In the Vernacular

Oct14

The Irish Aesthete usually features houses that are somewhat larger than average but this week, by way of change, we turn our attention to a building of decidedly modest proportions. The townland of Ballilogue in County Kilkenny enjoys likewise humble status, located down a laneway with seemingly little to distinguish it from thousands of similar spots across the country. Also like so many other places, it was once more densely populated than is now the case. The 1901 national census records twenty-two houses in the townland, presumably all of them simple dwellings unremarkable except for the number of occupants. In one of these properties, for example, Cornelius Meaney, then aged 59 and one imagines a widower, lived alone. Not far away dwelt another member of the family John, together with his wife Bridget and their two sons, James and John aged two and one respectively. Ten years later, when the next census was taken, the household of Cornelius (now listed as being 70) had grown considerably: his 74-year old sister, another Bridget, lived with him, as did the younger Bridget by then the mother of seven children, the eldest (James) being twelve and Mary the youngest just three. Either her husband John had died in the meantime or had gone elsewhere in search of work to support his family. So the house where Cornelius lived alone in 1901 had eleven occupants in 1911, since the census also records the presence of a 29-year old servant called Michael Dunne, presumably a farmhand.

By the 1911 census the number of occupied dwellings in Ballilogue had halved to eleven, with sixty-eight people living in the townland. A number of them were further members of the extended Meaney family, including 54-year old Patrick, together with his wife Mary, their five children and Edward Flynn who, although aged just fourteen, was already listed as being a ‘servant.’ All eight lived in the house shown here, the origins of which are believed to date back to the 1700s although subject to many changes since. In her truly excellent 1993 book on Irish Country Furniture, Claudia Kinmonth notes ‘By the nineteenth century in Ireland, the term cottage was used disparagingly, mainly by visiting English. The term is not used in this text as it was considered derogatory by country people, who called their homes houses, regardless of size and status.’ Accordingly we shall here refer to the Meaney House, not least because so it remained until only ten years ago, inhabited by successive generations of the same family before being acquired by the present owners.

To quote from another splendid book, A Lost Tradition: The Nature of Architecture in Ireland written by Niall McCullough and Valerie Mulvin in 1989, typical Irish houses in the vernacular style ‘have a familiar character, cramped, linear spaces set out on a line of doors without beginning or end – in the manner of a Baroque palace with its rooms en enfilade.’ That link between Baroque palaces and humble Irish dwellings may seem fanciful, yet it is often the case that even the most unpretentious of houses derives inspiration from a grander type. McCullough and Mulvin continue by observing how these little buildings ‘have a natural classic balance in the arrangement of simple materials and structure, in the proportion of gables, the relationship between thick white walls and small square windows, in the heavy oversailing roofs and primitive trabeaten doorways.’ This perfectly describes the character of the Meaney House, which is typical of the dwellings occupied by the majority of this country’s population for hundreds of years, although compared to many of the others it can be considered relatively large and well-appointed.

Traditional house types differed somewhat across Ireland, not least according to whatever materials were available for their construction, and how prosperous was the region. With regard to this part of the country, the Meaney House displays some familiar features of the Irish domestic dwelling, beginning with an entrance placed at the centre of the front and given a small porch in order to shield the interior from the worst effects of our weather. One then steps straight into the main space which, as was almost always the case, is dominated by a large hearth. This was used for cooking purposes (note the crane which allowed kettles and pots to be swung over the fire) but also provided a focal point for sociability: residents and visitors alike gathered here and the large recess beneath a hooded canopy supported by a massive beam running the width of the house allowed everyone to enjoy additional warmth. Immediately behind this is the house’s best room, the equivalent of a parlour, often kept for use only on special occasions and in the Meaney House distinguished by having a cast iron chimneypiece. On the other side of the central room are two bedrooms, with a ladder staircase in one providing access to another sleeping chamber immediately beneath the roof.

