RIC (Ruins in Connaught)



The remains of an RIC Barracks at Islandeady, County Mayo. The building dates from the first half of the 19th century when constructed on a plot provided for the purpose by local landlord Sir William Palmer who lived at Castle Lacken, today also a ruin. Of two storeys and three bays, the barracks is a handsome structure, with the focus on its cut-limestone doorcase. There is a small yard to the rear with holding cell. It remained in operation until early 1920 when, like many other remote buildings held by the force, it was abandoned owing to the War of Independence. In June of that year, the barracks was gutted by fire, again a common circumstance, and has remained a ruin ever since.


Forlorn



Stripped not just of contents but also all character, this is what remains of the former Presbyterian church in Creggs, County Galway. Outside Ulster, there were always relatively few Presbyterians outside faith, and this is a rare example of such a building in Connaught. It opened for services in 1863 but clearly never attracted much of a congregation as the church was closed just over sixty years later in 1925. The west front displays a playful engagement with form, the Gothic arched doorcase below a trefoil window, and then on the tower above, and slightly recessed, a circular opening below rounded arch. The roofless walls now stand, forlorn and purposeless, in a puddle of gravel.


A Fine Portrait


This year marks the tenth anniversary of Maurice Craig’s death, and next year the seventieth anniversary of the publication of Dublin 1660-1860: The Shaping of a City, the book for which he is still best remembered. Seemingly, although it took 13 years for the first run of 2,000 copies to sell, the work has never since been out of print. For many readers, it remains the definitive guide to Ireland’s capital during the Georgian era, despite enormous numbers of other books on the same subject having appeared before and since. Although he came to be regarded as the one of the foremost experts on the country’s architectural history, this was far from being a foregone conclusion. When young, Maurice appears to have entertained notions of being either a painter or a composer, but ultimately realised that the written word was his best form of communication. Even so, his doctoral thesis from Trinity College Dublin was concerned not with buildings but the 19th century poet Walter Savage Landor, and the back of a copy of Dublin 1660-1860 declares ‘his recreations include travel, ship-modelling and the history of transport’. To which one might add vintage motor cars and book-binding, as well as noting that his first book (which appeared in 1948) was a biography of the Earl of Charlemont. And, as anyone who knew Maurice can attest, he loved cats.




In his preface, Maurice Craig announced that Dublin 1660-1860 had been conceived more as a ‘portrait’ than a history, by which he meant the author had opted to focus on certain aspects of the narrative and omit others. Developing the portrait metaphor, he noted that some readers might not appreciate such an approach, ‘but if I paint my sitter in a purple tie, that need not imply that he has no others in his wardrobe.’ Certainly he introduced more colour into his text than is customarily the case, opening the story not in Dublin or even in Ireland, but with a lively description of the fall to Ottoman forces of Constantinople in May 1453. In a variant on the theme of the Butterfly Effect, Maurice proposed a link between ‘this great Levantine catastrophe’ and a date more than 200 years later, July 27th 1662, when James Butler, Duke of Ormonde ‘stepped out of his pinnace on to the sands of Dublin Bay. The Renaissance, in a word, had arrived in Ireland…The Middle Ages were at last at an end.’ It’s a bold statement, and one open to dispute, but it sets the tone for what follows over the next 300-plus pages, across which Maurice painted his portrait of the city with bold strokes and bright shades that help to make this a genuine page-turner. When writing of Aldborough House, for example, he briskly notes how the Stratford family title, ‘passed rapidly through a ludicrous succession of spendthrift holders, ending with the sixth and last Earl who bred dogs, advertised patent pills, and died in Alicante in 1875.’ The point about such prose is that it leaves the reader longing to learn more on the subject. And when writing of 18th century Dublin’s relatively weak literary legacy, he took a clever swipe at the censored Ireland of the mid-1950s, observing that ‘a society uncertain of its foundations and its destiny is, as we are now proving, unhappy ground in which to cultivate the art of letters.’ And again, as anyone who knew him can testify, Maurice was never averse to expressing a personal opinion. Thomas Cooley’s Neoclassical City Hall (the former Royal Exchange), he deemed ‘a little cold…its best points are its site, the excellence of the detail and the grandeur of the central hall. It does not inspire much affection.’ 




