Category Archives: Meath

Playing with the Architectural Lexicon



‘Crossing the left bank of the Boyne at Bellinter bridge we enter the noble demesne of Ardsallagh, now belonging to the Duke of Bedford, who has recently erected here a handsome Elizabethan mansion, in which report whispers he will annually spend some time. In no part of its course does the river present the same extreme calmness and repose as here. Widening into deep, still pools, shaded by aged timber, and fringed with wild plants of gigantic growth, huge colts-foot; with the modest blue forget-me-not and the little yellow potentilla peeping through their dark umbrageous foliage; long, topling bulrushes, fragrant meadow-sweet, and broad waterlilies, stretch in wild luxuriance along the placid banks. Long avenues of lime trees, and groves of tall grey- stemmed beeches with arcades of aged yew, give an air of antiquity as well as grandeur to this handsome park. One almost always expects to meet some remnant of ecclesiastical buildings where aged yew trees abound, and accordingly we read that St. Finian founded the monastery of Escair-branain near this, but at present even the site of that ancient edifice is unknown.’ (from The Beauties of the Boyne and its Tributary the Blackwater by William R. Wilde, 1849). 






Located above the banks of the river Boyne as it flows south from the town of Navan, County Meath, Ardsallagh was, as Wilde mentioned, believed to be the site of a religious house established here in the sixth century by Saint Finian of Clonard. In the late 12th century, the land here was granted by the Norman knight Hugh de Lacy to one of his supporters, Jocelyn de Angulo, whose descendants, their name anglicised to Nangle, became known as Barons of Navan. The Nangles erected a castle at Ardsallagh and would remain there until the 1650s when, like so many other families who had supported the Catholic Confederate cause, they were deprived of their property, 8,000 acres of which were later purchased by the Dublin alderman John Preston: in the following century, his great-granddaughter Mary Preston inherited the Ardsallagh estate. Her husband, Peter Ludlow served as an MP for Meath, while the couple’s son, also called Peter, would have a highly successful political career, eventually becoming Comptroller of the Household in the 1780s. Before then, he had been elevated to the peerage, created Baron Ludlow of Ardsallagh while aged just 25, and eventually becoming first Earl Ludlow. In due course he was succeeded by his two sons, the younger of whom, the third and last earl, had a highly successful military career, rising to the rank of Lieutenant General, as well as acting as Equerry to the Prince of Wales from 1784-95. On his death without direct heirs in 1842, Ardsallagh was bequeathed to Francis Russell, seventh Duke of Bedford who, Wilde noted, commissioned a new residence on the site. This property subsequently passed to the duke’s brother, Lord John Russell, British Prime Minister 1846-52, and later first Earl Russell. However, he and his descendants do not appear to have spent much, if any, time in residence at Ardsallagh. In January 1890, The Times carried the following advertisement: ‘To be let or sold for a term of years, the house and demesne lands of Ardsallagh, the Irish residence of Lord Russell, situated on his property in the County of Meath, in the best hunting district in Ireland.  The house is a large gentleman’s residence, with good stables and out offices, and the demesne contains 333 acres 1 rood 43 perches statute measurement.’ Certainly, in the closing decades of the 19th century, the estate was let to the French family, and eventually in the 1930s it was bought by a local builder, Cormac Murphy and his wife Catherine: earlier this year, their grandchildren placed the house and surrounding 199 acres on the market. 






