On a Clare Day

May14

The tower of the church at Quin Friary, County Clare seen through one of its transept windows. Another of the outstanding Franciscan houses in Ireland, Quin Friary was established in the mid-14th century by members of the local MacNamara family. However, it was built on the site, and incorporated parts, of a castle built in 1280 by the Norman Richard de Clare in an unsuccessful attempt to subdue the same family: six years later this structure was attacked and burnt by Cuvea MacNamara who slaughtered most of its occupants. The subsequent friary had an equally bloody and incendiary history. In 1584, for example, Donough Beg O’Brian, having been half-hanged from a cart and his bones broken with the back of an axe was strung up while still alive from this same tower by Sir John Perrot; a few years later the building was again set alight by another of the O’Brians. Somehow, and with intermittent breaks, Franciscan friars continued to live on the site, the last resident only dying in 1820. Today there is little evidence of the friary’s turbulent past.

To Smooth the Lawn, To Decorate the Dale

May12

Travellers in Ireland during the 18th and 19th centuries seem rarely to have visited Laois, or Queen’s County as it was known until 1922. The preference was to head either south or north or west, by-passing the midlands with the result that references to this part of the country are not so easy to find. One suspects this continues to be the case, a pity since land-locked Laois has much to offer, not least the Lutyens-designed gardens at Heywood.
The main outlines of the estate here were created by Michael Frederick Trench, son of the Rev. Frederick Trench; one of those visitors to Ireland who did explore the area, English antiquary Owen Brereton, in 1763 wrote of the cleric’s property, describing it as ‘a sweet Habitation’ with ’24 Acres Walld round 10 feet high.’ Both the habitation and the grounds were enlarged by his son who in 1773 built a new house which he named Heywood after his mother-in-law’s maiden name. A barrister and amateur architect, Trench is believed to have been responsible for the building’s design, perhaps in consultation with James Gandon: Thomas J Mulvany’s biography of the latter (published 1846) states that in 1785 Trench ‘anxiously superintended’ the erection of the Rotunda Assembly Rooms in Dublin, being a member of the building committee. He has also been credited with the design of the two pavilions which terminated the colonnades on either side of the lying-in hospital.
At Heywood, Trench embarked on large-scale improvements to the surrounding parkland beginning with a gothic entrance gate and featuring various other decorative features, most notably a striking ruin on the adjacent hill, composed from elements of the mediaeval Dominican friary at Aghaboe some twelve miles away. When Samuel Lewis published his Topographical Dictionary of Ireland in 1837, a year after Michael Frederick Trench’s death, he was able to call Heywood a ‘richly varied demesne ornamented with plantations and artificial sheets of water.’

When Michael Frederick Trench’s only son General Sir Frederick William Trench died in 1859, he left Heywood to the family of his sister Helena who in 1815 had married the euphoniously-named Sir Compton Pocklington Domvile. This couple’s granddaughter Mary Adelaide Domvile in turn became an heiress and in 1886 she married William Hutcheson Poë. There has always been some confusion about how to pronounce the family name, but William’s younger brother Edmund once explained, ‘I have been sat upon by women and held at arm’s length by men, but my name is pronounced p-o-a-y.’
Sons of a Queen’s County barrister, both men were educated at Dr Burney’s Academy in Gosport, near Portsmouth before joining the navy. Edmund rose to be promoted to Rear-Admiral in 1902, second in command of the Home Fleet the following year and Commander of the 1st Cruiser Squadron in 1904. A year later he was appointed Commander-in-Chief, East Indies Station, then Commander-in-Chief, Cape of Good Hope Station in 1907 and Commander-in-Chief, Mediterranean Fleet in 1910. Finally he became First and Principal Aide-de-Camp to George V in 1912, retiring two years afterwards.
William Hutcheson Poë meanwhile served in the Royal Marines and from 1884 was in Sudan, commanding a unit of the Camel Corps in the Relief of Khartoum in 1885 during which period he had a leg amputated. The following year he married Mary Adelaide Domvile and retired from service in 1888 when promoted to Lieutenant Colonel. The rest of his public life can be summarised as follows: in 1891 became High Sheriff for Queen’s County, and in 1893 for County Tyrone. He was a member of the Land Conference in 1904, was appointed a Governor of the National Gallery of Ireland in 1904 and created a baronet eight years later. In 1915 to 1916 he served in Egypt in the First World War, and from 1916 to 1919 with the Red Cross in France. From 1922 to 1925 he served as a Senator of the Irish Free State.

