Where Turkeys Voted for Christmas


Like their English equivalent, for many centuries Ireland’s Houses of Parliament lacked purpose-built quarters, instead meeting in various locations, not least a hall in Dublin Castle. However, following Charles II’s restoration to the throne in 1660, the government leased Chichester House, a residence in central Dublin dating from the reign of Elizabeth I which in the early 17th century had been used as the country’s law courts. Overlooking Hoggen (subsequently College Green) and adjacent to Trinity College Dublin, despite its eminent position the building soon proved to be unsatisfactory for its new purpose and by 1728 a decision had been taken that it should be replaced. This was despite, or perhaps because, of the country’s economic circumstances then being in a poor condition: Edward McParland has proposed that William Conolly, then Speaker of the House of Commons and likely one of the driving forces behind the project (although he died while work on the site was ongoing) would have seen the new parliament building’s construction as reflationary; in 1721 George Berkeley, specifically mentioning such an undertaking, argued that it would ‘employ many Hands’ and at the same time ‘keep the Mony circulating at home…’ Likewise, when finished, Robert Howard, Bishop of Elphin, while thinking the Houses of Parliament were ‘too fine for us,’ consoled himself with the thought that at least ‘it hath chiefly employed our own hands.’ Once it had been decided to embark on this enterprise, progress was fast. In January 1728 a building committee was empowered to receive plans, and less than a month later it sought these from Edward Lovett Pearce: he submitted these in early March. The foundation stone was laid in February 1729 and by November of that year, ‘the Walls and Roof…are now near finished and compleat.’ In October 1731 the two houses of the Irish Parliament assembled for the first time in their newly completed chambers. 





Described by Christine Casey as ‘arguably the most accomplished public set-piece of the Palladian style in these islands,’ Edward Lovett Pearce’s building was also the first purpose-built bicameral assembly in Europe. Overlooking College Green, the former Houses of Parliament has a forecourt dominated by a towering Ionic colonnade of Portland stone in front of Granite walls. The only original decoration to this austere facade is the royal coat of arms set into the tympanum (the three figures above, of Hibernia flanked by Fidelity and Commerce, were added in the early 19th century after the building had changed purposes). There were separate entrances for the Houses of Commons and Lords respectively and while the former chamber no longer exists ((it was, in any case, badly damaged by fire in 1792 before being dismantled barely a decade later), the latter has survived with relatively few changes. In Francis G James’s Lords of the Ascendancy, his book on the Irish House of Lords 1600-1800, the author notes that the number of this country’s peers was never very great. In the first three quarters of the 18th century, there were between 100 and 150 families possessing Irish titles, but James notes that only 60 percent of these spent a substantial amount of time in Ireland (some of them had Irish titles but no land or connections here, others were Roman Catholics or émigrés, unable or unwilling to take the Oath of Allegiance to the Crown). Accordingly, the number of peers attending the Irish House of Lords was often considerably less than 100, to which can be added the 22 Lords Spiritual (four Archbishops and 18 Bishops) who also had a right to seats in the upper house, although again many of them did not attend regularly. This explains the relatively small size of the House of Lords, since it never had to hold too many people. The room is tripartite, with an entrance area, the main chamber and the throne apse. Tall and barrel-vaulted with a coffered ceiling, it is lit by thermal windows at either end. The entrance area and apse are entirely panelled in oak with round-headed niches and engaged Ionic columns. The main chamber is panelled in the lower section, above which are giant Corinthian pilasters on either side of walls dominated by a pair of tapestries. Commissioned for the space in 1728, they depict William III at the Battle of the Boyne (above the oak chimneypiece) and the Siege of Derry. When assembled, the peers would have sat here upon benches and wool-sacks. No image of them doing so appears to exist (whereas there is a painting of 1780 by Francis Wheatley that depicts the Irish House of Commons in session). 