As alredy mentioned, the original building at Ardsallagh was a castle erected by the Nangles, but no trace of this survives today: a census from 1821 merely notes ‘the remains house of Ardsala’ while The Parliamentary Gazetteer 0f Ireland, 1844-1845 observed that the demesne here ‘seems to be as ill kept as it is delightfully situated.’ The two later Earls Ludlow had enjoyed careers based in England and therefore one assumes neglected their Irish estate. However, the place had once been very fine: passing through the area in August 1732, Mrs Delany declared ‘The house seems a very antique edifice, it has fine gardens, but the trees and meadows that lie by the river are extremely beautiful.’ Similarly, writing c.1740, Isaac Butler called Ardsallagh, ‘the beautifull Seat of Mr Ludlow the House is lofty & well designed with a fine Firr Grove which almost encompass the House here are delightfull Gardens, & curious subterraneous Grottos.’ By the following century, it appears all this had fallen into ruin, which explains why, after inheriting the place, the Duke of Bedford should have opted to start afresh with the construction of a new residence. As seen today, Ardsallagh is in the Tudor Revival style, its limestone exterior replete with pointed gables and towering diagonal chimneys, oriels and mullioned windows. Designed by an unknown architect, but described by Casey and Rowan as being ‘in the manner of Edward Blore’, the house cost £40,000 to build and fit out. The building, which suffered a fire in 1903, subsequently received attention from Sir Thomas Drew, which makes it difficult to know how much of the present interior is original and how much early 20th century refurbishment. The most striking feature is the double-height staircase hall which, unlike the exterior, evokes the Baroque period, with the first-floor gallery supported by a series fluted columns below an elaborate entablature. The main rooms, their plasterwork ceilings simultaneously incorporating elements of the Jacobean and English Perpendicular periods, further add to the delightfully eclectic blend of styles found within the house. Although, as is evident in these pictures, the place now needs some attention, Ardsallagh is a wonderful survivor from a time when bold borrowing from the architectural lexicon was still widespread. At the time of writing, the property is listed as Sale Agreed: one must hope that whoever takes it on appreciates Ardsallagh’s special qualities and ensures they are preserved into the future. 



The Irish Aesthete is generously supported by

Two Ruins, One Site


Located in County Meath, but close to the border with County Offaly, Castlejordan is said to take its name from a man named Jordan, but who he might have been is open to conjecture. One suggestion is that he was a Norman knight called Jordan de Courcy, a relative (possibly a son) of John de Courcy who in the late 12th century conquered much of eastern Ulster. According to this story, following the senior de Courcy’s downfall, Jordan fled or was exiled to Exeter but later returned to Ireland and erected a fortress which came to be known as Castlejordan. The alternative version is that the place owes its origins to a later settler, Jordan Comyn who is held to have founded an Augustinian Priory a few miles away at Ballyboggan. 





Found beside the river Monagh, by their scale the ruins of Castlejordan indicate that this was once a fortress of some importance, used to defend the inhabitants of the Pale against incursions by the local O’Connor family. It appears that during the 16th century, the castle regularly changed hands between the English and Irish, although towards the end of the Tudor period it was held by Sir Henry Duke. Following his death in 1595, the property was inherited by one of Duke’s daughters, Mary who married Richard Gifford, and it would appear their descendants remained living in the area until the early 19th century, although the castle came under attack several times during the Confederate Wars of the 1640s. How much of the building survived from this period is open to question: by 1837, in his Topographical Dictionary of Ireland, when writing about Castlejordan, Samuel Lewis simply noted ‘here are the ruins of a castle, formerly occupied by the Giffords.’ The last member of the family associated with the site appears to have been Marie Giffard (note the slight difference in spelling of the surname by the late 18th century). She married Frederick William Lewis Augustus, Count de Lusi, who from 1834-38 served as Prussian Envoy Extraordinary to the Court of Greece. What remains of the castle is in two parts. That closer to the river is a squat, three storey structure, the north-west front flanked by a pair of circular towers, and with tall chimneys on two gable ends. This might be considered complete in itself, but rather strangely, some distance to the south is another structure, a single tall, slender tower at least five storeys high and with masonry on one side indicating it was once part of a bigger building (but now forming the backdrop to a private garden, rather like a modern version of the 18th century folly). Has Castlejordan castle been the subject of a detailed study or archaeological survey? It would seem not, but any further information on the place would be fascinating to see. 