Re-reading Dublin 1660-1860 what strikes this reader once more is Maurice Craig’s exceptional erudition, and his ability to wear a great deal of learning lightly. The book is as much a social as an architectural history of the city, and this makes sense: all buildings, even prisons, are erected with varying degrees of social interaction in mind. So while Maurice provides much information on architects and patrons across the span of 200 years, he also places their enterprises within a broader context. This often leads in turn to the text taking unexpected diversions, as the author shares another piece of historical anecdote with us. For example, at one point, when writing of the growth of newspapers in mid-18th century Ireland, he then reflects on how pamphlets often better reflect concerns of the time. This in turn leads him to describe an occasion in 1759 when rumours of union with Britain led to ‘startling eruptions of popular feeling: the jacquerie broke into the Parliament House, placed an old woman in the Speaker’s Chair, rigged up a gallows and threatened various dignitaries with death,’ all of which sounds reminiscent of events which took place in Washington, D.C. earlier this year. Ending as it does in the mid-19th century, the book concludes on a somewhat melancholy note, Maurice noting how in Dublin ‘after sixty years the loss of political status is beginning to induce an unmistakable feeling of provincialism.’ Since his book first appeared in 1952, many other authors have investigated the development of Ireland’s capital during what has come to be known as the long 18th century, but none has managed to capture so well the atmosphere of that period, to conjure up for us the spirit of the age, and to present it with such grace. 


Today’s images are taken from Dublin 1660-1860 and are all by Maurice Craig, demonstrating his talents as an architectural draughtsman.
The Little Museum of Dublin is currently hosting a series of lectures on the city’s history delivered by Professor David Dickson, author of Dublin: The making of a capital city (2014). For more information, see The Dublin Lectures 2021 – The Little Museum of Dublin

Glasleck



The Presbyterian church at Glasleck, County Cavan which, as a cut-stone plaque set into the wall advises, was built in 1836. Its first minister was the Reverend Randal McCollum who remained in this office until his death in 1874. Aside from attending to his flock, he also maintained a farm and wrote a number of works, not least Sketches of the Highlands of Cavan and of Shirley Castle, in Farney, Taken during the Irish Famine, which was published in 1856. A diary he kept for ten years, 1861-71 is now in the collection of Cavan County Council. Evidently there was once a thriving Presbyterian community in this part of the country, thereby justifying the building’s construction, but it gradually declined in the second half of the last century and closed in 1998, when the congregation was amalgamated with that of First Bailieborough.


Seeking Fresh Purpose


A little classical gem: a lodge at the entrance to St Patrick’s College, Carlow. The English-born architect Thomas Alfred Cobden, who designed the main buildings on the site (and who for a couple of decades received an astonishing number of commissions in this part of the country), is thought to have been also responsible for the lodge which dates from around 1820. It has a beautifully austere facade, the pedimented portico supported by a pair of Doric columns, these features made of the local granite. The interior has an entrance hall and two rooms, but alas at the moment is empty and – inevitably – falling into neglect: surely some use can be found for the place?



O’Fallons’ Country


‘The sept of the O’Phelans is recorded in the earliest annals of Ireland. They were styled Princes of Desies, a territory comprising the greater part of the County of Waterford, with a portion of Tipperary. Malachy O’Phelan was their chief at the time of the Anglo-Norman invasion, and his was the principal native force that, in co-operation with the Danes of Waterford, sought, but unsuccessfully, to hold that city against the newcomers. Malachy was taken prisoner, and condemned to die, but his life was spared on the intercession of Dermod McMurrough, who had on that day come down from Ferns to celebrate the marriage of his daughter with Strongbow.’ 





‘A King of the Desies was long after recognised, and was summoned, as such, in 1245 to aid Henry the Third in the Scottish war; but the sept, having been subsequently expelled from their old homes, some, after a brief sojourn in Westmeath, crossed the Shannon into Connaught, where they spelt their name, O’Fallon, and a district in Roscommon, between Athlone and the County of Galway, was hence known as O’Fallons’ country, while the sept was distinguished as the O’Fallons of Clanhudach.’