In the last quarter of the 18th century, Ireland’s parliament sought to exercise its independent authority to a greater extent than had previously been the case, leading to a series of political crises as the government in London sought to curtail Irish legislators’ power. In 1782, for example, what became known as ‘Grattan’s Parliament’ (after the Irish politician and orator Henry Grattan), succeeded in passing a series of acts that increased Ireland’s legislative and judicial independence. The onset of the French Revolution in 1789 and then an uprising – ultimately abortive but temporarily threatening – within Ireland in 1798, led the British government to fear that the country might escape from its authority altogether. Accordingly the decision was taken to concentrate all legislative power in Westminster, requiring the abolition of a separate Irish parliament. It took a couple of efforts – and a great deal of bribery – to achieve this result, not least because Ireland’s legislators had to approve the loss of their own authority (the phrase about turkeys voting for Christmas comes to mind). The Act of Union, as it was called, initially failed to win approval in the Irish House of Commons in January 1799, but a year (and a number of further bribes) later, the deed was done and the Irish Houses of Parliament ceased, of its own volition, to exist. In his Autobiographical Sketches, Thomas de Quincy recalled being in the House of Lords when it met for the last time, and he observed that when the order of abolition was announced, ‘no audible expression, no buzz nor murmur, nor susurrus even, testified the feelings which, doubtless lay rankling in many bosoms.; They had surrendered their power, he thought, ‘with nothing worth the name of a struggle, and no reward worth the name of an indemnification.’ In the aftermath of this act, an alternative use needed to be found for the splendid building on College Green, and in 1803 it was sold by the government to the Bank of Ireland for £40,000, on the understanding that changes would be made to the interior so that it could not revert to its former purpose. This work was undertaken sympathetically by architect Francis Johnston but while the old House of Commons was broken up, the House of Lords survived, for a long time being used as the bank’s board room. Today it is open to the public during weekday mornings and offers a glimpse into how and where Ireland’s parliament operated in the decades before voting itself out of existence. 

Just Dotey



Further to Monday’s piece on The Argory, County Armagh, (see Where Time Stands Still « The Irish Aesthete), to the north of the house and yards is an expansive lawn overlooking the adjacent river Blackwater. This concludes in a long, curved rampart of rock-faced masonry, at either end of which stands a little, square pavilion. While sloping ground means one sits higher on a bastion above the path below than does the other, the pair otherwise have the same decorative features, such as rusticated quoins and pyramidal roofing with central polygonal chimneystack. They are, to use an Irishism, just dotey*


*Dotey: meaning adorable or charming.

Where Time Stands Still



When Joshua MacGeough died in 1817, he left Drumsill House, County Armagh to his younger son Walter, but with the provision that his three daughters took precedence in occupying the property until they either married, died or moved elsewhere. In the event, none of the trio married (and the last of them lived until 1861), so Walter, who would change his surname to MacGeough Bond, decided to build a new residence for himself on land owned by the family elsewhere in the county. In 1819, he commissioned designs for a house from siblings John and Arthur Williamson; they were related by marriage to Francis Johnston and John had also worked for a time in Johnston’s office as a drawing clerk. Nevertheless, the house the brothers produced shows little of Johnston’s influence. Faced in Caledon sandstone, The Argory is long and low, a two-storey, seven bay building, the east front almost entirely plain except for a porch added a few years after the main building had been completed. The west-facing facade is more elaborate, with a central, two-stepped breakfront, the upper portion of which has a horned pediment, the lower distinguished by fluted Doric columns supporting an entablature. Below this a wide elliptical arch has a lion’s head serving as the keystone, its extended tongue taking the form of an acanthus leaf. The main block of The Argory had barely been completed in 1824 before work started on a service wing on the building’s north side (the house has no basement). Behind this wing are a series of enclosed yards. 






