Category Archives: Historic Interior

Little Changed


The origins of the Baker family in Ireland are unclear, but it would seem that Thomas Baker, an Englishman, came here and settled, likely in the first decades of the 17th century. Based in Knockordan, County Tipperary, he came to rent large areas of farmland in the vicinity, running to more than 3,730 acres, from local Roman Catholic owners. Disaster befell both them and their tenant in 1641 with the onset of the Confederate Wars: in the case of Baker and his family, they were besieged by the rebels and, following his death in February 1642, forced to surrender everything they had, down to their ‘wearing apparel’, before the family – a widow with six children – were turned out of doors. As for the owners of the land that Baker had rented, they too lost their property, divided up following the Down Survey in the following decade. However, because Thomas had loaned money to some of his landlords on the security of mortgages they had taken out against the properties he rented from them, his son Walter was able to lay claim to some of what had been lost and, in the years after the Restoration of 1660, the Bakers regained outright some of what had once been held only in leasehold. Thereafter they seem to have prospered and in October 1704, William Baker, a great-grandson of the original Thomas, purchased from Charles Blount – a grandson of one of the Down Survey commissioners – the lands on which Lismacue House now stands for the sum of £923. The original residence, long since gone, was one of the largest in this part of the country and with five hearths incurring a tax of 10 shillings, according to the 1665 hearth-money records.





Approached at the end of a long avenue of lime trees planted in the mid-18th century by Hugh Baker, the present house at Lismacue replaced an earlier residence elsewhere on the estate. This building was commissioned in 1813 by Hugh’s grandson William from Kilkenny architect William Robertson. However, the owner was not able to enjoy his new home for long because a short time later he was murdered. As reported by the Rev. William Burke in his History of Clonmel (1907), ‘The event, however, which stirred the county to its depths was the murder of William Baker of Lismacue. Returning from Cashel Sessions, November 27th, 1815, he was met by two men at the gates of Thomastown Park and shot through the head. Though a reward of £5,000 was offered, and though scores of suspected persons were lodged in the bridewells, the secret which was known to hundreds, was long kept and the efforts of the Crown baffled.’ Eventually, it seems, two men called Keating and Maher were imprisoned in Cahir where the former ‘through connivance or otherwise’, obtained some whisky which apparently loosened tongues. Their conversation being overheard, Keating was subsequently induced to give evidence, and Maher was hanged. Since the murdered man had no children, Lismacue was then inherited by his nephew, Hugh Baker who was still a minor at the time. He and his wife Marion Conyers were responsible for finishing the interiors now seen in the house. After his death in 1868, he was succeeded by his son, also called Hugh, but when the latter in turn died in 1887, the family almost lost everything as a result of needful land sales. Fortunately, the third Hugh’s widow, Frances Massy, remarried and her second husband, Major Ralph Bunbury, was able to buy Lismacue and the surrounding lands for what was described as a ‘low price’ so that the Bakers could continue to live there. Eventually, following the major’s death, his siblings transferred the place ‘on generous terms’ to one of the third Hugh’s sons, Charles Conyers Massy Baker. Today, Lismacue continues to be occupied by his descendants. 





Designed in a mildly Tudorbethan style, Lismacue’s exterior is ornamented with hood mouldings over the windows, and dainty crenellations and pinnacles along the roofline. Of two storeys over-basement, the facade is three bays wide, the centre bay distinguished by a single-storey limestone Gothick porch supported by columns. A service wing to the immediate north looks as though it concludes in a chapel, since the gable here holds a large arched window with Gothick tracery. However, this is illusory, since the interior is divided into several floors. Inside, the same restrained use of Gothick ornament prevails, but the overall tone is late Georgian classical. Many of the main reception rooms still contain wallpapers first hung in the 1830s and indeed, the charm of Lismacue is precisely that, ever since built, successive owners have never been in a position to undertake largescale alterations. Little changed since first constructed, in spirit and style, it still retains the style and spirit of an early 19th century Irish country house.

