Category Archives: Interior Decoration

In No Way Averse to the Magnificence of Life 


Born in 1695, Robert Clayton followed the example of his father and became a Church of Ireland clergyman, rising to become Bishop first of Killala and Achonry, then Cork and Ross and finally of Clogher. His personal wealth allowed him to undertake a Grand Tour, which left a lasting impression not just on Clayton but also on his contemporaries. Following his appointment to Cork in 1735, the Earl of Orrery wrote, ‘We have a Bishop, who, as He has travel’d beyond the Alps, has brought home with him, to the amazement of our merchantile Fraternity, the Arts and Sciences that are the Ornament of Italy and the Admiration of the European World. He eats, drinks and sleeps in Taste. He has Pictures by Carlo, Morat, Music by Corelli, Castles in the Air by Vitruvius ; and on High-Days and Holidays We have the Honour of catching Cold at a Venetian door.’ Lord Orrery’s colourful account of the impression made by Clayton proposes a striking contrast with the episcopacy of his predecessor, Peter Browne, during which ‘We were as silent and melancholy as Captives, and We were Strangers to Mirth even by Analogy.’ Clayton seems to have appreciated not just Corelli but also Handel, since he facilitated the first performance of ‘The Messiah’ in St Fin Barre’s Cathedral in December 1744. He was a Fellow of both the Royal Society and the Society of Antiquaries of London, as well as supporting various cultural organisations in Ireland.




Robert Clayton’s wealth meant that when in 1728 he married Katherine Donnellan, a daughter of Lord Chief Baron Nehemiah Donnellan, he could afford to give his wife’s fortune to her sister Anne. The latter was a close friend of Mary Delany, which is one reason why we know so much about the Claytons and their social life. In June 1732, while still the widowed Mrs Pendarves, she spent some time in Killala, staying with the couple in the episcopal palace, known as the Castle, which she described as ‘old and indifferent enough.’ However, ‘the garden, which is laid out entirely for use, is pretty – a great many shady walks and full-grown forest trees.’ Furthermore, Bishop Clayton had added another field to the property, ‘and planted it in very good taste.’ While in Killala, Mrs Pendarves and Anne Donnellan created what may have been the first shell house in Ireland. This was installed inside a natural grotto at the top of a hill close to Killala, the shells coming from a large collection assembled by the bishop as well as those collected on the shores of County Mayo. In mid-August, there was a local fair, with races on the strand and then, to mark Mrs Clayton’s birthday, she and her guests ‘all attired in our best apparel,’ sat in front of the house to watch ‘dancing, singing, grinning, accompanied with an excellent bagpipe, the whole concluded with a ball, bonfire and illuminations.’ ‘Pray,’ she asked her sister, ‘does your Bishop promote such entertainments at Gloster as ours does at Killala?’ Fifteen years later and by now married to Dr Patrick Delany, she described another such birthday party, this time in Clogher, where musicians played for eight pairs of dances, a ‘sumptuous cold collation’ was served at 11pm, after which the fiddlers struck up again and the dancing continued until after two o’clock (the Delanys sensibly crept away to their own sleeping quarters after supper). Writing to her family in England in February 1746, Mrs Delany noted ‘On Monday we dine at the Bishop of Clogher’s. Mrs Clayton is to have a drum in the evening and we are invited to it. Their house is very proper for such an entertainment, and Mrs Clayton very fit for the undertaking. She loves the show and homage of a rout, has a very good address and is still as well inclined to all the gaieties of life as she was at five-and-twenty; the Bishop loves to please and indulge her, and is himself no way averse to the magnificence of life.’ 




The Claytons undoubtedly liked to live well and could afford to do so. On one of her early visits to Dublin, in September 1731 Mrs Pendarves stayed with the couple in their townhouse on St Stephen’s Green. Writing to her sister in England, the Claytons’ guest declared the building to be ‘magnifique’, the chief front of it looking like Devonshire House in London and the rooms filled with objects, busts and pictures which the bishop had brought back from a tour he had made of France and Italy after graduating from Trinity College Dublin. In a second letter, Mrs Pendarves provided her sibling with a meticulous description of the main reception rooms: ‘First there is a very good hall well filled with servants, then a room of eighteen foot square, wainscoated with oak, the panels all carved, and the doors and chimney finished with very fine high carving, the ceiling stucco, the window-curtains and chairs yellow Genoa damask, portraits and landscapes, very well done, round the room, marble tables between the windows, and looking glasses with gilt frames.’ Mrs Pendarves continues her account with information on the next room, which measured 28 by 22 feet, ‘and is as finely adorned as damask, pictures and busts can make it, besides the floor being entirely covered with the finest Persian carpet that ever was seen. The bedchamber is large and handsome, all furnished with the same damask.’ Despite its evident splendour, this was not the house, 80 St Stephen’s Green designed for Clayton by architect Richard Castle (and seen in these pictures), since work on that property only began five years later in 1736.  