The interiors of The Argory, County Armagh appear to have changed little if at all over the past century or more, retaining much of their late-19th century decoration and furnishings: it is as though time has stood still. In standard tripartite fashion, on either side of the entrance hall lie the drawing  and dining rooms, both of which have elaborate overdoors added in the 1850s to the designs of Thomas Turner, those in the latter room featuring scallop shells filled with fruit. Similarly, both rooms have splendid white marble chimneypieces with carved centre panels, that in the drawing room depicting the Death of Cleopatra, while in the dining room Ceres can be seen reclining with her Horn of Plenty. To the rear of the house, what had originally been a morning room was subsequently converted into an inner hall, with a massive chimneypiece of black marble and, above the door leading to the front of the building, a plaster frieze depicting a battle between warriors and Amazons, its design derived from that found below the entablature on the Temple of Athena Nike in Athens. 






The bow-ended entrance hall of The Argory, County Armagh is dominated by a  cantilevered Portland stone staircase that snakes up to the first floor with brass balusters and mahogany handrail. The walls here are painted to imitate sheets of Siena marble while at the foot of the stairs is the original cast-iron stove of Greek pedestal design, topped by a copy of the Warwick Vase and installed in the house in the early 1820s. A wide landing on the first-floor accommodates a large cabinet organ, initially commissioned in 1822 from James Davis but following the latter’s retirement, the work passed to James Chapman Bishop who completed the instrument in 1824; it was thereafter played to accompany morning and evening prayers for the household. Although part of the original furnishings of The Argory, the organ’s dimensions meant cutting into the vaulted ceiling to accommodate it in this location. On either side of the landing, long corridors lead to a succession of bedrooms which, as elsewhere in the building, are still furnished in the style of the late 19th century. The Argory continued to be owned by the MacGeough Bond family until 1979 when it was presented to the National Trust. Last weekend, the trust celebrated the 200th anniversary of the house’s completion with a variety of events on the property.


Going into the Night



Tucked away in a corner of the graveyard at Ballynoe, County Cork: a mausoleum dedicated to members of the Nason family. It takes the form of a miniature temple, with arched entrance below pediment (containing a blind oculus) and flanked by two arched winows, the building constructed of rough hewn stone with ashlar employed for door and window surrounds. There were two branches of Nasons, living in different parts of the county, but in 1808 John Nason of Newtown (which lies close to Ballynoe) married Elizabeth Nason of Bettyville (a house east of Fermoy and since demolished), and this mausoleum appears to commemorate them and their descendants (one of whom, incidentally, was Kate Meyrick, née Nason, the notorious night club proprietress in 1920s London). A monument to Elizabeth Nason dominates the interior but a nearby plaque lists subsequent members of the family, the last of whom is given as being of Newtown Lodge in 1929. This house then passed out of Nason ownership and was recently offered for sale.


Langrishe Go Down


The Langrishe family were originally from Hampshire, where they lived for several centuries until one of their number, Lieutenant Hercules Langrishe, arrived in Ireland c.1650. His father was the first of the family to be given that distinctive first name (his sibling was called Lucullus). The younger Hercules had one son, John, who married no less than five times, his second wife being Alice Blayney, daughter of Henry Blayney, second Baron Blayney. She had previously been married to one Thomas Sandford, who held a long lease on lands at Knocktopher, County Kilkenny; following her own death, the lease was inherited by John Langrishe and finally in 1757 his only child (from a third marriage) Robert Langrishe completed the outright purchase of the fee simple of this property. His son, another Hercules, created a baronet in 1777, served as MP for Knocktopher for almost 40 years until the Irish Parliament was abolished in consequence of the Act of Union in 1800. A keen advocate of Irish legislative independence, he was also a supporter of Roman Catholic Relief: in 1792 Edmund Burke published his renowned Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe arguing the necessity for all remaining civil restrictions on Catholics to be removed. Following Sir Hercules Langrishe’s death in 1811, the baronetcy and Knocktopher estate were inherited by his eldest son Robert.




