Category Archives: Tyrone

A Good Showish Figure



To the immediate east of St Macartan’s Cathedral in Clogher, County Tyrone stands the former bishop’s palace which was likewise rebuilt in the early 18th century by the Rev Dr John Stearne. Mrs Delany visited the place in August 1748 when it was occupied by Stearne’s successor, Robert Clayton and his wife, and while she thought the garden  ‘pretty with a fine large sloping green walk from the steps to a large basin on water, on which sail most gracefully fair beautiful swans,’ she was less satisfied with the house, describing it as ‘large, and makes a good showish figure; but great loss of room by ill-contrivance within doors. It is situated on the side of so steep a hill that part of the front next the street is under ground and from that to the garden you descend fifty stone steps which is intolerable.’ In consequence, while the seven-bay entrance front is of three storeys, the six-bay garden front is of four storeys. As seen today, the old palace is the result of work undertaken here by Lord John George Beresford, bishop in 1819-20 and then Lord Robert Tottenham. Following the union of the diocese of Clogher with the archdiocese of Armagh in 1850, the property was sold and became a private residence. The interiors are rather plain, the most striking feature being the staircase, the ceiling of which is painted with six cherubs: these represented the children of Thomas Stewart Porter who inherited what was then called Clogher Park in 1903. The house subsequently became a convent for the Sisters of St Louis, but is now a residential care home.



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In the Ancient Style


One of the lesser-known figures in early 18th century Irish cultural life is the Rev John Stearne, successively Dean of St Patrick’s, Dublin, then Bishop of Dromore and finally Bishop of Clogher. Born in 1660, he was the son of another John Stearne, Professor of Medicine at Trinity College Dublin and founder of what would become the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland. In 1705 the younger Stearne succeeded his mother’s kinsman Jerome Ryves as Dean of St Patrick’s where he rebuilt the deanery (a house that would be destroyed by fire in 1781), the first of several such projects he undertook. The next came following his elevation in 1713 to the Bishopric of Dromore where he inherited an incomplete episcopal palace at Magheralin from his predecessor, Tobias Pullen. The latter had spent some residence which Stearne further extended and finished at a cost of more than £333: this building is also, alas, no more. Then, following his translation to Clogher, he is recorded by his near contemporary Walter Harris as having spent £3,000 ‘in building and other improvements.’  A considerable amount of the money is likely to have gone towards a new cathedral, commissioned by Stearne only a year before his death in 1744. 





A bachelor, Bishop Stearne was an ardent bibliophile, one of the keenest book collectors of his generation. In June 1713 he informed his friend William King, Archbishop of Dublin (another great book collector) that he sought a remedy for ‘that disease which inclines men to buy more books than they can have much use for.’ Even while he was Dean of St Patrick’s, his fondness for acquiring volumes had been noted in verses by William Percival, Dean of Emly, who wrote:
‘Near St Sepulchre’s stands a building
Which, as report goes, ne’er had child in;
The house is large, and to adorn her,
From garret down to chimney corner,
The upper chambers were well lined
With antique books, and books new coined;
Which plainly shewed its founder’s head
With learning of all sorts supplied…’*
His collection would become a useful resource for many scholars, not least the aforementioned Walter Harris who, in the preface to his updating of Sir James Ware’s writings, gratefully noted that the bishop ‘gave me free leave to make Extracts out of his valuable Collections relating to Ireland.’ In June 1738, John Copping, newly appointed Dean of Clogher told Sir Hans Sloane that Stearne, then aged 78, ‘carries in him a magazine of knowledge, unimpaired by his great age, with a constitution of body which I dare not match. An easy temper, with an engaging affability makes his house the constant resort of all the learned and polite world, and as he is a bachelor, you will not wonder that his hospitable doors are open to the ladies.’ Copping added that the bishop was as communicative as he was knowing. ‘His study is large, containing I believe 6 or 7000 volumes, among which are some curious pieces, and I believe there is nothing in his collection with which he is not intimately acquainted.’ Five years earlier, Stearne had donated £1,000 to his alma mater Trinity College Dublin for the construction of a printing house (designed by Richard Castle) and two years later gave a further £200 for the purchase of block types used in printing. It might have been expected therefore that following his death he would leave his library, which he had long regarded as ‘a resource for others’, to the college where he had long served as vice-chancellor. Instead, he opted to divide the collection between different institutions, TCD having already received in 1741 the collection of depositions relating to the 1641 rebellion, which Stearne had bought from the widow of Dr John Madden. Over 2,000 works from his collection to the library established more than forty years earlier by Narcissus Marsh, declaring in his will that this was but ‘a small token of the great regard I have for the bountiful erector and endower of this Library.’ By the terms of his will, he endowed a number of charities, including Dr Stevens’ Hospital and St Patrick’s Hospital (established by his old friend, Jonathan Swift), as well as leaving funds for the completion of the cathedral which was then under construction at Clogher. 