Another common feature of these houses was the versatility of their furnishings. Because space was at a premium and occupancy levels high, very often items served several purposes. The most obvious example of this is the settle bed, which acts as a bench during the day but then at night the seat can be opened, the bedlinen stored inside spread out and a place for sleep thereby created. Dressers, on which china, kitchen and dining utensils would be kept, might have a lower section open except for a series of bars: chickens would be kept here at night to keep them save from predators. A side effect of this was that hens, benefitting from the warm environment, continued to lay eggs all winter.
Inside the Meaney House, as these pictures show, recesses in the walls were also used for storage, the doors’ interiors lined with pieces of patterned paper: those close to the hearth would often hold food that needed to be kept dry, such as tea, sugar and salt. The utilisation of every available space emphasised utility and frugality, but also a desire to maximise comfort in our relatively harsh climate.

Today the Meaney House is part of a larger agglomeration of buildings restored and developed by the present owners as a retreat where guests may come to stay. When they acquired the house, it still held the greater part of the former owners’ possessions and a decision was taken to retain them in situ and to preserve the interior as an example of how most of our forebears lived until relatively recently. As little as possible was done to disrupt the building’s character or to alter its accumulated patina. For example the corrugated roof, certainly a 20th century intervention under which the older thatch still survives, was not changed. Similarly inside the house the concrete floor – again probably laid at the start of the last century as it would previously have been just compacted earth – has not been touched. The old pieces of furniture remain in place, as do most of the household goods and so forth. Some pieces previously kept out of sight are now on show: plates and platters have been arranged on one of the bedroom walls while pieces of broken china discovered in the immediate vicinity are arranged in a circle and framed. Likewise an assortment of abandoned footwear found outside has been placed on the shelves of an old pine hanging cupboard. These pieces, literal objets trouvés, further enhance the experience of visiting this little house and improve our understanding of its former residents. The Meaney House demonstrates that despite their poverty our ancestors could build with superior taste and a better understanding of the Irish environment than is usually the case today.

For more information about the Meaney House and the many other marvellous facilities at Ballilogue, see: http://www.ballilogue.com

And the Winner is…

Oct13

I am delighted to advise that last night The Irish Aesthete was declared Ireland’s Best Arts & Culture Blog 2013. Many thanks to those awarding the titles and also to all readers whose encouragement and interest are always so appreciated.
The accompanying illustration depicts the Conolly Folly, designed by Richard Castle and built at the request of the widowed Katherine Conolly in order to provide relief to the local poor during he famine of 1740-41. It is, of course, also the symbol of the Irish Georgian Society.

A Spouse’s Souvenir

Oct12

Dating from c.1816 this watercolour is deemed to be J.M.W Turner’s only Irish view and shows Clontarf Castle, County Dublin. The picture was painted for one of the artist’s closest friends, Walter Fawkes of Farnley Hall, Yorkshire who owned a large collection of Turner’s work. The watercolour is of particular interest because Turner never visited Ireland and therefore must have been working from an image of Clontarf Castle produced by someone else; the connection is that Fawkes’ second wife Maria Sophia Vernon – who he married precisely around the time this watercolour was produced – had grown up at Clontarf Castle, so presumably it was intended to act as a souvenir of her childhood home. Twenty years later the building, originally constructed in the 12th century by the Knights Templar and acquired by the Vernons in the second half of the 17th century, was very extensively remodelled by William Vitruvius Morrison at the request of Maria Sophia’s nephew, John Edward Venables Vernon. Thus the picture also serves as a guide to what the house looked like in its earlier incarnation. Today Clontarf is a suburb of Dublin and the castle, greatly enlarged, an hotel. It is possible to gain a sense of what the building and surrounding lands were like a century ago by reading ‘A Georgian Boyhood’ the third part of Cyril Connolly’s wonderful Enemies of Promise published in 1938. His mother was a Vernon and he therefore spent holidays as a child in the house. Estimated to fetch €20,000-€40,000, the watercolour is due to be auctioned next Monday by Adam’s as part of its country house sale at Slane Castle, County Meath (see: http://www.adams.ie).
Update: the Turner watercolour of Clontarf Castle sold for €65,000.

About Last Knight

Oct9

The late Desmond FitzGerald has been mentioned here before more than once (Knight and Day, October 1st 2012 and Shanid A Boo, July 8th last). I am now happy to advise that my new book The Last Knight which celebrates Desmond’s many achievements has been published and is available from the Irish Georgian Society (see: http://www.igs.ie). Thanks to the generosity of a number of benefactors, all proceeds from the sale of this work go to benefit the IGS.

