Category Archives: Heritage at Risk

Golden Memories



‘GOLDEN, a village and post town, in the parish of Relickmurry, barony of Clanwilliam, county of Tipperary, and province of’ Munster, 3½ miles (W.) from Cashel (to which it has a sub post-office), and 82 (S.) from Dublin, on the road from Cashel to Tipperary. containing 114 houses and 648 inhabitants. It is a neat and improving village, situated in what is called “the Golden Vale,” and is divided into two parts by the river Suir, over which is a stone bridge. on which King William signed the Charter of Cashel, and near it is an old circular stone tower. Here are flour and oat meal-mills, and constabulary police station fair are held on May 18th, Aug. 26th, Oct. 26th, and Dre. 15th, and petty sessions once a fortnight The parochial church was erected here in 1808, and a tower was added by aid of a loan of £700 from the late Board of First Fruits, in 1812. There is also a large R.C. chapel.’
From Samuel Lewis’ Topographical Dictionary of Ireland (1837)





In the last census (taken April 2016) the village of Golden, County Tipperary had a population of 267, a drop of some 9 per cent on what it had been a quarter of a century earlier, and barely 40 per cent of the figure given by Lewis 180 years ago. The ongoing and seemingly unstoppable decline of Ireland’s rural towns and villages has been the subject of much debate in recent years. At least part of the explanation for this phenomenon lies in the fact that these smaller urban centres now rarely generate much economic activity and employment, Golden appearing typical in this respect. Such was not always the case: the buildings shown here are what remain of a larger mill complex, dating from the early 19th century when a considerable number of these industrial complexes were developed in response to improved agricultural practices, and increased demand for corn and other grains. The majority of these mills closed fifty or more years ago because they were no longer economically viable, but the evidence of their presence – and the important role they once played in the commercial prosperity of a village like Golden – remain, at least for the moment. In the middle of last month, a large and splendid mill complex in the heart of Drogheda, County Louth was gutted by fire. It had been allowed to stand empty and neglected for many years, and accordingly the building’s eventual destruction was entirely predictable. The loss is considerable and unnecessary, and means that part of Drogheda’s history has disappeared. Looking around the detritus in Golden’s old mill, it would seem a similar fate awaits here, even though the building is (like that recently burnt in Drogheda) listed by the relevant local authority as a Protected Structure. When that happens part of the area’s collective memory will be forever lost.


The Big Castle


What survives of Castlemore, County Cork. Standing on a limestone outcrop, this once-substantial building (caisleán mór: big castle) is believed to have been constructed in the 15th century by the McCarthys, then the dominant family in this part of the world. Towards the end of the 16th century it was held for them by the MacSwineys but then passed into the hands of the Ryes whose main seat, Rye Court, lay just a few miles away (see June 1921 II, January 26th 2019). It was subsequently owned, and occupied, by the Travers family but must have been abandoned by them because photographs of the castle taken by Robert French in the late 19th/early 20th show it as a ruin. Still, at least then it was relatively clear of vegetation and also of other properties. Today Castlemore lies in the middle of a quarry and is in very poor condition.

Dirty Money


In the 1830s, William Drummond Delap of Monasterboice House, County Louth was paid £1,933 by the British government. The reason: he was being compensated for the abolition of slavery in the Caribbean colonies. Mr Delap, it transpires, had owned 96 slaves on two plantations in Jamaica. Slavery there, and on the other islands in the area, had been abolished in 1833, but such was the level of complaint about loss of revenue from former owners, not least those like Mr Delap who lived on the opposite side of the Atlantic, that four years later parliament passed the Slave Compensation Act, resulting in some £20 million being paid out.
Little work has been done in Ireland on the benefits enjoyed during the 17th and 18th centuries by some country house estate owners who were involved in plantations, although twelve years ago History Ireland published a highly informative article by Nini Rodgers on the subject of Irish links to the slave trade (see: https://www.historyireland.com/18th-19th-century-history/the-irish-and-the-atlantic-slave-trade). In England, and indeed in France too, much more research has been undertaken on the matter, not least at University College London’s Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slave-ownership, where archival examination has discovered who were the beneficiaries: it has, for example, documented which country houses owe their existence, in part or whole, to money that came through slavery in the Caribbean. In 2013, the centre created a database of the individuals who were paid compensation when slavery was finally abolished, and it includes some 170 names of people in Ireland, not least William Dunlop Delap. His brother Colonel James Bogle Delap, a friend of George IV, received £4,960. Among the others, some are well-known, such as two members of the banking La Touche family (£6,865 between them) and Howe Peter Browne, second Marquess of Sligo (£5,425). However, by far the largest beneficiary was one Charles McGarel of Larne, County Antrim whose claim for 2,777 slaves on twelve different plantations led to his receiving no less than £135,076. (To explore the documentation relating to Ireland, see: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/search).