Located on a rise above the village, the cathedral at Clogher has always sat within the walls of what was once a Celtic hill-fort. As a religious settlement, the building is said to owe its origins to St Macartan, a companion of St Patrick, who c.493 founded a monastery here. In 1111, at the reforming Synod of Ráth Breasail, Clogher was established as a diocese, its boundaries roughly conforming to those of the medieval Kingdom of Airgíalla, although for a period during the 12th century its centre was moved to Louth. Nothing survives of the original cathedral. Dedicated to St Macartan, it was rebuilt c.1183 and then again in c.1295, before the entire site was severely damaged in two fires in the years 1395 and 1396. Further damage was inflicted on several occasions during the upheavals of the 16th century, so that by the time James Spottiswood was appointed bishop in 1621, he found the cathedral church ‘altogether ruynous. The walls of an Abbey church standeth by, which will beare no roofe.’ Although he undertook extensive restoration works, these suffered again over the course of the Confederate Wars and their aftermath, and it was only in the early 18th century that this part of the country experienced sufficient peace for John Stearne to undertake the construction of a new cathedral, although in doing so, almost all evidence of earlier buildings here were cleared. Stearne’s architect is believed to have been the builder/architect James Martin, about whom little is known except that he died almost the same time as did the bishop. Although quite clearly a classical structure, the building was described at the time as being ‘in the ancient style of English architecture.’ As explained by Peter Galloway in The Cathedrals of Ireland (1992) this clearly does not suggest the latest iteration of St Macartan’s was an early example of the Gothic revival, but rather that it had a cruciform plan ‘which was a notable move away from the hall-and-tower type of church in standard design in the late 17th century.’ In 1816-18, alterations ‘in the Grecian style’ were made to the cathedral by the then-dean, Richard Bagwell, the most obvious instance of which was the addition of an open stonework balustrade with obelisk finials around the top of the tower at the west end. Internally, further changes took place in 1865 when the galleries along the south and north sides were removed, so that only that on the west side, accommodating the organ, can be found today. The interior of the building is relatively plain, relieved by a variety of memorials between round-headed windows, most of which have been filled with stained glass: the Venetian east window has Ionic columns and pilasters and commemorates Lord John George Beresford, Bishop of Clogher 1819-20. Still well-maintained by the local community, St Macartan’s is perhaps not the most engaging cathedral in Ireland: one wonders what might have been its final appearance had both John Stearne and James Martin lived to see the work completed. 


*Patrick Delany, Dean of Down, also wrote a verse, Written on a Window, at the Deanery House, St Patrick’s, in which he mentioned the genial hospitality provided there by both Stearne and his successor Jonathan Swift.
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The Old and the New



Unused for almost 160 years, the old church at Ballyclog, County Tyrone dates from 1622 when it was built on the site of an ancient place of worship by the then-rector, the Rev Bradley. Constructed of dark stone with a brick belfry, the building was summarised by Samuel Lewis in 1837 as ‘a small plain ancient structure with a tower and spire; and in the churchyard are the family vaults of the Steuarts of Steuart Hall, and the Bells of Belmont, to whom some handsome monuments of freestone have been erected.’ Three decades later, another rector, the Rev. Greene, decided the time had come to commission a new church, erected within sight of its predecessor. Used for services since 1868, St Patrick’s was designed by Welland and Gillespie, joint architects to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners of the Church of Ireland. It has been described by Prof. Alistair Rowan as ‘a roguish little building…wilfully adapting Irish architectural elements to jazzy ends.’ Among the most obvious of these elements is a tower on the south-west corner, which rises from a battered base around which snake bands of red stone up to a greatly extended conical spire. 