The name Knocktopher derives from the Irish ‘Cnoc an Tóchair’, meaning the Hill of the Causeway. Seemingly, it first appears in surviving records from the late-13th century Ormond Deeds, associated with the Butlers. That family was critical in the development of the area, although a Norman motte and castle were already developed here by one Griffin FitzWilliam in the closing decades of the 12th century (a telling indication of public attitudes to the country’s heritage is the fact that the motte, along with some masonry, survived until 1973 when the site was completely levelled). In 1312 the Butlers took possession of Knocktopher, thereafter making it one of their principal residences; in consequence, an urban settlement grew up around the castle and eventually in 1365 Edward III gave permission for a weekly market to be held there. In the previous decade, James Butler, second Earl of Ormonde had founded a religious house in Knocktopher for Carmelite friars. They remained there until the Dissolution of the Monasteries and in 1542 their property was granted by the English government first to Sir Patrick Barnewall, Solicitor General for Ireland, and then passed to Sir Nicholas White, Master of the Rolls and Privy Councillor. His family retained Knocktopher until 1677 when it was bought by Sandsfords and, as mentioned above, through marriage it then passed into the possession of the Langrishes who remained there until 1981.




As seen today, Knocktopher Abbey primarily dates from 1866 when commissioned by Sir James Langrishe to replace an older property on the site which seemingly had been largely destroyed by fire some years earlier. The architect responsible was John McCurdy, today best-known for his remodelling of Dublin’s Shelbourne Hotel. McCurdy’s output was eclectic: he also worked on the Museum Building in Trinity College Dublin and the Masonic Female Orphan School (now an hotel) in Ballsbridge, Dublin, as well as designing a number of private houses in diverse styles. At Knocktopher, evidently keen to emphasise the antiquity of the site, he opted for a loosely Gothic, asymmetrical manner, with suggestions of a French chateau, most notably in the three-storey entrance tower with Oriel window and steeply pitched roof. The building is faced in limestone ashlar, with granite used for door and lancet window dressings, the latter in bi- or tripartite arrangements. Further bipartite dormer windows are set into the roofline. What sets the house apart is that on the western side it incorporates parts of the medieval Carmelite priory, not least a great square tower of rough-hewn limestone and with window openings which may have been made by subsequent lay owners. Certainly a tall paired chimney stack suggests late 16th or early 17th century interventions and may hint at the appearance of the building lost to fire in the 19th century. But this must remain speculation, not least because access to the house’s interior was not possible. After being sold by the Langrishe family, Knocktopher Abbey was developed as a time share scheme. Today the service yard has been turned into a series of short-term self-catering units. A fascinating place that deserves closer study. 

A Charmer



Located on the outskirts of New Ross, County Wexford, Woodville dates from the first years of the 19th century and may have been built in 1807 when the property’s owner Edward Tottenham married Henrieta Alcock, daughter of Sir John Alcock; the Tottenhams had long been settled in this part of the country. Woodville’s site was clearly chosen because the land in front then drops away down to the river Barrow. However, this view was obscured in 1887 when the Dublin and South Eastern Railway opened a branch to New Ross, the line running along the banks of the river (the railway is long since closed). Of five bays and two storeys over basement, the house was originally two bays deep but was extended towards the end of the 19th century, with further alterations made during an extensive restoration in 2006. The Woodville estate was acquired by Patrick James Roche in 1876 and is still owned and occupied by his descendants who have developed charming and extensive gardens both in front and behind the main house. 


