Category Archives: Heritage at Risk

A Shoddy Welcome




As many readers will be aware, a splendid book was recently published on one of Ireland’s finest country houses, Townley Hall, County Louth (see Of the Highest Standard « The Irish Aesthete). The building and immediate surroundings have been meticulously maintained by its current custodians but the same cannot be said for the organisation responsible for the wider grounds, including the entrance. Both the gates and the lodge here were, like the house itself, designed by Francis Johnston and ought therefore to be kept in good condition. The photographs above show their state in January, and those below in April: already in poor shape, over those intervening months the gate posts have become even more dilapidated and unless there is due intervention, their future has to be in doubt. The owner in this instance is a state body, Coillte which has an almost unrivalled reputation for neglecting historic buildings supposed to be in its care – cf. Donadea Castle, County Kildare (Another Blot on the Landscape « The Irish Aesthete), Rockingham, County Roscommon (Differing Fates I « The Irish Aesthete) and many other sites. If Coillte cannot look after such properties – and clearly it can’t – then the organisation should hand over responsibility for their maintenance to another body which will show more concern for the protection of our national heritage. It’s worth pointing out that the relevant local authority, Louth County Council, ought by now to have intervened and instructed Coillte to restore these gateposts: in their present state, they provide a very shoddy welcome to Townley Hall and its woodlands. 



Society Scandals



At the rear of a graveyard in Clonlara, County Clare stands this impressive tomb erected following the death in June 1817 of the Rev. Charles Massy. The second son of Sir Hugh Dillon Massy, he had, like so many other young men in his position, become a Church of Ireland clergyman and as such was permitted to marry. His choice of bride was the 18-year old Mary Ann Ross-Lewin, beautiful and poor and as a result of the latter circumstance, Sir Hugh attempted to persuade his son against the marriage. To no avail: the couple married in 1796 and the following year had a son, named Hugh Dillon after his grandfather. All seemed well until 1803 when the Rev Massy and his wife made the acquaintance of Thomas Taylour, first Marquess of Headfort. At the end of that year, on the Sunday morning after Christmas and while her husband was officiating in church, Mary Anne Massy eloped with the marquess who was not only twice her age but married with four children. A scandal ensued, and the cuckolded clergyman brought a case for Criminal Conversation against Taylour, being awarded £10,000 at the end of a court case in July 1804. The Rev Massy was represented by barrister and orator John Philpot Curran, who was in a positin to sympathise with his client’s circumstances: a decade earlier, he had discovered his own wife Sarah had being having an affair with, and become pregnant by, another man – curiously enough, a Church of Ireland cleric the Rev Abraham Sandys. Curran successfully sued for Criminal Conversation, but, since his own philandering was publicly exposed during the case, he was only awarded a token £50. He and his wife separated but never divorced, whereas the Rev Massy did divorce his errant wife in 1808 and subsequently remarried. As for Mrs Massy, she was left in the disadvantaged position of being a divorced woman as the Marquess of Headfort remained married to his wife. None of this history, of course, is related on the the Rev Massy’s tomb but it seems a shame a monument that provides a link to these scandals of the late Georgian period should be allowed to fall into such poor condition.


A Cause for Worry



Like so many Irish towns, Ennis, County Clare sometimes seems determined not to take best advantage, or best care, of its architectural heritage. Nothing better exemplifies this unfortunate state of affairs than Bindon Street, a short stretch of road comprising two terraces facing each other, both holding six properties. A mixture of two and three bays wide, the houses are of three or four storeys over basement, with handsome limestone doorcases and, in most cases, mellow brick facades. Dating from the early 1830s, Bindon Street has the potential to be a splendid, albeit rather truncated, thoroughfare, a celebration of Ennis’s thriving mercantile and architectural past. Alas, while some of the buildings have been decently maintained, others suggest all is not well. No. 1, for example, is distinguished from the others by a bay window added to the ground floor around the middle of the 19th century. At this level all seems fine, but raise your eyes and note the insertion of unsuitable uPVC windows, at least in some openings – others on the top floors are boarded up. A cause for worry. 



P.S. And would someone please do something about all those ugly exposed electric cables snaking across every building. 

