Boyce’s Almshouses in Tallow, County Waterford. When local man John Boyce died in May 1830, he left funds for the construction of this terrace of single-storey cottages in a loosely Tudor-Gothic idiom to provide accommodation for ‘aged couples.’ They served this purpose for over a century and a half but then fell into disrepair and were abandoned until a few years ago when restored by the local authority as four social housing units.
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Cabinets of Curiosity have probably always existed, albeit in different forms. In a seminal work on the subject published in 1908, Die Kunst- und Wunderkammern der Spätrenaissance (later translated as Art and Curiosity Cabinets of the Late Renaissance), Viennese art historian Julius von Schlosser argued that Greek and Roman temples acted as proto-cabinets of curiosity, a role then taken on by medieval churches with their valuable holdings of vessels, vestments and reliquaries, often masterpieces of craftsmanship incorporating precious metal and gemstones.
As we now understand the term, cabinets of curiosity were first created in the late 15th and 16th centuries, around the same time that Western European horizons – geographic, religious, scientific, metaphysical – began to expand. New worlds, new ideas: they recast the way in which people thought of themselves and their surroundings. The Renaissance cabinet of curiosities was frequently filled with rare and priceless treasures. But unlike collections held in earlier ages by temples or churches, these ones belonged to individuals. And while they were the forerunners of the modern museum, initially they existed not in the public realm, but in private ownership and were thus accessible only to the privileged few. Because their contents were costly, they were almost exclusively the preserve of princes and members of the aristocracy, representative of that caste’s wealth and power. Cabinets could vary in size from a single piece of furniture – a cabinet – with drawers holding different articles, to a room or even series of rooms specifically designed to display the owner’s collection.
By the mid-16th century, similar collections had begun to appear north of the Alps and to develop into the kunstkammer (room of art), a term apparently first employed by Count Froben Christoph of Zimmern in his historical account Zimmerische Chronik of 1564–66. Alternatively, they might be called Wunderkammer (room of wonder). Whatever the name, they featured a broad range of objects, including Artificialia (products of man) and Naturalia (products of nature), with some pieces being a hybrid combination of both. A cup owned by the Emperor Rudolf II in the early 17th century, for example, was made from an elaborately carved horn of a rhinoceros, on top of which sat a silver-gilt lid in the form of a grimacing monster, a fossilized shark’s tongue coming out of its mouth and a pair of African warthog tusks serving as its horns. Scientific instruments, clocks and automaton might also feature in the typical kunstkammer. Priceless works of art were placed alongside strange items brought from distant lands on one of the newly opened global trade routes, pieces from the distant past were displayed next to the newest objets de vertu. They were united in their diversity, their beauty and their singularity. In many instances, they were small but wondrously formed, a display of the craftsman’s ingenuity, incorporating rare materials such as crystal, ivory and amber, together with gold and silver and gemstones.
Collectors would acquire valuable antiquities, including sculptures, mosaics, cameos, medals and coins. They commissioned paintings from leading artists and sought out bizarre and curious pieces. Isabella d’Este was the proud owner of a unicorn’s horn, while in 17th century Vienna the Emperor Ferdinand III possessed a bowl (or chalice) said to have come from Solomon’s Temple as well as horn which had belonged to the Magi. Other collectors came to own mermaids’ skeletons or taxidermized creatures that were part bird, part beast. Brought together, these diverse items reflected the era’s budding curiosity and insatiable thirst for better comprehension of what was then a rapidly changing world. Collections were simultaneously intended to delight the eye and to encourage closer study of nature in all her forms. In 1565 Samuel Quiccheberg, scientific and artistic adviser to Albrecht V of Bavaria, published Inscriptiones vel tituli theatre amplissimi, the first treatise on collecting in which he described the cabinet of curiosity as being ‘a theatre of the broadest scope, containing authentic materials and precise reproductions of the whole of the universe.’
While some of the largest and most famous Kunstkammern were formed by the likes of the Emperor Rudolf II in Prague Castle or the Archduke Ferdinand II in Schloss Ambras outside Innsbruck, members of the emerging European bourgeoisie also began to form their own collections. In 1599 the Neapolitan apothecary Ferrante Imperato published Dell’Historia Naturale, which included an engraving depicting his own cabinet of curiosities then on display in the city’s Palazzo Gravina. The picture shows the extraordinary objects gathered by Imperato in one room, said to have numbered as many as 35,000 plant, mineral and animal specimens, including shells, marine creatures and even a crocodile suspended from the ceiling.
