Category Archives: Roscommon

A Photographic Record


In 1650 Captain Theophilus Sandford, who came from the town of Audenshaw, a few miles east of Manchester, sailed from Liverpool to Ireland at the head of 80 horsemen, and joined the English army then suppressing the Irish uprising. Following the end of hostilities, Captain Sandford was rewarded for his services with a large grant of land, formerly held by the O’Conor family, in County Roscommon. To this he added further lands by purchase, as did his heir Henry Sandford in the aftermath of the Williamite wars. The Sandfords were based in Castlerea where on the edge of the town they erected a substantial house in the early 18th century, of seven bays and three storeys over basement. The centre block of this building was seriously damaged by fire in 1895 and replaced by a single storey, prefabricated house linking what survived of the two wings. Following the departure of the family from the area in the aftermath of the First World War, and the division of their former estate by the Land Commission, Castlerea House was demolished and nothing now remains of the property.






Through marriage and a seat in parliament the Sandfords rose to become respectable members of the Landed Gentry and, in 1800, Henry Sandford was rewarded with the title Baron Mount Sandford. Having no children, he was succeeded by his nephew, another Henry Sandford who in June 1828 at the age of only 23 met an unfortunate end. He and some friends stopped in Windsor on their way to Ascot for the races and observed a drunken brawl taking place on the street. Lord Mount Sandford was attacked by one of the brawlers who knocked him down and then kicked him in the head; he died from his injuries nine days later. An elderly uncle then inherited but he had no children, so eventually the estate was jointly inherited by the first baron’s two daughters, one of whom married a Pakenham (and her eldest son Henry married Grace Mahon, heiress to another Roscommon estate, Strokestown). The other sister Mary married William Robert Wills who also had an estate, Willsgrove, not far from Castlerea but the couple and their children lived in the old Sandford home and changed their name to Wills-Sandford. Their great-grandson Thomas George Wills-Sandford was the last of the family to occupy Castlerea House, while his younger brother Edward lived a few miles west of the town in the property seen here today, Cashlieve.






It is difficult to date the origins of Cashlieve which may have begun in the 19th century as a hunting lodge. However, the building was most likely enlarged following Edward Wills-Sandford’s marriage to Amy Guinness in 1889; the couple would have two daughters. The manner in which the entrance is wedged in a canted bay between the main block and a long wing, seems to suggest the latter was added to an earlier structure. Inside a handsome hallway contains the main staircase lit by a glazed dome and doors to the main reception rooms on one side; the single storey canted bays in both dining and drawing room in this portion of the building appear to be later additions and between them is a little vestibule which was clearly the original entrance before the whole site was turned around. Speculation about, and research into, Cashlieve’s history will need to occur soon, because it looks set to meet the same fate as Castlerea House before long. As was the case there, the surrounding lands were sold by the Land Commission and the property then seems to have been owned by a number of different persons. It has now stood empty for a number of years and much of what can be taken from a house – such as chimneypieces – has been taken, in a rather cack-handed fashion. Another house, one suspects, soon destined to be known only through old photographs.

Stalled?


The Catholic Committee (sometimes called the Catholic Convention) was a body set up in 1757 to campaign for the repeal of the Penal Laws, and greater religious and political freedom for members of the Roman Catholic church. One of its founders was the antiquarian Charles O’Conor who lived in County Roscommon, and it is likely that as a result of his involvement other men in the same part of the country became involved with the committee. Hugh O’Beirne was among this number, a merchant based in Carrick-on-Shannon, County Leitrim who eventually became sufficiently affluent that he was able to acquire several thousand acres of land and build himself a residence at Jamestown, County Leitrim. In late 1792 Theobald Wolfe Tone, then Assistant Secretary of the Catholic Committee, encountered Hugh O’Beirne at a gathering in Dublin and wrote, ‘Met “Met Mr. O’Beirne of Co Leitrim, a sensible man. . . says the common people are up in high spirits and anxious for the event. Bravo! Better to have the peasantry of one county than twenty members of Parliament.’





Hugh O’Beirne took the Oath of Allegiance to the United Irishmen but does not seem to have been penalized for his association with the society in the aftermath of 1798: in the years before his death in 1813, he was a Justice of the Peace for Roscommon. He was succeeded by his son Francis, likewise a J.P. and also Deputy Lieutenant for County Leitrim. In 1843 he enlarged the small Catholic chapel built by his father for the people of Jamestown; behind this Francis also erected a school and schoolmaster’s house. On his death in 1854, the estate – which at its height ran to over 7,500 acres in County Leitrim (and almost another 250 in neighbouring Roscommon) – passed to his son Hugh. His children seem to have been the last of the O’Beirnes to have lived in Jamestown, one son, likewise called Hugh, entered the British Diplomatic Service and along with Lord Kitchener drowned when the vessel they were on, HMS Hampshire, was sunk by a German U-boat off the Orkney coast in June 1916.





