Category Archives: Irish Garden

Walking with Ghosts of the Past


In 1862 The Dublin Exhibition Palace and Winter Garden Company Limited was established with a capital of £50,000 by three men, the Duke of Leinster, Lord Talbot de Malahide and Benjamin Lee Guinness. The purpose of this body was to provide ‘an institution to afford, to the people of Dublin and its neighbourhood, rational amusement blended with instruction and thus supply a want long felt in the city.’ To this end, it intended to erect a building ‘of an ornamental and appropriate character, which would comprise a Winter Garden adorned with the choicest plants and exotics, and which would also be used for the exhibition of horticulture – for promenades – musicales, when required – a concert hall suitable for the largest concerts and for the production of the works of the most eminent Masters – a gallery for the exhibition and sale of pictures and articles of vertu – a department for the display of manufacturers and useful arts – a polytechnic museum and theatre for lectures on popular subjects, and especially on the natural and mechanical sciences.’ There would also be a public bazaar, reading rooms, refreshment rooms, gymnasium and so forth, all of which were to be located amidst ornamental pleasure grounds. From this proposal emerged the International Exhibition of Arts and Manufactures held in Dublin in 1865. A similar event had taken place in the city twelve years earlier when the railway entrepreneur and philanthropist William Dargan had underwritten the Great Industrial Exhibition held on Leinster Lawn. This time, the location was a 17 acre site running from Earlsfort Terrace and Harcourt Street, with Hatch Street to the south and the rear of houses on St Stephen’s Green to the north. In the 18th century, much of this land, an uncultivated piece of ground, had been owned by Joseph Leeson, first Earl of Milltown, and was known as Leeson’s Fields. Later, it passed into the hands of John Scott, Lord Chief Justice and eventually first Earl of Clonmell, whose town residence on Harcourt Street was just across the way from an entrance to the grounds: while he used this as a private garden (accessed via a tunnel under Harcourt Street), in 1810 his son sold the place and some years after, it was open to the public as the Coburg Gardens. Half a century later, by which time they had fallen into disrepair, the gardens were bought by Benjamin Lee Guinness and when the Dublin Exhibition Palace and Winter Garden Company Limited was set up in 1862, he sold the site to it for the same price he had paid.  





With the main buildings designed by Dublin architect Alfred Gresham Jones, the International Exhibition was opened in May 1865 by the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII) and before closing six months later had received some 956,000 visitors. In 1870, two of Benjamin Lee’s sons, Edward (later Lord Ardilaun) and Arthur (later Lord Iveagh) re-acquired both the buildings and grounds behind them from the exhibition company, and while the site was used for another such venture in 1872, otherwise the gardens once more became private. As for the buildings, the vast iron and glass Winter Gardens were sold in 1882 and shipped to London where they were re-erected and opened to the paying public as the Albert Palace. Sadly, this venture proved a financial failure and within a few years the palace had closed down and was demolished before the end of the century. The other buildings were sold by Edward Guinness in 1883 to the Commissioners of Public Works to be adapted for the new Royal University. An architectural competition was held in 1912 for University College Dublin, with Rudolf Maximilian Butler selected as the winning entrant. His stripped-back Greek Revival design, with towering Ionic columns in the central breakfront and end pavilions, now conceals the earlier complex of the 1865 exhibition. Later vacated by University College Dublin, the Great Hall was adapted by the OPW in 1981 as the auditorium of the National Concert Hall. Meanwhile, as mentioned, the gardens to the rear remained the property of the Guinness family, whose Dublin residence, Iveagh House, stood on St Stephen’s Green (see In No Way Averse to the Magnificence of Life  « The Irish Aesthete). When that building was presented to the Irish government by the second Earl of Iveagh in May 1939, so too were the gardens to the rear, on the understanding that ‘they remain intact as a lung for the city.’ 