The Claytons’ new Dublin townhouse was still a work in progress when visited in December 1736 by the aforementioned Earl of Orrery, who shortly afterwards wrote to Clayton. Lord Orrery was much impressed by what he had seen, even though, ‘as your Lordps Commands did not extend so far as to order me to break my Neck or my Limbs, I ventur’d no further than the Hall Door, from whence my Prospect was much confin’d, except when I look’d upwards to the Sky.’ Calling the house a palace, Orrery went on to say that its first floor Great Room would probably bring his cousin, the architect Earl of Burlington, over to Ireland from London. However, while he was confident that the bishop’s hearing and sight should be satisfied with the finished building, the same might not be the case for his sense of smell, owing to the proximity of the stables. Orrery therefore suggested these could be located further behind the house if a little more land were purchased, although he observed that as long as the stables had a beautiful cornice, ‘Signor Cassels [Castle] does not seem to care where it stands.’ From the exterior, it’s difficult to gain a sense of what the building looked like because, after being bought in 1858 by Benjamin Lee Guinness, it was joined to its immediate neighbour to the right and the two properties given a unified  seven-bay façade in Portland stone. However, inside the house, some of the original interiors survive on both the ground and first floors, not least the Saloon or ‘Great Room’ which spans the full three-bay width of the Clayton building and is notable for its coved and coffered ceiling, based on a Serlio plate of the Temple of Bacchus in Rome) which rises up to the attic. Behind this lies the Music Room, the ceiling of which conveniently indicates its function. Alas, the Claytons’ happy, sociable existence ended in tears, due to the prelate’s insistence on putting into print his somewhat unorthodox views on Christianity in a work called A Vindication of the Histories of the Old and New Testament. Espousing Arianism, he subsequently proposed in the Irish House of Lords that the Nicene and Athanasian creeds be removed from the prayer book. As a result, he was summoned for trial on a charge of heresy before an ecclesiastical commission. However, before the trial began, in February 1758 the bishop died of a fever in his Dublin residence. Horace Walpole, with his customary sharpness of tongue, claimed Clayton’s death was due to panic at the thought of having to defend his idiosyncratic religious beliefs. Presented by the second Earl of Iveagh to the Irish State, the building has since served as the headquarters of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Below, a portrait of Robert and Katherine Clayton painted in happier times (c.1740) by James Latham, now in the National Gallery of Ireland. 


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In the Gallery


‘Over the Supper Room is the Picture Gallery, of the same dimensions, containing many fine Paintings by the first masters, with other great Ornaments, chosen and displayed with great elegance; the Ceiling is arched, and highly enriched and painted, from designs by Mr WYATT. The most distinguished Pictures are, a Student drawing from a Bust by REMBRANDT; the Rape of Europa by CLAUDE LORRAINE; the Triumph of Amphitrite, by LUCCA GIORDANO; two capital pictures of Rubens and his two Wives, by VAN DYCK; Dogs killing a Stag; a fine Picture of Saint Catharine; a Landscape by Barratt; with many others. In a bow in the middle of one side, is a marble Statue, an Adonis, executed by PONCET; a fine bust of Niobe, and of Apollo, are placed on each side. In the Windows of the Bow, are some specimens of modern stained Glass, by Jervis.’
James Malton, c.1795