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A Fair Stone Howse


Thought to have been born in Paisley, Scotland around 1577, Sir George Hamilton was a younger son of Claud Hamilton, first Lord Paisley. Following the accession of James VI to the English throne (as James I) in 1603, and the Flight of the Earls from Ulster four years later, Sir George and his older siblings were granted lands in that part of Ireland. By 1611, having received some 12,400 statute acres, he had moved to this country where he and was living with his family in the Strabane area of County Tyrone part of which, lying to the east of a 15th century former O’Neill tower house on Island MacHugh in Lough Catherine, was called Derrywoone. Unlike many of his fellow Scots Sir George was a staunch Roman Catholic, described in 1622 as “an arch-papist and a great patron of them.’ Following the death of his first wife Isobel Leslie, in 1630 Hamilton married Lady Mary Butler, a daughter of the 11th Earl of Ormond. When her father had difficulty paying the agreed dowry of £1,800, he granted his new son-in-law the manor, castle, town, and lands of Roscrea, County Tipperary for 21 years (for more on the castle, see A Dominant Presence « The Irish Aesthete). In 1646, during the Confederate Wars, Roscrea was attacked and captured by Owen Roe O’Neill, but it is unclear whether Hamilton was still alive at this date or had already died. In part the confusion arises because one of his nephews, likewise Sir George Hamilton and likewise married to another Lady Mary Butler, then lived not far away in Nenagh, County Tipperary. The latter Sir George, incidentally, was father of Anthony Hamilton, author of the famous Mémoires du Comte de Grammont, first published in 1713. 





Now deep in woodland but presumably once with clear views over Lough Catherine to the immediate west, Derrywoone Castle is believed to have been built for Sir George Hamilton around 1619; work there was almost complete three years later when it was recorded as being a  ‘fair stone howse, 4 stories high, which is almost finished, and a bawne of stone and lyme, 90 foot long, 70 foot broad and 14 foot high. The house takes up almost the full bawne. As soon as it is finished, he [Hamilton] intends to dwell there himself.’ The same report suggests that in excess of 80 families may have been settled in the vicinity of the castle, although an archaeological survey in 2013 revealed no evidence of houses here. More a fortified house than a castle, Derrywoone was designed as an L-shaped residence with large window openings on all sides and a fine gable end to the south. Stylistically, the castle reveals the Hamiltons’ Lowland-Scottish origins, not least thanks to a  finely carved corbelled out-staircase on the south-west side; a large round tower also survives on the north-east. 





Little information about the later history of Derrywoone seems to be available. Since Sir George moved to Roscrea following his second marriage and seems to have been based there, the castle may have stood empty or occupied by whoever was responsible for managing his property in this part of the country. He had one surviving son, James, who died unmarried in 1659. In the Down Survey for Tyrone, James Hamilton is described as ‘James Hamilton of Roskre Esqr. a minor Sone to Sr George Hamillton ye elder of Roskrea knight deceased who was a Scottish papist.’ Indeed, many of the Hamiltons, not just James’s cousin Anthony, remained both Roman Catholic and loyal to the Stuarts, going into exile in France and elsewhere in the late 17th century. However, eventually one of the family, James Hamilton, sixth Earl of Abercorn and a great-nephew of Sir George, conformed to the Established Church and inherited the Ulster estates. His descendants have lived there ever since, in the 18th century moving to a new residence. Located to the south of Derrywoone, it is called Baronscourt. 


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Some Highly Picturesque Remains



As the year draws to a close, some pictures of what remains of Corickmore, County Tyrone, a religious house founded c.1465 for Franciscans of the Third Order. The establishment had a relatively short life, being granted in 1603 to Sir Henry Piers and thereafter being allowed to fall into ruin. In Samuel Lewis’s Topographical Dictionary of Ireland (1837), we read ‘There are some highly picturesque remains of this abbey, affording an idea of the original extent and elegance of the buildings.’ Such is no longer the case, since only the east wall and window of the church survives in any substance, the rest of the building being reduced to low sections of masonry. The surrounding grounds, heavily overgrown, are filled with gravestones, some of which date back to the 17th century, not long after the site would have been relinquished by the Franciscans.