Final Traces


Rostellan Castle, County Cork is one of Ireland’s great lost houses, demolished less than 80 years ago and obliterated so completely that most visitors to the site would have no idea a substantial residence stood here for several centuries. The original building here is thought to have been constructed by a branch of the FitzGerald family; certainly by the mid-1560s the land it occupied had passed into the possession of Edmund FitzJohn FitzGerald, hereditary Dean of Cloyne. Knighted in 1602, he had a daughter Ellen who married Dermot O’Brien, fifth Baron Inchiquin and their eldest son, Murrough O’Brien, sixth Baron and first Earl of Inchiquin, would eventually come to own Rostellan. Remembered as Murchadh na dTóiteán (‘Murrough of the conflagrations’), he became notorious during the Confederate Wars from 1641 onwards for burning the houses, livestock and lands of his opponents, first the Catholic forces and then the Cromwellian army. In 1650 he left Ireland and moved to France where he joined the royal court in exile (and converted to Catholicism), returning to his country three years after the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660 and thereafter living quietly on estates which had been restored to him by royal act. Although O’Brien’s family had historically been associated with County Clare, where he owned land, his preference in later years was to live at Rostellan, and this remained the case for subsequent generations until the mid-19th century. 





Following his death in 1674, the first earl’s estates, including Rostellan, were inherited by his eldest son William O’Brien who had not converted to Catholicism but remained loyal to the Protestant faith. A military man, he had lost an eye in 1660 when he and his father were captured by Algerian corsairs in 1660; 14 years later, he . became Governor of Tangier and Captain General of the King’s Forces there. Back in Ireland, in 1688 he declared his support for William of Orange, but then failed in an effort to raise troops in County Cork to oppose James II. In the aftermath of the Williamite Wars, William III appointed him Governor of Jamaica, where he died of disease in 1692. His heir, the third earl, also William O’Brien seems to have lived a quieter life, spending much of his time at Rostellan where he carried out various improvements, not least walling and damming the surrounding land to stop tidal incursions, since Rostellan sits on a promontory overlooking Lower Cork Harbour; in 1701 he advised Queen Anne that at considerable expense he had ‘prevented the tide from overflowing a parcel of land adjoining to his house at Rostellan, which would be an advantage to the harbour of Cork for small vessels and boats, if a quay was made there, and desiring her Majesty to grant to him and his heirs the said ground, containing about 150 acres.’ In 1710 it was noted that the earl ‘is now att Rostellan…as buesie as ever, building &c; there neaver will be an end. God help him…’ He died in 1719, and was succeeded by his eldest son, yet another William O’Brien, who, in 1720, founded the Water Club of Cork Harbour in 1720; among other offices, he also served as Governor of Clare for more than 30 years and was a Member of the Privy Council of Ireland from 1753. Although he spent much time in England, the fourth earl carried out extensive works on the dwelling house at Rostellan, perhaps incorporating the older building although this is unclear. Legend has it that he built the house on or near the site of an old graveyard, ordering that the tombstones be levelled, according to another version, thrown into the sea. In any case, a woman whose only son was buried there duly laid a curse on him, saying no son would succeed thereafter and that the family line would die out. Indeed, the fourth earl and his wife had four sons, but they all predeceased him and when he died in 1777, Rostellan was inherited by a nephew, Murrough O’Brien, created first Marquess of Thomond in 1800. He in turn had no male heir, so the estate once more passed to a nephew, who had four daughters but no son. Rostellan and the O’Brien lands accordingly passed to a brother, the third and last marquess who, despite being married three times, had no children. And so, on his death in 1855, the curse made over a century earlier came to pass, the line died out and Rostellan was sold. Over the following decades, the property changed hands on a number of occasions, finally being leased in 1930 to Cloyne China Clay Company. who mined clay there for export. That continued for  decade, after which the house stood empty until demolished by the Irish Army Corps of Engineers in 1944. 