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At Peace


The Echlin family has been mentioned here before (see Lost Heritage « The Irish Aesthete). The first of them to settle in Ireland was Robert Echlin, a Scots-born clergyman who in 1612 was appointed Bishop of Down and Connor by James I. His great-grandson Henry Echlin, a judge and bibliophile, was created a baronet four years prior to his death in 1725. The family continued to thrive for a period, but already before the end of the 18th century, much of their fortune had been dissipated and by the time the third baronet died in 1799 without a direct male heir, not a great deal remained. Nevertheless, in circumstances reminiscent of Bleak House’s Jarndyce V Jarndyce, in 1827 the fourth baronet, Sir James Echlin became involved in a complex legal dispute. By the time the matter eventually concluded in 1850, Sir James was dead and legal fees had swallowed up all the money. As Sir Bernard Burke noted in Vicissitudes of Families, Volume II (1869), ‘the litigation went on year after year; the lawyers enjoyed it amazingly; they chuckled and punned, and cracked jokes about it. To them it was food and raiment; to the Echlin family, death and destitution.’ Sir Bernard went on to quote a letter written in June 1860 by the Rector of Carbury, County Kildare concerning the fifth baronet, Sir Frederick Echlin, who lived in the parish: ‘Sir Frederick can neither read nor write, and his brother is also quite an illiterate and uneducated man…He is now upwards of seventy, and utterly destitute, his only means of support being two shillings and sixpence a week, which I allow him out of our collection for the poor, together with occasional donations from Christian persons in this neighbourhood, and contributions which I get for him from my friends’ Since he was unmarried, the baronetcy passed to his younger brother Fenton, who also lived in County Kildare, ‘deriving his only support from contributions from his sons, very deserving young men, one a Policeman, another a private in the Life Guards, and the third a Footman.’ The policeman, a sergeant in the Royal Irish Constabulary and based in the Phoenix Park in Dublin, in due course became Sir Thomas Echlin, seventh baronet. Aside from the title, he inherited little  other than some family memorabilia, including a number of portraits, an oak box containing parchments, records, and deeds to the former estates and a sword used by Lieutenant General Robert Echlin at the Battle of the Boyne. The last of the baronets, Sir Norman Echlin, died on the Isle of Wight in April 2007. 





Not all members of the Echlin family suffered such serious reversals of fortune. In December 1804 Anne Echlin, described as a spinster and living in a house on St Stephen’s Green, Dublin died and left a will indicating that she owned property in County Galway, ‘estates in the North of Ireland’ and an estate in County Carlow. While the Galway and Northern Irish estates went to two cousins, Dublin barrister George Vesey and the Rev. George Vesey, the Carlow land was bequeathed to Robert Marshall and then to his wife Frances Marshall, a sister of the Rev George Vesey. The Veseys were cousins of Anne Echlin, her grandmother Frances Vesey having married Robert Echlin. However the Marshalls did not receive their inheritance outright since the will specified, ‘I have let to my friend Clement Wolsely, Esq., the house and demesne of Sandbrook, part of said Carlow estate, consisting of 165 acres for 61 years at the annual rent of 40/- by the acre, which agreement is to be confirmed.’ Just a few years later, in 1808 the Marshalls sold the entire property formerly owned by Anne Echlin, running to some 500 acres and including Sandbrook, for £488. The new owner was Robert Browne of nearby Browne’s Hill (see Escaping the Wreckers’ Ball « The Irish Aesthete) and while the Wolseleys continued to own and occupy Sandbrook until at least the middle of the 19th century, by 1888 it was occupied by Robert Clayton Browne. However, early in the 20th century, it belonged to an army man, Colonel (later Brigadier General) Bridges George Lewis before becoming home to Brigadier Arthur George Rolleston. In 1960 he sold the house and 85 acres to John and Mary Allnatt. Sandbrook was then inherited by Mrs Allnatt’s son before being bought in 1997 by the present owner, Christopher Bielenberg, who now lives there with his wife, interior designer Arabella Huddart.  





