Tag Archives: Altamont

Kindly Regarded Here


Writing about follies more than 70 years ago, illustrator and author Barbara Jones described these structures as ‘built for pleasure, and pleasure is personal, difficult to define. Follies are fashionable or frantic, built to keep up with the neighbours, or built from obsession. They are at once cheerful and morbid, both an ornament for a gentleman’s grounds and a mirror for his mind.’ When Jones’s Follies and Grottoes first appeared in 1953, little had been written about the subject but by the time a revised and enlarged edition was published in 1974, follies were much studied and appreciated. That updated work also contained a gazetteer of follies, including those in Ireland, with Jones commenting that Irish examples were ‘better preserved than they would be in England, for follies are kindly regarded here, and few heave a brick at them.’ Jones’s list was quite patchy, but since then, architect James Howley has published his invaluable The Follies and Garden Buildings of Ireland (1993), so now there is an abundance of information about where to find most, if not quite all, of them in this country. Herewith today, three examples of the genre. 





Coming into the coastal town of Ardglass, County Down from the south, the visitor’s eye is caught by a small gothic structure high on a hill. Now in the middle of a housing estate, this is Isabella’s Tower, a two storey construction, measuring 27 feet high and 18 feet wide. The first level is octagonal with one door and one window. A staircase, now gone, led to an upper floor which is circular with four windows. It was built in 1851 by Aubrey William Beauclerk (1801-1854) for his daughter, Isabella, who was suffering from tuberculosis, so that she could enjoy the bracing air coming from the Irish Sea. Evidently, this did the job as Isabella survived, marrying a sergeant-major from Corfu in 1867. The tower later served as a coastguard station, before the surrounding land was gradually sold off and it now stands neglected, a prey to vandalism.





The main house at Monksgrange, County Wexford was originally built in 1769 (see Monksgrange « The Irish Aesthete) but with only the north quadrant and wind completed. Towards the end of the 18th century, work began on construction of a southern wind but then the 1798 Rebellion erupted and the Richards family, who owned the property, fled to England, only returning some 20 years later. Subsequently plans for the southern wing were abandoned but the stones on the site reused to construct a folly in the gardens behind the house. Dating from 1822, this takes the form of a miniature castle, of two storeys with arched gothic doorcase and windows below a battlemented roofline.





Barbara Jones proposed that in country house gardens there is difference between temples and follies, the former being generally classical in style, the latter gothic. But she also insisted that ‘there is a difference of mood; a temple is an ornament, a folly is glass, and bones and a hank of weeds.’ Her argument fails to withstand scrutiny, since the essence of a folly lies in its name, because whatever the style of architecture employed, its purpose is essentially decorative rather than functional. This is certainly the case with one of the country’s more recent follies: the temple at Altamont, County Carlow (see Developments Awaited « The Irish Aesthete). The building was erected by Corona North in 1998, shortly before she died and constructed of local granite with six Doric columns supporting a domed roof. The temple is beautifully situated at the topmost point of a field to the rear of the house offering eastward views towards the distant Wicklow Mountains. 


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Developments Awaited



The recent run of good weather in Ireland has turned everyone’s attention to gardens (if only to wonder, given a recent hose ban, how to keep them sufficiently watered). There has always been a strong public appetite for visiting gardens, especially those developed over a long period of time. One of the most popular in recent years has been Altamont, County Carlow, which offers the additional allure of free admission. Running to almost 100 acres, Altamont was developed around a house which, as so often in this country, has a complex and at times unclear history.






Originally known as Rose Hill, the present property at Altamont dates from the 18th century, although it has been proposed that the house incorporates an older dwelling, possibly a mediaeval religious establishment. Various dates are given for the core of the building, anything from 1720 to 1770 but during the earlier period a branch of the St George family was in residence and seems to have been responsible for its construction, including the polygonal bay on the east-facing façade. By the later part of the 18th century Altamont was occupied by the Doyles: curiously Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s father, a mid-19th century illustrator and watercolourist, was called Charles Altamont Doyle. By that time, the place was owned by Dawson Borror whose father had been a landscape architect: it was he who initiated changes to the demesne and gardens to provide local employment in the aftermath of the Great Famine (not least the creation of the lake). Borror also extended the house, adding a wing on the north side for a library and other rooms, and then making further alterations in the early 1870s. Half a century later, Altamont came into the ownership of Feilding Lecky Watson: first he and then his daughter Corona North were largely responsible for giving the gardens their present appearance.






Following the death of Corona North in 1999 Altamont passed into the care of the Irish State, which through the Office of Public Works has continued to care for the gardens and keep them open to the public. Hitherto the house at the centre of the site remains closed. An article in the Irish Times in December 2007 noted that the building had been rated by the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage as being of national importance and quoted then-Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government John Gormley as saying that the house would be ‘a very important tourist attraction in the Carlow area and a wonderful amenity for local families.’ The economic recession began soon afterwards and the building stayed shuttered. It also appears legal complexities delayed the formal handing over of the property to the OPW: this only occurred in January 2014 when then-Minister of State with special responsibility for the Office of Public Works Brian Hayes announced plans to open Altamont House to the public in the future. The following year a government press release reported that Simon Harris, then-Minister of State with special responsibility for the Office of Public Works had visited Altamont where he explained his office ‘has already carried out vital remedial and maintenance works to the house and the entrance road and I am pleased to confirm that design work is at an advanced stage for the new Tearooms for which it is hoped to lodge planning permission very shortly.’ In December 2016 local media advised that work was ‘finally going to start in earnest into developing Altamont House into a place for visitors to the gardens to go.’ In February of last year the Carlow Nationalist reported that then-Minister of State with special responsibility for the Office of Public Works Seán Canney had visited Altamont and announced the organization was close to submitting planning permission for tea rooms in the building: ‘It’s a hugely ambitious project to renovate the house and it’s going to cost a substantial amount of money.’ Since then necessary repairs have been carried out on the roof. Further developments are awaited and, all being well, before too long the building at the heart of Altamont’s gardens will open its doors to the public.