A short distance to the west of the old castle lies another ruin, this time of a Church of Ireland church. Samuel Lewis advised readers that this was built in 1826, likely on the site of an earlier place of worship, since records survive showing that services were held in Castlejordan during the 17th and 18th centuries: In 1693, for example, the church and chancel here were recorded as being in good repair. According to Lewis, the new building was constructed at a cost of £664, 12 shillings and one penny. On the other hand, the Parliamentary Directory of 1846 gives a figure of £923, one shilling and six and a half pence. Both sources agree that the expense was borne thanks to a loan from the Board of First Fruits, and the later document also provides the helpful information that while the church could hold 100 persons, attendance averaged 40. Meanwhile, the Roman Catholic chapel had an attendance of 600. As the Parliamentary Directory noted, while the Protestants of the parish amounted to 60, the number of Roman Catholics was 4,024. By the early 20th century, the church in Castlejordan was united with a number of other parishes and eventually closed for services in 1978. Today, just the tower which would have stood at the west end of the building, still remains in place, like a response to the singular tall tower of the older castle to the south.  

The Irish Aesthete is generously supported by

Suitably Splendid



The former main entrance to the demesne of Dunsany Castle, County Meath is thought to date from the 1830s and to have been designed by James Shiel, an architect who specialises in castellating any building that stayed still long enough to be garnished with crenelations and battlements. In this instance, a rubble-faced lodge in the form of a small square keep, two storey to the front and three storey to the rear, rises to one side of the buttressed and Tudor-arched carriage gatescreen which is of crisp ashlar. Both here and in the adjacent pedestrian entrance, the decorative ironwork survives, giving the ensemble a suitably splendid appearance.



The Irish Aesthete is generously supported by

Erected for their Posterity



Above the pointed arch doorway with cable moulding at the entrance to a now-roofless church in Naul, County Dublin is a plaque stating that the building had been ‘Erected by Hon. Edward Hussey and his wife Lady Mabel (nee Barnwall) for their posterity in the year of Our Lord God 1710.’ This memorial also features the Hussey coat of arms and motto ‘Cor Immobile’ (Immovable Hearts). The plaque suggests the building dates from the early 18th century but more likely it was reconstructed then as a chantry chapel for the Husseys (whose vault lies within the nave), because the Civil Survey of 1654-6 described it as being ruinous with only ‘the walles of ye parish church’ still standing. In addition, at the east end there remains a fine double ogee-headed window (a second, less ornamented opening can be found on the south wall). At the start of the 19th century, a Church of Ireland church was constructed to the immediate north of this little structure but was then demolished in 1949 due to insufficient numbers attending services there.



The Irish Aesthete is generously supported by

How the Mighty have Fallen


‘Sir Lucas Dillon, father of the first Earl of Roscommon, and son of Sir Robert Dillon, who was Attorney-General to Henry VIII, built the castle and church of Moymett, after having received the grants of the Abbey of the Virgin Mary at Trim, and the townlands of Ladyrath, Grange of Trim, Cannonstown and Rathnally, in the year 1567.’
From ‘A Continuation of Notes on Sepia Sketches of Various Antiquities presented to the Library of the Royal Irish Academy’ by George V Du Noyer, in Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, Vol. VII, 1862.