Great collections continued to be formed over the course of the 17th and 18th centuries, perhaps none greater than belonging to Sir Hans Sloane. Born in 1660 in Killyleagh, County Down, even as a child Sloane collected plants, shells, bird eggs and other objects of natural history which he carefully catalogued. At the age of 19 he left Ireland and moved to London to study chemistry and then medicine. After some years travelling elsewhere in Europe, Sloane spent time in Jamaica and the Caribbean (where he is sometimes credited with inventing milk chocolate). Back in London and married to an heiress, he became a successful physician, appointed President of the College of Physicians in 1719. He also continued collecting, so that by the time of his death at the age of 92 in 1753 he had amassed some 71,000 objects, many of them acquired from other collectors – notably James Petiver and William Charleton – and housed in a property he owned in Chelsea, London (where he is still recalled through the names of such locations as Sloane Square and Hans Crescent). In his will, Sloane bequeathed the entire collection to the nation, on condition of payment of £20,000 to his heirs, and that Parliament create a new and freely accessible public museum to house it. The funds were raised through a national lottery and in June 1753, an Act of Parliament established the British Museum, where much of Sloane’s collection remains to the present day.
Sir Hans Sloane was by no means the only Irish creator of a cabinet of curiosities. Also in the 18th century, Dr Richard Pococke, a Church of Ireland clergyman who in 1756 became Bishop of Ossory, developed his own remarkable collection, perhaps inspired by those he had seen when travelling through Europe as a young man. Writing from Berlin to his mother in October 1736, he described visiting ‘the Chambers of Sciences & Curiosities in the Palace, where are very rich Cabinets & great curiosities, natural & artificial…an Egg with a Crocodiles head just out of it no bigger than a Goose Egg, a trunk of a tree with the horns of a deer run thro it & part of the head let into it, which I believe was done by art, the tree standing & appears plainly to have grown after it being much bigger where the horns run in than in any other part, stones natural mix’d with gold, &c.’ Pococke later travelled to the Middle East and while there acquired objects, including ancient Egyptian mummies, bringing them back to Ireland where they were installed in the Bishop’s Palace in Kilkenny. Visitors to the episcopal residence could see the mummies alongside antique Greek and Roman coins and medals, as well as urns, fossils and shells, and in the garden several basalt stones that Pococke had carried off from the Giant’s Causeway in County Antrim.
Incorporating items collected by Charles Cobbe, Archbishop of Dublin, the cabinet of curiosities at Newbridge, County Dublin was essentially the creation of his son Thomas and daughter-in-law Lady Betty Cobbe who lived there from the time of their marriage in 1755 to their respective deaths in the early 19th century. Originally referred to as ‘ye Ark’, the cabinet filled an entire room in Newbridge, its walls lined with hand-painted sheets depicting oriental scenes and held in place by faux bamboo découpage trellising. A suite of specially made cases and display cabinets were filled with a typically diverse range of items, shells, exotica, curios, much of it from other countries. In 1758, for example, the Cobbes bought some coral, as well as a nest of vipers and a ‘Solar Microscope.’ Eventually, the collection came to include a stuffed crocodile, an ostrich egg mounted in a bog oak stand, a set of ivory chess pieces from China and a depiction of the coronation of George III (1761) carved in bone and placed inside a glass bottle.
Over time, the room in Newbridge began to suffer neglect: even by 1858 it was being described as ‘the poor old museum.’ In the 1960s the paper on the walls was taken down and sold, the cases and cabinets moved first to the basement and then an attic lumber room, and the space converted into a sitting room. More recently, Newbridge’s cabinet of curiosities has been recreated, a replica of the wallpaper produced from memory by a member of the family, Alec Cobbe, the cases brought down from the attic, and a replica sample of the collection once more on display. It offers an opportunity to see how cabinets of curiosity, in all their quirky, whimsical idiosyncrasy, would have looked when they were more widespread.