Faith of Our Fathers

Oct7

In his 1997 book Grace’s Card, the late Charles Chenevix Trench debunked the notion that after the passage of Penal Laws at the start of the 18th century all Irish landowners who remained loyal to the Roman Catholic faith were deprived of their property. Certainly a great many members of the old order were dispossessed of their land, and often left the country as a result. But this was by no means always the case; in fact, as Trench demonstrates, some families were able to hold onto their ancient estates and even improve their circumstances through advantageous marriage, even though they were not permitted to hold public office or sit in the Irish Houses of Parliament. Having a single heir was certainly helpful: where there were several male children born into the same family, it was possible one of them would join the Established Church and then make claim to the estate. This happened, for example, with the O’Conors of Balanagare: in 1777 the then-O’Conor Don, Charles – a notable antiquarian – found himself fighting for retention of the family property after his younger brother Hugh became an Anglican (in the end Charles won, and Hugh returned to Catholicism). But there are many other instances of families remaining firmly in possession of their land, such being the case in Meath with the Prestons (as Gormanston Ireland’s premier Viscountcy) and Plunkett (as Fingall Ireland’s premier Earldom). Both these old estates are now broken up but in a neighbouring county another family continues to practise the faith of its forebears and to hold onto some of its ancestral lands.

Ballinlough Castle, County Westmeath has been rightly described as offering ‘all that anyone might hope for in an Irish country house. A wooded lakeside setting, a charming and eccentric house of several building periods and a family history of distinction.’ To begin with the family, originally their surname was O’Reilly and they have lived in this spot since the Middle Ages. In 1795 Hugh O’Reilly, despite being a Roman Catholic, was created a baronet but then in 1812 he changed his name to Nugent in order to receive an inheritance from his maternal uncle. It would seem not everyone approved of this switch of nomenclature, since the phrase went around, ‘Better an Old Reilly than a New Gent.’ Nevertheless ever since the family has been called Nugent.
As for their house, high above the main entrance can be seen a carving of the O’Reilly coat of arms carrying the date 1614 but this is considered not to be accurate. It may be that the original southernmost section of the castle is older, perhaps a late-Mediaevel fortified tower although subsequent changes make it hard to assign precise dates to this part of the building. In any case, the block looks to have been modernised in the first half of the 18th century when it was transformed into a two-storey, seven bay house with breakfront centre. At the same time long narrow windows were inserted and larger rooms created inside.

Around 1790 the previously mentioned Hugh O’Reilly chose to enlarge the house by adding a central attic with castellations to the old block and then a range immediately to the north featuring slender corner towers. As is ever the case in Ireland, we cannot be certain who was responsible for the design: a chimney piece in the drawing room is identical to one in Curraghmore, County Waterford known to have been the work of James Wyatt, so his name is sometimes proposed as architect. More frequently however the extension at Ballinlough is attributed to an amateur enthusiast called Thomas Wogan Browne who lived at Castle Browne, County Kildare, which from 1788 he had elaborately reconstructed in the gothic style. Two years after his death in 1812, Castle Browne was sold by Wogan Browne’s brother (a Roman Catholic and general in the army of the King of Saxony) to the Jesuit Order which opened there a boarding school for boys known ever since as Clongowes Wood College.
The extension at Ballinlough bears similarities with similar work carried out around the same time at Malahide Castle, County Dublin; the latter property was then occupied by Hugh O’Reilly’s sister Margaret who would later be created Baroness Talbot of Malahide. Hogan Browne is believed to have been the designer of this, and therefore Ballinlough’s extension is likewise attributed to him.

While the rooms in the newer section of Ballinlough are certainly very fine (and will be given consideration here on another occasion) all today’s photographs are of one particular area of the house: its glorious double-height entrance hall with stairs climbing to an unusual bridge gallery. Presumably dating from around the time the building received its first refurbishment, the decoration is exuberant if on occasion somewhat unsophisticated, as though whoever was in charge had discovered a manual on current taste in design and applied its contents liberally throughout. This is part of the hall’s charm: its sheer gusto. The oak panelling is relatively restrained – note the exceptionaly tall and slender lugged door and window frames – but a freer hand has been employed for the carving on the stairs with their fluted balusters and foliate scrolls on both sides of the gallery base. This work is supplemented on the upper sections of the walls, the plasterwork embellished by swags and drapes of foliage and flowers and diverse musical instruments. In this instance, Casey and Rowan in their Buildings of Ireland guide to North Leinster reference similarities to nearby Drewstown, County Meath which is attributed to Francis Bindon but perhaps Ballinlough’s entrance hall was merely influenced by what had been done in the former house rather than designed by the same person.