‘In the time of Queen Elizabeth Redmond O’Fallon was the Chief. Of his estates Edmund O’Fallon had livery, as his son and heir, in 1606, of which in the ‘unsettling’ settlements of James the First, he thought it prudent to take out a fresh patent. It bore date in 1612, and confirmed to him the manor, castle, town, and land of Miltown, in the barony of Athlone, with sundry lands and a water-mill annexed; part of Ballyforan near the Suck, its island and fishing weir, the castle of Turrock, ‘moieties’ of the castles of Newtown and Ballyglass, with lands and chiefries in the County of Roscommon, and markets and fairs at Miltown, besides other premises at Balrath, in Westmeath. These interests he was obliged to claim on petition to the Commissioners at Athlone after the civil war of 1641, as were eight other proprietors within the O’Fallons’ country, the claims of all seeking restoration as to their ancient ancestral estates. The Supreme Council of Catholics in 1646 was attended by two members of this sept, William Fallon of Miltown and Stephen Fallon of Athlone. In 1677 another Edmund O’Fallon, styled of Mote, passed patent for 344 acres in Galway, as did a John Fallon for 131 in Roscommon.’


Text taken from King James II’s Irish Army List, 1689 by John d’Alton (published 1855). Pictures show the now-ruined – and thoroughly pillaged – remains of Cloonagh, County Roscommon, an early 18th century house which was built and occupied by a branch of the O’Fallon family. James O’Fallon, who was Roman Catholic Bishop of Elphin for thirty years, lived in the house, dying there in December 1786. A pity to see this link with the area’s history about to be lost.

Leading Nowhere


An entrance into the former demesne of Affane, County Waterford. The core of the house here dated from the 17th century but had a new front added in the first half of the 19th century with canted bows on either side of the entrance. These ashlar gateposts with screen walls on either side and arched pedestrian openings on either side were probably erected around the same time. Once leading towards the main building, now they go nowhere but provide a reminder of what used to be here: the house itself is a ruined shell.

Lopsided



A County Wexford property formerly known as Grange, but now called Bannow House is thought to date from the mid-1830s when built for Thomas Boyce, although it work may have been initiated a couple of decades earlier by his father Samuel: the Boyce family had settled in the area in the 17th century. Of two storeys, the south-facing facade is of eight bays, the two centre ones breaking forward, with the entrance marked by a fine portico approached by four granite steps and featuring four Ionic columns. Curiously, the rear of the house is lopsided: while the west side runs back six bays, that to the east is more shallow, and partially hidden behind a high screen wall, suggesting a section of the building here was at some date demolished. In any case, an opening in that wall leads to a large and handsome yard constructed, like so many buildings in this part of the country, of local granite.


O Pioneer!


One suspects that few people today are aware of, let alone have read, the works of Constantia Maxwell who in the middle of the last century was probably the best-known woman writing on Irish history. This is a pity, because she was a first-rate stylist and her books impart a great deal of information in an agreeable fashion, which is often not the case today. Furthermore, she is worthy of study in her own right, being something of an academic pioneer. The daughter of an ophthalmic surgeon, she was born in Dublin in 1886 and was among the first women to be admitted to Trinity College Dublin as an undergraduate (the college had been exclusively male until 1904). In 1909, she became the first woman to join the institution’s academic staff when appointed a lecturer in modern history. Thirty years later, she was the first woman to be made a professor at TCD, when given a chair in economic history and then, when appointed to the Lecky Professorship of History, was again the first woman to hold this chair. Without question, she was an impressive trailblazer, and not just thanks to her ascent of the academic hierarchy. In some respects, not least owing to her interest in Ireland during the 18th century, Maxwell might be considered the successor to Froude and Lecky, but she is less polemical than either of them, less determined to represent a particular point of view, more desirous to engage and hold the reader’s attention. Her knowledge was prodigious – the bibliography for Country and Town in Ireland under the Georges (of which more below) runs to some 22 pages – but it was lightly worn. There are no stodgy passages in her books, they race along from one anecdote to the next, so that knowledge is shared with the lightest of touches. Her work has sometimes been criticised for concentrating on the ruling elite of the Georgian period, but at the time this was the case with almost anyone writing about the period: history was still perceived as belonging to the victors. Furthermore, as will be seen, she was keenly aware of and sympathetic towards the dreadful misfortunes experienced by the poor during the period under consideration, so censure levelled at her is not altogether fair. The college where she taught for so long offers a scholarship in her name, but surely the time has come for a revival of interest in Constantia Maxwell, and the republication of her books.