At Heywood Colonel Hutcheson Poë was responsible for substantial alterations to both house and grounds. With regard to the former, Sir Charles Coote in his Statistical Survey of Queen’s County (published 1801) having discussed Trench’s various enterprises on the estate says ‘The Mansion house has also been built after his own plan, and is of a curious, though not regular order of architecture, being a square building composed of four fronts, and, from the irregularity of the ground, on which it stands, presents at one front three stories, at another four, at the third five, and six at the fourth. The apartments are as commodious as could be wished for, and are considerably more extensive, than we should suppose from the outside view.’
In the 1890s this building was enlarged and almost engulfed by extensions to either side, designed by one of the period’s most indefatigable architects Sir Thomas Drew. Sadleir and Dickinson’s 1915 Georgian Mansions of Ireland describes the result as ‘a large building, embodying extensive recent additions, and has been in fact so completely re-edified that one room only retains its entire Georgian character. This is the large and well proportioned dining-room, a singularly handsome apartment, and one of the finest examples of the Adam style in this country…the walls are covered with plaster panels and festoons, which, like the ornament of the over-doors, are very delicately modelled. The mantel, purchased by the present owner in London, exhibits Adam decoration with wedgwood plaques, and there is a steel grate…A series of Minerva heads in the frieze conceal the electric light bulbs, this ingenious device obviating the introduction of unsightly electroliers. In the adjoining drawing-room, which also retains some Georgian features, are a number of valuable pictures, including the fine full-length of John Musters, of Colwick, in Nottinghamshire, by Sir Joshua Reynolds…’ A series of photographs taken by A.E. Henson in 1917 and published in Country Life two years later testify to Colonel Hutcheson Poë’s discerning taste as a collector of pictures and furniture, even if not of architecture.

Outside also Colonel Hutcheson Poë set about leaving his mark. The house at Heywood was built at the top of a south-west facing ridge from which the ground drops steeply to a lake out of which runs a stream in turn feeding two further lakes. As well as being a successful army man, Sir Frederick William Trench was a talented artist (just as his father was an amateur architect), and in 1818 he produced several drawings of the demesne from which lithographs were produced; these give an excellent idea of how the view swept away from the house across water and trees towards distant mountains, the very incarnation of the romantic landscape.
Nevertheless in 1906 Hutcheson Poë commissioned Edwin Lutyens to come up with a design for gardens in the vicinity of the house, occupying the area to the immediate south, east and west. As has already been explained, this part of the parkland is on a slope, and so the first and most important task was to build a massice retaining wall with buttressing to protect the house above from any risk of slippage. Thereafter the main features of the scheme begin with a pair of central terraces relatively uncluttered so as not to obscure views from the building; other than flagged walks and grass lawns, the most notable feature here is a pair of columns topped with stone balls and carrying carved milestones. Presumably Lutyens recycled these from elsewhere, as he did a series of Ionic columns which were once part of a Temple of the Winds erected by Michael Frederick Trench elsewhere in the grounds. The columns can now be seen in a pergola walk which Lutyens constructed to the west of the main terrace and where they support a line of oak beams. This walk, from which there is a sharp descent to the lake, is otherwise composed of rough-hewn stone, with an open prospect at its southern end and an apsidal niche at the northern: the latter once held a copy of the Capitoline Venus but now contains a more respectably clothed figure.

