Category Archives: Laois

A Death on Main Street



Portarlington, County Laois has featured here on a couple of previous occasions (see A Boarded Up Boarding School « The Irish Aesthete and On the Market « The Irish Aesthete). In both instances, astonishment was expressed that so many historic buildings in what could be a jewel of a town – and a magnet for tourism in Ireland’s Midlands – were being left to fall into ruin. In Andrew Tierney’s 2019 guide to Central Leinster, Portarlington is politely described as ‘once elegant’, thereby only gently suggesting the place’s chronic decay and shabbiness. As mentioned previously, the town takes its name from Sir Henry Bennett, Baron Arlington, who was granted land here in 1667 by Charles II and created a settlement on his property. However, it was only at the end of the 17th century, after Portarlington had passed into the hands of Henri de Massue, second Marquis de Ruvigny (subsequently Baron Portarlington and Earl of Galway) that the town really began to prosper. The marquis was a Huguenot and, like many other members of his faith, had fled France after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. Spending much time in this country, he encouraged his co-religious to move to Portarlington, which soon became an important centre, not just for trade, but also for education; a considerable number of schools were established in houses around the town. However, the schools have long-since gone, and so too has all evidence of the town’s prosperity. 





Today’s pictures show the former Rectory on Portarlington’s Main Street. Although a considerable part of the town’s population in the 18th century was Huguenot, the Church of Ireland also had a presence here, as evidenced by this building, constructed around 1780, although somewhat altered a century later. Of five bays and two storeys over basement, its significance is indicated by the fact that the house has been slightly set back from the road, the door approached by a flight of stone steps. At some date, either late 19th or early 20th century, a small pavilion or kios, was erected in front of and linked to the southern part of the building. In due course, the rectory was used as offices while the kiosk served as a local branch of Allied Irish Bank, until it was closed down in October 2012. Since then, it would seem that the entire site has sat empty and left to fall into its present state of appalling dereliction; part of the rear of the old rectory has collapsed, its condition not helped by the demolition of the adjacent building to the immediate north. Last year, the former rectory was placed on the derelict sites list and this may have been responsible for the owners,  a County Monaghan-based development company, to apply for conversion of the property into a series of flats, with the additional construction of a three-storey block to the rear. On the other hand, the same company was previously granted permission for almost the same conversion in June 2019, and since then things have only grown worse. A death of Main Street: this is a sad state of affairs, but one now typical of Irish cities and towns in the 21st century. 


New Ruins


‘New ruins have not yet acquired the weathered patina of age, the true rust of the barons’ wars, not yet put on their ivy, nor equipped themselves with the appropriate bestiary of lizards, bats, screech-owls, serpents, speckled toads and little foxes which, as has been so frequently observed by ruin-explorers, hold high revel in the precincts of old ruins (such revelling, though noted with pleasure, is seldom described in detail; possibly the jackal waltzes with the toad, the lizard with the fox, while the screech-owl supplies the music and they all glory and drink deep among the tumbled capitals)…’





‘…But new ruins are for a time stark and bare, vegetationless and creatureless; blackened and torn, they smell of fire and mortality. It will not be for long. Very soon trees will be thrusting through the empty window sockets, the rose-bay and fennel blossoming within the broken walls, the brambles tangling outside them. Very soon the ruin will be enjungled, engulfed, and the appropriate creatures will revel. Even ruins in city streets will, if they are let alone, come, soon or late, to the same fate. Month by month it grows harder to trace the streets around them; here, we see, is the lane of tangled briars that was a street of warehouses; there, in those jungled caverns, stood the large tailor’s shop; where those grassy paths cross, a board swings, bearing the name of a tavern. We stumble among stone foundations and fragments of cellar walls, among the ghosts of the exiled merchants and publicans who there carried on their gainful trades. Shells of churches gape emptily; over broken altars the small yellow dandelions make their pattern. All this will presently be; but at first there is only the ruin; a mass of torn, charred prayer books strew the stone floor; the statues, tumbled from their niches, have broken in pieces; rafters and rubble pile knee-deep…’