From the exterior, Sandbrook looks like a larger house than proves to be the case, the main body of the building being just one room deep. This suggests an early date of construction, likely during the first quarter of the 18th century when the building was only of five bays and two storeys over basement, a further two bays being added at either side in the 19th century, perhaps when owned and occupied by the Brownes. The central breakfront bay is delineated by quoins and features a pediment incorporating an oculus. Below, the simple granite doorcase (its more substantial lintel again being a later insertion) gives access to the panelled entrance hall with fluted Ionic pilasters and doors with shouldered architraves. A gable-ended extension to the rear accommodates the staircase with shallow treads and fluted balusters.  The reception rooms opening on either side of the hall are more simply designed, although they all have fine chimneypieces of various dates. As seen today, Sandbrook, which is available for hire for the likes of family gatherings or weddings, is relaxed, comfortable and peaceful. Hard to believe that it might ever have been associated, however tangentially, with the turmoil of the Echlin family.


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Remembrance of Things Past



Recently going through the ever-expanding collection of photographs, the Irish Aesthete came across a cache, taken some years ago and showing Drummin, County Kildare. Until his death five years ago, this house was home to the hospitable Grattan de Courcy Wheeler, whose many lunches and dinners, prepared by an ever-loyal housekeeper Mary, were renowned for their length and liveliness. Grattan was a throwback to the kind of 18th century landed gentleman described with various degrees of delight and disapproval by the likes of Sir Jonah Barrington, Arthur Young and many others. Drummin too seemed to belong to an earlier age, certainly many modern comforts were not to be found there but that rarely deterred guests from accepting an invitation to visit and, if the evening went on too late (and the claret was poured too liberally), to stay overnight. 





Its name derived from the Irish Droim Mín, meaning ‘Little Ridge of a Hill’, Drummin dates from the mid-18th century, a lease for some 580 acres of land here being taken out in 1746 by the Rev Richard Grattan: in 1840 this lease would be renewed for three lives by his grandson Dr Richard Grattan. The Grattans of Drummin were related to Ireland’s famous parliamentary patriot, Henry Grattan, both branches seemingly descended from the Rev Patrick Grattan of Belcamp, County Dublin: two of the Rev Patrick’s sons, Robert and John, also both clergymen, were executors of the will of Jonathan Swift, a family friend. As for Drummin, the original house was of two storeys over basement and with a rendered facade of three bays (five bays to the garden front). It is thought that the centre breakfront originally contained the main entrance to the building (where an arched window is now) but in the 19th century single bay extensions were added to either side, that to the north containing a new entrance hall. According to legend, when the house was first being constructed, a curse was put on the place that no eldest son would succeed his father, and indeed this is what came to pass while the Grattans owned the property. The aforementioned Dr Richard Grattan, a distinguished Dublin physician, had two sons, one of whom died at the age of 15, the other at the age of 22. Drummin was therefore inherited by the doctor’s daughters, Anne and Elizabeth, and, following the former’s death, the house and estate, which by then ran to 2,000 acres, passed to Robert ‘Diamond’ de Courcy Wheeler, a doctor who served as Chief Medical Officer to the British army in Malta during the First World War. 





Robert de Courcy Wheeler does not appear to have spent too much time in Drummin, living for many years in south Dublin. In 1939 the property was inherited by his son, Cecil de Courcy Wheeler who, when the Land Commission broke up the old estate, established a successful mushroom growing business on what land he still retained. In due course, Drummin passed to his son, Grattan and following the latter’s retirement from many years working in banking in England and the United States, he settled in the house and, as already mentioned, embarked on some two decades of entertaining his wide circle of friends. Little was done to the place, with rooms always rather higgledy-piggledy and heating something of a rarity: on winter nights, guests could be found jostling for a place in front of the drawing room fire. Some time after Grattan de Courcy’s death, Drummin was sold. Now in new ownership, no doubt it will undergo some changes and necessary improvements. But these pictures are a souvenir of how it used to look, a remembrance of things past.