As all these images indicate, Ballinlough Castle survives in wonderful condition but the house was almost lost in the last century. When Sir Hugh Nugent inherited the estate in 1927 he found it in poor condition and much reduced in size by the Land Commission which proposed to demolish the family home. Fortunately this did not come to pass and today Ballinlough is occupied by the eighth baronet, Nick along with his wife Alice and their children. They host a variety of events on the estate during the year, not least the highly successful Body & Soul Festival each summer.
To conclude with one more picture, the portrait reflected in a mirror below hangs on the stairs at Ballinlough and represents George Nugent-Temple-Grenville, 1st Marquess of Buckingham who in the 1780s served as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and while in this country established by Royal Warrant the Order of St Patrick. His wife was Lady Mary Nugent, who as her name indicates was related to the family at Ballinlough. A Roman Catholic, in 1798 Lady Mary invited the Reverend Charles O’Conor to become her chaplain and librarian at Stowe, her husband’s seat in Buckinghamshire. Fr Charles was the grandson of the Charles O’Conor already mentioned. He was also brother of another O’Conor Don, Matthew another notable historian and, like the Nugents of Ballinlough, a loyal adherent to the faith of his fathers.

For more information on Ballinlough, see: http://www.ballinloughcastle.ie
Ballinlough will be hosting the third Katie Nugent Duathlon on Sunday October 20th. To sign up or to find out more information about this event, see: http://precisiontiming.primo-solutions.co.uk/ps/event/KatieNugentDuathlon2013

The Irish Aesthete Recommends V

Oct5

A photograph of Dromore Castle, County Limerick built in the late 1860s for William Pery, third Earl of Limerick to the designs of Edward William Godwin (also responsible for James Whistler’s ‘aesthetic’ house on Tite Street, London). On a hill overlooking a lake and with views across the Shannon to County Clare, the castle looked ravishing but suffered from chronic damp (seemingly paint never stayed long on the walls) and was not occupied by the Perys for more than a few decades. The family sold Dromore in 1939 and since the middle of the last century it has grown steadily more ruinous: the roof was removed in the 1950s in order to avoid paying tax on the building. Today it can still be seen, a striking sight some twelve miles west of Limerick city.
Dating from around 1920 this photograph was taken by Franz S. Haselbeck, the son of German emigrants who had settled in Limerick in the early 1900s. Haselbeck was a professional photographer who lived and worked in the area until his death in 1973 and now a book of his images has been published by The Collins Press. With an introduction by his granddaughter who has been responsible for preserving the material, Franz S. Haselbeck’s Ireland includes pictures spanning the entire course of his long career, and shows scenes of a world which has since disappeared, many of them taken in the years before Independence. What makes the work especially fascinating are the photographs of buildings which subsequently fell into serious disrepair, not just Dromore but also Mount Shannon House in Castleconnell, immediately east of Limerick city. Acquired and greatly enlarged in the late 18th century by John FitzGibbon, first Earl of Clare (notoriously one of the most hated men of his generation), the house and its contents were sold by the family in the 1880s when they had run through all their money. After changing hands on a couple of occasions, it was burnt out in 1920 during the Troubles, so the picture below, which shows the rear of the building with its fine conservatory intact, must have been taken before that date. There are many other such photographs in the book, not all of them featuring country houses but all meriting close study.

The Wall of China

Oct2

A view of the contents of a cabinet in the dining room at Borris House, County Carlow. Diffused light through windows to the left disposes a radiance over an assortment of bowls, plates and vases displayed on the mahogany shelves. More on Borris in a few weeks’ hence.
And in other news, The Irish Aesthete has been included amongst the finalists for Ireland’s 2013 Blog Awards in two categories: Best Arts & Culture, and Best Newcomer. The winners will be announced on October 12th next.

