Taking to the Air

Jan26

Woodbrook, County Wexford is believed to date from the 1770s but was badly damaged during the 1798 Rising. As a result, the building appears to have undergone considerable reconstruction in the first decade of the 19th century which is presumably when the tripartite Wyatt windows were inserted. One of them provides ample light to the rear hall which contains the house’s principal feature: a wooden flying spiral staircase, the only one of its kind in Ireland. As you ascend or descend, the steps lightly quiver with every tread.

Lest We Forget

Jan23

On a road leading out of Castlepollard, County Westmeath can be found this souvenir of an era when, to use an apt Irish expression, we lost the run of ourselves. A year after this sign was hammered into the ground, the nation’s banks crumpled under the weight of over-extended credit and the proposed scheme – for six townhouses and two blocks of eight apartments no doubt all of exquisitely faultless design – failed to materialise. Meanwhile, immediately beside the undeveloped site, another old building continues to moulder…

La Belle au Bois Dormant

Jan21

Here is Bellamont Forest, County Cavan which can lay claim to being the most beautiful house in Ireland. Certainly its situation is unparalleled, since the building sits on a rise at the end of a mile-long drive, the ground to either side dropping to lakes, the world beyond screened by dense woodland. Bellamont is an unexpected delight, hidden from view until one rounds the last turn of the drive and sees the house ahead.
In purest Palladian style and looking like a villa in the Veneto, Bellamont is believed to have been designed c.1725-30 by the pre-eminent architect then working in Ireland, Sir Edward Lovett Pearce who was also responsible for the Houses of Parliament in Dublin (now the Bank of Ireland), and a number of since-lost country houses such as Desart Court, County Kilkenny and Summerhill, County Meath. Pearce was a cousin of Bellamont’s builder Thomas Coote, a Lord Justice of the King’s Bench. The Cootes had come to Ireland at the start of the 17th century and prospered so well that within 100 years their various descendants owned estates throughout the country. Ballyfin, County Laois which has recently undergone a superlative restoration was another Coote property.

The appeal of Bellamont lies in its exquisite simplicity, beginning with an exterior which is of mellow red brick with stone window dressings. Of two storeys over a raised rusticated basement, the front is dominated by a full-height limestone portico reached by a broad flight of steps. The imposing effect is achieved by the most effortless means and using the plainest materials, but there can be no doubt that Bellamont was always intended to impress. The Portland stone-flagged entrance hall, with its coved ceiling and pairs of flanking doors, sets the tone for what is follow.
While there are small rooms immediately to right and left, the latter traditionally used as a cosy winter library, the main reception areas lie to the rear of the building, a sequence of drawing room, saloon and dining room which retain their 18^th century decoration including the chimneypieces. The first of these is believed to have once been a series of rooms, but following a fire in 1760 acquired its present form including the elaborate recessed ceiling which was probably intended to complement that in the dining room on the other side of the saloon. The walls of this central room contain contain stucco panels once filled with family portraits, the best-known of which – painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds in 1773 and showing the Charles Coote, Earl of Bellamont resplendent in his robes as a Knight of Bath – now hangs in the National Gallery of Ireland.

The aforementioned Earldom of Bellamont was a second creation of the title for a member of the family. Evidently an ostentatious and pompous man – seemingly he insisted on making his maiden speech in the House of Lords in French, to the bemusement of his fellow peers – Lord Bellamont can at least be credited with having the good taste to enhance the house built by his grandfather. He married a daughter of the first Duke of Leinster and by her had four daughters and just one son who died in Toulouse at the age of 12, his body being brought back to Bellamont to lie for three days on the upper landing before burial in the family vault.
As a result of there being no legitimate heir, the earldom again lapsed on Lord Bellamont’s death in 1800. However, despite being seriously wounded in the groin during a duel with Lord Townshend, he managed to have at least 16 offsring out of wedlock by four different women, and one of these sons, also called Charles Coote, inherited Bellamont Forest. Ultimately it was sold out of the family in the middle of the 19th century and bought by the Smiths (later Dorman-Smiths), one of whom Major-General Eric Dorman-Smith served in the British army during both the First and Second World Wars after which, having changed his surname to O’Gowan, he became involved with the IRA.