‘…But often the ruin has put on, in its catastrophic tipsy chaos, a bizarre new charm* What was last week a drab little house has become a steep flight of stairs winding up in the open between gaily-coloured walls, tiled lavatories, interiors bright and intimate like a Dutch picture or a stage set; the stairway climbs up and up, undaunted, to the roofless summit where it meets the sky. The house has put on melodrama; people stop to stare; here is a domestic scene wide open for all to enjoy. To-morrow or to-night, the gazers feel, their own dwelling may be even as this. Last night the house was scenic; flames leaping to the sky; to-day it is squalid and morne, but out of its dereliction it flaunts the flags of what is left.’


Extracts from Pleasure of Ruins by Rose Macaulay (1953). Photographs show Ballymorris, County Laois, a house believed to date from c.1760 and which appears to have been occupied until some 15 years ago but has since fallen into its present sad condition. 

 

The Other Spire



Located on the summit of Carrick Wood, County Laois, this is Ireland’s other – and older – Spire. A circular folly crowned with an immensely tall stone conical roof, the date of its construction is uncertain. Writing in 1801, Sir Charles Coote proposed that the spire had been erected ‘to give employment to the poor in the year of the great frost’ (namely 1740-41). On the other hand, in 1814 William Shaw Mason wrote that it had been built ‘by the late Lord Viscount Carlow, grand-father of the present Earl of Portarlington’. Since the Carlow viscountcy was only created in 1776, this suggests a later period of construction. Another notion is that the building was originally a windmill, later converted into a folly. Restored in 2005, it remains in good condition although, alas, marred by the inevitable – and inevitably unimaginative – graffiti.


A Gem


Writing about Summergrove, County Laois almost half a century ago (Irish Georgian Society Bulletin XVI, October 1973), the late Maurice Craig declared, ‘Of all the houses which are neither ‘big houses’ nor farmhouses, Summer Grove has always seemed to me one of the most attractive, nor has a wider acquaintance with its rivals caused me to modify that opinion.’  While he admitted that ‘the elements of the facade: gibbsian doorway with side lights, venetian window, diocletian window, platband, stone cornice, hipped roof and symmetrical chimneys, are common to a great many mid-eighteenth century houses of about this size, as is the pediment over the breakfront in the centre,’ nevertheless, Maurice was seduced by the building’s irresistible charm. In part, he explained, this derives from ‘the mildly archaic flavour of its rather steep roof with its barely perceptible sprocketing, the interior decoration suggests a date some time around 1760 or even a little later. The Venetian and Diocletian windows go on so long in the provinces that they provide no reliable indication of dates. From the massive triple keystone of the front door projects an elaborate and splendid wrought-iron lamp-bracket, such as would be noteworthy even in Dublin, but in the country is of the very highest rarity. Before leaving the facade we should note the unusually small stones of which it is built, which from a distance seem hardly larger than bricks, and very nearly as regular.’ Thereafter, Maurice noted in his Classic Irish Houses of the Middle Size (1976), ‘the main interest in Summer Grove lies in the ingenuity of the planning. In the back half of the house three storeys are fitted into the same height as two on the entrance-front. It is surprising that this method of ‘mezzanine’ planning was not more widely used in country houses, since it results in a small number of high-ceilinged rooms and a rather larger number of low-ceilinged ones, a most desirable result not so easily achieved by conventional planning.’ Among the rere elevation’s most distinctive features are the pair of Venetian windows, one at either end of the top floor.