The tomb of Sir Lucas Dillon (c.1530-1593) and his first wife Jane Bathe in Newtown Trim, County Meath has featured here before (see Former Greatness « The Irish Aesthete). As mentioned above, he was the eldest son of Sir Robert Dillon, and member of a Norman family which had settled in Ireland in the 12th century and thereafter prospered. A Chief Justice of the Irish Common Pleas, Sir Robert, despite being Roman Catholic, assisted in the English crown in the dissolution of monasteries in Ireland and in 1537 was granted a 21-year lease of the demesne of St Peter’s at in Newtown Trim and three years later was allowed to buy the property (in 1546 he also purchased the Carmelite monastery at Athcarne, Co. Meath). Like his father, Lucas Dillon became a lawyer and in 1565 was appointed Solicitor General for Ireland. He would later become Attorney General, a member of the Irish Parliament, Chief Baron of the Exchequer (succeeding his late father-in-law), and then a member of the Irish Privy Council. During this period, he acquired the land at Moymet, some four miles north-west of Newtown Trim which he also owned. Again like his father, he acted in the service of the English government: in Terry Clavin’s entry in the Dictionary of Irish Biography, he notes that Dillon ‘believed that the best means of pacifying Ireland was by the extension of the common law to all corners of the island.’ He was especially close to Sir Henry Sidney, Lord Deputy of Ireland 1565-71 and again 1575-78 and accompanied the latter on his tours of Ireland; Sidney knighted Dillon in 1575. Inevitably as he grew older, the number of Dillon’s enemies increased – he often faced charges of corruption – but he managed to hold on to his offices until he died in 1593. His eldest son James would become first Earl of Roscommon, despite remaining Roman Catholic, although (although subsequent generations conformed to the Established Church).





In their guide to North Leinster, Professors Casey and Rowan described the buildings at Moymet as ‘a rare microcosm of late medieval life in Ireland.’ The ensemble begins with a substantial three-storey gatehouse, comprising an entrance archway, once vaulted, with a number of rooms above. On the west side, a narrow vaulted chamber has a spiral staircase in one corner giving access to the upper level. A short distance south of this lie the remains of the castle which would have served as the Dillons’ residence. Although now in poor condition, this was originally of four storeys, presumably with a typical vaulted chamber on the ground floor (none of the interior divisions survive). Several large window and chimney openings survive, as well as a garderobe in the south-east corner of the structure. There is also, seemingly a much-worn sheela-na-gig figure on the east wall, but the presence of an excessively inquisitive herd of cattle prevented the Irish Aesthete from seeing this. A long, low range to the immediate west probably acted as a service block. Meanwhile, further west of the castle stands a similarly ruined church, once dedicated to St Brigid. Like the other buildings on this site, it is thought to have been built, or perhaps rebuilt by Sir Luke Dillon since the church is in two parts, the nave wider than the chancel and lit by slender windows with trefoils carved into the spandrels, each then capped with hood moulding.  An internal staircase in the north-east corner of the nave formerly gave access to the rood-loft, where most likely a priest lived. At the east end, the chancel closes in a large rectangular window divided into three with ogee arches and, once more, a hood moulding over the whole. The church appears to have been damaged during the Confederate Wars of the 1640s and then abandoned, as were the nearby castle and its associated structures, leaving the whole to fall into decay.


The Irish Aesthete is generously supported by

A Swifte Burial



Located beside a now-disused church and within an old graveyard at Castlerickard, County Meath is this curious limestone pyramid, each of its steeply pitched sides carrying a raised diamond. One of them carries the name Swifte, indicating that the monument commemorates a member of the family of that name, possibly Godwin Swifte who died in 1815 and owned a property in this part of the country, the picturesquely named Lionsden, which still stands. Godwin Swifte belonged to a branch of the same family as Jonathan Swift, the famous Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin. 



The Irish Aesthete is generously supported by 

Corbalton



Corbalton Hall dates from 1801 when the house was designed by Francis Johnston. The foremost architect of the period, Johnston was responsible for some of Ireland’s most significant buildings, such as Dublin’s GPO and the Chapel Royal in Dublin Castle, as well as many other country houses. His client on this occasion was Elias Corbally, a wealthy miller who bought the estate along with an older house, since demolished, called Cookstown. To commemorate his family, Corbally decided to name the new house Corbalton Hall. A flawless example of fashionable neo-classical taste, Corbalton is faced in crisp limestone, the two-storey facade defined by a freestanding Ionic portico. The windows on either side are set in shallow recesses with semi-elliptical fluted panels above them. Inside, the building follows a typical tripartite plan, with a central entrance hall flanked by the main reception rooms, accessed through meticulously finished mahogany doors. To the rear of the hall is the cantilevered staircase in pale Portland stone, the whole space amply lit by a generous bowed window on the return and leading up to a series of bedrooms.