In 1987 Bellamont Forest was bought by John Coote, an Australian interior designer whose family had emigrated from Ireland at the start of the last century. John dearly loved the house and undertook to restore it to a pristine condition, keeping the decoration spare so that the beauty of the rooms’ architecture would be more apparent. There was never a great deal of furniture, just a few large pieces he had specifically made and which were inspired by Georgian workmanship. In revealing the building’s purity he not only demonstrated the splendid taste of Pearce but his own also, since it would have been tempting to intervene in the interiors.
Those interiors served wonderfully for entertaining, which John did frequently. I have been to a great many terrific parties at Bellamont, and even hosted a few there, one of which – a birthday dinner for 30 – is thankfully uncommemorated by any photographs. But there are ample souvenirs and joyous memories of John’s own sundry social gatherings, such as the thé dansants he loved to throw, when a 16-piece orchestra would play in the saloon and Jack Leslie would demonstrate how to dance the Black Bottom. The last great party at Bellamont took place during the summer of 2009 to mark John’s 60th birthday and was spectacular even by his standards, with drinks in the lower gardens followed by dinner and dancing outdoors in the balmy air.
The following year John was obliged to put Bellamont Forest up for sale, and thereafter he rarely visited the place. Tomorrow marks the first anniversary of his death, which happened unexpectedly while he was working in Indonesia. He is still sorely mourned by all of us who knew him in Ireland. Meanwhile Bellamont slumbers, awaiting a new owner who will kiss the place back to life; there is talk now of an auction in March. One prays that whoever next assumes responsibility for Bellamont will bring to the house the same flair and fun as did John Coote for so many years.

All photographs by René Kramers (http://www.reneez.com/)

All That Glitters

Jan19

A door on the top floor of Tullynally, County Westmeath, formerly Pakenham Hall and home to generations of the Pakenham family. Note the traces of gilt on the brass handle, and also the manner in which its quatrefoil design is echoed by that of a panel to the left.

From Here to Eternity

Jan16

This cliff-edge garden in East Cork opens onto a seemingly-infinite horizon. A copse of trees in the foreground shows signs of having to face the onslaught of winds blowing without interruption across the Celtic Sea.

Mounting Concern

Jan14

In April 1801 Sir Henry Browne Hayes, a widower approaching fifty, was brought to trial in Cork for abducting a Quaker heiress Mary Pike four years earlier and forcing her to participate in a spurious marriage. Given that the facts of the case were common knowledge and that Hayes had voluntarily surrendered to the authorities, it did not take long for a guilty verdict to be reached and for the felon to be sentenced to death. On the recommendation of Ireland’s then-Lord Lieutenant, the Earl of Hardwicke, this was commuted to transportation for life to Botany Bay. Hayes’ passage was less grim than that of the average Irish convict, since he was provided with his own cabin and allowed to bring a manservant. A year after arriving in Australia, he purchased a property immediately north-east of Sydney and there built himself a house called Vaucluse which still stands and is today managed by the Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales.
After sundry adventures (he seems to have been incapable of leading a quiet life), including founding Australia’s first Freemason lodge and being sent to work in a coal mine for backing Governor William Bligh during a period of dispute in the colony, Hayes eventually secured a pardon and was allowed to return to Ireland. Even this journey was fraught, since the vessel on which he travelled, the Isabella, was shipwrecked off the Falkland Islands. Among the other passengers on board was Joseph Holt, a County Wicklow man who had been one of the leaders of the 1798 Rebellion and who, like Sir Henry, had been given transportation, and subsequent pardon, rather than the customary execution. On their arrival in Ireland it was ironically noted the crimes of both men involved pikes: Hayes had abducted one and Holt had distributed many.