The house shown in today’s photographs, Tinny Park, County Roscommon, was until recently owned by a branch of the same family. It is believed to date from around the mid-19th century and is a typical gentleman farmer’s residence, complete with handsome yard to the rear. Of two storeys over basement with a central door approached via a short flight of stone steps, the interior conforms to the usual country house plan, albeit on a small scale: double doors to the rear of the two main reception rooms lead to smaller spaces, and the entrance hall is largely taken up by a staircase. Unoccupied for the previous ten years, Tinny Park was offered for sale for the first time in the summer of 2016, the price on just over six acres was a modest €250,000. It duly sold and, evidently, refurbishment work began, not all of it advantageous: old photographs show the exterior covered in render, all of which has been stripped away. This work now looks to have stalled and when visited last winter the house wore a forsaken appearance. One can only hope that restoration has since resumed (and that in due course the exterior will be correctly re-rendered).


Scattered Remains


Lough Ree has been mentioned here on a couple of occasions (see With Advantageous Views, September 19th 2018 and Well Lodged, October 15th 2018). The second-largest lake over the course of the river Shannon (and the third-largest lake in Ireland) Lough Ree is some 28 kilometres long and borders on three counties: Westmeath, Longford and Roscommon. Across its length can be found many islands of differing sizes: until the 1950s many of these were inhabited by farmers: the last man to live on a Lough Ree island only died in February 2018. Lough Ree appears on the map derived from Ptolomy’s second century Geographia where it is called Rheba, indicating awareness of its existence beyond the shores of Ireland. Most likely Rheda is a corruption of Rí, the Irish word for King, whence derives Lough Ree. However, while this might be designated the Lake of Kings, for a long time it was better known for the monastic settlements that were once widespread on the islands here.




Inchcleraun derives its name from Clothru, according to ancient legend the sister of Queen Mebh of Connacht: the latter is said to have retired to the island where while bathing she was killed, seemingly by her nephew (the story is exceedingly complicated). A monastery was founded here around the year 530 by St Diarmaid: a little church, the oldest on the site, is known as Templedermot. By the eighth century Inchcleraun was home to a number of religious settlements, but over the course of the next 500-odd years these were subject to repeated attack and plunder. Today there are the remains of some seven churches, the largest of which is called Templemurry: according to old lore, any woman entering this building would die within a year.




Running to just over 132 acres, Inchmore is the largest of the islands on Lough Ree and lies inside the borders of County Westmeath. The first religious settlement here is said to have been made in the fifth century by one St Liberius. However, in the second half of the 12th century, a priory of the Canons Regular of St Augustin was established here: it is the remains of this establishment – perhaps with later embellishments – which can be found on the island today. Like all such houses, the Augustinian priory was closed down in the 16th century, in 1567 Inchmore being granted by the crown authorities to Christopher Nugent, Baron Delvin.




Like Inchcleraun, Saints Island lies inside the boundaries of County Longford but is not strictly an island since a narrow causeway connects it to the mainland. A monastery was established here in the mid-sixth century by St Ciarán who would later go on to found a more famous house at Clonmacnoise. In 1089 Saints Island was attacked and plundered by Murkertach O’Brien and a large number of Danes. However around 1244 Sir Henry Dillon caused the settlement of Augustinian canons in a Priory of All Saints to be settled on the site of St Ciarán’s earlier foundation. As with all other such establishments, it was closed down in the 16th century but the main part of the church with its fine east window, clearly subject to alterations 100-odd years earlier, survives as do a few portions of the priory buildings.

The Books Will Still Be There


And yet the books will be there on the shelves, separate beings,
That appeared once, still wet
As shining chestnuts under a tree in autumn,
And, touched, coddled, began to live
In spite of fires on the horizon, castles blown up,
Tribes on the march, planets in motion.



‘We are,’ they said, even as their pages
Were being torn out, or a buzzing flame
Licked away their letters. So much more durable
Than we are, whose frail warmth
Cools down with memory, disperses, perishes.



I imagine the earth when I am no more:
Nothing happens, no loss, it’s still a strange pageant,
Women’s dresses, dewy lilacs, a song in the valley.
Yet the books will still be there on the shelves, well born,
Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights.