Splendours and Follies

Sep30

Driving along a minor road in south County Kildare, one’s eye is caught by the sight of ruins rising high above a field of maize. These roofless blocks were once the stables attached to and now all that remain of Belan, seat of the Stratford family, Earls of Aldborough. That Belan was once rather splendid cannot be doubted: in 1786 George Powell who was related to the family through marriage, wrote ‘The Mansion House of Belan is most Magnificent as is also the Demesne thereto, containing 12 porters Lodges Erected by the present Earl at the six Approaches, who hath also added thereto a Fruitery, Green, Hot and Tea Houses, a Square of Offices, a Chappel & a Theatre & Expended near £8000 on the Estate…’
Almost all of this is now gone, and the only evidence of Belan’s former resplendence are the aforementioned stables, the shell of an octagonal tea house, a few obelisks and a small domed temple. For once, however, decline and fall occurred not during the last century but earlier and while members of the Stratford family were still, if only nominally, great landowners.

Originally from Warwickshire, the Stratfords seem to have settled in Ireland about the time of Charles II’s restoration in 1660. Within a few years Robert Stratford had acquired land around Baltinglass, County Wicklow and thereafter their rise was assured, not least through the ability to return two members to the Irish House of Commons. By 1690 they already owned property at Belan, since in July of that year Edward Stratford found himself successively entertaining the two rival Kings James and William, his personal sympathies lying with the latter. As William ultimately proved the victor, the Stratfords’ political and financial status was further strengthened. Edward Stratford’s third son John (who was made first Earl of Aldborough shortly before he died in 1777) inherited Belan around 1740 and soon afterwards commenced either to build anew or to enlarge his residence there. The architects for this property are held to have been Richard Castle and Francis Bindon.
We cannot say for certain what the house looked like since paintings in which it features by William Ashford (from which the engraving at the top of this piece is taken) and Francis Wheatley (see the very last picture, showing the second Earl reviewing the Aldborough Volunteers at Belan) display differences that suggest to some extent they reflected the owner’s aspirations for the building rather than its actual appearance. Nevertheless we do know the main block, large and plain, was 120 feet long and 44 feet deep, of three storeys with a gabled attic and projecting end bays. To its right were the pair of parallel stable blocks that still survive (albeit in ruinous state), the first of them linked to the house by a curved portico.

Here are some extracts from the delightful reminiscences of Georgina Sartoris (née Lyster) published in the Journal of the Kildare Archaeological Society in January 1908 during which she recalls visiting Belan as a little girl in the 1830s:…’a fine stone mansion, a magnificent flight of granite steps, with two stone vases at the top, led to the entrance door. Though uninhabited for fully ten years, the house was in perfect repair, no trace of damp or decay and to all appearance, might have been lived in a week before. I have not a distinct recollection of all the rooms; but the dining room is fresh in my memory, also the saloon, and his late lordship’s bedroom. The dining room, not very large was panelled, family portraits being set in the panelling. I was too young to care much about them, but feel sure they were all of men. Had there been lovely ladies or pretty children amongst them, I should have remembered them. The saloon was lovely, with a polished floor of narrow oak boards…. on one occasion (why I know not) my sister and myself occupied his late lordship’s bedroom, very comfortable it was of moderate size, the fireplace like those of the other bedrooms surrounded with the prettiest tiles I have ever seen, the ground white with pink and blue landscapes, figures and flowers on it; a fine four post mahogany bedstead, Indian chintz curtains, some Chippendale chairs, and a wardrobe are all I remember of its furniture…The grounds of Belan were very beautiful, and of considerable extent. On one side though not seen from the house, were the celebrated fish ponds (not that in my time there was a fish in them), large and deep, the trees around them giving them a secluded and fascinating look. Here, on hot summers’ evenings, we used to sit and watch the dragon flies. I had never seen dragonflies before, and could not associate them with flies – I could only think of them as tiny winged spirits, whispering messages from afar to the reeds and irises which grew at the water’s edge. The gardens were at some distance from the house, and were large and walled in. I do not think I was often in them. What struck me most was the enormous quantity of lily of the valley. I have never seen anything like it elsewhere and its scent lingers with me still…’