Back in Cork, Sir Henry settled into his family residence where he died at the age of 70 twenty years later in 1832.* That house, Vernon Mount, featured last week in the Irish Times where it was reported that the relevant local authority, Cork County Council, had taken steps to secure the building’s future. There are few houses in the region more deserving of preservation, and yet, despite repeated calls for intervention, Vernon Mount has suffered shameful neglect in recent decades.
Located to the south of Cork city on a raised site with panoramic views over the Lee valley, Vernon Mount is highly unusual in design, a two-storey over basement villa, the curved entrance front having symmetrical convex bows on either side. For a long time it was thought the house dated from c.1784 and had been built by Hayes’ father, Atwell Hayes a prosperous merchant involved in brewing, milling and glass manufacture. However, an advertisement in the Cork Courier of December 10th, 1794 announced ‘a new house Vernon Mount to be let, with from 160 acres of meadows, lawns, shruberries etc’ with the house described as being ’finished in a superb style, with painted ceilings, elegant chimney pieces, grates.’
If the place was only then deemed new, the supposition is that it had been designed by Abraham Hargrave (1755-1808), a locally-based architect who worked during this period on a number of projects in Cork City and County. Evidently the house was not let by Hayes, since he brought Mary Pike there after her abduction. Incidentally, Vernon Mount’s name is a salute to George Washington and his own residence Mount Vernon in Virginia; a number of Irish house owners paid similar tributes to the American War of Independence as a means of showing their political sympathies.

There is a further connection between Vernon Mount and the United States: the artist responsible for the house’s remarkable painted interiors, Nathaniel Grogan the elder (1740-1807) spent a number of years on the other side of the Atlantic before returning to his native city. Here he was commissioned to work on the decoration of Vernon Mount, including a ceiling painting on canvas in the drawing room. Within an octagonal frame, this depicts Minerva Throwing Away the Spears of War, a reference perhaps to the cessation of hostilities at the end of the American War of Independence. Around the central work are a series of lozenge-shaped panels and roundels featuring floral motifs, angels and centaurs.
Additional examples of Grogan’s handiwork exist on the first floor, reached by a splendid cantilevered stone staircase with neo-classical wrought-iron balustrade, the whole lit by a large arched window. On the oval upper landing are eight marblised Corinthian columns interspersed with seven doors painted with tromp l’oeil niches ‘containing’ classical statues and urns; these doors lead to the house’s bedrooms and a concealed service staircase.

It should be evident from this description that Vernon Mount is a house of enormous architectural importance, to be treasured and protected. But, as already mentioned, of late this has not been the case. Occupied as a family residence until the middle of the last century Vernon Mount and its surrounding parkland were bought in the 1950s by the Cork and Munster Motorcycle Club, which developed a motor race track around the house. However, the latter was well-maintained until the whole place was acquired in the 1990s by a consortium of developers led by San Diego-based IT entrepreneur Jonathon Moss and his colleague in Cork Olaf Maxwell. This consortium applied to redevelop the house and surrounding grounds as an hotel, but when the proposal was refused by Cork County Council (which described the proposal as ‘a gross over development of the site’ that would ‘be seriously detrimental to the setting, scale and character of a listed building’), the owners settled down to do precisely nothing.
Shamefully Cork County Council chose to mimic this inactivity and as a result Vernon Mount’s condition was permitted to deteriorate. The Irish Georgian Society repeatedly called for intervention but to no avail, and in 2008 the organisation arranged for the building to be placed on the World Monuments Fund List of 100 Most Endangered Sites. Still the local authority failed to act, even though two years earlier at a council meeting it had been agreed that if something were not done soon the building would be lost forever.
It appears that local residents groups, keen to have the entire area designated a public park and amenity, have taken to lobbying the county council; finally last month it used powers available under the country’s existing planning acts to carry out essential repairs to the roof of Vernon Mount. Of course this is excellent news, but the fact remains that the local authority could have availed of the same powers to take action sooner; that it failed to do so is a disgrace. One of the unanswered questions remains the condition of the interior with its unique Grogan paintings; for a long time it has long been impossible to persuade the owners to allow regular access. Australia cherishes Vaucluse and the United States Mount Vernon. In Ireland, on the other hand, there will be more scenarios like that at Vernon Mount unless and until the statutory bodies charged with responsibility for ensuring the welfare of the state’s architectural heritage actually do their job. This is a shabby tale, from which neither the consortium nor the county council emerges with credit.