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First Fruits



Glebe: land granted to a member of the clergy as part of a benefice. Etymology: derives from the Middle English word ‘glebe’, which in turn came from the Old French ‘glèbe’, and ultimately from the Latin word ‘gleba’ or ‘glaeba’, meaning ‘clod of earth’ or ‘soil’.
As indicated above, glebes were parcels of land provided for members of the clergy within the parish for which they were responsible. And, in the post-Reformation period, clergymen of the Established Church were supposed to be provided with suitable residences on that land. However, for various reasons, not least lay impropriations of former church property during the upheavals of the late 16th and 17th centuries, by 1700 many parishes suffered from a want of glebe land and glebe houses alike. In consequence, they were unable to support a resident clergyman. In order to have an adequate income, some clerics came to hold a number of benefices, but only reside in one of them, leading to inevitable neglect of the others and to complaints that parishes (and parishioners) were suffering from a want of attention. In 1693 Bishop Dopping of Meath suggested one reason for widespread clerical non-residence lay in ‘the want of Gleabs in some places, and in all the decay of manse houses by the frequent Warrs in the Kingdome.’ Similarly, in 1720 Bishop Henry Downes of Elphin wrote that there was only one clerical residence within his diocese, and that was occupied by the dean. As a result, he declared, clergymen who wanted to live within their parishes, ‘generally take little Farms that they may have within themselves all Necessarys…they for ye most part want Glebes to build on, what they had of yt kind being very much swallowed up in Connaught during ye times of Rebellion & Confusion.’ 





By the start of the 18th century, the pitiful plight of the Established Church in Ireland, especially the poor state of its churches and clerical residences, led to the establishment by government in 1711 of the Board of First Fruits; its equivalent in England, set up seven years earlier, was known as Queen Anne’s Bounty. The board directed that the first fruits or ‘annates’ – that is the first year’s income of a clergyman occupying a new position – were paid into a fund which was then used to build or restore churches and glebe houses, as well as purchase appropriate glebe lands. During the first 70 years of its existence, the board purchased glebe lands for benefices around the country at a total cost of £3,543. In addition, it assisted the building of forty-five glebe houses with gifts of £4,080. These figures greatly increased from 1791 thanks to annual parliamentary grants. Over the following 12 years, the Board of First Fruits spent £55,600 on building 88 churches and 116 glebe houses. The sums grew larger in the decades following the Act of Union and further government grants: in total, £807,648 was provided to purchase glebe lands in 193 benefices, with the construction of 550 glebe houses, and building, rebuilding or enlargement of 697 churches. By 1832 some 829 glebe houses had been built across Ireland, but this activity came largely to a halt the following year with the passing of the Church Temporalities Act, which led to the functions and income of the Board of First Fruits being passed to a new body, the Board of Ecclesiastical Commissioners. 





Today’s pictures show the former glebe house of the parish of Rathkeale, County Limerick. In his Topographical Dictionary of Ireland (1837), Samuel Lewis advised that the building had been constructed in 1819 ‘by aid of a gift of £100, and a loan of £1500 from the late Board of First Fruits.’ Furthermore, the glebe lands ran to 10 acres, half of them attached to the glebe house, the other half adjoining an earlier clerical residence closer to the centre of the town. The glebe house’s first occupant was Charles Warburton, Rector of Rathkeale, as well as Chancellor of the Diocese of Limerick (and indeed, Rector of Clonmel, County Tipperary). Warburton’s family background is curious. His paternal grandfather, Dominic Mungan (1715-1774) was a famous blind harpist from County Tyrone. The youngest of Mungan’s three sons, Terence Mongan, originally trained to become a Roman Catholic priest but appears to have converted to the Anglican faith after being appointed a chaplain of the 62nd Regiment of Foot in the British army during the American War of Independence. Changing his name to Charles Mongan, he subsequently married a well-connected New Yorker Frances Marston, with whom he had four sons. The couple and their children returned to Ireland in 1786 where Mongan, who adopted the surname Warburton by royal licence in 1792, enjoyed rapid promotion within the Established Church, serving as Dean of Ardagh and then Clonmacnoise before being appointed Bishop of Limerick in 1806. He would be translated to Cloyne in 1820, dying in office six years later. It was his third son, likewise called Charles, born in New York in 1780, who was the first resident of the new Rathkeale glebe house, a handsome square block of two storeys over basement, with a three-bay east-facing facade, the central doorcase having fan and sidelights. The property also has adjacent yards, with coach houses and stabling for eight horses, as well as a walled garden running to more than an acre. The original 19th century Ordnance Survey map shows that there were once two gate lodges, one to the north, the other to the east, but are now lost. Internally, the house conforms to what would be expected of a rural residence of the period, the most striking decorative feature being the staircase hall, divided into two parts by a screen of Ionic columns. Long since sold by the Church of Ireland, the former glebe house is privately owned and much cherished by its current proprietor.