Surviving photographs of Rostellan Castle show a three-storey house with a five-bay entrance front and three-sided bows at each corner. In the 19th century, a Gothic porch was added to the facade and to one side of the house a long, single-storey extension containing a Gothic-style chapel, ending in a squat round tower. All of this, as mentioned, has been entirely swept away, the area now occupied by pitches for a local GAA club. But along the shoreline are traces of the work undertaken by the fourth earl and his successors, not least a causeway with battlemented parapets and, at one point, the remains of a prow-like battery terrace, dating from 1727. Here were formerly set a number of canon, used for starting boat races (the earl having founded the Cork Water Club). Elsewhere along the same shoreline can be seen a rather stock Doric column with vermiculated plinth; originally this supported a lead statue by John van Nost the Younger of Admiral Edward Hawke. And further along are what survives of a battlemented round tower built as a tea house by the first marquess and named after the famous actress Sarah Siddons who he entertained there during one of her visits to Ireland. All in poor condition, these are all that remain of Rostellan Castle and its demesne; soon, like the house itself, they will disappear and with them the last memory of this place.  

Good Honest Design


A worker’s cottage in the hamlet of Glenosheen, County Limerick. It dates from c.1840, around the time a new bog road was built through the area, then part of the Castle Oliver estate. The building’s simple but effective design sets it apart from many other such modest dwellings of the period: for example, the use of brick around the upper sections of the door and windows, in contrast to the limestone rubble with which it is otherwise constructed. Then there are the hooded mouldings above the windows, and the pedimented projection of the gently-arched doorway. This is one of a pair of cottages but unfortunately its neighboutr has had unsympathetic fenestration inserted, with the result that much of its charm is lost.

A Reminder




On Monday, the Irish Times carried a report noting that Ireland’s Health Service Executive owns hundreds of unused buildings across the state, some of which have been left vacant for decades (see: HSE owns hundreds of unused buildings, figures show (irishtimes.com)). This will not come as news to anyone who is concerned for the welfare of the country’s architectural heritage: the HSE is responsible for many historic sites, and a large number of them have been left not just vacant, but badly neglected, such as the former St Brigid’s Hospital in Ballinasloe, County Galway (above). A vast range of buildings designed by William Murray and opened in 1833, it closed 180 years later and has stood abandoned ever since. The HSE is by no means the only offender in this respect. Columb (originally Wellington) Barracks in Mullingar, County Westmeath provided accommodation for troops from 1819 until 2011, when it closed down: owned by the Department of Defence, the site has since been left largely empty, a prey to vandalism and creeping decay. Last winter – a full decade after the last troops left – the Land Development Agency produced a report on the site, with the promise that further information would follow in due course. No doubt something will eventually happen here, but after 11 years nobody can be accused of rushing into hasty decision-making.
A few points need to be made about both these and many other such premises, the first of which is that they are owned by the people of Ireland: the relevant state bodies in whose care they remain, are supposed to be their custodians. These are national assets, and the abysmal failure to take due care of them is at a cost to everyone else: the more they fall into decay, the less they are worth, to the detriment of all of us. In addition, the two examples shown here, and many more besides, are often close to urban centres and therefore ideally suited to provide ample accommodation for those who unfortunately don’t have it at present. In recent days, for example, it has been reported that a tent village is being prepared for Romanian refugees in Gormanstown, County Meath. This is an extraordinary state of affairs: why should anyone have to sleep in a tent when the HSE, and other agencies, own so many vacant buildings. Furthermore, if the state is supposed to lead by example, what sort of example is set by the likes of the HSE and the Department of Defence? Why should private owners worry about neglecting their property, when state authorities do so on a much larger scale? A reminder: this is a shameful – and shameless – squandering of our assets, and we are the losers as a result.



Dereliction is Vandalism


Since last year, two Cork-based sustainable designers, Jude Sherry and Frank O’Connor have been driving a campaign – primarily via Twitter (look for #derelictireland) but also through other channels – to tackle the shameful and ongoing problem of dereliction in Ireland. This is a long-standing issue which has been allowed to fester for far too long. Last October,
research by UK price comparison website money.co.uk reported that 9.1 % of the State’s housing stock, equating to more than 183,000 units, were classified as vacant – with 4,000 of these being owned by local authorities. Furthermore, the following month it was revealed that during 2020 the same local authorities had collected €378,000 through the Derelict Sites Levy, a small fraction of the almost €12.5 million in cumulative unpaid charges which could have been claimed. A large number of vacant properties can be classified as derelict, which is hardly surprising when owners see so little effort is made to ensure they maintain buildings in their possession. As anyone who has travelled around Ireland can testify, everywhere, in urban and rural settings alike, there are houses falling gradually, and seemingly irrevocably, into decay. These are a blight on a nation and ought to be a matter of shame, but instead too often the only response is indifference. Hence the importance of Sherry and O’Connor’s work. 