William Drummond Delap was a descendant of Hugh Dunlop who around 1600 moved from Ayrshire in Scotland to Sligo where he was involved in the wine trade. His son Robert moved to County Donegal, which is where successive generations of the family lived, their surname becoming corrupted to Delap. Robert Delap, born in 1754, graduated from Trinity College Dublin and was admitted to the Middle Temple before being called to the Irish bar in 1778. Two years before he had married Mary Ann Bogle, daughter of James Bogle of Castlefin, County Donegal. It was Mary Ann’s family, likewise of Scottish origin, which had plantation interests in Jamaica: the UCL Legacies of British Slave-ownership site lists 21 persons of that name. Evidently she acquired a substantial stake in these properties following her marriage: Robert Delap died at sea while returning from the Caribbean in 1782, leaving a widow with several young children including William Drummond who was then barely two years old. In 1805 he married Catherine, eldest daughter of William Foster, Bishop of Clogher and brother of John Foster, last Speaker of the Irish House of Commons. In 1811 John Foster described his niece’s husband as ‘a good man of business resident in London where he acted as a merchant and has a West India property of his own to look after.’ Around 1830 he decided to move to Co Louth, where many of his wife’s family owned land, and there he bought various parcels to create an estate of more than 1,200 acres on which he either built, or more likely enlarged, Monasterboice House. He also laid out elaborate terraced gardens and planted many specimen trees. On a rise south-west of the house he erected a folly, called Drummond Tower after his maternal grandmother who had helped to raise him after his father’s early death. In 1861 he resumed by licence the family’s original surname of Dunlop.





Not much appears to be known about the history of Monasterboice House, now a ruinous building. At its core looks to be a typical late-mediaeval tower house, which as was so often the case has been subject to various structural alterations but is still clearly distinct rising on the northern section of the site. To the south is what appears to be a late 18th/early 19th century residence, of two storeys over basement, three bays with the centre one in the form of a substantial bow. The ground floor of this has glazed doors that once opened onto the terraced gardens and is flanked by Wyatt windows typical of the period. The house’s principal entrance lies on the west side, and was formerly approached by a long avenue. Perhaps to harmonise with the old tower house, this section was gothicised in the Tudoresque manner with arched windows and a large porte-cochere in front of a castellated porch. The back of the house opens to two large yards beyond which was the walled garden. It looks as though the building was developed in three sections, first the tower house, then the villa and finally a Tudor-Gothic expansion. In Samuel Lewis’s Topographical Dictionary of Ireland, he writes of Monasterboice House that ‘a spacious mansion is now being erected by the proprietor.’ Lewis’ work came out in 1837, just as compensation was being paid to former plantation owners, such as William Drummond Delap/Dunlop. A suspicion forms that the money he then received was used to improve his country residence. Future generations did not enjoy it for long: his son and heir Robert Foster Dunlop married a cousin, the Hon Anna Skeffington but the couple had no son and their daughters do not seem to have occupied the place. At the start of the last century, the estate built up by William Drummond Delap was divided up and while the Louth Archaeological and History Society Journal reported in 1945 that the house was ‘in a fair state of preservation’ that is certainly no longer the case.

Relics of Auld Decency



The remains of Tober House, County Wicklow. The building is believed to date from c.1720 when constructed for a branch of the Powell family (not Power, as is often stated) It appears the house originally rose two storeys over basement but an additional floor was later added above the moulded string course. It’s curious to note that the windows on the ground floor are not symmetrically spaced: one of them on the ground floor being much closer to the entrance than the other. Parts of the slate cladding on the south wall survive, as does the handsome limestone lugged doorcase. Tober is said to have been gutted by fire at the end of the 18th century, perhaps during the time of the 1798 Rebellion when this part of the country was engulfed by violence. It has stood a ruin ever since.



The House by the Churchyard

In 1863 Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu published one of his most successful works The House by the Churchyard. The book, which like many 19th century novels was initially serialized and accordingly has a convoluted plot, is set in the village of Chapelizod to the immediate west of central Dublin. Sheridan Le Fanu knew the area well: not long after he was born in 1814 his father, an Anglican clergyman, was appointed chaplain of the Royal Hibernian Military School (now St Mary’s Hospital) in the Phoenix Park which lies directly north of Chapelizod. This is the eponymous House by the Churchyard, standing – just about – outside the gates of the adjacent St Laurence’s Church. The building is believed to date from c.1740, just a few decades before the period in which Sheridan Le Fanu’s novel is set. It has been standing empty and neglected for some years and now looks to be in a seriously dilapidated condition. Unless there is an intervention soon, it will be necessary to write another book, this one called The Lost House by the Churchyard.


Incidentally, this is not the only historic property in Chapelizod in perilous condition: a little to the east, the last surviving house from a terrace built around 1700 is boarded up and on the verge of disintegration. 

Stalled?


The Catholic Committee (sometimes called the Catholic Convention) was a body set up in 1757 to campaign for the repeal of the Penal Laws, and greater religious and political freedom for members of the Roman Catholic church. One of its founders was the antiquarian Charles O’Conor who lived in County Roscommon, and it is likely that as a result of his involvement other men in the same part of the country became involved with the committee. Hugh O’Beirne was among this number, a merchant based in Carrick-on-Shannon, County Leitrim who eventually became sufficiently affluent that he was able to acquire several thousand acres of land and build himself a residence at Jamestown, County Leitrim. In late 1792 Theobald Wolfe Tone, then Assistant Secretary of the Catholic Committee, encountered Hugh O’Beirne at a gathering in Dublin and wrote, ‘Met “Met Mr. O’Beirne of Co Leitrim, a sensible man. . . says the common people are up in high spirits and anxious for the event. Bravo! Better to have the peasantry of one county than twenty members of Parliament.’





