Rusticated Remains


On a hill to the north of Moydrum Castle, County Westmeath and now surrounded by woodland, the rusticated exterior of a church once serving the Handcock family. The present building dates from the 1840s when built by Richard Handcock, third Viscount Castlemaine to provide relief work during the Great Famine. It replaced an earlier church on or near the same site also constructed by the family in 1740, and was in turn further altered in the 1860s by the addition of a gabled porch on the west end.

An Unforgettable Fire


The ruins of Moydrum Castle, County Westmeath. The former seat of the Handcock family, an earlier house here was described in Neale’s Views of Seats (1823) as being ‘nothing more than an ordinary farmhouse, contracted in its dimensions, mean in its external form and inconvenient in its interior arrangements.’ By that date work was already underway to transform and enlarge the building into a neo-Jacobean castle designed by Richard Morrison suitable as a residence for William Handcock, raised to the peerage first as Baron and then Viscount Castlemaine. The completed work was described by Samuel Lewis in 1837 as ‘a solid castellated mansion with square turrets at each angle beautifully situated on the edge of a small lake and surrounded by an extensive and richly wooded demesne.’ This is what remains of the east-facing façade, the entrance resembling an immense gate-tower. Moydrum was burnt by members of the IRA in July 1921 and has remained derelict ever since: in 1984 a photograph of Moydrum by Anton Corbijn was used on the cover of U2’s album The Unforgettable Fire showing members of the band standing in front of the ruins.

‘A Tall, Unlovely Block’


‘It was in the sixteenth century that Robert Martin, one of the long and powerful line of High Sheriffs and Mayors of Galway, became possessed of a large amount of land in West Galway, and in 1590 Ross was his country place. From this point the Martins began slowly to assimilate West Galway; Ross, Dangan, Birch Hall, and Ballinahinch, marked their progress, until Ballinahinch, youngest and greatest of the family strongholds, had gathered to itself nearly 200,000 acres of Connemara. It fell, tragically, from the hand of its last owner, Mary Martin, Princess of Connemara, in the time of the Famine, and that page of Martin history is closed in Galway, though the descendants of her grandfather, ‘Humanity Dick ‘ (for ever to be had in honourable remembrance as the author of ‘Martin’s Act for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals’), have kept alive the old name of Ballinahinch, and have opened a new and notable record for themselves in Canada…’




‘Through a line of Jaspers, Nicholases and Roberts, the story of Ross moved prosperously on from Robert of Elizabeth’s times, untouched even by the hand of Cromwell, unshaken even when the gates of Galway, twelve miles away, opened at length to Ireton. Beyond the town of Galway, the Cromwellian did not set his foot; Connemara was a dark and barren country, and the Martins, Roman Catholic and Royalists to the core, as were all the other Tribes of Galway, held the key of the road. From that conflict Ross emerged, minus most of its possessions in Galway town and suburbs; after the Restoration they were restored by the Decree of Charles II, but remained nevertheless in the hands of those to whom they had been apportioned as spoil. The many links that had bound Ross to Galway Town seem thence forward to have been severed; during the eighteenth century the life of its owners was that of their surroundings, peaceful for the most part, and intricately bound up with that of their tenants. They were still Roman Catholic and Jacobite – a kinsman of Dangan was an agent for Charles Edward – and each generation provided several priests for its Church. With my great-grandfather, Nicholas, came the change of creed; he became a Protestant in order to marry a Protestant neighbour, Miss Elizabeth O’Hara, of Lenaboy; where an affair of the heart was concerned, he was not the man to stick at what he perhaps considered to be a trifle. It is said that at the end of his long life his early training asserted itself, and drew him again towards the Church of his fathers; it is certainly probable that he died, as he was born, a son of Rome. But the die had been cast. His six children were born and bred Protestants. Strong in all ways, they were strong Protestants, and Low Church, according to the fashion of their time, yet they lived in an entirely Roman Catholic district without religious friction of any kind…’




‘It was during the life of Nicholas, my great-grand-father, that Ross House was burned down; with much loss, it is believed, of plate and pictures; it had a tower, and stood beautifully on a point in the lake. He replaced it by the present house, built about the year 1777, whose architecture is not aesthetically to his credit; it is a tall, unlovely block, of great solidity, with kitchen premises half underground, and the whole surrounded by a wide and deep area. It suggests the idea of defence, which was probably not absent from the builder’s mind, yet the Rebellion of twenty years later did not put it to the test. In the great storm of 1839, still known as ” The Big Wind,” my grandfather gathered the whole household into the kitchen for safety, and, looking up at its heavily-vaulted ceiling, said that if Ross fell, not a house in Ireland would stand that night. Many fell, but Ross House stood the assault, even though the lawn was white with the spray borne in from the Atlantic, six miles away. It has at least two fine rooms, a lofty well-staircase, with balusters of mahogany, taken out of a wreck, and it takes all day the sun into its heart, looking west and south, with tall windows, over lake and mountain. It is said that a man is never in love till he is in love with a plain woman, and in spite of draughts, of exhausting flights of stairs, of chimneys that are the despair of sweeps, it has held the affection of five generations of Martins…’