Close to the shores of Lough Corrib, Oughterard, County Galway lies on the main route to Connemara: almost all traffic heading west passes through the town. Before doing so, all traffic must also pass the shabby remains of the former Connemara Gateway Hotel. This former 62-bedroom property on around six acres closed its doors some years ago, and is currently for sale for €2.4 million. In September 2019, some refurbishment was undertaken as the owner sought to have it leased by the state as a Direct Provision Centre. There had been no consultation with the local population which, when this notion became public, rallied to oppose the scheme; it was duly abandoned. So, the building now sits empty and falling ever further into decay, serving as a welcome when visitors arrive in the west of Ireland. Then, as they leave Oughterard, those visitors have an opportunity to inspect a further example of the national penchant for dereliction: the former Sweeney’s Oughterard House Hotel. The front of this building dates from the early 18th century when it was constructed as a private residence: it was subsequently, and clumsily, extended to the rear. Like the Connemara Gateway Hotel, the property has stood empty for some years and is in an increasingly poor state of repair.





One small Irish town, two large properties capable of providing accommodation to upwards of 100 people left to stand empty and neglected. In Ireland, property ownership is sacrosanct. Owners believe they are entitled to do what they like with the buildings in their possession, and that includes doing nothing. Hence the increasing number of buildings lying vacant and decaying. In February, Irish Times columnist David McWilliams wrote – not for the first time – that dereliction is vandalism and must be stopped (see https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/david-mcwilliams-dereliction-is-vandalism-and-must-be-stopped-1.4798979). What’s more, the state allows this vandalism to persist. Legislation exists providing both national and local governments with the necessary powers to intervene and halt dereliction, but both persistently fail to exercise them. Until they do so, the likes of these two Oughterard buildings will continue to be found right around the country. 

School’s Out Forever



The former National School in Ballintemple, County Cavan, with adjacent house. The buildings stand beside St Patrick’s Church of Ireland church which dates from 1821, and the school, which is the single storey building to the right, was built almost thirty years later as a small plaque beneath the roof eaves explains. Another plaque on the facade of the two-storey neighbouring buildingnotes that it was erected in 1925 by the Rev. RJ Walker. Alas, both are now empty and falling into dereliction.


A Survivor and a Loss


Some weeks ago, the sad present state of a Penal-era Roman Catholic chapel in County Cavan was featured here (see A Sorrowful Sight « The Irish Aesthete). Here is another such building, thankfully this one in much better condition. St James’s in Grange, County Louth dates from 1762, meaning that this year marks its 260th anniversary. It is likely that when first erected, the chapel consisted simply of one long hall running north to south, with separate entrances for men and women at either end, and an altar in the middle of the east wall, as at Holy Trinity in Kildoagh At the start of the 19th century, extensions were made to west and east, the former running back to create a third arm and convert the building into the typical T-plan form, while a belfry tower was built at the centre of the eastern side incorporating a sacristy. It has been proposed that the original chapel was designed by a local architect and builder called Thaddeus Gallagher whose son James emigrated to the United States where he changed his surname to Gallier and enjoyed a successful architectural career in New Orleans; in his autobiography of 1864 he claimed to have re-roofed the chapel at Grange around 1818, which is likely when the other alterations were made.





The interior of the chapel still retains much of its original character. At the end of each arm are panelled timber galleries, although that in the western, later section has taller panels with a slightly different frieze below (compare the first and last pictures above). Each gallery is supported by elaborate plaster brackets at either end, and a pair of columns with Ionic capitals that reflect the building’s location by incorporating scallop shells suspended from strings of beads. The interior is lit by tall, round-headed windows with their Georgian glazing and there are charming fanlights over the two porch doors. At some date in the post-Vatican II era, the sacristy behind the altar was opened to create a new sanctuary space. The present arrangement there, with the end wall featuring an aedicule and Ionic columns, appears to incorporate at least elements of the former design.