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Look Up



The extraordinary ceiling in the drawing room of Fota House, County Cork. This part of the building dates from the mid-1820s when Sir Richard Morrison was employed by Fota’s owner, John Smith-Barry. The plasterwork, which had deep borders of floral wreaths containing birds alternating with lozenges of bay leaves containing trophies of musical instruments and hunting paraphernalia, bears similarities with what can be seen at Ballyfin, County Laois where the same architect was employed. However, unlike the latter where the ceilings are predominantly monochrome, at Fota the Dublin firm of Henry Sibthorpe & Son was hired towards the end of the 19th century to decorate both the drawing room and its adjacent ante room, gilding the borders while the main surface was covered with an elaborate multi-coloured scheme, partly painted and partly stencilled. 



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Something of a Rarity



Originally from Yorkshire, in 1657 Montifort Westropp settled in Limerick city and three years later was comptroller of the port there. Subsequently he purchased various parcels of land in Co. Clare where he held the office of High Sheriff in 1674 and 1690, as well as being appointed a Commissioner for the county by an Act of Irish Parliament in 1697. Following his death the following year, several of his sons continued to prosper: one son, also called Montifort – a forebear of the antiquarian Thomas Johnson Westropp – purchased the Attyflin estate near Patrickswell, County Limerick from the Chichester House Commissioners in 1703, and the same year, another son, Thomas Westropp bought an estate in the same county at Ballysteen. Some kind of castle or tower house evidently stood here, but it was replaced by the present building in the last quarter of the 18th century, perhaps by the original Thomas’s grandson (also called Thomas) who died in 1789.





Following Thomas Westropp’s death in 1789, the Ballysteen estate was inherited by his only surviving son, General John Westropp. However, when he died in 1825 without issue, Ballysteen reverted to one of the children of his sister Sara who in 1775 had married Colonel Thomas Odell of Ballingarry, County Limerick. The couple’s third son, Edmond, duly inherited his uncle’s estate and changed his name to Westropp. His grandson Edward also had no son but two daughters, one of whom, Elizabeth, in 1942 married Maurice Talbot, son of the Dean of Cashel and himself, from 1954, Dean of Limerick. Ballysteen was in due course inherited by the present generation of the family who have, for the first time in its history, offered the property for sale. 





As seen today, Ballysteen is a two-storey, five-bay house, with east-facing rendered facade and a west-facing, four-bay garden front, as well as lower two-storey wings on either side of the main block. Internally, the house appears to have been last undergone alterations around 1820, or perhaps soon after 1825 when it was inherited by Edmond Odell Westropp. To the front, much of the space is taken up by a substantial, three-bay entrance hall, with the staircase in an adjacent area to the immediate north. Behind the entrance are the two principal reception rooms, drawing and dining, and all three have white marble chimneypieces typical of the late-18th/early 19th century. They also retain some mahogany furniture from the same period: the dining room, for example, has a pair of arched niches each of which holds an identical buffet with slender spiral twist legs, while the entrance hall has a pair of bookcases with similar decorative detail, suggesting they all came from the same workshop at the same time. A sitting room/library is accommodated in the south wing while the kitchen, pantry, scullery and so forth, together with the service staircase, can be found in its northern equivalent. Upstairs are six bedrooms, some with dressing rooms. Thanks to being left unaltered for so long, Ballysteen retains the appearance and character of an Irish country house once widespread but today something of a rarity. One must hope that whoever is fortunate to acquire the property, while updating some of the facilities, retains that wonderful character. It is too precious to lose.