Today occupied by Dáil Éireann and Seanad Éireann (the two houses of Ireland’s parliament), Leinster House was originally commissioned in 1745 by James FitzGerald, 20th Earl of Kildare, and future first Duke of Leinster, as his Dublin townhouse, the largest and grandest such residence built in the city during the 18th century. Designed by Richard Castle, the house was intended to hold a picture gallery on the first floor, but this work was not undertaken before the architect’s death in 1751 and towards the end of that decade a second proposal for the room was produced by Isaac Ware. Based on a scheme published by Ware in Designs of Inigo Jones and others (1731), this was likewise unexecuted. The gallery remained an empty shell until 1775 when the second Duke of Leinster commissioned fresh designs from James Wyatt, and these are what can still be seen today. In that year, the duke married Emilia Olivia St George, only daughter and heiress of Usher St George, first Baron St George. The new duchess brought a substantial art collection with her, and the need to have a space in which these could be shown to best advantage gave a certain urgency to the matter. As executed, Wyatt’s proposals included inserting additional windows into the north side of an existing bow window (above which is a shallow half-dome) and dividing the shallow elliptical vault into three sections, all of which are decorated with elaborate neo-classical plasterwork. As described by Professor Christine Casey, the ceiling’s centre holds a chamfered octagon within a square and at each end a diaper within a square, each flanked by broad figurative lunette panels at the base of the coving and bracketed by husk garlands and garlands of leafy ovals. Between are ribs with attenuated tripods, urns and arabesque finials.’ The scheme’s coherence is illustrated by the inclusion of a pair of white marble chimneypieces with high-relief female figures on the uprights and putti marking the division between beaded spandrels enclosing urns and griffins, and then similar motifs being employed in pewter and gesso on the doors.





Following the Act of Union in 1800 and the death of the second duke four years later, Leinster House was scarcely used by the family and so in 1815 the third duke sold the property to the Dublin Society (later Royal Dublin Society). Many of the picture gallery’s contents were moved to the family’s country house, Carton House, County Kildare where alterations to accommodate the collection were made by Richard Morrison; many of the artworks were subsequently sold as the fortunes of the FitzGerald family declined in the last century. Meanwhile, the Dublin Society converted the room in which they were once displayed into a library, Francis Johnston inserting a gallery above the line of the window heads, although this was removed in the late 19th century. Following the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922, the Dail was housed – temporarily, it was thought – in the RDS’s lecture theatre, a large hall which had been completed a quarter century earlier. In 1924, the society sold the entire property to the government for £68,000 and moved permanently to the site it still occupies in Ballsbridge. Leinster House’s former picture gallery was then adapted with virtually no structural alterations to accommodate the Seanad, which it has continued to do ever since.


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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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In Need of Amendment


In 1779 Charles Agar, hitherto Bishop of Cloyne, was appointed Archbishop of Cashel, following the death of the previous incumbent, Dr Michael Cox. The latter, although he had occupied the archiepiscopal seat for the previous quarter-century, had spent little time in Cashel, preferring to live in the splendid residence he commissioned in County Kilkenny, Castletown Cox. As a result, when Agar arrived in Cashel, he discovered that the palace there ‘certainly had undergone no alterations, and probably received but few repairs from the time it was built…and as the house is wainscotted throughout the parlour and bedchamber stories, and much of the former had originally been painted of a dark brown colour, it made at this time but a dismal appearance.’ Today an hotel, Cashel Palace was designed by Sir Edward Lovett Pearce around 1727 for the then-archbishop Timothy Godwin but he died two years later and the building was completed by his successor Theophilus Bolton who, as is well-known, constructed a library beside his residence, bequeathing a collection of  more than 8,000 volumes to the archdiocese. The Rev Henry Cotton in his Fasti ecclesiae Hibernicae (1847) estimated that the construction cost £3,730, while more recently Anthony Malcomson, in his magisterial Archbishop Charles Agar: Churchmanship and Politics in Ireland, 1760-1810 (2002) has proposed a figure of £3,611. This was an expensive project but by the time Agar arrived, further expenditure was required to bring the palace up to date. The building seems to have been in such poor condition that Sir Cornwallis Maude, who lived not far away at Dundrum, offered the archbishop his own house while he ordered the repairs ‘which I believe necessary before it can be fit for your accommodation.’ Working with the architect Oliver Grace, Agar embarked on a programme of improvements to the palace, which in total would cost him £1,123. 