*Poor Miss Pike, carried off in the night by Hayes, never recovered from her ordeal and around the same time as her abductor died, so did she – in a lunatic asylum.

I am Gabriel

Jan12

Beaulieu, County Louth is one of Ireland’s most distinguished early houses with a superlative double-height entrance hall. It has been owned by successive generations of the same family since the lands on which Beaulieu stands were granted to Sir Henry Tichbourne by Charles II in 1666. The building is believed to have assumed its present form at the start of the 18th century during the time of Sir Henry’s grandson, also called Henry, first (and last) Baron Ferrard of Beaulieu; the name of John Curle is usually cited as probable architect. Most recently Beaulieu has been under the care of the tenth generation of Sir Henry’s descendants, Gabriel de Freitas, who very sadly died this week.

Here is a photograph of Gabriel (standing left) in 2010 when she kindly hosted the Irish Georgian Society’s summer party at Beaulieu. She was a wonderfully forceful character who in earlier decades had been a well-known racing driver and had built up an impressive collection of classic cars. I remember the first time we met, at lunch in Leixlip Castle, mentioning to her Fiona MacCarthy’s 2006 book The Last Curtsey, in which both Gabriel and Beaulieu appear. The response could best be described as trenchant: Gabriel was most displeased that the author had failed to consult or notify her in advance. (Incidentally, another debutante of 1958 discussed by MacCarthy in the same work was Rose Dugdale, who later joined the IRA and took part in the 1974 art robbery at Russborough, County Wickow).
Having returned to Ireland only a few years ago to assume responsibility for Beaulieu, it is cruelly unfair that Gabriel, who was so dynamic and vital, should have been denied the opportunity to do more for the place where her family has lived for almost 350 years. One hopes that with her customary speed she has gone to enjoy the company of her angelic namesake.

Above photograph courtesy of Barry Cronin, http://www.barrycronin.com

Offering You the Quays of the City

Jan9

A prospect that never fails to gladden the eye: Dublin’s north quays looking west from Essex Bridge towards the Four Courts. The view has inspired artists for more than two centuries, not least thanks to the varied rythym of the facades, their diversity of form, height and fabric. One must be concerned over the future of the large white structure at the centre of this picture. It is the old Ormond Hotel, incorporating premises of the same name which feature in James Joyce’s Ulysses. In 2004, on the centenary of the year in which the novel is set, Dublin City Council bloody-mindedly granted permission for the hotel to be demolished and replaced. This never happened although the Ormond closed for business in 2006 and has sat empty and progressively more neglected ever since.

A (Ros)common Problem

Jan7

Like the majority of Irish towns, Roscommon is a bit of a mess, the historic core displaying a lack of coherent civic vision for either its maintenance or improvement. And there seems little will to change the situation. The tourist office, for example, closes during the key lunch period: wasn’t that kind of wilful indifference to visitors’ needs supposed to have disappeared around the same time as the manually operated telephone exchange?
Clearly it wasn’t always thus. Signs of Roscommon’s currently-indiscernible vibrancy can be found in the free-standing limestone structure closing the vista of Main Street and dominating the Square – which, but of course, is actually oval-shaped. This is the town’s former court and market house, built in the early 1760s to replace an previous structure which had collapsed more than forty years before ‘killing and wounding at least 200 persons.’