A date stone discovered some 20 years ago suggests that Summergrove was finished in 1766 but work on the house probably started much earlier. The original owner was one Thomas Sabatier whose Huguenot forebear – likely grandfather – François Sabatier had fled France in the aftermath of the 1685 Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. In 1707, he was listed as living in Mountmellick, a prosperous town just a couple of miles east of Summergrove. Like many other Huguenot families who settled here, the Sabatiers must have flourished, since in 1736, within one or two generations of arrival in this country, they were able to acquire tracts of land in the neighbourhood and embark on building a fine country house. The architect responsible is unknown: the Knight of Glin proposed Henry Pentland, but there is little evidence to support this name, or any other. Regardless, it would appear the costs involved in the building’s construction were greater than had been anticipated because in February 1774 Summergrove was advertised to let for such Term of Years as may be agreed’, the building described as ‘large and commodious, and fit for the immediate Reception of a Gentleman of Fortune,’ the interior being ‘well finished and stucco’d, with every other Necessary, such as Italian, Kilkenny and other Marble Chimney Pieces, Grates, etc.’ Nevertheless, the family remained in possession, if not always in residence, of Summergrove. Thomas Sabatier died in 1784 and was succeeded by his son John who, in turn, died in 1792, followed by two further generations likewise called John. Following the death of the last of these in 1859, the house changed hands for the first time, being acquired by Jonathan Pim, whose Quaker ancestors had settled in Mountmellick at the end of the 17th century. By the beginning of the 19th century the Pims were involved in brewing and other business enterprises, while Jonathan Pim was acting as agent for the Summergrove estate. Having taken over the property, he had little time to enjoy possession, since he died in 1864, being succeeded by his son William, who lived in the house until 1902. Having no children, he left Summergrove to his sister who in turn passed it to her son, William Anthony Robinson who, with his wife lived there until the 1950s when, once more, the house was offered for sale. Thereafter it passed through different owners, not all of whom occupied the building, before being bought 30 years ago by the present owner.







The interiors of Summergrove are quite as engaging as the house’s external appearance. To cite Maurice Craig again, ‘The small square entrance-hall has a Doric entablature over the door and window cases, a flowing rococo centrepiece to the ceiling and, on the inner wall, three elegant arches under a single wide arch, the three doors separated by fluted corinthian pilasters. The right-hand door gives directly on to the staircase, while the middle one is dummy, a device which recalls the entrance to the centre of the Long Gallery at Castletown. On the staircase side the same three doors are under a pediment with ornament a good deal less fruity than that on the hall side, but in the same free-flowing rococo vein. The right-hand room on the ground floor has a coved cornice and ceiling decorated in the Robert West manner with sprays, roses, bunches of grapes and pheasants.’ (Loath as one is to correct Maurice, the inner wall’s middle door is not a dummy, but now serves to provide access to the staircase beyond. Furthermore, the ground floor room with ceiling decorated in the style of Robert West is to the left – not the right – of the entrance.) The rococo plasterwork in Summergrove’s reception rooms varies in quality, that in the entrance hall being charming but somewhat perfunctory, while that in the dining room is of altogether finer quality and clearly by a superior hand. On the other side of the entrance hall, what is now a drawing room has a plain ceiling. The original drawing room – now a bedroom – can be found on the first floor, directly above the dining room has another fine rococo ceiling although this one lacks the latter’s coved frame. And, as the advertisement of 1774 noted, there are some fine chimneypieces, although a couple of these were taken out of the house prior to it being acquired by the present owner, who deserves credit for having found satisfactory replacements. Indeed, he merits praise for having undertaken such a meticulous restoration of Summergrove over the past three decades, so that today this glorious building glows, a burnished gem in Ireland’s Midlands and an example of what can be achieved with sufficient dedication and patience. 