Recording his time in Cashel, Archbishop Agar noted that when he arrived ‘The door from the hall into the salon was exactly opposite the hall door, and there was in the salon a door into the garden exactly opposite to the door of the room; which not only cut the room, as it were, in two, but rendered it so cold that, as often as any one of the three doors was opened, the room was not habitable with comfort, for no company could be so situated as not to feel the wind. The Archbishop therefore stopped up the door in the centre of the room, and took away entirely that which opened into the garden. He placed the door in the hall at the end of the south side, let all of the windows of the salon down to the ground, and put double doors to this and every room on the parlour storey, and new-sashed the parlour and bed-chamber stories in front and rear. He…put the best species of register grates in the hall, salon and eating parlour, and in all the other rooms of the house. He also painted the whole house once and in some parts twice since he has inhabited it.’ Today, the salon (ie. the drawing room) retains the alterations made to it by Agar, although French windows once again allow access to the gardens. Of the interiors from the time of the palace’s original construction, the staircase hall still has its splendid staircase and the entrance hall retains its panelling. A room to the immediate right of the latter, now used as an office, is also panelled but this decoration may have been recycled when the house underwent reordering by Agar (or even more recently) because until his arrival it served as the main dining room…





‘Though the house was substantially built,’ Archbishop Agar later wrote, ‘and the plan originally a good one in most respects, in some it stood in great need of amendment. The eating parlour was only 19 feet 6 inches by 17 feet, a room certainly altogether too small for such a purpose in such a house. This room was on the east side of the great hall of entrance and could not be enlarged. On the west side of the hall was a room of the same dimensions, at the north end of which, and between it and the breakfast parlour, was a dark passage from the hall to the gallery, leading to the library, in which there was a staircase which communicated by a trap door with the north end of the corridor in the bedroom story. Dr Agar removed this staircase entirely, took down the wall of partition and threw the passage into the eating room, which made it 30 feet long by 19 feet 6 inches broad, and placed a window over the door leading to the library, in order to render that part of the eating room more light.’ After it became an hotel in the 1960s, Agar’s eating room was further opened into the adjacent breakfast parlour to the south to create one large dining room; a divider marks the former division between the two spaces. While many of his alterations were felicitous and have survived, one addition to the building – the construction of a study perched to the rear – proved unsuccessful, not least due to damp, and was taken down by his successor, Charles Brodrick. He is believed to have carried out further alterations to the palace, not least the insertion of dormer windows on the top floor but consideration of Brodrick’s interventions here must wait for another time. 


On May 19th next, I shall be giving a paper on ‘Diocesan domesticity: daily life in Cashel Palace during the episcopacy of Charles Agar, 1779-1801’ at the 23rd Historic Houses Conference held in Maynooth University. For more information, please see: CSHIHE 2025 conference programme Final.pdf

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Astonished at the Splendour


The former House of Lords in what is now the Bank of Ireland, College Green, Dublin was discussed here some time ago (see Where Turkeys Voted for Christmas « The Irish Aesthete). As is well known, after the building ceased to be used as the Irish Houses of Parliament and had been purchased by the bank, Francis Johnston was invited to make alterations, including the creation of a central Cash Office behind Edward Lovett Pearce’s south front. This five bay, double-height space rises to a richly decorated coved ceiling, the centre of which supports a clerestory concluding in a coffered ceiling. When George IV visited the bank during his visit to Ireland, he was reportedly ‘astonished at the splendour’ of the hall.

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A Handsome House



‘Not far from Douglas is a handsome house adorned with a cupola and good plantations, the residence of Mr Richard Newenham, merchant in Cork, a gentleman who is the largest dealer in Ireland in the worsted trade, and employs some thousands in different parts of this country in spinning bay yarn, which he exports to Bristol.’ From The Ancient and Present State of the County and City of Cork by Charles Smith (1750).
The Newenhams are believed to have settled in Cork in the early 17th century and to have prospered as merchants: in 1671 one of their number, John Newenham, served as Mayor of Cork city. One branch of the family would come to live at Coolmore (see Trans-Atlantic Links « The Irish Aesthete). Believed to have been born around 1705, Richard Newenham was the son of another John, a clothier who some years earlier had become a Quaker. His father-in-law, Thomas Wight, who also began professional life as a clothier, was author of A history of the rise and progress of the people called Quakers, in Ireland, from the year 1653 to 1700. The eldest of seven children, Richard Newenham prospered and, as noted by Charles Smith, developed a thriving textile business. As Daniel Beaumont has noted, he may also have been involved in the manufacture of sailcloth, because the village of Douglas, close to Maryborough, had become an important centre for this industry. Newenham also went into partnership with a number of other men in the business of ‘sugar making and sugar boiling’ on the southern outskirts of Cork city. In 1738 he married Sarah Devonsher, member of another successful Quaker family which was responsible for building Kilshannig (see Exuberance « The Irish Aesthete).