Just a few miles away from Grange stands another old Catholic chapel, but this one is poor repair. It is located in a townland called Lordship, its title derived from the pre-Reformation period when this part of the country was owned by the Lord Abbot of Mellifont. The chapel forms one element of what seems to have been a group of buildings, including a national school and another property (today in use as a creche). Some time ago the old national school was converted into a local credit union: Irish readers may remember it was here that Detective Garda Adrian Donohoe was fatally shot during an armed robbery almost exactly nine years ago. There is little information available about this disused chapel, but apparently it was on the site of a place of Catholic worship during the penal era. Today it stands abandoned and derelict.

Then & Now


‘A little before dinner I got to Castle Ward. Lord Bangor received me with great cordiality, brought me into his room, and signed the address with great willingness. He also asked me to dine and stay all night. This was the greater compliment as his house was full of company and not quite finished…There was an elegant dinner, stewed trout at the head, chine of the beef at the foot, soup in the middle, a little pie in the middle of each side, and four trifling things in the corners, just as you saw at Mr Adderley’s. This is the style of all the dinners I have seen, and the second course of nine dishes made out much in the same way. The cloth was taken away, and then the fruit – a pine-apple (not good), a small plate of peaches, grapes and figs, (but a few) and the rest pears and apples. No plates or knives given about. We were served in queenware.
Our epergne, candlesticks, service of china, variety of fruit, substantial and well-dressed dinners and dining-room far exceed anything that I have seen since I came abroad, and so it is spoken of, for Miss Murray assured me in the most serious manner that both Sir Patrick and Fortescue had often declared that they never had anywhere in their lives met with so much entertainment, with a more convenient house, or more elegant living than at Castle Caldwell.’
Sir James Caldwell, writing to his wife, Monday, 12th October, 1772





‘August 11th, 1776. Reached Castle Caldwell at night, where Sir James Caldwell received me with a politeness and cordiality that will make me long remember it with pleasure…Nothing can be more beautiful than the approach to Castle Caldwell; the promontories of thick wood which shoot into Lough Erne, under the shade of a great ridge of mountains, have the finest effect imaginable; as soon as you are through the gates, turn to the left, about 200 yards to the edge of the hill, where the whole domain lies beneath the point of view. It is a promontory three miles long, projecting into the lake, a beautiful assemblage of wood and lawn, one end a thick shade, the other grass, scattered with trees and finished with wood…the house, almost obscured among the trees, seems a fit retreat from every care and anxiety of the world; a little beyond it the lawn, which is in front, shews its lively green among the deeper shades and over the neck of land, which joins it to the promontory of wood called Ross a goul, the lake seems to form a beautiful wood-locked bason, stretching its silver surface behind the stems of the single trees; beyond the whole, the mountainy rocks of Turaw give a magnificent finishing…Take my leave of Castle Caldwell, and with colours flying and his band of music playing, go on board his six-oared barge for Inniskilling; the heavens were favourable, and a clear sky and bright sun gave me the beauties of the lake in all their splendour.’
From Arthur Young’s Tour of Ireland 1776-1779. 





‘I travelled four hundred miles de suite without going to an inn. Amongst those who were most desirous of my calling upon them was Sir James Caldwell, of Castle Caldwell, on Lough Erne. One anecdote will give some idea of his character. The Marquis of Lansdowne, then Earl of Shelburne, being in Ireland, and intending to call on Sir James, he, with an hospitality truly Irish, thought of nothing night or day but how to devise some amusement to entertain his noble guest, and came home to breakfast one morning with prodigious eagerness to communicate a new idea to Lady  Caldwell. This was to summon together the hundred labourers he employed, and choose fifty that would best represent New Zealand savages, in order that he might form two fleets of boats on the Lough, one to represent Captain Cook and his men, the other a New Zealand chief at the head of his party in  canoes, and consulted her how it would be possible to get them dressed in an appropriate manner in time for Lord Shelburne’s arrival. Lady C, who had much more prudence than Sir James, reminded him that he had 200 acres of hay down, and the preparations he mentioned would occupy so much time that the whole would now stand a chance of being spoiled. All remonstrances were in vain. Tailors were pressed into his service from the surrounding country to vamp up, as well as time would permit, the crews of men and fleets. The prediction was fulfilled: the hay was spoiled, and what hurt Sir James much more, he received a letter from Lord S. to put off his coming till  his return from Kilkenny, and that uncertain.’
From The Autobiography of Arthur Young (published 1898)


Today’s photographs show the now-scant remains of Castle Caldwell, County Fermanagh.