Period Piece


Back in 2010, while reviewing a biography of Derek Hill, the Irish Aesthete managed to affront a number of people by suggesting the artist’s reputation was less substantial than either he or his admirers might have wished. Indeed, some 24 years after his death, the question is likely to be asked in some circles: Derek who? Born in Southampton in 1916, after leaving school in 1933 Hill originally studied theatre design in Munich, before travelling eastwards through Russia, eventually visiting China and Japan. Returning to England, he took a job as costume designer at Sadlers Wells Theatre but then, encouraged by the couturier Edward Molyneux, he took up painting in a serious fashion. During the Second World War, he worked on a farm as a conscientious objector but still found time to paint and in 1943 had a one-man exhibition in London. In the aftermath of war, he spent a great deal of time in Italy, often staying with art historian Bernard Berenson at his villa I Tatti outside Florence. And he continued to paint, specialising in the genres of landscape and portraiture. Hill demonstrated a distinct aptitude for the former, especially when working on a small scale – in larger pictures he seemed to lose his way – and when presented with the kind of rugged prospect found in the north-west of Ireland, where he spent more and more time. The influence of Corot was always evident in this work, aligned with the beneficial impact of Cezanne. His portraits are more problematic, veering between acute character study and superficial likeness. Some of the finest are little more than preparatory studies; he could overwork a portrait and thereby mislay the sitter’s personality. But in their enormous number these pictures offer an insight into the scope of his social life, which took in everyone from Irish farmers to English grandees. That he had a weakness for aristocracy and royalty cannot be denied (he loved to go on painting holidays with Prince – now King – Charles); it was another aspect of his essentially old-fashioned persona. There is a well-known anecdote of Hill once being decried as a snob, to which he supposedly responded: “How amazing. I was only talking with the Queen Mother a few days ago, and she said just the same thing.” There were two drawbacks to his maintaining a busy social life, flitting from one grand house to the next: it made him appear trivial in the eyes of many people and it took him away from his work. Although he spent periods entirely focused on his work, and quoted Degas’ remark that “if the artist wishes to be serious . . . he must once more sink himself into solitude”, he was unable to apply this policy with sufficient rigour.






Derek Hill first came to Ireland in the late 1940s, invited here by the wealthy  Philadelphia-born socialite and art collector Henry McIllhenny who in 1938 had bought Glenveagh Castle, County Donegal, an estate some 15 miles south-west of where his forebears had lived until emigrating to the United States the previous century; at the time of their meeting, McIllhenny was working as Resident Art Historian at the American Academy in Rome. The two men thereafter remained lifelong ‘frenemies’ (to use a wonderful neologism) and in due course also neighbours because in 1953 Hill bought an old rectory, St Columb’s, just a few miles south of Glenveagh. Five years later, he visited Tory, a small island off the north coast of Donegal, where he rented a hut and spent time each summer painting for himself and also encouraging members of the local fishing community to do likewise, thereby creating a school of naïve painting, known as the Tory Island Painters, the best-known of whom was James Dixon. In 1982 Hill donated St Columb’s and its contents to the Irish State (McIllhenny had done likewise with Glenveagh Castle and gardens three years earlier) and thereafter lived in a small cottage nearby although he spent more time than hitherto in England. He died in London in 2000. 






St Columb’s dates from 1828 when, according to Samuel Lewis’s Topographical Dictionary of Ireland (1837) it was constructed thanks to a gift of £400 and a loan of £380 from the Board of First Fruits; the surrounding glebe land ran to 25 acres. It remained in use as a Church of Ireland rectory until the death of the second resident clergyman, the Rev Henry Maturin in 1880, after which the building was leased to tenants before being sold. In 1898 it opened as St Columb’s Hotel, and continued to be used for this purpose until being bought by Derek Hill in 1953, the majority of guests over the intervening period coming to this part of the country either for fishing or shooting. Of two storeys and three bays, the house retains much of its original appearance, although a large and elaborate cast-iron single storey veranda to the rear seemingly was brought here from somewhere else. Inside, it has a typical tripartite design, with reception rooms on either side of a narrow entrance hall, that to the right presumably serving as a small study since the staircase immediately behind takes up considerable space. The decoration throughout is as it was when St Columb’s was occupied by Derek Hill and displays a fondness for Victoriana and William Morris papers, for needlepoint cushions and Staffordshire figures. The house is now a period piece, preserved as though its former owner had just stepped out for air, and deservedly ought to be kept as such even if, rather like Hill’s paintings, this will not be to everyone’s taste. It is open to the public for tours during the summer months, while, the adjacent yard buildings have been converted into a gallery space which hosts temporary exhibitions each year.