Probably built not long before Charles Smith published his book on Cork in 1750 and thought to be on the site of an earlier house, Maryborough was then described as having a cupola, but that no longer exists. The main body of the house is rendered, of three storeys over a raised basement, and seven bays wide, the three-bay breakfront defined with limestone quoins. A substantial flight of steps leads up to the pedimented entrance doorcase, also of limestone. The rear of the house is similar, having a three-bay breakfront but with a Gibbsian doorcase and the two upper floors being slate-fronted, as is the upper section of an extension to the east. The latter’s two-storied facade is a substantial, three-bay bow. This part of the building is thought to be a later extension from c.1830 while behind it is another addition from the late 18th century, a gable-ended wing accommodating a cantilevered Portland stone staircase: Frank Keohane proposes this as the work of local architect Michael Shanahan (who also worked in Ulster for the Earl-Bishop of Derry). The interiors of Maryborough are relatively plain, as befitted the home of a member of the Quaker community, amongst whom there was strong disapproval of gratuitous ornament. However, one room on the first floor has an elaborately decorated rococo ceiling, heavily enriched with scrolling acanthus leaves and an abundance of floral bouquets. 





Following Richard Newenham’s death in 1759, Maryborough was inherited by his only son John, and after the latter died in turn his son, another Richard, inherited the property. In 1837 it was described by Samuel Lewis as ‘the residence of E.E. Newenham Esq., a noble mansion in a spacious demesne, embellished with stately timber.’
Maryborough remained in the ownership of the Newenhams until the late 19th century, although rented out for some years before being sold to Thomas Sherrard in 1889. His descendants lived there until 1995 when the place was sold to the present owners who turned the house into an hotel, with a large bedroom extension added to the south and, more recently, an orangery/function room to the immediate west of the old building.


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In Need of an Overhaul



Born in Cheshire in 1689, Robert Taylor was a younger son of Sir Thomas Taylor, first baronet. The latter’s father, also called Thomas Taylor, had come to Ireland in 1652 to work as Chief Surveyor and Examiner on the Down Survey with an annual stipend of £100. In the aftermath of this enterprise, Taylor sold his own family lands in Sussex and bought 21,000 acres in County Meath. His descendants, who eventually became Marquesses of Headfort, continued to live there until the last century, their main residence Headfort now serving as a preparatory school (see A Unique Legacy « The Irish Aesthete). Meanwhile, as a younger son Robert Taylor could not expect to inherit the family property and so studied for Holy Orders at Trinity College Dublin. In 1714, he was appointed Archdeacon of Kilmacduagh in the Province of Tuam, likely through the influence of his brother-in-law William Fitzgerald, Bishop of Clonfert and Kilmacduagh. Eight years later, Taylor became Precentor of Clonfert, and then in 1726 made Dean of the same diocese, although he seems to have resigned from the position soon afterwards. Some years earlier, he had bought a parcel of land between Skerries and Balbriggan in North County Dublin. When his only sister died in 1726, she left him 544 acres in County Galway and £800. More than a decade later, Taylor used this bequest to purchase the townlands of Ardgilland and Baltry, adjacent to the property he had already acquired north of the capital. Here he built a modest country residence for himself of three bays and two storeys-over-basement. Although the area had originally been called Ardgillan (from the Irish Ard Choill, meaning High Wood), its location on raised ground overlooking the Irish Sea meant that it had come to be known as Mount Prospect. For this reason, the new property was given the name Prospect House. In what later became a billiard room can be seen a white marble plaque carrying an engraving in Latin which can be translated as follows:
‘With the Lord’s Favour, Robert Taylor, Dean of Clonfert, built this house in the year of Salvation 1738.
May mendacity, quarreling, shouting, grief and anger be far from here.
Let sweet friendship, calm, soulful happiness, naked truth, and play be present.
So we say in the morning and again when the sun sinks beneath the ocean.’
(This last line taken from Horace’s Odes, Book 4, Verse 5)