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Glenville House


In 1763 John Massy, who served as Treasurer of Limerick, bought an estate in the county called Glenville. John was the great-grandson of Hugh Massy, an English soldier who had come to Ireland during the Confederate War period and afterwards settled in this part of the country, being granted land at Duntrileague: when Burke’s Peerage first appeared in the 19th century, the Massys – several of whom had by then being granted titles – claimed descent from one Hamon de Massy who, seemingly, had accompanied William the Conqueror to England in 1066. Be that as it may, the family now firmly established themselves in County Limerick, intermarrying with other landed dynasties and with sundry younger sons becoming either Church of Ireland clergymen or soldiers: a cousin of John Massy, General Eyre Massey (for unknown reasons, he spelt his surname differently to other branches of the family) as a result of his distinguished military career was created Baron Clarina of Elm Park in 1800. And among the next generation of the family to live at Glenville, several sons of William Massy and his wife Ann Creagh – the couple would have no less than 23 children – served as clergymen and soldiers. Given the extraordinary number of offspring, it is hardly surprising that in the early 19th century the house was enlarged. 





From among the many children of William and Ann Massy, one of their sons John, again a Captain in the British army – inherited Glenville and lived there until his death in 1846. The property then passed to his son William but he opted to sell it to his uncle, Eyre Massy (another of William and Ann’s children). After he died in 1869, Glenville passed to his son, Jonathan Bruce Massy who, bucking the family trend for large families, had only two daughters. When he died in 1903, Glenville was left not to one of these two women, but to a nephew, Henry Eyre Massy, who lived in Australia. Seven years later, he sold the estate back to his uncle’s elder daughter, Frances who had married Thomas Crawford Coplen-Langford the same year as her father’s death but had then been widowed just a couple of years later: curiously, Thomas’s elder brother Richard also married a member of the Massy family. Meanwhile, his widow Frances, having bought Glenville in 1912, remained there until her death in 1956. The house was then occupied by Langford relatives until bought some years ago by the present owners who have since undertaken extensive work on the property.





Above a former carriage house in the yard to the rear of Glenville, a keystone carries the information ‘WM/AD/1803’ but at least part of the building is older than this date. What is now a wing to the right of the main block is probably the original residence here, a late 17th/early 18th century long house, one room deep and of two storeys. Evidently, given the size of William and Ann Massy’s family, this structure was insufficient, hence the addition of 1803. Below wide eaves, the south-facing new house, of coarse-dressed limestone and two storeys, has three bays with a central breakfront, the ground-floor door flanked by side lights. Internally, the layout follows a customary tripartite plan, dining room to one side of the entrance hall and drawing room to the other. The former has a Kilkenny marble chimneypiece, the latter one of white marble. Returning to the hall, there are two doors facing the entrance, with a fanlight between them. That to the right is blind, while that to the left gives access to a staircase leading to the first floor (and lit by the aforementioned fanlight). Behind the house is a generous yard, which has been partially restored by the present owners. This in turn opens into a substantial walled garden. Glenville is significant because it is an example of a gentry residence from the late Georgian period, similar in style to aristocratic country houses but built and decorated on a more modest scale. As the gentry class has disappeared in this country, so too have many of their properties, which makes the survival of Glenville all the more cheering.  


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Another Gratifying Example



Following the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, Captain George Pepper was confirmed by the crown in ownership of Ballygarth Castle, County Meath, a property that had hitherto belonged to the Netterville family. However, by the second half of the 18th century, one branch of the Peppers had settled in County Offaly where, in 1777 they commissioned a new residence called Loughton. Facing north across sweeping parkland, as originally constructed, the house had its entrance located in a central canted bay with two bays on either side, and probably looking not unlike Newhall, County Clare (see New Blood for New Hall « The Irish Aesthete). It served as home to Thomas Ryder Pepper until killed in a hunting accident in 1828. Having no direct heir, he directed that Loughton be left to his brother-in-law, Lt-General Benjamin Bloomfield, who had been created Baron Bloomfield three years before. After a distinguished career in the army, Bloomfield had entered royal service, acting as an Aide-de-Camp, then Chief Equerry and Clerak Marshall to the Prince of Wales, before becoming Private Secretary to George IV, as well as Keeper of the Privy Purse and Receiver of the Duchy of Cornwall from 1817-22. It was in his role as Keeper of the Privy Purse that he ran into trouble, since Bloomfield attempted to curb the monarch’s notorious extravagance, thereby not only incurring the latter’s wrath but also that of Lady Conyngham, George IV’s mistress and a frequent beneficiary of his largesse: once a great friend of the king, Bloomfield was ignominiously removed from his positions in 1822. 