The Iveagh Gardens, as they are now known, were designed by Ninian Niven, a well-known landscape gardener and former Director of the Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin. Born in Glasgow, in 1827 Niven was offered the position of head gardener of the grounds of the official residence of the chief secretary for Ireland in the Phoenix Park, Dublin: here he remained until appointed to the Botanic Gardens in 1834. He left that position after four years to establish his own highly successful nursery as well as designing the gardens of a number of Irish country houses. When it came to the grounds of the International Exhibition grounds, Niven opted for a style that mixed French and English traditions, a blend of formality and informality that allowed him to include a variety of different elements within a single space. On the north side of the site, for example, is a sunken lawn with a drop of five feet that originally served as an archery field, a rare surviving example of this once popular feature. On the south side, meanwhile, can be found both a rosarium and a Yew maze, the latter being a miniature copy of the one at Hampton Court, London. Between these lies a central walk, with fountains on either side and, at the west end, a cascade that flows over a rockery incorporating stones from each of Ireland’s 32 counties. The west end, abutting what is now the National Concert Hall, has an American gardens, replete with walks through specimen trees and past what remains of statuary first placed here for the International Exhibition. While these grounds were much used while University College Dublin was based in Earlsfort Terrace, from the late 1960s onwards its campus moved to a new site at Belfield, south of the city centre, the gardens were largely forgotten and overlooked. In 1991, they were placed under the management of the Office of Public Works (OPW) and opened to the public in 1992, with the cascade restored in 1996, and a new entrance on the south side, opened on Upper Hatch Street in 2003. Today, the Iveagh Gardens are a popular destination for office workers in this part of Dublin, but there are still times, especially soon after the gates open, when it is possible to walk around the grounds alone except for ghosts of the past. 

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Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?


Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;




Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;




But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.


William Shakespeare, Sonnet 18
Photographs of the walled garden at Glenarm Castle, County Antrim

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Within these Walls



The beautiful walled garden at Bellefield, County Offaly has featured here before (see A Gardener’s Legacy « The Irish Aesthete). Both the garden and its adjacent house were bequeathed to the Royal Horticultural Society of Ireland four years ago following the death of its owner, Angela Jupe and since then it has served as an ideal venue for a series of events open to the public. On Saturday July 12th, I shall be giving a talk at Bellefield on the history and evolution of walled gardens in Ireland, as part of a day dedicated to exploring the subject. More information on this occasion can be found here: rhsi.ie/event/celebrating-irish-walled-gardens/


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Lá Fhéile Pádraig sona duit*

Abbey Leix, County Laois

Ballyvolane, County Cork

Lodge Park, County Kildare

Oakfield Park, County Donegal

Malahide Castle, County Dublin

In 1959, following a visit to Ireland, Johnny Cash wrote a song called ‘Forty Shades of Green.’ Given that this is St Patrick’s Day, it seems appropriate to offer readers of the Irish Aesthete a small selection of those shades…

Killruddery, County Wicklow

Garinish Island, County Cork

Blarney Castle, County Cork

Farmleigh, Dublin

Kells Bay, County Kerry

*Translation to English: Happy St Patrick’s Day
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A Summer Memory


As we approach the winter solstice, a visit from precisely six months ago to Primrose Hill which sits above the village of Lucan, County Dublin. The house is a late 18th century villa, the design of which has been sometimes attributed to architect James Gandon. Today, it sits amid several acres of gardens developed by the present owner and his late parents.



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A Charmer



Located on the outskirts of New Ross, County Wexford, Woodville dates from the first years of the 19th century and may have been built in 1807 when the property’s owner Edward Tottenham married Henrieta Alcock, daughter of Sir John Alcock; the Tottenhams had long been settled in this part of the country. Woodville’s site was clearly chosen because the land in front then drops away down to the river Barrow. However, this view was obscured in 1887 when the Dublin and South Eastern Railway opened a branch to New Ross, the line running along the banks of the river (the railway is long since closed). Of five bays and two storeys over basement, the house was originally two bays deep but was extended towards the end of the 19th century, with further alterations made during an extensive restoration in 2006. The Woodville estate was acquired by Patrick James Roche in 1876 and is still owned and occupied by his descendants who have developed charming and extensive gardens both in front and behind the main house. 


A Rare Insight


Lisburn, County Antrim was originally called Lisnagarvy (from the Irish Lios na gCearrbhach, meaning Ringfort of the Gamesters) and until the early 17th century was under the control of the O’Neill family. However, the Ulster Plantations meant this part of the country, a territory called Killultagh, passed into the hands of an English adventurer, Sir Fulke Conway, younger son of Sir John Conway of Warwickshire. As early as 1611, Lord Carew who was then passing through the area could write, ‘In our travel from Dromore towards Knockfargus, we saw in Kellultagh upon Sir Fulke Conway’s lands a house of cagework in hand and almost finished, where he intends to erect a bawn of brick in a place called Lisnagarvagh. He has built a fair timber bridge over the river of Lagan near the house.’ Sir Fulke died childless in 1624 and left the lands he had acquired to his older brother, Sir Edward Conway, a soldier and politician who three years later was created Viscount Conway in the English peerage, and Viscount Killultagh in the Irish peerage; a member of the Privy Council and a Secretary of State, in the years prior to his death in 1631 he served as Lord President of the Council. His heir, also called Edward, the second viscount was also a soldier and politician but also an ardent bibliophile: his library in Ireland contained between 8,000 and 9,000 books. On his death in 1655, the estates and titles passed to the third Edward who in 1679 was created first Earl of Conway. He was also the last because, having no heir despite being married three times, on his death the titles became extinct. His property, on the other hand, passed to an eight-year old first-cousin once removed, with the stipulation that he take the surname of the deceased; accordingly, Lisburn and the surrounding lands were inherited by the wonderfully-named Popham Seymour-Conway. Alas, while not yet 25, he was mortally wounded in a drunken duel, and so once more the estates were passed on, this time to his younger brother, Francis Seymour-Conway, who in due course became  Baron Conway of Ragley and Baron Conway of Killultagh in the respective national peerages. In turn, his son was created Marquess of Hertford, and when his descendant, the fourth marquess, died in 1870, he left the greater part of his estate (anything not entailed) to his secretary and illegitimate son, Sir Richard Wallace whose widow, in turn, bequeathed the family’s extraordinary art collection to the English nation, hence the Wallace Collection in London. 