The fall of the house of Stratford was as spectacular as its rise. The second Earl, a man of great energy, not only greatly improved the house and demesne at Belan but was also responsible for developing Stratford Place in London and for building the immense (and now sadly dilapidated) Aldborough House in Dublin in the years preceding his death in 1801. Although twice married, he had no children and so a younger brother inherited. The last member of the family to live at Belan, he was likewise childless meaning everything passed to another brother, the fourth Earl who preferred to occupy a house elsewhere on the estate, Stratford Lodge (subsequently destroyed by fire) and who abandoned Belan to an agent more interested in helping himself than in looking after his employer’s property. The next heir, Mason Gerard Stratford, fifth Earl was a hopeless spendthrift who, when short of funds, would visit London money lenders with a gun and threaten to shoot himself if they did not give him cash. He was also a bigamist, possibly even a trigamist, and on his death the eldest son from one of these marriages had trouble claiming a right to the title and what remained of the family property. Sixth and final Earl of Aldborough, he died without heirs in 1875.
By that date Belan was already in poor condition and some thirty years later Mrs Sartoris, who remembered the house intact, could write that ‘Beautiful Belan lies in ruins, the wind blowing where it listheth, sighs over the desolate grounds and gardens once so beautiful, a herd lives in the yard, sole occupant of that once lovely demesne.’ As late as the 1940s the main walls of the house still stood, but this shell was subsequently swept away. Today only the remnants of the stables survive to remind us of what once stood on this site and to serve as a warning that nothing is eternal.

Castles in the Air

Sep25

An old photograph of Shanganagh Castle, County Dublin showing the house when all its external decoration was still intact (some has since been removed/lost). Although there have been buildings of that name on the site since the early 15th century, the core of the present structure dates from c.1760 when a plain classical residence was constructed. At the start of the 19th century the property was bought by Major-General Sir George Cockburn who in 1805 commissioned Sir Richard Morrison to remodel the house: the addition of what has been accurately described as ‘a profusion of battlements and turrets’ transformed the place into a fantastical toy fort. The interiors were more restrained not least because Cockburn, who was something of an aesthetically-minded career soldier and had acquired a collection of antiquities, sculptures and paintings during his military career, required a top-lit gallery in which these could be displayed.
As with so many Irish houses, the history of Shanganagh in the last century was not a happy one: after serving for some time as a Church of Ireland college of education it was converted into an open prison and remained such until closed ten years ago. Since then the building has suffered from being left vacant, but earlier this month Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council announced it had acquired Shanganagh and immediately surrounding acreage as part of a complex land-exchange programme. Inevitably the property is now in poor condition and so remedial work must be undertaken to make it secure. One awaits further developments, not least whether Shanganagh will be returned to the appearance it presents in this photograph.

The Luck of the Barrys

Sep24

These two portraits of James Barry, fourth Earl of Barrymore and his third wife Lady Anne Chichester are being offered for sale today at Sotheby’s in London. The Barrys were an old, but relatively impoverished Irish family although their finances were greatly improved by the fourth Earl making a succession of advantageous marriages. In the later 18th century they also became noted for their eccentricity: the seventh (and penultimate) Earl who died at the age of 23 in 1793 was one of the period’s most infamous rakes, commonly known as ‘Hellgate.’ (His sister was nicknamed ‘Billingsgate’ owing to her dreadful language, while his younger brothers were respectively called ‘Cripplegate’ due to a club foot and ‘Newgate’ since, as it was a women’s prison, he had never spent time there; in 1791 James Gillray produced a splendid caricature of the three men mocking their various distinctive characteristics). Their rackety lives were not dissimilar from that of another man with the same surname, Redmond Barry, eponymous hero of Thackeray’s 1844 picaresque novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon, and like him they all ended badly.
Meanwhile descendants of the fourth Earl’s fourth son became Smith Barrys and inherited a large estate on Fota Island, County Cork at the centre of which stood what was originally a hunting lodge. This building was enlarged and embellished c.1820 to the designs of Sir Richard Morrison and his son William Vitruvius Morrison. In their charming George II rococo fames, the two portraits (that above judged to be from the studio of Sir Godfrey Kneller, that below attributed to Philip Hussey) formerly hung in Fota House which today is managed by the Irish Heritage Trust and open to the public. How wonderful it would be if this tale concluded better than did that of the Barrys, and after today the portraits once more returned to the house…

Update: on Tuesday, 24th September the two portraits sold for ₤60,000 and ₤43,750 respectively.