Following the first Lord Bloomfield’s death in 1846, Loughton was inherited by his only son, John, second baron and diplomat who began his career in 1824 acting as an attaché in Lisbon. In 1851 he was appointed ambassador to Berlin and from thence to Vienna in 1860, eventually retiring 11 years later. When he died in 1879, he left no legitimate heir, although while posted to Stockholm in 1826 he had at least one child with Swedish actress Emilie Högquist, later mistress of King Oscar I. The Loughton estate then passed to Benjamin Bloomfield Trench, whose mother Georgiana had been a sister of the second Lord Bloomfield: the Trenches lived not far away at Cangort Park (see A Work in Progress « The Irish Aesthete). Benjamin Bloomfield Trench and his wife Dora had two daughters, and following their deaths, Loughton passed once again to another relation, Major Anthony Guy Atkinson, whose family for many generations had also lived in the area at Cangort House (see A Feast of Colour and Light « The Irish Aesthete). His son would sell Loughton in 2001 to Dr James Reilly, former Minister for Health who, in turn, sold the property to its present owners in 2016. 





As seen today, Loughton shows the results of a radical remodelling and enlargement of the house undertaken by architect James Pain in the mid-1830s for the first Lord Bloomfield. On the exterior, the entrance was moved from the north front’s canted bow to a new single-storey extension on the east side, leaving a rather sober rendered facade of three storeys over basement, tall, plain and relieved only by the windows’ limestone dressings. The eight-bay, south-facing garden front is altogether more immediately engaging, reversing the plan on the north side so that full-height canted bays flank a central two-bay recess, the window treatments also more dressed with details such as pediments and entablatures on console brackets. One curious feature is that the heights of the windows in the two central bays have not been raised to match those on either side, thereby disrupting the lines. The enfilade of principal reception rooms lies immediately behind this front, the drawing room leading to the library and thence the dining room. Immediately behind the library, Pain cleverly used the canted bow former entrance as a hall, its cantilevered stone staircase snaking around the walls to the main bedrooms immediately above. The most important of these formerly contained a richly carved bed made in 1821 in expectation of a visit to the house by George IV: the king never came to Loughton but the bed remained in situ until very regrettably sold at auction in 2016. Meanwhile, off the staircase hall can be found the former billiard room which acquired its present decoration of inlaid doors and window shutters, as well as a Tudor Revival chimneypiece, around 1890 seemingly thanks to Dora, wife of Benjamin Bloomfield Trench. Since acquiring the property nine years ago, when all the contents were sold, the current owners have been working both to refurbish and refurnish Loughton, an arduous task given the size of the place. Nevertheless, given how much has already been achieved here, their ambitions seem perfectly achievable. This is another gratifying example of what can be done to ensure Ireland’s historic houses have a viable future. 



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Often Overlooked



Often overlooked by visitors, this is the spectacular entrance hall of the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin. Designed by T.N. and T.M. Deane in 1885-90 and taking the form of a rotunda, it consists of a ground floor around which run a series of polished Ionic columns in different coloured Irish stone. The deep entablature, pierced by a sequence of oculi, supports a balustraded gallery above which pilasters with gilded capitals framing niches and, in one section, windows. And on top of this floats the dome. Meanwhile, the floor is covered in mosaic designed and laid by the Manchester firm of Ludwig Oppenheimer Ltd; the central section is taken up by the twelve signs of the Zodiac surrounding a stylised sun.