And Yet the Books by Czeslaw Milosz.
Photographs of the library at Clonalis, County Roscommon (https://clonalis.com)

Fit for a High King



The garden front of Clonalis, County Roscommon. Ancestral seat of the O’Conor Don (one of Ireland’s most ancient families, descended from the country’s last High Kings), the present house replaced an earlier one elsewhere on the estate. As seen today, Clonalis was designed in 1878 by Frederick Pepys Cockerell, one of his few Irish commissions. It was one of the very first houses in Ireland constructed using concrete, with a cement render finish to the exterior and in a manner that is customarily judged to have blended elements of the Queen Anne style with Italianate classicism. The entrance front (below) is dominated by a three storey tower that projects forward to create a porch for the door on the ground floor. Clonalis is significant for being one of the rare Irish houses still to remain in the hands of the original family

More from Clonalis early in the new year…

 

The Lion in Winter


The Lion Gate at Mote Park, County Roscommon. This was once one of the entrances to an estate owned by the Crofton family who settled here in the second half of the 16th century; in 1798 they became Barons Crofton of Mot . In the 1620s their forebear George Crofton built Mote Castle, but it was replaced by a new house at some date between 1777-87. This property was in turn rebuilt after being gutted by fire in 1865 but only survived another century: the last of the Croftons left Mote in the 1940s after which the contents were auctioned: the house itself was demolished in the 1960s. In February 2015 its former portico, rescued at the time of the demolition, was sold at auction for €12,000.



According to a history of Mote Park compiled in 1897 by Captain the Hon Francis Crofton, the Lion Gate was erected in 1787 and its design has sometimes been attributed to James Gandon, although this is disputed. Whatever the case, it takes the form of a Doric triumphal arch with screen walls linking it to what were once a pair of identical lodges (but are now used for housing livestock). A plinth on top of the arch features a Coade Stone lion, one foot resting on a ball. Over time this had become much weathered (not helped by bees nesting inside the animal) and when taken down a few years ago three of its feet fell off. Following restoration work at the Coade workshop in Wiltshire, the lion was reinstated in September 2016 and now once more surveys what is left of the Mote parkland: this restoration was funded by a number of sources, predominantly American supporters of the Irish Georgian Society.

With Advantageous Views


On the banks of Lough Ree, the remains of Rindoon Castle, County Roscommon built by Geoffrey de Marisco, Justiciar (or head of government) in Ireland from 1227-35. Located on a peninsula jutting out into the lake, the castle commanded views both north and south, and was a key feature of an Anglo-Norman settlement established immediately outside its walls.



Within decades of being completed, Rindoon Castle had been attacked by the native Irish who seized control of the entire site before the middle of the 14th century. Around this time the adjacent town was also abandoned, although sections of its walls remain standing. Some 200 years later the castle was rebuilt as part of the Elizabethan conquest of Ireland but later once more abandoned and it has remained a ruin ever since.

State of Grace


The Grace Mausoleum erected by O.D.J. Grace in 1868 within the grounds of the former Dominican priory at Tulsk, County Roscommon. According to a family memoir published in 1823 the Graces could trace their ancestry back to the Anglo-Norman knight Raymond FitzGerald ‘le Gros’, brother-in-law of Strongbow. Whether true or not, by the start of the 16th century the Graces were settled in County Kilkenny. Another branch later moved to County Laois where they had constructed a not-dissimilar mausoleum at Arles (see In Good Grace, February 1st 2017) and owned a property named Gracefield. Meanwhile in the 1740s one Oliver Grace married the Roscommon heiress Mary Dowell and accordingly moved to this part of the country where he built a large Palladian house called Mantua, its design attributed to Richard Castle. Mantua is no more and nor are the Graces any longer living in Roscommon, so this somewhat neglected structure serves as a record of the family’s presence in the area.

Still Inhabited


Donamon Castle, County Roscommon is said to be one of the oldest continuously inhabited buildings in Ireland. It is believed that originally there was a fort here (whence the name Dún Iomáin, fort of Iomán), but the first recorded reference to the place occurs in the Annals of the Four Masters for the year 1154. In 1232, the Anglo-Norman Adam de Staunton further fortified the site but his works were captured and demolished by the O’Connors a year later. After passing back and forth between different hands, the castle was occupied from the early 14th century onwards by a branch of the Burkes who remained here until in 1688 it passed to the Caulfeilds (the main branch of which became Earls of Charlemont). In the last century, like many other estates Donamon was broken up by the Irish Land Commission, the castle being acquired in 1939 by the Divine Word Missionaries, members of which community remain there to the present time. Although much altered and extended in the 18th and 19th century, the core of the old castle resembles that at Bunratty, County Clare, both front and rear featuring a tall arched recess between square towers.

Laid to Rest

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The Lloyd Mausoleum in the graveyard at Aughrim, County Roscommon: a church dating from 1744 (and described by Samuel Lewis in 1837 as ‘a neat plain building with a small spire’) stood adjacent until 1955 when it was demolished. Monuments inside the church were moved outdoors and can now be seen in plots around the mausoleum. It was erected in 1907 by Major William Lloyd following the death of his wife May and he was subsequently interred there five years later. Members of the Lloyd family had lived in nearby Rockville House since 1740 but sold the estate in 1918; after passing through several hands, the house was demolished in the 1950s.

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