Meanwhile, back in the early 17th century, as has been noted, Sir Fulke Conway began to build a substantial house, known as Lisburn Castle, on his Irish lands. This was in Lisburn, on a site above the river Lagan beside which he laid out the town, arranging for the construction of a market house and square, as well as a new church and several residential streets: settlers from England and Wales were then encouraged to move there. Inevitably, in the early 1640s the town was attacked during the Confederate Wars but survived and continued to flourish; in the aftermath of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685) large numbers of Huguenots moved here and helped to develop the linen trade, of which Lisburn became the most important centre in Ireland. A terrible fire ravaged the centre of the town in 1707 but it was soon rebuilt and returned to prosperity. The only building of importance not reconstructed in the aftermath of the conflagration was the Conway residence above the Lagan. By this time, the property had passed into the hands of the Seymour-Conways, who were absentee landlords and therefore there was no need for them to have a residence in Ireland. 




Because it was destroyed by fire in 1707, the character and appearance of the Conway residence in Lisburn is unknown. However, what do survive are some of the outer walls of the site and a series of terraced gardens that led down to the banks of the Lagan. These gardens were laid out by Edward Conway, third viscount (and first earl) who appears to have been particularly interested in his Irish property. In 1656, a year after the death of his father, he brought over a Dutch gardener to create four terraces on the south-east facing slope that led from the building to the river. These terraces had retaining walls constructed of stone fronted with red brick, and the top of them would likely have been lined with pots containing colourful flowers: in 1667, Lord Conway imported twelve dozen such pots from Ostend. Each terrace was laid out with beds for growing fruit, vegetables and flowers, with a lower one planted as an orchard growing a variety of different apples. The terraces also held a broad gravel path, at the end of one of them being a ‘Dutch tent’, presumably some kind of summerhouse. Again in 1667, Conway ordered some 7,000 painted tiles from Holland for its interior, but only 3,000 of them survived the journey unbroken; his agent advised, ‘a very dear commodity they prove and in these scarce times I think your Lordship may better lay out or keep your money.’ The topmost terrace featured a double-flight stone perron beneath which was a grotto of some kind, with an arched entrance. In the aftermath of the 1707 fire and the failure to reconstruct Lisburn Castle – the site of which eventually became, and remains, a public park, with a late 19th century monument to Sir Richard Wallace at its centre –  these terraced gardens were neglected and fell into dilapidation. However, in 2006-09, the area was excavated and restored, so that now it looks not unlike what Lord Conway intended when he undertook the work in the mid-17th century. Today, they provide a rare insight into horticultural design and practice in Stuart Ireland. 

By Design


Derrynane, County Kerry

Regular followers will be aware that for the past couple of years, the Irish Aesthete has undertaken much research into the evolution of Ireland’s country house gardens, the evolution of which has not always been sufficiently appreciated. One of the areas where such gardens can be seen to best advantage is County Kerry, which enjoys the benefit of lying adjacent to the Gulf Stream as it passes this island’s Atlantic coast. In consequence, historic gardens of quite astonishing fecundity can be found throughout Kerry and these will be the subject of a one-day seminar – Designed Landscapes & Demesnes of Kerry: Their History and Conservation – to be held next Friday, September 30th in Killarney. The Irish Aesthete will be speaking at this event, offering an overview of the country’s designed landscapes (with a particular emphasis on those found in Kerry, of course). The seminar is free, but booking required, and further information can be found here: Designed Landscapes & Demesnes of Kerry: their history & conservation seminar | Irish Georgian Society (igs.ie)


Kells Bay, County Kerry