The Reverend Robert Taylor died unmarried in 1744 and the Prospect estate was inherited by his elder brother, another Sir Thomas Taylor. In due course the property passed to the latter’s heir, Sir Thomas Taylour (note the change in the spelling of the family’s surname), who in 1766 was created first Earl of Bective. In 1783, Prospect was described by the English antiquary Austin Cooper as ‘a country seat of Lord Bective’s.’ A few years later, in 1786, plans were drawn up by one Henry Brownrigg for alterations to Prospect House. While remaining two storeys’ high, Brownrigg’s proposals would effectively have doubled the building’s size, with the addition of a new drawing room, dining room, a parlour, a ‘court’ and a ‘great stairs.’ However, the scheme remained unexecuted and following the earl’s death in 1795, Prospect, along with the rest of the Taylour estates, was inherited by his eldest son, yet another Thomas Taylour who would be created first Marquess of Headfort five years later. Before then, he leased Prospect to one of his younger brothers, Clotworthy Taylour, the latter’s first name deriving from his mother’s family. That union was made even closer when he married a cousin, Frances Rowley, only child of the Hon. Major Clotworthy Rowley and heiress to the Summerhill estate in County Meath (see My Name is Ozymandias « The Irish Aesthete), which in turn led him to change his own name to Clotworthy Rowley. In 1800, he became first Baron Langford of Summerhill. Incidentally, one of Clotworthy Rowley’s siblings was General Hon. Robert Taylour who, in his retirement lived at Dowdstown, County Meath (see Dowdstown « The Irish Aesthete). Meanwhile, Prospect House became available to the youngest son of that generation, the Hon Henry Edward Taylor who, like his great-uncle Robert, was a Church of Ireland clergyman. However, unlike the late Dean of Clonfert, the Rev Edward Taylour was married, his wife being Marianne Harriet St Leger, a granddaughter of the first Viscount Doneraile. The couple came to live at Prospect in 1807 and the following decade saw substantial changes made to the structure building. 





A map dating from 1844 shows Prospect now renamed Ardgillan Castle, the house having been given castellations and single-storey, three-bay battlemented wings on either side of the entrance front. These accommodated a new drawing and dining room.  The same year also saw the opening of a railway line from Dublin to Drogheda which passed through the eastern boundary of the estate: the Taylors gave permission for this on several conditions, one of which was that trains would stop for them on their property if they so wished. Following the death of the Rev Edward Taylorin 1852 and then his wife Marianne seven years later , Ardgillen was initially inherited by the couple’s younger surviving son General Sir Richard Chambre Hayes Taylor, his elder brother Captain Thomas Edward Taylor having inherited the Dowdstown estate from their unmarried uncle, General Hon. Robert Taylor. However, the siblings agreed to swap properties, meaning Thomas Edward Taylor lived at Ardgillen.  A Conservative MP for County Dublin from 1841 to 1883, he became Chief Government Whip in 1866 and later Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and a member of the Queen’s Privy Council. To designs by architect Sandham Symes, further alterations were made to the house in 1863 with the addition of two castellated towers, one containing a smoking room, the other storage rooms. Thomas Edward Taylor had married the previous year, and he and his wife Louisa Tollemache would go on to have five children. The eldest of these, Captain Edward Richard Taylor, inherited Ardgillan following his father’s death in 1883 and left his own mark on the house by installing oak panelling in the dining room (the doors carved with the date 1889) and shelving in the library. He only married in 1935, shortly before his 70th birthday, and left no immediate heir when he died three years later. The Ardgillan estate, much reduced following sales of land over the preceding decades, was now inherited by his nephew Richard Taylor, a barrister who had hitherto been living and working in Singapore with his family. The Taylors returned to Europe and lived in Ardgillan but found it increasingly difficult to make the place pay for itself. In 1958, they sold a large Kilkenny marble chimneypiece from the house to the Hon Desmond Guinness: today it can be seen in the entrance hall of Leixlip Castle. Four years later, the entire estate was sold to a German industrialist, Heinrich Pott, and members of his family held onto the place until 1981 when it was placed on the market, the eventual purchaser being the local authority, now Fingal County Council. Ardgillan Castle and its demesne are open to the public, with plenty of walking trails around the grounds and much attention paid to maintenance of the formal and walled gardens. As for the house itself, while work was undertaken on conserving the fabric some 40 years ago, today the place looks tired and its meanly furnished interiors in need of some attention. The same authority is also responsible for two other historic properties – Malahide Castle and Newbridge both of which have benefitted in recent years from generous care and improvement. It’s time for Ardgillan Castle to enjoy the same treatment and be given an overhaul.