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A Good Showish Figure



The pretty Doric gatelodge which stands at the entrance to what was formerly the Bishop’s Palace in Clogher, County Tyrone. Mrs Delany, who was close friends of the then-Bishop Robert Clayton and his wife, paid a visit to the place in August 1748 when she wrote ‘this house is large and makes a good showish figure; but there is a great loss of room by ill-contrivance within doors.’ Perhaps that is why it was replaced by the building seen today, erected on the site. This was commissioned in the early 19th century by Bishop Lord John George Beresford (although the wings may be survivors of the earlier palace) and designed by Dublin architect David Henry. The facade is of seven bays and three storeys over basement, with a three-bay pediment and a large Doric porch on the ground floor. The land immediately behind the house drops away steeply to give views of what remains of the 18th century landscaped park, which can be seen from a high arcaded terrace (alas, not accessible on a recent visit). Clogher is a tiny village, dominated by the former palace and the small cathedral which sits to its immediate west. Inevitably, in the aftermath of the Disestablishment of the Church of Ireland, the house was sold to a private owner and then, in 1922, bought by the Roman Catholic Church and turned into a convent. Today it is a residential care home.


The Fairest Building I Have Seen


‘Castle-Caulfield owes its erection to Sir Toby Caulfield, afterwards Lord Charlemont – a distinguished English soldier who had fought in Spain and the Low Countries in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and commanded a company of one hundred and fifty men in Ireland in the war with O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, at the close of her reign. For these services he was rewarded by the Queen with a grant of part of Tyrone’s estate, and other lands in the province of Ulster; and on King James’s accession to the British crown, was honoured with knighthood and made governor of the fort of Charlemont, and of the counties of Tyrone and Armagh. At the plantation of Ulster he received further grants of lands, and among them a thousand acres called Ballydonnelly, or O’Donnelly’s town, in the barony of Dungannon, on which, in 1614, he commenced the erection of the mansion subsequently called Castle-Caulfield. This mansion is described by Pynnar in his Survey of Ulster in 1618-19, in the following words…’





‘…“Sir Toby Caulfield hath one thousand acres called Ballydonnell (recte Ballydonnelly), whereunto is added beside what was certified by Sir Josias Bodley, a fair house or castle, the front whereof is eighty feet in length and twenty-eight feet in breadth from outside to outside, two cross ends fifty feet in length and twenty-eight feet in breadth; the walls are five feet thick at the bottom, and four at the top, very good cellars under ground and all the windows are of hewn stone. Between the two cross ends there goeth a wall, which is eighteen feet high and maketh a small court within the building. This work at this time is but thirteen feet high, and a number of men at work for the sudden finishing of it. There is also a stone bridge over the river, which is of lime and stone, with strong buttresses for the supporting of it. And to this is joined a good water-mill for corn, all built of lime and stone. This is at this time the fairest building I have seen. Near unto this Bawne is built a town, in which there is fifteen English families, who are able to make twenty men with arms.”
The ruins of this celebrated mansion seem to justify the the opinion expressed by Pynnar, that it was the fairest building he had seen, that is, in the counties of the Plantation, for there are no existing remains of any house erected by the English or Scottish undertakers equal to it in architectural style. It received, however, from the second Lord Charlemont, the addition of a large gate-house with towers, and also of a strong keep or donjon…’





‘…That Ballydonnelly was truly, as we have stated, the ancient name of the place, and that it was the patrimonial residence of the chief of that ancient family, previously to the plantation of Ulster, must be sufficiently indicated by the authorities we have already adduced; but if any doubt on this fact could exist, it would be removed by the following passage in an unpublished Irish MS. Journal of the Rebellion of 1641 in our own possession, from which it appears that, as usual with the representatives of the dispossessed Irish families on the breaking out of that unhappy conflict, the chief of the O’Donnellys seized upon the Castle-Caufield mansion as of right his own:-
“October 1641. Lord Caulfield’s castle in Ballydonnelly (Baile I Donghoile) was taken by Patrick Moder (the gloomy) O’Donnelly.”
The Lord Charlemont, with his family, was at that time absent from his home in command of the garrison of Charlemont, and it was not his fate ever to see it afterwards; he was treacherously captured in his fortress about the same period by the cruel Sir Phelim O’Neill, and was barbarously murdered while under his protection, if not, as seems the fact, by his direction, on the 1st of March following. Nor was this costly and fairest house of its kind in “the north” ever after inhabited by any of his family: it was burned in those unhappy “troubles” and left the melancholy, though picturesque memorial of sad events which we now see it.’  