Colonel Hutcheson Poë was not an easy client and Lutyens’ letters indicate his time at Heywood was rather stressful. In February 1910, for example, he wrote to his wife, ‘Colonel Poë, you know, has a wooden leg and he sits on a chair and watches the men lay stones – stone by stone – and finds endless fault. I couldn’t stand it.’ Two years later he wrote again, ‘The gardens promise well, but he is so cross to his workmen, to me and to all under him, and his wife, who is very rich, is left alone and ignored almost. At least she goes her own way, ignores as much as she is ignored.’
On an earlier occasion Lutyens had announced that the colonel’s ‘cross period has damaged the garden as there is, I think, evidence in my work of my attitude or despondency towards him.’ There is in fact no evidence of the sort apparent, particularly not in the marvellous elliptical sunken garden which is Lutyens’ greatest legacy at Heywood. The approach to this was most likely intended to have been via a short sequence of yew enclosed spaces which lead to a curved flight of stone steps bringing the visitor right into the garden. Today however, the more customary point of access is from the main terrace, passing tall piers to a pleached lime walk. Here a low stone wall to the south offers open views of the countryside, the wall to the north being higher and carrying a series of cut stone niches: originally these contained lead busts but they are now filled with stone urns. At the end of this walk, wrought iron gates provide access to the sunken garden, its centre occupied by a large pond once fed by spouting bronze tortoises and holding a basin formerly topped by another piece of sculpture. At the easternmost point of the sunken garden is a slender, single-room pavilion, the rear wall of which contains four Ionic capitals set into the rough stone and said to have come from the 18th century Irish House of Commons designed by Sir Edward Lovett Pearce (for more about this discovery, see Jane Meredith’s article on the subject in the Irish Arts Review Yearbook 2001, Vol. 17).

Like so many other Irish country houses and estates, Heywood experienced mixed fortunes in the last century. After its owner’s death in 1934, the house stood empty and then the Land Commission moved in to divide up the property. In 1941 the house and surrounding 160 acres was acquired by members of the Salesian religious order who originally used the place as a novitiate. Unfortunately in 1950 the house was badly damaged by fire, after which a decision was taken to demolish it; a new building was erected on a site to the north-east adjacent to the former stable yard. This became a school run by the Salesians but since 1990 has been a community school. Three years later the Lutyens gardens were transferred to state ownership and they have since been the responsibility of the Office of Public Works.
Visiting Heywood today is a curious experience. On the one hand, it is wonderful that Lutyens’ work here has been preserved, on the other it is difficult properly to appreciate his vision without the presence of the house for which the gardens were intended to provide a setting: the context for which they were created has gone (see the plan below for a better understanding of this). And the 18th century parkland devised by Michael Frederick Trench is even harder to envisage since it has received very little attention, and some of it has been altogether lost. The defiant ugliness of the school buildings also plays its part in suppressing any impulse towards romanticism. Conversely, once properly inside the gardens equivocation slips away, and the genius of Lutyens takes over. It is, as I say, a curious experience but with the accompaniment of a little imagination by no means an unpleasant one.

With thanks to Máirtín D’Alton for his advice and information.

The Swan of Erin

May10

This weekend sees the Irish Georgian Society’s annual Traditional Building Skills exhibition take place at the Hunt Museum in Limerick. Visitors might care to look across the road to the current poor state of Patrick Street, including this house No.4, birthplace of the 19th century soprano Catherine Hayes. One of the most celebrated singers of her generation, she performed in opera houses throughout Europe (as well as giving a recital for Queen Victoria in Buckingham Palace in June 1849) before touring to the United States – where P.T. Barnum sponsored her concerts in California – Australia and India. She deserves to be better remembered today in her native city than the condition of this building and its neighbours would indicate.
For further information on the IGS’s activities in Limerick this weekend, see: http://www.igs.ie/uploads/IGS_2014_Traditional_Building_Skills_Brochure_May.pdf

Remembering Mariga Guinness

May8

This afternoon at the Conolly Folly, County Kildare where Mariga is buried.

Beneath a Starry Dome

May7

A section of the coffered dome in the Rotunda at Ballyfin, County Laois. According to Kevin V. Mulligan, the plasterwork fronds and stars were originally gilded and set against a Prussian blue background. Although the space is clearly inspired by the Pantheon in Rome, its central oculus is not open to the elements but rises through a cloud of gilded stars to a further dome filled with coloured glass.