Kunstkammer: An Idiosyncratic Cabinet of Curiosities runs at Lismore Castle Arts, County Waterford until October 26th 2025.
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Just over a week ago, the handful of Cistercian monks still living at Mount Melleray Abbey, County Waterford left the premises and moved to another part of the country. The history of the abbey dates back almost 200 years, to the aftermath of the 1830 Revolution in France when a group of some 64 Irish and English monks were obliged to leave their monastery at Melleray in Brittany. Led by Melleray’s Prior, Waterford-born Fr Vincent Ryan, they arrived in this country in December 1831 and initially rented a property in County Kerry but soon found that site unsatisfactory and were then offered an alternative by Sir Richard Keane who a few years earlier had inherited a large estate at Cappoquin, County Waterford. Keane proposed the monks rent 600 acres of mountain land at a modest rent. Assisted by local people, the furze and scrub covering the property was gradually cleared and a working farm established. Meanwhile, preparations were made for the establishment of a new monastery, the foundation stone of which was laid on 20th August 1833, the feast of St Bernard of Clairvaux. Created an abbey two years later, with Fr Ryan as its first abbot, the monastery was named Mount Melleray, in memory of the French house left behind.
For a long time, Mount Melleray thrived; at its height the monastery was home to some 150 priests and brothers. A school operated on the premises from 1843 until it closed in 1974 (see Untapped Potential « The Irish Aesthete) and in addition to the farm, there was a carpenters’ workshop, a forge and an aviary. Nothing offers better evidence of the Cistercian order’s confidence in the future than the great church, plans for which were first drawn up a century ago following the acquisition of all the cut limestone which had once been used for the exterior of Mitchelstown Castle, County Cork. That great house, which stood some 28 miles to the west west, had been burnt by anti-Treaty forces in August 1922 (see Doomed Inheritance « The Irish Aesthete) and stood empty when Mount Melleray’s Abbot Dom Marius O’Phelan proposed buying the stone. Once agreement had been reached, the material was transported by steam lorry in two consignments a day over a five-year period. Designed by the Dublin firm of Jones and Kelly which specialised in producing traditional designs for religious clients, the new abbey church’s foundation stone was laid in April 1933, shortly before the abbey celebrated the centenary of its foundation. With its great square lantern tower, the main body of work on the abbey church was completed in November 1940, although it was only somewhat later that the high altar and some 20 lesser altars, gifts of benefactors, were installed, together with stained glass, some of which was made by the Harry Clarke Studios. At the south-west corner of this building and at a right-angle to it, a smaller, ‘public’ church was also built, again to the designs of Jones and Kelly and again with stained glass from the Clarke studios. The interior here is also decorated with extensive use of mosaic on the walls. The church was originally dedicated to Saint Philomena, and was once the National Shrine of the latter saint. However, her statue was removed when, on instructions from the Holy See in 1961, Philomena’s name was removed from all liturgical calendars.
So what will happen now to these churches and all the ancillary buildings around them, once accommodating hundreds of monks and visitors but now standing empty? The last eight monks have moved to another monastery, Mount St Joseph, County Tipperary and no decision has been taken on the future of the abbey at Mount Melleray. In Ireland of the 21st century, this is not an unusual circumstance: the numbers of people choosing to enter the religious life has dropped steeply in recent decades, and one legacy are substantial properties that are surplus to their original requirement. Finding an alternative purpose, especially for a site such as this one, which is relatively isolated, several miles from the nearest town and with no public services in the vicinity, will be challenging. And yet, again like so many others, the buildings are sturdily constructed and, in this particular instance, of architectural interest not least for the incorporation of cut stone from Mitchelstown Castle. A conundrum.
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While last Monday’s page told a cheering story of restoration and renewal, today’s story demonstrates that plenty of work remains to be done in order to secure the future of our urban architectural heritage. Waterford city has some fine Georgian buildings, a number of which have been restored in recent years. However, many others have been left to languish, such as that above, no.18 Lady’s Lane. This street was once an important thoroughfare, lined with fine houses of which no.18 is a particularly good example. Thought to date from c.1750, it is of five bays and three storeys, with a particularly splendid staircase and rococo plasterwork. An ugly extension was added to the rear in 1975 when the house served as a men’s hostel (doing so until 2012). Otherwise, despite a fire thought to have been started by vandals, the building retains much of its original character and appearance, although it hasnow sat empty for many years. Likewise no.22 Lady’s Lane, which is of a later date (c.1800), but likewise of five bays and three storeys, and again suffering neglect. Aside from being a terrible waste of good housing stock, the impression conveyed by such dereliction in the city – where, incidentally, the local authority has hitherto spent over €24 million on consultants’ fees alone for a north quay scheme that has yet to get underway – is that the future Waterford’s historic centre remains under threat from ill-advised indifference.