Extracts from The Irish Penny Journal, Saturday, January 9, 1841, Number 28, Volume 1

 

Barefoot but Battling


Eighteen years ago, Lissan, County Tyrone featured in a BBC television series called Restoration, in which historic properties were pitted against each other, with one of them receiving a large grant towards ensuring its survival: think of it as a kind of genteel gladiatorial fight. Alas, Lissan was not the winner, but the publicity generated by the house’s appearance helped bring the building – and its somewhat perilous condition – to attention. Until the death of its last occupant, Hazel Radclyffe Dolling, in 2006, the property had been owned by the same family for almost 400 years. Her forebear, Thomas Staples, had moved from outside Bristol to this country in the early part of the 17th century and in 1622 married an heiress called Charity Jones, and six years later he was created a baronet, this hereditary title being inherited by successive generations until the death of the 17th baronet in 2013 when it became extinct. Along the way, there were some eccentric holders, the best-known being Sir Robert Ponsonby Staples who in the late 19th and early 20th century gained a reputation as a fine painter, first exhibiting in the Royal Academy in 1875. As a young man, he was part of the Marlborough House set that gathered around the future Edward VII, then Prince of Wales, but was also associated with London’s influential Grosvenor Gallery, established by a cousin, Sir Coutts Lindsay. Among Sir Robert’s more idiosyncratic traits was his disinclination to wear shoes, believing that these blocked out natural electricity from the earth that was essential for good health. As a result, he became known as the barefoot baronet.





Presumably with the help of his heiress wife’s money, Thomas Staples was able to build the core of what is today’s house at Lissan, although there was already an even older building on the site and much of what we see now dates from later in the century, thanks to the fourth baronet. During the Confederate Wars of the 1640s, Lisan was taken by the O’Quinns, with Lady Staples and her children being held captive first at Moneymore Castle and then at Castlecaulfield where they were kept for two years before being released. The second and third baronets died without children, so eventually it was Sir Thomas’s youngest son Robert who inherited Lissan and became fourth baronet: as though to make up for his elder siblings’ lack of offspring, he and his wife, Mary Vesey, another heiress, had ten children. As mentioned, he was responsible for further embellishing the property so that in 1703 Thomas Ashe could describe it as an ‘extraordinary good stone house; the rooms are very noble, lofty and large.’ At some point in the 18th century the architect Davis Ducart may have been involved in reworking the building (a bridge in the grounds is attributed to him) but subsequent generations of the family left a more decisive mark on the place, not least Sir Nathaniel Staples, tenth baronet who in the 1880s added a rather distended porte-cochère to the entrance front (its outermost section contained a small waiting room for coachmen) and also the bulbous clock tower onto the western side of the house. Seemingly the clock, dating from 1820 and previously gracing the market house in Magherafelt, had been destined for a church until it was instead bought by Sir Nathaniel and installed at Lissan. In 1865 Sir Nathaniel had inherited the house and land from his uncle the ninth baronet, but not the rest of the family property (including the largest house in Dublin’s Merrion Square, now home to the Irish Architectural Archive), thereby leaving the family in somewhat straitened circumstances. Problems grew worse following the tenth baronet’s death in 1899, his heir, Sir John Staples being pronounced insane and spending his life in a number of asylums. Responsibility for the estate passed to the second son, James Head Staples who, to make ends meet, took in boarders while his wife taught cookery and lace-making to women in the area. Responsibility in turn passed to the next brother, the aforementioned barefoot baronet who likewise struggled to keep the place going. 