It took a while for the local populace to regain confidence after that traumatic event. Then they acted with gusto, commissioning a splendid new structure from fraternal architects John and George Ensor. These brothers both enjoyed successful careers, although George was twice dismissed from government posts for taking bribes; there is some kind of perverse comfort to be derived from knowing the offence has such a long, and dishonourable, history in Ireland. John Ensor, the older and apparently more law-abiding of the pair, was responsible for a number of private houses in the capital including sections of what is now Parnell Square, also Hume Street, Merrion Square and St Stephen’s Green. In other words, the citizens of Roscommon displayed foresight and taste alike when they invited the Ensors to design their town’s most prominent public edifice.
What they got was a splendid, two-storey rectangular building, the core of which survives although it has been subject to subsequent alteration. By the third decade of the 19th century the court/market house had already begun to show signs of neglect and following the repeal of the Penal Acts in 1829 the local Roman Catholic priest took over the premises and converted them into a church, with additions built front and rear. So it remained until 1903 when a new Catholic place of worship in full Triumphalist Gothic opened to serve the needs of the Roscommon congregation.
The older structure then underwent another transformation into Harrison Hall, a meeting place used for dances and social gatherings, as well as acting as a cinema and theatre. Forty years ago it was sold to the Bank of Ireland and continues to operate as a local branch. Having changed functions so often, the interior retains little of interest, although the main banking hall occupies an airy, double-height space with gallery running along one side.
The exterior is more distinguished, the 19th century additions – including an octagonal cupola over the main entrance – fully in sympathy with the central block erected almost 100 years before. Overall it looks well-maintained, although one worries about plant life flourishing directly above the pedimented facade (someone needs to pay more attention to the gutters).

At the moment it’s hard to appreciate the architectural merits of Roscommon’s finest historic monument. The surrounding square is a shambles of parking spaces and street signage, meaning an unimpeded view can never be found. See how much more handsome it looks in the old photograph above, without a press of vehicles on every side. Clear away the clutter and let the building breathe. It could then come into its own, Roscommon would acquire a fine public space and the local population might rediscover the appeal of their town centre: an example to other towns suffering from the same problems.
Another important old property close by suffers similar disadvantages. This is the former town gaol, dating from c.1740 and locally attributed to German-born architect Richard Cassels (usually anglicised to Castle); he was responsible for a number of houses in the region, including Strokestown (extant) and French Park (unroofed 1953, subsequently demolished). Like the neighbouring court/market house, Roscommon’s old gaol has had what, in most accounts of the building, is called a chequered career; the same description could probably have been applied to its earliest inmates. After housing miscreants for a century – and being famous for employing the country’s only hang-woman (seemingly she took the job to save herself from the noose) – it became a lunatic asylum, then a ‘refuge for smallpox sufferers’, a market house and a private house. Only the facade with advanced end bays and unusual mid-18th century castellation now remains: since 1999 the building has been a drab shopping centre. From one grimly utilitarian function to another…

Take a Seat

Jan5

An Irish mahogany chair in the entrance hall of Rokeby, County Louth. The house was built for Richard Robinson, Archbishop of Armagh, initially to the designs of Thomas Cooley (1740-1784) and then, following the architect’s early death, the job was taken over by Francis Johnston (1760-1829). This handsome chair is one of a set believed to date from the end of the 18th century and attributed to Mack Williams and Gibton. However, since that business was only established around 1812, the chairs could be earlier, made perhaps when John Mack was still working by himself (until 1801). They all bear a peer’s coronet so certainly belong to some date after Archbishop Robinson was created first Baron Rokeby in 1777. Perhaps the commission for them came from his third-cousin Matthew Robinson-Morris who succeeded to the title in 1794?
More on Rokeby soon.

The Irish Aesthete

This is not an Oxymoron