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Operation Transformation


Exactly eight years ago, the Irish Aesthete visited No.3 Henrietta Street, Dublin and subsequently wrote about the house (see Opportunity Knocks « The Irish Aesthete). It was then for sale and in pitiable condition, having been turned into a tenement in the last century, with many of the original features such as the main staircase and the main chimney pieces stripped out and rooms subdivided to create more units in which entire families could be accommodated. Like many such buildings in this part of the city, it had been comprehensively degraded and faced an uncertain future. 






As discussed before, the site of 3 Henrietta Street, along with its immediate neighbour, was originally owned by Nathaniel Clements who completed work on the building around 1740-41 and then sold to the Rev. George Stone, Bishop of Ferns. The latter occupied the building but did not finish paying for it, until 1747 when he was appointed Archbishop of Armagh and, in turn, opportunistically moved into the even grander residence at the top of the street constructed for his predecessor in that office, Hugh Boulter. No. 4 was then leased to John Maxwell, MP for County Cavan and later first Lord Farnham. When John Maxwell moved into the house, it came with a plot of land to the immediate east, perhaps serving as a garden. In 1754 Maxwell’s only daughter married another MP, Owen Wynne of Sligo and it is thought that No.3 was built around this time to provide a Dublin residence for the newly-weds. The interior of the building underwent alterations believed to date from 1830: this was perhaps when the main staircase was removed and the double-height entrance hall divided into rooms on two levels. However, particularly on the first floor, the rooms retained much of their original decoration, the pair to the front of the room having a deep frieze with strapwork and festoons, while below the walls were sectioned by plaster panelling. To the rear at this level was a wonderful room with rococo stuccowork in the coved ceiling which extended into the bow. 





As can be seen, when offered for sale in 2016, No.3 Henrietta Street was in poor condition and looked an unattractive proposition for any possible buyer. Fortunately, it found new owners who in the years that followed undertook a thorough, and thoroughly sensitive, restoration of the building. One of their main interventions was the reinstatement of the double-height entrance hall incorporating a staircase such as would have existed when the house was first constructed and as can still be found in a number of other houses on the street (see, for example, No. 7, Relics of Auld Decency « The Irish Aesthete). This completely transforms the interior, making it altogether lighter and offering a better idea of how such buildings would have appeared to both owners and visitors in the 18th century. Upstairs, all the rooms were similarly refurbished, not least the first-floor bow-ended room with its charming coved ceiling with rococo plasterwork. The Irish Aesthete often (perhaps too often for some readers) focuses on loss and debasement of this country’s architectural heritage, so it is a pleasure to offer more cheering news on this occasion, evidence that at least occasionally our historic buildings, can sometimes be brought back from what appears to be the brink of permanent loss. 


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The Ascent to Knowledge


Herewith the entrance hall and main staircase of the King’s Inns’ Library on Henrietta Street, Dublin. The site, located at the top of the thoroughfare, had previously been the location for a large, six-bay house built in the early 18th century for Hugh Boulter, Archbishop of Armagh and thereafter occupied by a number of his successors, hence the street was popularly known as Primate’s Hill. This building was demolished c.1825 and replaced with the present library, designed by Frederick Darley. The double-height reading room on the first floor is accessed via an imperial staircase lit by a large arched window filled with armorial glass made by Michael O’Connor.

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All in the Detail


Now installed on the first-floor landing of the former Bishop’s Palace in Waterford City, this is a detail of a pine chimneypiece carved c.1758 by John Kelly for the Dublin residence of artist Robert West. Not to be confused with the near-contemporaneous stuccodore of the same name, West was born in Waterford, the son of an alderman, and trained in Paris, seemingly with both Boucher and van Loo before returning to Ireland and establishing a school of drawing in Dublin. By the mid-1740s, this was being subsidised by the Dublin Society, with premiums offered to students by Samuel Madden and annual exhibitions of their work held in the House of Lords. Unfortunately West became mentally ill in 1763 and had to be replaced as head of the school; he returned briefly to the position in 1770 before dying the same year.


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