Marvellous Mariga

May5

Derek Hill’s portrait of Mariga which perfectly captures her shyness sometimes misconstrued as hauteur

This week marks the 25th anniversary of the death on May 8th 1989 of Mariga Guinness at the age of only 56. It seems an opportune moment to celebrate her life, especially since an entire generation has since grown up without having had the opportunity to meet Mariga and to benefit in person from her influence.
For those unfamiliar with her story, Marie-Gabrielle von Urach was born in September 1932, the only child of Prince Albrecht von Urach and Rosemary Blackadder. Her mother’s family were from the Scottish borders, her father’s a junior branch of the royal house of Württemberg in southern Germany; her grandfather was briefly King of Lithuania, a great-aunt Queen of Belgium and a great-grandaunt the Empress Elizabeth of Austria. Although her father had been expected to succeed to the principality of Monaco (an extraordinary story in itself), in the aftermath of the First World War this arrangement was abandoned and so he came of age with little money and no prospects. Both Mariga’s parents were artists and in the mid-1930s they and their daughter moved to Japan where Prince Albrecht was attached to the German embassy as a government photographer. However in 1937 Rosemary von Urach decided the Japanese Emperor was being misled into aggression by his generals, and taking Mariga with her somehow gained admission into the imperial palace to offer him advice. Arrested and sedated by security guards, she was sent back to Britain where she had a breakdown followed by a lobotomy and spent the rest of her life in a Scottish mental hospital. Meanwhile Mariga’s father continued working for the German government throughout the Second World War and did not see his daughter again until she was sixteen and he had remarried (when they reunited he did not tell her this himself and she only found out indirectly). In the intervening years Mariga had been raised in England by a septuagenarian unmarried friend of her grandmother’s who died in 1951, leaving her charge possessed of little other than great intelligence and beauty. That same year she was introduced to the Hon Desmond Guinness by her cousin Prince Rupert Löwenstein. The couple married in June 1954 and moved to Ireland the following year.

Desmond and Mariga on their honeymoon photographed by Anthony Armstrong-Jones (later Earl of Snowdon); these pictures courtesy, and property, of their son Patrick Guinness.

Mariga first visited Ireland (at the invitation of the late Mark Bence-Jones) in 1953. He later remembered that she arrived in a ball dress having gone straight from a dance in London to catch an early flight. ‘The first thing they asked me when I got off the ‘plane was “Have you been on a farm?”’ she said with her unerring sense of the incongruous (there had recently been an outbreak of foot and mouth disease in England). Afterwards she wrote, ‘Ireland is HEAVEN, everyone is so dotty and delicious and no one dreams of taking anything seriously; except, perhaps the Horse Show.’ Of course, after moving here Mariga took the country very seriously, not least in her ceaseless campaigns to preserve its architectural heritage and her founding with Desmond of the Irish Georgian Society in 1958.
The society was run from the couple’s home at Leixlip Castle, County Kildare which they had bought and restored after looking at countless other houses around Ireland. Leixlip represented Mariga’s highly distinctive and influential taste. As architectural historian Mark Girouard has written, ‘In the 1960s Mariga Guinness made Leixlip Castle an unforgettable place: a solid, four-towered mediaeval castle converted in the early 18th century with huge, thick-barred windows and spacious, simple rooms looking down to the Liffey; a massive front door that was never locked; and inside an inspired assembly of mainly Irish 18th-century furniture and pictures, put together and set off with a sense of color and occasion, a mixture of informality and showmanship, to make a setting in which it seemed that anything could happen and anyone might turn up.
One would turn up oneself, pull open the front door and wander into empty rooms with log fires smoldering, until people would, perhaps, begin to appear: millionaires, Irish professors, Anglo-Irish lordlings, pop stars, German princes, architects, priests, art historians, students, all revolving around Mariga, with her drawling voice and mischievous smile, and Desmond, with his charm and blazing blue eyes.
A party might develop or a picnic, or both or neither; intrigues and dramas would get under way, champagne might or might not flow, and the whole charade was given point by the crusade for Irish Georgian architecture, to save or rediscover which forays would be made from the castle all over Ireland.’