‘Life at Ross was of the traditional Irish kind, with many retainers at low wages, which works out as a costly establishment with nothing to show for it. A sheep a week and a cow a month were supplied by the farm, and assimilated by the household; it seemed as if with the farm produce, the abundance of dairy cows, the packed turf house, the fallen timber ready to be cut up, the fruitful garden, the game and the trout, there should have been affluence. But after all these followed the Saturday night labour bill, and the fact remains, as many Irish landlords can testify, that these free fruits of the earth are heavily paid for, that convenience is mistaken for economy, and that farming is, for the average gentleman, more of an occupation than an income.’


Extracts from Violet Martin’s essay The Martins of Ross published posthumously in 1917. 

A Lakeside Lament

 

The shore of Lough Tay, County Wicklow into which the ashes of the Hon Garech Browne were committed yesterday in the company of family and friends. The devoted custodian of the Luggala estate for half a century, his generous cultural patronage, not least through the creation of Claddagh Records, were deservedly eulogised during the afternoon in words and music alike. While Garech has gone, he leaves rich memories and a legacy certain to last as long as water laps on Lough Tay’s shore.

Whence Came the Wealth


Following Monday’s account of Belview, County Offaly, here are some views of the building which provided the funds to build a fine house. Ballycahan Mill (located in County Westmeath, although only a few hundred yards distant) is believed to date from the late 18th century, the main structure being a three-storey block used for the bleaching and scutching of linen. On a map of 1838 the field to the southwest of the mill is described as the ‘old bleach green’ indicating that the surrounding land was also used as part of the industrial process. Like Belview, this building is now just a shell.


Not Such a BelView


Writing of agriculture and manufacturing in County Offaly in 1801, Sir Charles Coote noted that the linen industry then thrived, with several local landowners ‘who keep looms employed, but do not bleach. Mr Holmes of Prospect and Mr Armstrong of Belview are the most extensive manufacturers, and both have large greens, but they only bleach their own linen, their [sic] being bleach yards for public accommodation.’ Almost twenty years later Peter Besnard, Inspector-General for Trade and Manufacture of Linen and Hemp in Ireland, produced a report in which he commented on Offaly: ‘The Manufacturing and Bleaching branches of the Linen Business are carried on in this county as usual, particularly in the neighbourhood of Clara and Charlestown; in the latter place, a new Linen Hall has been built by Andrew Armstong Esq. of Belview, whose family have long been supporters and encouragers of the Linen Trade. Mr Armstrong has built this Hall at his own expense, and likewise gives a premium for the best Web sold in it; and I cannot avoid remarking, that wherever premiums have been established, and judiciously applied, they have been productive of much benefit.’





The Armstrong family appears to have settled in this part of the country in the 18th century, one John Armstrong (born 1748) marrying Jane Holmes, whose family lived nearby in a house called Prospect (still standing). He married a second time and had a son Andrew Armstrong, the man mentioned by both Sir Charles Coote and Peter Besnard as being active in the linen industry. A large range of now-derelict buildings on ground below Belview testify to the one-time importance of this business, in the 18th and early 19th centuries by far the most commercially viable in Ireland. From the early 1700s onwards Irish linen was imported duty free to England and to the American colonies, so that eventually this one product accounted for around fifty per cent of Ireland’s total exports. It is understandable that so many entrepreneurial spirits became involved in the business and, if they managed their concern sufficiently well, grew rich, as did the Armstrongs. As was so often the case, they gradually climbed the social scale, moving away from the commercial class to become landed gentry. John Herbert Armstrong, for example, who inherited Belview in the mid-19th century , joined the army and served as a major in the Royal Tyrone Fusiliers. He further cemented his gentry status by marrying Eliza Catherine Lowry whose family, related to the Earls of Belmore, lived at Pomeroy House, County Tyrone. Their son in turn married Emily Theodosia Blacker-Douglas whose family were large landowners (with over 8,000 acres in County Kerry) and lived in Elm Park, outside Armagh. However, after selling their estate in 1912 under the Irish Land Act, the Armstrongs left Belview, which was subsequently leased to a variety of tenants.





Located on the border of Counties Offaly and Westmeath, Belview is a substantial house, the front portion of which dates from the second half of the 18th century. To the rear is an older L-shaped building which looks to have been adapted into a service wing when the newer section was added. The latter featured the usual layout of the period, with a drawing room, dining room and morning room/office opening off a central entrance hall on the ground floor: traces of neo-classical plasterwork survive in some of these spaces. Outside the east-facing façade is of five bays, with a Venetian window on the first floor. Below a short flight of stone steps led to a tripartite limestone doorcase with engaged Doric columns and an open pediment. The house testifies to the Armstrongs’ wish to identify themselves with the local gentry, as well as to the wealth that could be accumulated through the linen trade. A folly built in the form of a monastic round tower by Andrew Armstrong in 1817 and now buried in the nearby woodland, likewise provides evidence of the family’s social ambitions. The house was abandoned some decades ago and is now a roofless ruin.