Constantia Maxwell enjoyed popular success in 1936 with the publication of Dublin under the Georges, which explored all aspects of the city’s development from 1714 to 1830. In the space of some 300 pages, she celebrated Dublin’s golden age while not overlooking the misery that could be found beneath its glittering surface: an entire chapter is devoted to ‘Life of the Poor’ in which she cites many contemporary visitors to the city. When the English MP John Curwen came in 1818 while he declared ‘the style and beauty of Dublin have greatly surpassed my expectations,’ at the same time he could not but note ‘poverty, disease, and wretchedness exist in every great town, but in Dublin the misery is indescribable.’ Maxwell also quotes from the likes of the Rev James Whitelaw who recounted only too vividly the filth and squalor in which many of the city’s occupants lived. We are inclined to imagine tenements as being the product of the late 19th/early 20th centuries but almost 100 years earlier Whitelaw could write of frequently finding ‘from ten to sixteen persons, of all ages and sexes, in a room not 15 feet square, stretched on a wad of filthy straw swarming with vermin, and without any covering, save the wretched rags that constituted their wearing apparel.’ But of course Maxwell also devoted much attention to the glories of the era, reporting on the lives of the wealthy and the splendid residences they constructed for themselves. Furthermore she took time to look at how those residences were furnished and decorated, thanks to the many specialist craftsmen who flourished owing to the patronage of the domestic market. Everything from wool and linen production to glass and cabinet making was explored in her text, and again the breadth of the author’s reading is impressive; there seem to be no available sources she had not examined. It’s worth remembering that when Maxwell wrote her book, far less relevant material had been placed in the public domain, and far less research into it undertaken. As in so much else, she was a pioneer and almost everyone else who followed, from Maurice Craig onwards, was indebted to her.




Following on from the success of Dublin under the Georges, in 1940 Constantia Maxwell published Country and Town in Ireland under the Georges. This follows much the same format as its predecessor and demonstrates the same depth of knowledge presented in an equally engaging format. Maxwell understood the advantages of the well-told anecdote, whether writing of the foibles of the gentry or the misfortunes of the peasantry. With regard to the latter, she also demonstrated her inherent empathy, observing that her readers ‘need scarcely be reminded that the Irish peasant in the eighteenth century had none of the advantages of the small-holder in England. He had no permanent interest in the soil, because he had no security of tenure. He had no capital to spend upon improvements, and very little knowledge of agriculture. He was the product of an evil land system established by conquest, under which the landlord, who could never feel absolutely secure in the midst of an alien population, looked mainly for immediate profits.’ The consequences of this system were then thoroughly examined over the course of the pages that followed. One chapter of particular interest is devoted to a study of Ireland’s provincial towns during the 18th century. So much attention is paid to Dublin’s growth at the time, it is easy to forget that many other urban centres underwent expansion and improvement from the early 1700s onwards. Many of these became centres of industry and trade, such as Clonmel, County Tipperary, described by John Wesley in 1756 as ‘the pleasantest town beyond all comparison which I have yet seen in Ireland.’ and Cork city which Arthur Young thought displayed ‘by much the most animated scene of shipping in all Ireland.’ Incidentally, with regard to this specific subject, David Dickson – who has already written so eloquently on the developments of both Dublin and Cork – is due to publish his next work The First Irish Cities: An Eighteenth-Century Transformation in May (Yale University Press). In the meantime, for those who have yet to engage with Constantia Maxwell, an investigation of her work is encouraged. Despite the passage of many decades since the books’ first appearance, they continue to engage and inform.


Illustrations taken from Dublin under the Georges and Country and Town in Ireland under the Georges, both by Constantia Maxwell. 

Re-Engagement



Notable for having been largely designed early in the last century by architect Clough Williams-Ellis, the village of Cushendun, County Antrim has featured here before (see Cornwall in Ulster « The Irish Aesthete). Since the mid-1950s, much of the place has been in National Trust’s ownership, including the Glenmona, former home of Ronald John McNeill, Baron Cushendun who commissioned the house from Williams-Ellis after its predecessor was burnt down by the IRA in 1922. For some time the building was leased to the Health and Social Care Board, and used as a nursing home with the inevitable adjustments made to its interior. That arrangement ended and it appears a new purpose has yet to be found for Glenmona. While the National Trust has undertaken much good work on other properties for which it is responsible, such does not appear to be the case here. However, last year an independent body in the social housing sector, Supporting Communities announced that it had been approached by the National Trust ‘to help them re-engage positively with local stakeholders and the community in general’ and to develop the house ‘into a thriving hub for community activity.’ Let’s hope the eventual outcome is that the trust re-engages with this important part of the region’s architectural heritage and that it receives better care than has been the case of late.