Two photographs of Mariga taken by Horst P. Horst when he visited Leixlip Castle in 1968

Many people can testify, and have done so, to the abiding impact of Mariga’s exceptional taste. Interior designer John Stefanidis has remembered her ‘A wit, a tease, an intelligent and enchanting beauty, gifted with impeccable taste. She had panache…whether in a fur hat and muff, or in fancy dress with a large hat and feather boa, she always looked marvellous. A wonderful hostess, Leixlip Castle was an example on how to live in an historic house – despite it being freezing cold in winter (she longed for central heating).’
It was thrilling to stay there surrounded by marvellous furniture she had found and not an ugly thing in sight. She was the inspiration behind the founding of the Irish Georgian Society – not only did she find houses and restore them but also doggedly charmed her way through bureaucratic red tape in Dublin.’
Likewise in his 1985 book The Inspiration of the Past, architectural historian John Cornforth described Leixlip as ‘the key country house in the British Isles in the late 1950s and 1960s,’ before going on to write that ‘The process of restoring, decorating and furnishing the house was very much a shared enthusiasm, with complementary contributions from two remarkable people; but it always seemed to me that the overall look of the house owed more to Mrs Guinness, who has a rare gift for composing objects and rooms in a stimulating way and combining unlikely, and occasionally uncompromising, objects to create memorable effects…Ultimately it was the feeling for scale in the house and the combination of the Irish pictures and furniture with the simple decoration supported by prints, piles of books and quantities of shells that made it such a complete and convincing Irish country house, very carefully thought out but achieved with such brio and confidence that it seemed natural and not contrived. It managed to be stylish and unfussy; quite grand and yet informal and cut-back; and everywhere there was both a vivid historical air and a sense of fantasy.’ In this context, Cornforth referenced Nancy Lancaster before recalling an observation made by Christopher Gibbs that while Mrs Lancaster’s taste had been ‘patrician’ that of Mariga was ‘princely.’

Two sides of Mariga: up a ladder painting in Castletown, and modelling in Leixlip Castle at a fund-raising fashion show for the Irish Georgian Society

Although less actively involved with the Irish Georgian Society during the last years of her life, Mariga’s commitment and engagement with the organisation during its early decades was of vital importance. After her death, the late Professor Kevin B Nowlan noted how, ‘In the 1960s and 1970s Mariga Guinness gave a sparkle to the grim struggle to save our heritage of 18th century architecture.’ Indeed, it was her crusading spirit and her exceptional ability to inspire other people that deserve to be forever remembered. As the Knight of Glin commented, ‘She had that vital talent of leading every sort of person into the then often unappreciated world of Irish architecture, decoration, furniture and paintings.’ The society’s membership swelled as a direct result of her passionate advocacy of conservationism; she was a force of persuasive charm impossible to resist. ‘Not a painter, not a writer, not a musician,’ wrote her great friend Maureen Charlton while Mariga was still alive, ‘what she does is to transform life itself into a work of art, to make each passing day a new creation.’
Mariga was always especially good at inspiring the young, who would quickly be beguiled into voluntarily working for the Irish Georgian Society, and in a thoroughly practical way too. During the course of an interview given less than two months before her death, she spoke of the restoration, indeed the salvation of Castletown, County Kildare in 1967 when students were at the top of ladders painting cornices, children scrubbed floors, ‘and even the oldest of the old were able to polish the beautiful door handles and do something to help.’ Mariga too threw herself into activity and led by example, being prepared to climb a ladder with a pot of paint, or wield a banner during a protest against the threatened demolition of an historically important building. A feature in the Irish Independent during this period noted of Mariga that when not in Leixlip ‘dispensing informal hospitality and discussing current such finds as a document-packed sealskin trunk or an ancient set of stocks in a Meath courthouse, she’s paint-stripping or picture hanging at Castletown.’ Although she could sometimes give the impression of being rather vague – she was notorious for introducing even relatively close friends as ‘Mr Thingummy’ – a strong core of practicality ran through her character. And there was a streak of seriousness too. As she told a reporter from the Irish Times shortly before her death, when speaking of the Irish Georgian Society, ‘It was definitely very serious, what we were doing.’