Monasterboice


Rising some twenty-one feet, the tallest high cross in Ireland can be found, along with a couple of others, at Monasterboice, County Louth. The place name derives from  Mainistir Bhuithe meaning ‘Monastery of Buithe’: the latter was an early Christian saint said to have founded a religious settlement here in the late 5th century. Three high crosses survive here, this one which dates from the 9th century, standing closest to the round tower. Panels on one side feature, among others scenes of the Sacrifice of Isaac, Daniel in the Lion’s Denand David with the head of Goliath. The opposite side is devoted to scenes from the Life of Christ, such as his baptism, the Kiss of Judas, his arrest and crucifixion.


What’s Left


The remains of Rattin Castle, County Westmeath, a substantial four-storey tower house that was built in the 15th or 16th centuries. During this period the land on which it stands, formerly under the control of Hugh de Lacy, was in the possession of the d’Arcy family. The last member, Nicholas d’Arcy, forfeited the castle in the 1640s during the Confederate Wars and it seems to have fallen into ruin after that: a source from that period claimed the building originally had several towers and no less than 500 rooms.

Important Remains

In Classic Irish Houses of the Middle Size (1976) Kiltullagh, County Galway was described by the late Maurice Craig as having formerly been very handsome, thanks to its ‘gigantic paneled chimney-stacks and (as can still be traced) a very steep roof…To judge by the provision of pistol-loops it must have been built early in the 18th century or even earlier…Even in its present state it can be seen to be a building of quality. The pistol-loops commanding the entrance are conspicuous.’ Likewise, the reference to Kiltullagh in Vanishing Country Houses of Ireland (1988) noted that it was an ‘important, late seventeenth-century or early eighteenth-century, two-storey house. The very high chimney-stacks have sunk panels, and there are pistol-loops in the basement which is most unusual for a house of this period. The house which is now a ruin is a most impressive example of an early virtually undefended house and should be preserved from further depredation.’




Kiltullagh belonged to a branch of the d’Arcy family, one of the Tribes of Galway, the mercantile clans that ran the city during the Middle Ages. Like other members of the same milieu, from the early 16th century onwards they gradually acquired parcels of land in the countryside and gradually metamorphosed into gentry, although this process was not without setbacks. The lawyer Patrick d’Arcy was a key figure on the Roman Catholic side during the Confederate Wars of 1641-52, in the former year writing his Argument which insisted that ‘no parliament but an Irish one can properly legislate for Ireland’ and later helping to draw up a Constitution for the Confederacy. In the aftermath of that side’s defeat, he lost his lands but the greater part of these were restored to his heir James d’Arcy: the family owned over 18,750 acres – divided between Kiltullagh and an estate to the west around Clifden – but all this was lost in the aftermath of the Great Famine when the property was sold by the Encumbered Estates Court. (The last of the family to own the property, Hyacinth d’Arcy, subsequently became a Church of Ireland clergyman). In the meantime, one of the more interesting members was another Patrick d’Arcy, born in 1725 and at the age of fourteen sent to Paris to be raised by an uncle who was a banker there. An eminent soldier and scientist, he was created a French count and a member of the Académie Royale des Sciences, dying of cholera in 1779, two years after marrying his niece Jane d’Arcy.




As so often, we know almost nothing about Kiltullagh’s history. It was clearly a substantial house and stood at the centre of a large estate, but the architect responsible for the building’s design is a mystery. Kiltullagh appears to have been occupied by the d’Arcys until the second decade of the 19th century when the then-head of the family, John d’Arcy, following the death of his first wife, moved west where he founded the town of Clifden and outside it built a new residence, Clifden Castle (now also a ruin). Thereafter the house was rented to tenants and at some date gutted by fire. As with Clifden, the entire property was sold through the Encumbered Estates Court in 1850, being bought for £6,000 by Pierce Joyce. Kiltullagh was never rebuilt and stood a ruin. The former stable yard has been converted into a residence and some years ago work was undertaken on the main building to secure what remained. However, this enterprise appears to have halted and since then the interior has remained filled with scaffolding.

One Site: Two Ruins (II)


Second the remains of St Columcille’s church at Skryne, County Meath. Intended for Anglican worship, this was built in the early 19th century: in 1809 the Board of First Fruits provided £500 towards its construction costs. At the time there were some 67 souls who worshipped here but, as was the case across the country, numbers declined during the last century and the church closed in the 1960s. Today only the squat tower with its diagonal buttresses remains on the site.