The entrance hall in Lissan, County Tyrone is dominated by a vast oak staircase ascending the full height of the building. Dating from the 1880s, this is one of the alterations made to the house by Sir Nathaniel Staples, who, having ejected his wife, was living there with a mistress, Mary Potter, daughter of his land agent. Forced to act after rooms directly above the original entrance hall had collapsed, Sir Nathaniel recycled some of the previous staircase’s timber, notably for the balustrades, wood for the rest coming from the estate’s grounds. Once described as having the character ‘of a vast adventure playground’, the result is distinctly odd. Presumably designed by Sir Nathaniel (would any architect wish to claim credit for it?) the staircase takes no account of the space in which it sits, cutting across windows, jutting out in a variety of directions, and sometimes leading to dead ends. It certainly leaves an indelible impression on visitors. 





At some date after 1820 Sir Thomas Staples, ninth baronet, added a single storey ballroom to the east side of Lissan, County Tyrone, its full-length windows offering views to the gardens below; a conservatory, since gone, was erected to the immediate front of the room. A successful lawyer married to an heiress, Sir Thomas could afford to spend money on this extension, which was provided with a sprung floor and an early form of central heating. The walls were covered with Chinese paper which may originally have been purchased for Kilkenny Castle by Sir Thomas’s sister Grace who was married to the Marquess of Ormonde. Only portions of the paper survive, and as can be seen, these have been ‘improved’ with additions by later owners. Having fallen into a dangerous state of disrepair, the house was rescued by a charitable organisation, the Friends of Lissan House Trust, which has already undertaken trojan work ensuring the restoration and survival of this important property. Although much remains to be done, since 2012 the house has been open to the public and acts as a venue for a wide variety of events. 

A Hollow Drum


When writing about Ireland’s ruined country houses, the reason given for their destruction can sometimes be official indifference but rarely official action. However, the fate of Drum Manor, County Tyrone demonstrates that sometimes the latter happens. The origins of the property lie with Alexander Richardson, member of a family of Edinburgh burgesses who in 1617 bought the land on which it stands and constructed a house called Manor Richardson. His descendants remained there for the next two centuries and then in 1829 Drum Manor underwent a complete transformation. 





In 1829 Major William Stewart Richardson-Brady remodelled Drum Manor to the designs of an unknown architect, and given the new name of Oaklands. The house became a two-storey, three-bay villa dressed up with Tudor-Revival dressings, such as crenellations along the roofline, along with buttresses on the facade, a gabled single-storey entrance porch flanked by projecting bays with mullioned windows. The major’s only child, Augusta Le Vicomte, first married another Major, Hugh Massy, but following his death less than two years later, she married Henry James Stuart-Richardson, future fifth Earl Castle Stewart of Stuart Castle, elsewhere in County Tyrone (also since lost).




In 1869 Augusta and Henry James Stuart-Richardson aggrandised Oaklands, which now became Drum Manor, at the cost of some £10,000. The architect in this instance was William Hastings of Belfast, most of whose commissions were in neighbouring County Antrim. He was responsible for giving the house its most dominant features, not least a four-storey square tower with castellated and machiolated parapet. Inside, the building’s principal reception rooms radiated off a double-height central hall with a gallery running around the first floor. Elaborate works were also undertaken in the surrounding demesne, much of which survives in better condition than the main building. This survived until 1964 when the estate was acquired by the Northern Ireland Forestry Service; just over a decade later, that organisation demolished much of Drum Manor, seemingly in order to avoid incurring further rates liability. Today, just the shell survives. 

In Demand



Born in Killough, County Down, during the first half of the 19th century Charles Shiel became a highly successful merchant based in Liverpool until he retired to Ireland ten years before his death in 1861. He and his wife had no children, so he established a charity to provide accommodation in almshouses, specifying that ‘the inmates are, from time to time as vacancies occur, to be chosen without reference to religious creed from among the most deserving of such applicants.’ There are five groups of Shiels’ Almshouses around the country, with 126 of them in total, all still serving their original purpose. Those shown here are in Dungannon, County Tyrone. designed in 1867 in a loosely Gothic idiom by the firm of Lanyon, Lynn & Lanyon, constructed of local sandstone rubble with red sandstone for detailing, and green slate bands. Very well maintained, each of the houses is two storey and has a small yard to the rear, with the whole group set in landscaped grounds. Understandably, there is high demand for these residences.