 

A Country Retreat



Today known as Mount St Anne’s, this handsome villa was originally called Mount Henry, presumably after Henry Smyth who in the first decade of the 19th century commissioned the building’s design from Sir Richard Morrison: the central recessed entrance with pedimented Ionic portico between bowed bays can also be seen, albeit on a larger scale, on the facade of Lyons, County Kildare, for which Morrison was also responsible. It is unclear whether the now-exposed stone walls were once stuccoed. A wing containing a billiard room was added in 1868 by Lanyon, Lynn and Lanyon but otherwise few changes were made to the house even after it was acquired by the Presentation order of nuns in the 1930s but some thirty years later, when the Roman Catholic church was going through an expansionist phase, an oratory and other ancillary buildings, none of them of particular architectural merit (or displaying much sympathy with Morrison’s work) were constructed to the rear of the villa. Today Mount St Anne’s is used as a retreat and conference centre.


Fragments


Herewith the surviving fragments of the once-might Morett Castle, County Laois. It was a late-medieval tower house, built by the Fitzgerald family towards the end of the 16th century. During the wars of the 1650s the building came under attack and was then forfeited by the Fitzgeralds, although they were able to regain possession of it during the following decade. Then, in 1690, it was threatened again, this time by the O’Cahills, who claimed ownership of the land on which it stood. The owner at the time, Stephen Fitzgerald, made the mistake of taking a stroll in his garden, and was promptly captured by the attackers, who threatened to kill him unless the castle was surrendered. According to Sir Jonah Barrington (who was her great-nephew), the prisoner’s wife Elizabeth declined the offer, declaring ‘Elizabeth Fitzgerald may get another husband but Elizabeth Fitzgerald may not get another castle; so I’ll keep what I have; and if you don’t get off faster than your legs can readily carry you, my warders will try which is hardest, your skull or a stone bullet.’ She was as good as her word and the castle remained in her possession. The unfortunate Stephen Fitzgerald, on the other hand, was soon seen dangling from a gibbet: his widow did at least have the consideration to wake and bury him. Barrington recounts the sundry other attempts to seize the castle from her, all unsuccessful and ends his tale by informing readers that his great-aunt remained in occupation ‘to a very late period in the reign of George the First.’ The place must have been abandoned not long afterwards because by 1792 Francis Grose could show it in ruins (albeit with more surviving than is now the case). 

A Picture of Extreme Beauty


‘The church to which this doorway belongs stands in a glen at the foot of that part of the mountain of Slieve Mairgre called Knockara, two miles and a half from the town of Carlow, in the parish of Killeshin, barony of Slievemargy, and county of Carlow. The name is derived originally from that in the valley in which it was built, Gleann Uissean, by which title it is mentioned in the Annals and Martyrologies.
The ruin stands not far from a rath on a knoll overlooking a little waterfall, which tumbles over a ledge of rock in the ravine at its foot. The gables and side walls of the church are clothed with ivy and long grass. The ancient pillar-clustered doorway, arch within arch, with its rich adornment of sculptured traceries, mouldings, bas-reliefs and inscriptions appearing in the midst of this framework of leaves, forms a picture of extreme beauty.’




‘The church was remodelled at three different periods. Before the east wall fell, it was 66 ft. long by 25 ft. 8 in. broad internally, but as it stands now it measures 90 ft. from end to end, and the eastern part to the distance of 24 ft. was evidently added at a much later period than that at which the original building was erected. This modern portion may be termed the chancel, and is 1 ft 6 in. narrower than the nave. The walls are 3 ft. 8 in. to 4 ft. thick. The masonry is large, showing little trace of the hammer, with deep granite quoins and pilasters at the west end projecting 9 in., and 3 ft. 2 in. wide. In the modern work, the stones are small and hammered, while the quoins are of limestone. The western gable is partly broken away.
The west door is of four orders…Many of the ornaments are identical with those of the doorway at Timahoe [County Laois] and also resemble some of the later work at Tomgraney [County Clare]. The keystone of the outer order bears a venerable human head carved in relief. The design called the trumpet pattern, or divergent spiral, appears among the other ornaments of this door. The jambs are rounded, but the orders of the arch preserve their square form, and are enriched with surface ornament, while the entablature which runs along the top of the jambs is carved at the salient angles into human heads, the long interlaced hair of each head covering the surface of the stone back to the re-entrant angles. Each order of the doorway has engaged shafts at the angles. The bases have the beautiful feature of leaves connecting the bulbous portions with square plinths at the angles. The following inscriptions run along the abaci at each side, and the beginning of another occurs on the front of the jamb of the second order on the north side which appears to have been continued to the top of the jamb…
…The first inscription may be read:-
Pray for Art…King of Leinster, and for…Steward. Pray for…Iena Ua Mel[lach, Prince of Hy] Duach. Pray for Cellac…
The territory of Hy Duach comes within a mile of this church.’ 