Symmetry and order are paramount in Johnston’s neo-classical houses, so Corbalton Hall’s drawing room and dining room have exactly the same proportions, although the former has a large east-facing bow window offering views across the surrounding demesne. All the windows on this floor are set in shallow recesses holding the shutters, at the top of which can be seen a design detail typical of Johnston’s work: a fan-like fluted, semi-circular motif. In 1970 the original Cookstown House was demolished, leaving an empty space between Johnston’s villa and the stable block which he had also designed. At the start of the present century, however, an extension designed by conservation architect David Sheehan was added to the rear of Francis Johnston’s Corbalton Hall, on the footprint of the demolished building, thereby restoring coherence to the site. Fortunately the handsome stable yard survives and beyond it lie further work yards leading to a pair of substantial walled gardens (the first of them terraced), all essential features of a functioning country house. 







It is worth noting that Elias Corbally was a Roman Catholic, and a keen campaigner for the repeal of the Penal Laws, together with full civil rights for members of his faith. As a result, the Corballys became associated through marriage with other notable Catholic families elsewhere in County Meath. In 1817, for example, Elias’s only daughter Louisa Emilia Corbally married Arthur Plunket, 10th Earl of Fingall who lived not far away at Killeen Castle which had only recently been enlarged and altered by Francis Johnston. The Fingalls had always been Catholic, as were the Prestons, Viscount Gormanston: in 1842 Elias’s son and heir Matthew married the Hon Matilda Preston, daughter of the 12th Viscount. In 1865 their only child, and Elias’s granddaughter, Mary Margaret Corbally would marry Alfred Stourton, 24th Baron Segrave whose family title went all the way back to 1283; like the others, his ancestors had always remained Catholic.  Their son, Colonel the Hon Edward Plantagenet Joseph Corbally Stourton was the last of the family to live at Corbalton Hall, selling the property in 1951. It then passed through several owners before being acquired a few years ago by the present owner who has carried out extensive restoration and refurbishment work on the building. 


Accentuate the Positive




For a great many people, 2023 has not been an easy year, so let’s end it by accentuating the positive, at least as far as Ireland’s architectural heritage is concerned. Here are six good news stories featured here over the past twelve months, the first three private initiatives, the second involving properties in public ownership. In County Offaly, a young couple are pluckily taking on the restoration of Cangort Park, a handsome early 19th century villa designed by Richard Morrison (see: A Work in Progress « The Irish Aesthete). Likewise, the owner of Barntick, thought to be the oldest continuously inhabited house in County Clare, has embarked on ensuring the building has a viable future (see: Of Very Considerable Importance « The Irish Aesthete). And in County Roscommon, another young couple are gradually working hard to turn Edmondstown into both a family home and a viable business (see: Another Cheering Story « The Irish Aesthete).
On the public front, the Office of Public Works continues to make improvements at the Ormond Castle in County Tipperary, a building distinguished by its elaborately plastered 16th century Long Gallery (see: All that is Fantastically Eccentric in Architecture « The Irish Aesthete). In County Wicklow, Coillte (an organisation with which the Irish Aesthete often finds fault) reopened Avondale after an extensive restoration of the house (see: In the Highest Perfection « The Irish Aesthete). And in September it was announced that the Irish state had bought Dowth Hall and its surrounding 550 acres in order to establish a new national park: fingers crossed that essential work is speedily undertaken on the house (with its ravishing rococo stuccowork) at the centre of this estate (see: Second Time Around « The Irish Aesthete).
Occasionally, there is good news to report:: let us all pray much more of it will be forthcoming in 2024.