Mariga showing Castletown to Jacqueline Kennedy who visited the house in 1967, and wearing one of the many historical costumes she collected

Although we met in passing on a couple of occasions when I was still a student, it was only after she had divorced and I had graduated that Mariga and I came to know each other. By then she had perforce moved out of Leixlip Castle and was living in Tullynisk, the dower house of Birr, County Offaly. It was definitely a house of contrasts, on the one hand a grim little kitchen (out of which surprisingly delicious meals were produced) and on the other the main rooms which were decorated with Mariga’s customary flair and discernment. Despite chaos forever appearing imminent, life at Tullynisk was actually rather well-ordered: overnight guests found their rooms perfectly prepared, logs neatly piled beside the grate (the house was always cold), fresh linen on the beds, and carefully chosen reading matter on an adjacent stand. No matter how late we had all scattered – and it was often very late – the followed morning Mariga would be the first to rise, moving about the house with trays laden for the breakfast table.
At the same time, disorder reigned behind the scenes: Mariga’s unparalleled collection of historical costume, for example, remained heaped in a tempting Everest on one bedroom floor, periodically raided for dressing-up on her instruction during parties. And her wonderful library, although the majority of books were eventually shelved, never had any real order put on it. Meanwhile she continued to drive a battered old Citroen, which periodically refused to move and would sometimes spend months outside the house. I remember Mariga’s bafflement when she was summoned to appear in court in Birr for failing to tax the vehicle, her logic being that since it was immobile no taxation ought to be required.
The truth was that during those final years Mariga was deeply unhappy, the melancholia to which I suspect she had always been vulnerable threatening to overwhelm her. Although she tried to keep herself busy and organised regular house parties and outings – a caravan of cars driving slowly down pot-holed laneways in pursuit of an alleged architectural gem that more often turned out to be an undistinguished farmhouse, its owners baffled by the spectacle of this troupe of eccentric gawkers – she was often alone. At such times she must have felt the world of which she had once been so vital a part had moved on and forgotten her. Of course it hadn’t, and more importantly it still hasn’t. All of us remained heavily indebted to Mariga Guinness and her inspirational leadership. Through her dynamism and commitment, Ireland’s architectural heritage became better known and appreciated, and preserved, than would otherwise have been the case. This week’s anniversary of her untimely death allows us an opportunity once more to pay due acknowledgement to a remarkable woman.

The Conolly Folly beneath which Mariga is buried

Mariga Guinness, 21st September 1932 – 8th May 1989

Love and a Cottage

May3

On the edge of a country road in County Cork, this cottage testifies to centuries of living for the greater part of the Irish population. Its simple allure lies in the uneven slope of the thatched roof, the use of colour inside the window surrounds, the retention of the old double door, the whitewashed walls: all these factors combine to make the building as irresistibly photogenic as any grand country house.

A Reflection of the Past

Apr30

An engraving showing a cross-section of the interior of the Irish House of Commons in Dublin. Work on this, part of the world’s first purpose-built parliament, began in 1729 to designs by Sir Edward Lovett Pearce. The engraving was made in 1767 by the artist Peter Mazell after a drawing by architect Rowland Omer. It is a valuable source of information about how the House of Commons looked since the original domed chamber was destroyed by fire in 1792 and, for the last years of the Irish parliament’s life prior to the 1800 Act of Union, replaced by a simpler structure. The engraving hangs on the stairs of Furness, County Kildare (the upper landing window can be seen reflected in the glass): appropriate because in the second half of the 18th century the house was owned by Richard Nevill who, like his father and grandfather before him, sat as an M.P. in the Irish House of Commons.

Mr Speaker

Apr28

Most visitors to Collon, County Louth are likely to pass swiftly on their way, unaware the house on the north-east corner of the village’s crossroads has powerful links with a pivotal moment in our history when the country likewise stood at a crossroad: the 1800 Act of Union. This building, known as Collon House, was the birthplace and lifelong residence of John Foster, last speaker of the Irish House of Commons.
The Fosters are believed to have been of English origin, coming from Cumberland to settle in this country sometime around the time of Charles II’s Restoration: the name of a Samuel Foster appears in the Hearth Money return (by which one shilling was paid for every firehearth or stove in a dwelling) for the parish of Dunleer, County Louth in 1666. Samuel Foster’s son Anthony, named as a burgess of Dunleer in 1683, seems to have been a small tenant farmer in the area but his son John studied law, married well and started to acquire land, much of it formerly belonging to an impecunious branch of the Moore family. By the time of his death in 1747 he had built up an estate of some 6,000 acres. This property included Collon where around 1740 John Foster’s son, another Anthony, built the family residence. Land ownership conveyed power and thus with his election as an M.P. in 1737 Anthony Foster was able to wrest control of the Dunleer borough over which he and his son thereafter retained until the abolition of the Irish parliament. Trained as a barrister, from 1760 to 1766 Anthony Foster held the Office of First Counsel to the Commissioners of the Revenue, before being appointed Lord Chief Baron of the Court of Exchequer, retiring from this position a year before his death in 1778.