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Now installed on the first-floor landing of the former Bishop’s Palace in Waterford City, this is a detail of a pine chimneypiece carved c.1758 by John Kelly for the Dublin residence of artist Robert West. Not to be confused with the near-contemporaneous stuccodore of the same name, West was born in Waterford, the son of an alderman, and trained in Paris, seemingly with both Boucher and van Loo before returning to Ireland and establishing a school of drawing in Dublin. By the mid-1740s, this was being subsidised by the Dublin Society, with premiums offered to students by Samuel Madden and annual exhibitions of their work held in the House of Lords. Unfortunately West became mentally ill in 1763 and had to be replaced as head of the school; he returned briefly to the position in 1770 before dying the same year.
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Almost exactly five years ago, in early May 2019, Scouting Ireland announced that it was closing its centre at Mount Melleray, County Waterford. According to a report carried at the time in the local Dungarvan Gazette, a spokesperson for the organisation said of the closure, ‘This decision, which is a precautionary measure, has been taken after a planned health and safety audit identified a number of actions which should be taken to improve the building’s overall safety.’ As the publication noted, the centre, which had been operating for the previous four decades, had been a popular location for camps and other activities for groups throughout the south-east of the country. Scouting Ireland’s spokesperson said the audit’s recommendations ‘will now be considered in full before the building reopens.’ Five years later, the building – in fact a long terrace incorporating six substantial buildings – remains closed.
A group of Cistercian monks first arrived in this part of County Waterford in May 1832, having come from the monastery of Melleray in Brittany. Initially the monks, many of whom were of Irish origin and were led by Waterford-born Fr Vincent Ryan, had moved to County Kerry but the land there proved unsuitable and so they looked for an alternative location. They were then offered 600 acres by Sir Richard Keane of nearby Cappoquin House, and so moved there, the new monastery’s foundation stone being laid in 1833. Two years later, the place was officially designated an abbey and in remembrance of their former home in France, the monks called it Mount Melleray: members of the order, albeit not very many of them, remain living in the same location to the present day. Within just over a decade of their arrival, the monks opened a school, initially for local boys but demand for places quickly grew and so they expanded their facilities: in June 1845, the foundation was laid of what originally was called the classical school. At the time, students not from the locality had to stay with local families (only those approved by the school principal) but further building work allowed for the establishment of dormitory and other facilities, on land owned by the monastery but not directly attached to it. As mentioned above, these properties which date from the mid-19th century consist of a series of six blocks, of two storeys over basement. Mostly of red sandstone ashlar with cut limestone window and doorcases, the largest of the blocks is of seven bays, the smallest of two. Constructed on a sloping site, they are interconnected, running from north-west to south-east and concluding just before the gates into the grounds of the abbey. At the top end and again linked to the other structures, is a Gothic Revival chapel, also dating from the same period. All of these buildings were occupied and used by students attending Mount Melleray school until it closed down in 1974.
Five years after the school at Mount Melleray closed, the monks came to an agreement with the Catholic Boy Scouts of Ireland (CBSI) that it would take over responsibility for this collection of buildings. To mark the golden jubilee of its foundation, in 1977 the CBSI had already held an international jamboree in the grounds of Mount Melleray with some 10,000 attendees, so the organisation already had associations with the place, which was in need of fresh purpose once the students had left. Thereafter, it was used by the CBSI and, after this body merged with the Scout Association of Ireland in 2004, by the newly-created Scouting Ireland. Not least thanks to its substantial premises, the Mount Melleray venue became an important centre for activities; in 1996 a National Scout Archives and Museum was opened here. With accommodation for several hundred people and ample surrounding grounds available for use as campsites, it is easy to see why the venue proved so popular and why its closure was so widely mourned. A Scouting Ireland newsletter produced in October 2019, a few months after Mount Melleray shut its doors, noted that estimated costs for repairs to the property, upgrades to meet building regulations and conservation of a protected structure were more than €1.2 million. The same document recorded that the organisation was then in discussions with both the local authority and the monastery – from which it has held the buildings on lease – ‘to explore what the challenges are and possible options to meet these challenges.’ As yet, those discussions have not produced any results, and after five years of neglect, this range of substantial buildings is showing widespread evidence of neglect, not least slates coming off the roof in several places, thereby allowing water ingress. As is so often the case in Ireland, failure to address a problem speedily will mean the solution – if one is ever found – will be more costly and time-consuming than ought to have been the case. This is an extravagant and foolhardy waste of a property with considerable potential.