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A Brave Initiative



The story of Dr James Barry – a military surgeon in the British army during the first half of the 19th century who, on his death in 1865, was discovered to have been a woman called Margaret Anne Bulkley – is well-known. However, today’s post concerns another doctor of the same name and period, but who lived in County Kerry. Born in 1800, James Barry settled in Cahersiveen, where he had a successful practice and, despite being a Justice of the Peace, was a supporter of the Fenians: during an unsuccessful uprising in this part of the country in February 1867, it was reported that he had given shelter to a number of Fenians, one of their leaders, John Joseph O’Connor, taking the doctor’s horse when they departed. And an official report into local disturbances during the 1872 elections noted ‘the obstructive attitude of a local J.P., Dr. Barry, when the police were trying to restore the peace’ with the doctor described as ‘a disgrace to the Bench.’ Barry was clearly a man of both influence and affluence: by 1828 he was able to make an offer to Daniel O’Connell to buy the materials of Carhan House (where Daniel O’Connell had been born), although this may have meant just the doors, chimneypieces and so forth: the earliest Ordnance Survey map of 1841 already describes Carhan as being ‘in ruins.’ The same map also shows the first bridge across the river Fertha linking Cahersiveen with the Iveragh Peninsula; hitherto the only way to get across was by ferry. A pedestrian timber structure (it would be replaced in the 1930s with the present concrete bridge), this features on the Ordnance Survey map as ‘Barry’s Bridge (in progress). It was officially opened in 1847. The doctor’s motives for involvement in this project may not have been altogether altruistic because the following decade he built himself a fine new residence on the other side of the river and overlooking Cahersiveen. Access to this property was made easier by the existence of a bridge bearing his name.





In January 1857, Dr Barry married, seemingly for the first time. His bride was Honoria Ponsonby, whose family had, until the previous decade, lived at Crotta House, an important 17th century residence which survived in part until the 1970s. Honoria was a widow, having previously been married to Richard Francis Blennerhassett of Kells, County Kerry. His wedding may have spurred the doctor into building a new house for himself and his wife, because the following year he embarked on just such a project, leasing a site from the Marquess of Lansdowne on the north side of the river, with the land running down to the water’s edge and the marquess contributing £100 towards its construction. The building was given the name Villa Nuova, although, again looking at the earliest Ordnance Survey map, there is no evidence of an older structure here, certainly not one of any substance. As first built, Villa Nuova was of two storeys over raised basement; the rear of the latter looks to be of earlier date, so there may have been some kind of structure here before. The exterior’s most notable feature are the facade’s two steeply pitched gables with a small recessed bay between them. The present entrance porch, accessed at the top of a flight of Valencia slate steps, replaces an earlier one burnt in the 1920s. On either side of the house are two-storey canted bays which may be original or perhaps added later, although they can be seen in an early photograph of Villa Nuova. 





The history of Villa Nuova in the last century is a little unclear. Dr Barry and his wife had no children of their own, and the house thereafter seems to have passed through a variety of hands. In the 1901 Census, it is listed as being occupied by Resident Magistrate Major Ernest Thomas Lloyd, retired from the Bengal Civil Service, together with his four young children and three household servants. Ten years later, the occupant of the building was local solicitor James Shuel. However, by the early 1920s Villa Nuova was owned by one Bartholomew Sheehan, a local merchant who also had commercial premises in Cahersiveen: both these and the house suffered from being attacked and burnt by anti-Treaty forces in 1922. In consequence, Villa Nuova was left gutted and had to be reconstructed, so that much of the interior seen today dates from the mid-1920s. This includes a series of tiled chimneypieces produced by a Devon-based company called Candy and Co, as well as handsome oak doors and architraves, and a fine staircase. Villa Nuova then became home to the Duffy family, a relative of whose was the last to live in the house some 20 years ago. In September 2007, the building, together with some 54 acres, was sold to a local company for €2.35m, but was then left empty and unoccupied. Most recently, together with the immediate land, it has been bought by new owners who have embarked on an ambitious programme of retrieval and restoration, with the intention of bringing the place back to a habitable condition in which they will live. It’s a brave initiative, and – as always with such projects – deserves applause and all possible support.



For readers interested in following the restoration of Villa Nuova, the owners are chronicling progress on YouTube ((1) Villa Nuova – YouTube) and Instagram (@villa_nuova_)

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