Hugh O’Beirne took the Oath of Allegiance to the United Irishmen but does not seem to have been penalized for his association with the society in the aftermath of 1798: in the years before his death in 1813, he was a Justice of the Peace for Roscommon. He was succeeded by his son Francis, likewise a J.P. and also Deputy Lieutenant for County Leitrim. In 1843 he enlarged the small Catholic chapel built by his father for the people of Jamestown; behind this Francis also erected a school and schoolmaster’s house. On his death in 1854, the estate – which at its height ran to over 7,500 acres in County Leitrim (and almost another 250 in neighbouring Roscommon) – passed to his son Hugh. His children seem to have been the last of the O’Beirnes to have lived in Jamestown, one son, likewise called Hugh, entered the British Diplomatic Service and along with Lord Kitchener drowned when the vessel they were on, HMS Hampshire, was sunk by a German U-boat off the Orkney coast in June 1916.





The house shown in today’s photographs, Tinny Park, County Roscommon, was until recently owned by a branch of the same family. It is believed to date from around the mid-19th century and is a typical gentleman farmer’s residence, complete with handsome yard to the rear. Of two storeys over basement with a central door approached via a short flight of stone steps, the interior conforms to the usual country house plan, albeit on a small scale: double doors to the rear of the two main reception rooms lead to smaller spaces, and the entrance hall is largely taken up by a staircase. Unoccupied for the previous ten years, Tinny Park was offered for sale for the first time in the summer of 2016, the price on just over six acres was a modest €250,000. It duly sold and, evidently, refurbishment work began, not all of it advantageous: old photographs show the exterior covered in render, all of which has been stripped away. This work now looks to have stalled and when visited last winter the house wore a forsaken appearance. One can only hope that restoration has since resumed (and that in due course the exterior will be correctly re-rendered).


In a Sorry (es)State


According to an entry in buildingsofireland.ie, this building ‘gives strong architectural definition to its context, and forms a landmark at a crossroads on the main Virginia-Cavan Road.’ Dating from c.1870, the house was probably built for estate workers employed by the Marquess of Headfort whose former lodge lies not far away.




The building is particularly interesting because although looking like a single house from the front, it actually contained four residences, each with its own entrance. Given such a prominent position on the main road from the north into Virginia, County Cavan and the property’s historic associations its ongoing neglect is regrettable.

First Impressions


The first building seen by visitors to Carton, County Kildare is a boathouse on the north side of the Rye Water. Said to have been constructed in expectation of a visit by Queen Victoria in the mid-19th century, the boathouse makes an excellent first impression, provided not inspected too closely. Look at the other side of the building: here are slates already fallen off the roof, and others on the verge of doing so, allowing rainwater to damage the fabric. Unless necessary repairs are carried out by the hotel owners, the first building seen by visitors to Carton could yet be a ruin.

Ghost House


I dwell in a lonely house I know
That vanished many a summer ago,
And left no trace but the cellar walls,
And a cellar in which the daylight falls
And the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow.

O’er ruined fences the grape-vines shield
The woods come back to the mowing field;
The orchard tree has grown one copse
Of new wood and old where the woodpecker chops;
The footpath down to the well is healed.




I dwell with a strangely aching heart
In that vanished abode there far apart
On that disused and forgotten road
That has no dust-bath now for the toad.
Night comes; the black bats tumble and dart;

The whippoorwill is coming to shout
And hush and cluck and flutter about:
I hear him begin far enough away
Full many a time to say his say
Before he arrives to say it out.




It is under the small, dim, summer star.
I know not who these mute folk are
Who share the unlit place with me—
Those stones out under the low-limbed tree
Doubtless bear names that the mosses mar.

They are tireless folk, but slow and sad—
Though two, close-keeping, are lass and lad,—
With none among them that ever sings,
And yet, in view of how many things,
As sweet companions as might be had.


Ghost House by Robert Frost. 
Crossdrum Lower, County Meath – one of the houses featured in The Irish Aesthete: Ruins of Ireland (Cico Books), now available to order from your favourite local bookshop or online from Amazon…

Reconciled to Ruin


Inside the rear section of the former army barracks at Glencree, County Wicklow. In the aftermath of the 1798 Rebellion when this part of the country proved difficult for the authorities to control, a route still called the Military Road was constructed through the Wicklow Mountains, and these buildings erected in 1806 to house 100 troops. In the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars they vacated the barracks which during the second half of the 19th century was converted into a boy’s reformatory, being used for this purpose until 1940. The site then served as a prison for captured German military personnel (a small cemetery holding the remains of those who died during that period remains close by) and since the mid-1970s one block has been the Glencree Centre for Reconciliation. However, as can be seen, the buildings immediately behind have been left to fall into their present state of disrepair.