In the mid-17th century, one Peter Carey from Devon came to Ireland and settled in County Cork where he acquired Ballymacpatrick, lying a few miles east of Fermoy and formerly part of the Condon estate on the river Blackwater. Generations of his descendants remained living in this place, the name of which was duly changed to Careysville: an early 19th century house built by the Careys survives here, although it is now owned by the Cavendish family. In the second half of the 18th century, Richard Carey, a younger son, became a Church of Ireland clergyman, as so often was the case with offspring not expected to inherit property. Although a prebendary of Donoughmore and Kiltegan in the diocese of Lismore, the Rev Carey lived in Clonmel, County Tipperary where he was associated with the local Free School. Both he and his son, Langer Carey, also a clergyman, lived a short distance south of Clonmel, just across the border into County Waterford, in a spot called Glenabbey.
Located on a spot overlooking the Glenary river, Glenabbey is supposed to derive its name from a mediaeval religious settlement, a grange established here by the Cistercian abbey of Inishlounaght not far from Clonmel. Following the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the mid-16th century, the lands of Inishlounaght – presumably including those at Glenabbey – passed by sale to Sir Edward Gough, his ownership confirmed in 1591 by the English crown. However, his grandson Patrick forfeited the property in 1641 and thereafter ownership of Glenabbey seems unknown until it became home to the Careys at the start of the 19th century.
Although called Glenabbey House on the original 1840 Ordnance Survey Map, the remains here are now known as Carey’s Castle. Today surrounded by woodland owned by Coillte, Ireland’s forestry body, the property has a somewhat eccentric appearance, composed of a series of interlinking structures that incorporate a variety of architectural styles and themes. Evidently the intention was to suggest an ancient lineage, as indicated by the rather bizarre incorporation of a three-storey capped round tower into the largest part of the building. In fact, even this section is not especially substantial and contains no fireplaces (it may be that another part of the building immediately behind and now lost held some comfortable rooms). Carey’s Castle, while charming to look at, must have been rather unsatisfactory as a family residence, being more like a sequence of follies. To the immediate north of this main building, for example, is another that looks as though intended to serve as a chapel, except the arched windows are filled with rubble stones (and no evidence of openings ever existing on the other side of the same wall). In any case, it does not seem to have been used as a home for very long. The Rev Langer Carey died at the early age of 41 in 1830 and some years later his surviving family sold the property. The new owner is given as Lieutenant-Colonel Nuttall Greene, who already owned Kilmanahan Castle (see Shrouded in Mystery « The Irish Aesthete). Having greatly over-extended himself, in the aftermath of the Great Famine, Greene’s heir was forced to sell the family’s properties through the Encumbered Estates Court. After which Carey’s Castle was abandoned, and so fell into its present condition.
A not-uncommon sight in rural Ireland: a pair of abandoned cottages on a minor road in the Knockmealdown Mountains, County Waterford. Their semi-detached status and matching design suggest these were originally built for local estate workers. The buildings are reasonably substantial, of two storeys and with several rooms on each floor. It appears work was begun on restoring one of them but this has been left incomplete and now the pair are sliding into ruin. Sadly, this is a story that can be found repeated in every part of the country.