‘The chancel arch was pulled down upwards of fifty years ago, and a great part of the south wall of the church destroyed. It is said to have contained two round-headed windows widely splayed inside. Two windows of the same character still remain in the north wall. The most perfect is 7 ft. in height by 3 ft. 6 in. internally and is placed at a height of 9 ft. from the ground…About twenty yards to the south-west of the entrance stood the belfry, a round tower of great height and beauty, the doorway of which faced that of the church and was pulled down upwards of a century ago…Molyneaux, writing in the year 1709, thus alludes to the tower:- “Near the foot of the mountain on this road stands the old church of Killeshin, which is a very old building. Here lately stood, over against the Doore of the Church, one of the old round steeples which I am told, was very high, old and well built, so that when the owner of this place had it fallen, it came to the ground in one solid piece, and was not even by the fall against the ground so broke, but that several vast pieces yet remain sticking together, so that you easily discover what this building was. It plainly appears to be of the same building and age with the adjacent church, and this was certainly an Irish building, as appears by two Inscriptions on either side of the door as you enter…”’


Extracts from Notes on Irish Architecture by Edwin, third Earl of Dunraven, edited by Margaret Stokes, Vol.II, London, 1877. 

 

Towering Over its Surroundings



The surviving walls of Garron Castle, County Laois. Dating from the late 16th century, it was originally built by the Mac Giolla Phádraig (FitzPatrick) family, possibly in the time of Brían Óg Mac Giolla Phádraig, who in 1541 was created first Baron Upper Ossory, or else his son Barnaby FitzPatrick, second baron, who became a close companion to the boy king Edward VI before returning to Ireland after the latter’s death in 1553. The six-storey tower house remained in the possession of the FitzPatricks until the mid-17th century when it appears to have passed into the possession of the Vicars family. A view painted in 1790 by Austin Cooper shows it still reasonably intact, but in 1863 it was reported that two walls had collapsed, leaving the remains seen here, with a round bartizan on the top of one corner and a corbelled bartizan lower down the wall. Today Garron Castle towers over a farm yard adjacent to the present owners’ bungalow.


Awaiting New Purpose



Dating from c.1800, here is an exceptionally handsome stableyard at Ballykilcavan, County Laois. The land here was bought by Oliver Walsh in 1639 and through 13 generations has belonged to his descendants, in various incarnations, ever since. Some years ago, the present owner cleverly converted the adjacent farmyard into a  brewery, using barley grown on the land and water from the estate’s well, to make a number of fine beers. No doubt in due course a new purpose will be similarly found for the stableyard buildings.


A Widow’s Memorial



Following last Wednesday’s post on Bellegrove, County Laois (A Landlord’s Legacy), this nearby church in Rathdaire was commissioned after John George Adair’s death in 1885 by his American widow Cornelia. Her rapacious late husband had not been a popular man; every time his grave was dug, dead cats and dogs were flung into it by the deceased’s former tenants as evidence of their hatred. Yet Mrs Adair persisted with creating this memorial to him, designed by James Franklin Fuller in an approximation of the Hiberno-Romanesque style, the Portland stone portal inspired in part by the remains of St Cronan’s church in Roscrea, County Tipperary. There’s an unquestionable incongruity between the peacefulness of this site, and the memory of the man who inspired its construction.