For more information about the house and gallery, see Glebe House and Gallery | Explore a world-class collection of art (glebegallery.ie)

 

It’s Not Unusual



A not-unusual sight in Ireland: the former hotel on Main Street, Milford, County Donegal. Also not unusual: the fact that it has been left closed and falling into decay for many years. The property was put on the market some ten years ago but failed to find a buyer. Then in 2019 the owners applied to redevelop the site into a mixture of townhouses and apartments, with the front section renovated and the rear replaced. That didn’t come to pass, and in 2020 a local elected representative proposed Donegal County Council buy the place. This didn’t happen either, and last year a similar proposal was made, the response being that the authority was working on the (inevitable) draft plan for the town centre’s regeneration and that this document would be subject to further consultation. Some months ago, Milford was listed as one of 26 beneficiaries of a new national Town Centre First initiative. Meanwhile, the old hotel continues to deteriorate.


Decidedly Quirky



Ardress House, County Armagh is a wonderfully quirky building that appears to have begun as a modest farmer’s residence but then, as we say in Ireland, ‘got notions.’ The earliest part, a gable-ended brick house of five bays over basement, probably dates from the late 17th century when constructed for one Thomas Clarke. In 1760 heiress Sarah Clarke married Dublin architect George Ensor who in due course enlarged Ardress by adding a further bay to either side of the east facade (and probably the small limestone Tuscan portico) and a large extension to the rear accommodating a grand drawing room. Within a few years of his death, further changes took place , the front enlarged by a further bay on either side with tripartite windows, their lower parapets decorated with urns and undulating dressed stone at each corner. The extension to the north contains rooms but that to the south is just a blank wall, as can be seen by going around to the garden where it becomes one of a pair of quadrants with blind recessed panels and statuary niches, the latter holding busts representing the Four Seasons. Formerly a conservatory ran the length of the five ground floor bays on this side, helping to provide some unity, but without this structure, the imbalance created by the double bays to the east is more apparent, thereby adding to Ardress House’s quirky charm.





Text here…The interiors of Ardress House, County Armagh are as idiosyncratic as its exterior. To the front of the building immediately inside the entrance is a large arch opening into a sitting room, while through a door on the other side lies a small parlour. The main staircase in an extension to the north rises to a landing which then divides to give access to bedrooms in different parts of the building. Meanwhile, another eccentric feature of Ardress House is the location of the dining room, which would customarily be located to one side of the entrance hall: here it is located behind the drawing room but not accessed from it. Instead, the dining room is reached via a corridor to the rear of the building and then through a small external door (originally a small glazed building provided coverage for diners).





As mentioned earlier, in 1760 heiress Sarah Clarke married architect George Ensor, who oversaw a number of additions to Ardress House, County Armagh. One of these was the creation c.1783 of a large, rectangular drawing room behind the original building, its walls and ceiling elaborately decorated with neoclassical plasterwork, its design attributed to the preeminent Irish stuccodore of the period, Michael Stapleton. The tripartite ceiling is composed of a circular section with demi-lunes on either side, the former containing a centrepieces featuring Aurora in a chariot drawn by two winged horses. Other panels and medallions around the walls show various classical figures, including Cupid bound to a tree and observed by three females and a warrior kneeling before Minerva and another goddess. Between these, garlands of husk chains and ribbons swoop and  fall across the walls in a breathtaking, and unexpected, display of sophisticated craftsmanship in rural Ulster. Ardress House is today under the care of the National Trust and open to the public. 


Well Fort



Hillsborough Fort, County Down has been considered here before (see Hillsborough Fort « The Irish Aesthete) but on that occasion the Irish Aesthete was unable to gain access to the building at its centre. Completed c.1650 by Colonel Arthur Hill, the little square forthouse was Gothicised just over a century later, perhaps to the designs of Christopher Myers and, having been a place of defence became instead a place of delight, used for entertainments. Inside, the ground floor consists of a narrow entrance hall with vaulted ceiling, doors to front and rear, and a number of small rooms on either side. A staircase in one of the flanking towers leads upstairs to a great chamber occupying the entire space, lit by three arched windows and with a high flat roof. At the moment, the building sits empty but there plans are afoot for its restoration and reuse.