John Foster’s biographer Anthony Malcolmson describes Anthony Foster as ‘an able man whose misfortune it has been to be overshadowed by an even abler son.’ This is evident in his enterprises in Collon and surrounding areas. Finding the land here in poor condition – he recalled it had been ‘a waste sheep walk, covered chiefly with heath, with some dwarf furze and fern’ – he carried out many improvements, not least through drainage. When the English agriculturalist Arthur Young published his Tour of Ireland in 1780 he called Anthony Foster a ‘great improver, a title more deserving estimation than that of a great general or a great minister,’ someone who had ‘made a barren wilderness smile with cultivation, planted it with people and made those people happy,’ altogether a man whose work on his estate was ‘of a magnitude I have never heard of before.’
Anthony Foster gained a patent to hold a weekly market in Collon as well as two annual fairs, and the grounds of his house, in which he built greenhouses in 1763 for the production of exotic fruits, became renowned for their variety of trees and shrubs: this interest in botany would be inherited by his son who is credited with introducing the copper beech to Ireland. However, all this land acquisition and improvement came at a price, and as early as 1740 John Foster the elder was concerned over his level of indebtedness. The family never managed to become solvent and by 1810 his grandson John was estimated to have debts of £72,000. As we shall see, this helps to explain the relative modesty of Collon House.

John Foster was born in 1740, on other words precisely around the time Collon House was being built by his father. Like the latter, he sought to improve the family estate, developing a linen industry in the area, building mills and encouraging Protestant weavers to settle in Collon. Also following the example of Anthony Foster he studied law and was first elected to parliament in 1761. Noted for his interest in the economic and commercial betterment of this country, he was involved in successfully ‘regulating Ireland’s external trade with Great Britain, with other parts of the Empire, with the United States, and with France’. In 1777 he served as Chairman of the Committee of Supply and Ways and Means before succeeding his cousin and brother-in-law Walter Hussey de Burgh as Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1784. In that year parliament passed his corn law, ‘granting large bounties on the exportation of corn and imposing heavy duties on its importation.’ According to the 19th century historian William Lecky, ‘This law is one of the capital facts in Irish history. In a few years it changed the face of the land and made Ireland to a great extent an arable instead of a pasture country.’
Foster only remained in the Exchequer a year before becoming Speaker of the Irish House of Commons in 1785, the final man to hold this position. His understanding of Ireland and her particular circumstances made him a leading opponent of the Act of Union. ‘I declare from my soul,’ he declared when the abolition of the Irish parliament was first proposed, ‘that if England were to give us all her revenues, I could not barter for them the free constitution of my country.’ He was forced to preside over the debate in the Commons for its own eradication, an occasion later recalled by Sir Jonah Barrington who wrote, ‘The Speaker rose slowly from that chair which had been the proud source of his honours and of his high character; for a moment he resumed his seat, but the strength of his mind sustained him in his duty, though his struggle was apparent.’ However, Foster refused to surrender the Speaker’s mace, declaring that “until the body that intrusted it to his keeping demanded it, he would preserve it for them.’ The mace was eventually offered for sale by his descendants in 1937 and bought by the Bank of Ireland. It has ever since remained in that organisation’s premises, the former Irish parliament building.