Tikincor (from the Irish Tigh Cinn Chora, meaning The House at the Head of the Weir) is a townland adjacent to both the river Suir and County Tipperary: it lies just inside County Waterford. The house in question dates from the early 17th century and is one of the fortified residences then coming into fashion. It is believed to have been built for Alexander Power, a member of the de la Poer family which owned extensive lands in this part of the country. However, during the upheavals of the Confederate Wars of the 1640s and their aftermath, the Powers lost possession of Tikincor which passed into the hands of the Cromwellian supporter Sir Thomas Stanley whose son, John, future Chief Secretary for Ireland, was born in Tikincor in 1663. However, not long after that date it appears that Sir Thomas disposed of the property, since it then came into the hands of an elderly lawyer and politician, Sir Richard Osborne, whose descendants continued to own Tikincor for the next couple of centuries.
Burke’s Landed Gentry of 1871 proposes that the Osbornes first settled in Ireland in 1558 but from whence they came does not appear to be known. Sir Richard, who sat as Clerk of the King’s Court in Ireland for 13 years from 1616, was created a baronet in 1629 and thereafter sat as MP for County Waterford on a number of occasions until his death in 1667. In 1690 his grandson, Sir Thomas Osborne was responsible for building the narrow five-arched bridge over the Suir which is still known by his name and which provided convenient access to the family’s lands on either side of the river. The Osbornes continued to live at Tikincor until the late 18th century when they moved to Newtown Anner, on their County Tipperary property. Incidentally, the current heir to the baronetcy is Britain’s former Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne.
Tikincor Castle, as the building is usually known, is an excellent example of the fortified houses constructed throughout Ireland in the first decades of the 17th century when the country was at peace. Few of them survived the Confederate Wars and many can now be found in a ruinous condition, such as Burncourt, County Tipperary (see Burntcourt « The Irish Aesthete) and Ichtermurragh Castle, County Cork (see Whom Love Binds as One « The Irish Aesthete). Tikincor shares many characteristics with both of these, T-shaped and built of rubble, it climbs three storeys to a many-gabled attic floor marked by a string course, above which soar tall slender chimneys indicating a greater number of hearths than would have been the case in earlier tower houses. A staircase was likely accommodated in the wing that projects on the east side, while the west front now has a wide arched opening on the ground floor, probably a later alteration. Tikincor does not appear to have been occupied after having been abandoned by the Osbornes; it was described as being ‘in ruins’ on the first edition Ordnance Survey map in 1840. Such remains its condition today.
Currently on the market with some 70 acres, Landscape House, County Waterford is thought to date from c.1790 when it was owned by the Congreve family: their main residence, Mount Congreve, lies some 20 miles to the south-east. On a raised site overlooking the south bank of the river Suir, it’s a relatively small building, three bays and two storeys over basement, and was perhaps intended to serve as a dower house or perhaps a residence for a land agent. Samuel Lewis in his Topographical Dictionary of Ireland (1837) refers to it as a seat of the Congreves, but it may have been let. Certainly, in 1853 Captain Charles Boycott rented Landscape House for a year before he moved to Mayo where he became agent for the then-Earl of Erne and, owing to subsequent events, unwittingly bequeathed a new word to the English language.
Landscape is a curious building, both grand and yet modest. Like other small country houses of the period, it borrows features from larger properties in order to indicate the owner’s aspirations. Here, for example, on either side of the front, symmetrically curved curtain walls conceal modestly-proportioned yards, each of which holds a single-storey pavilion, the interior of which is lit by a generously-proportioned arched Gothick window (one of these pavilions was discreetly extended some decades ago and turned into guest accommodation). The curtain walls and pavilions pay homage to Palladian grandeur, but on an altogether less ostentatious scale. Current taste is acknowledged, even emulated, without being precisely copied.
The interior of Landscape House manifests the same stylistic traits found outside, not least an aspiration to magnificence. The building was originally T-shaped, with three rooms to the front on each floor and behind them one very substantial room closed by a great three-bay bow that offers views down to the river. Seemingly in the 1940s, the areas on either side of the bow were filled in with flat-roofed, single-bay extensions in order to create more space inside the house, hence its present appearance. With its half-conical slated roof and lines of windows, those on the ground floor especially substantial, the rear of Landscape must have looked quite remarkable before alterations were made. It would then have had a very distinctive character, one that paid homage to contemporary architectural taste while simultaneously proposing an alternative option. And still today, the house lives up to its name by being a noteworthy feature on the landscape.