It is often proposed as evidence of the Fosters’ prudence that they did not indulge in building a lavish country mansion. But the fact that they remained in Collon might just be due as much to ongoing indebtedness as to financial sagacity. And they were not without other properties, having a residence in central Dublin (essential for any member of Parliament) as well as one on the outskirts of the capital (Merville, now part of the University College Dublin campus, but its original owners remembered in the name of adjacent Foster Avenue). Furthermore in the 1770s a short distance from Collon they would build themselves a pleasure pavilion called Oriel Temple and John Foster leased in perpetuity another house in the county, Rathescar Lodge which likewise still stands although much enlarged.
Nevertheless, the principal Foster residence remained that in Collon which, as built by Anthony c.1740 was a exceptionally extended version of the traditional Irish ‘long house’, in this case running two storeys and eighteen bays. It seems to have comprised a series of long, low rooms, none very substantial. Many of these survive, as can be seen in the photographs above and testify to the determinedly modest condition of the family’s living conditions: when Anthony Foster invited a cousin to stay around 1766 he warned that a shared room should be expected, presumably due to the number of other guests due at the same time. Inside the design is determinedly simple, with surviving chimneypieces and cornicing almost devoid of decoration. The want of ostentation was not necessarily to everyone’s taste. Indeed John Foster’s own daughter Anna, Lady Dufferin later wrote that arrangements in Collon House were ‘so uncomfortable as soon to banish all visitors, even of our own family.’ This would change somewhat after Anthony Foster’s death when his son inherited the house and embarked on a programme of aggrandisement.

The original Collon House ran east-west facing onto what is now the main road from Drogheda to Kells, County Meath but was then open countryside. Around the late 1770s John Foster enlarged the building at its western end, adding an additional storey to the final five bays and then to the immediate north creating a substantial entrance hall, high-ceilinged saloon and, behind these two, a stairhall lit by two big round-headed windows as it turns upon itself to climb to the upper floors. These windows look out on a courtyard around which run the various original outbuildings and service quarters. The proportions in John Foster’s addition are more generous, the cornicing and chimneypieces more elaborate but at the same time the earlier element of cautious restraint has not been forsaken: even in its late 18th century adjunct the house holds onto a certain self-effacement, all the more surprising since first Mrs Foster and then her husband were granted peerages.
The Fosters likewise held on to Collon House and its estate, although later generations, who became Viscounts Massereene, tended to spend the greater part of their time in County Antrim. Thus Collon House was neglected and indeed the more easterly part of the property internally separated from the main part of the building, hence today it runs to seven bays. In his biography of John Foster Anthony Malcolmson records that when he first visited the house in 1977 it was in ‘a fairly ruinous state.’ Having since changed residents a couple of times, Collon House has in recent years undergone extensive and meticulous restoration and, one suspects, now looks better than it did even when occupied by the Fosters. To give just one example the present owners panelled the dining room and thereby greatly improved its appearance; they have also created rather splendid gardens, a recollection of those made by Anthony Foster, as can be seen below. Today Collon House is in splendid shape. Visitors ought not to rush through the village but consider lingering there in order to experience the abiding spirit of the last Speaker of the Irish House of Commons.

Collon House is now open for guests. Further information can be found at: http://www.collonhouse.com/index.html

Down Memory Lane

Apr26

An early 20th century house party photographed on the steps of Moore Abbey, County Kildare. On the site of a mediaeval abbey and from c.1699 home to successive generations of the Moore family, Earls (and for a period Marquesses) of Drogheda, the building is significant for being one of the earliest examples of the gothick style in Ireland: at the request of the sixth earl, in 1767 Christopher Myers ‘beautifully repaired the ancient abbey by enlarging the windows, placing a new roof, and recompartitioning the whole; preserving however the external walls and original form, except somewhat lengthening the eastern front.’ (Anthologia Hibernica III, February 1794) It underwent further alterations in the 19th century before being sold by the Moores in 1945 to the Sisters of Charity and subjected to much redevelopment. In this group photograph taken with the garden front as backdrop, the moustachioed gentleman sitting on the steps and holding a dog is the dealer and art collector Sir Hugh Lane. Next Tuesday, April 29th at 10.30 am I shall be giving a talk on Lane at the National Gallery of Ireland, focussing on his too-brief tenure as Director of that institution. Admission is free.

The Irish Aesthete

This is not an Oxymoron