Tag Archives: Architectural History

An Antiquarian’s Delight


The O’Dwyer family claimed descent from Milesius of Spain who, according to legend, conquered Ireland for the Gaels (hence the term ‘Milesians’ to describe the Irish race). By the late Middle Ages, the O’Dwyers had settled in the Barony of Kilnamanagh, Co. Tipperary, where their primary base was Dundrum, some eight miles to the west of Cashel. In this area, they constructed a number of castles, not least one at Dundrum, later replaced by a house constructed in the 18th century for the Maude family. Not far away, in the 16th century the O’Dwyers built another large castle at Killenure, which remained an important base for them until the Confederate Wars and their aftermath. According to the Civil Survey of 1654, the site had until then been occupied by ‘Charles O’Dwyer of Cullynuer Irish Papist.’ As for the property, it was described as ‘one demolished castle irreparable and one thatched house.’ Like many other such families, in the course of the Cromwellian settlement, the O’Dwyers were dispossessed of their lands, which in this case subsequently passed into the ownership of a branch of the Coppingers, who have featured here before (see Holding Court « The Irish Aesthete). They must have been responsible for adding a small residence to the east of the castle, using this as a shooting lodge. However, in 1746, the Coppingers sold Killenure to William George Cooper. 






The first of Killenure’s new owners to arrive in Ireland was Austin Cooper, originally from Surrey where he inherited property, but having sold it for some £1.500 around 1661, he moved to this country and settled in County Wicklow where he became responsible for the gardens around the house at Blessington built by Michael Boyle, future Archbishop of Armagh. There Cooper was responsible for creating one of the finest baroque gardens in Ireland, its greenhouse was one of the first places in the country where fruit was grown out of season. He became renowned for his feats of strength, such as taking two men, one in each hand, slapping them together and throwing them on a dunghill. Seemingly, if he held onto a cart, the horse pulling it could not move. It was his great-grandson, William, who moved to Killenure, having been appointed Diocesan Registrar of Cashel by Archbishop Arthur Price. Cooper and his wife Jane Wayland would have 14 children, their eldest son Samuel acting as land agent for his neighbours, the Maudes of Dundrum, whose estate management was much admired by Arthur Young when he visited in 1776. One of Samuel Cooper’s younger brothers was Austin Cooper who despite a life working in the Irish Treasury Office in Dublin is today remembered as an ardent antiquarian who measured, described and drew historic monuments, predominantly castles and churches, throughout the country. All this material was donated by the family to the National Library of Ireland in 1993: one of his pictures shows Killenure Castle, as it then looked. 






As can be seen here, Killenure Castle is very much a building in two parts, with a large house built to one side of the old O’Dwyer property. As it exists now, the two-storey house is L-shaped, and dates from two periods, the original five-bay pedimented block c.1770 and what is now the entrance front of four bays added c.1800. Adjoining this to the west stand the substantial remains of the original building, which is a curious blend of an old-fashioned defensive castle and an Elizabethan manor house, with a gable-fronted facade, mullioned windows and tall chimney stacks. Another distinctive feature is that it has a circular defensive tower at each of the four corners. One of these towers has later, larger window openings with brick surrounds, indicating this section was in use relatively recently but otherwise the castle seems little altered since first constructed, although nothing of substance remains inside. The Coopers remained at Killenure until 1963 when the estate was sold and the family moved to England. Happily,after a period when it appears the future of the property was in doubt, almost 20 years ago, it was bought by a family and has remained well cared for ever since.


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A Gothick Set-Piece



The castellated entrance into the former estate at Tynan Abbey, County Armagh. In his definitive guide to the gate lodges of Ulster (1994) J.A.K. Dean describes this the building as a romantic Gothick set-piece and attributes its design to John Nash who in the early 19th century was working at neighbouring Caledon and who also drew up plans, unexecuted, for Tynan. As Dean notes, the gate is in the form of a double ‘portcullis’ in a Tudor archway recessed below machiolations, the whole framed within a tall screen wall, with the gate keeper’s accommodation found within a polygonal tower at one end. Tynan Abbey itself was gutted by fire in 1981 after its then-owner Sir Norman Stronge and his son James were shot dead by the IRA: the remains of the building were eventually demolished in 1998.


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Offering an Alternative Vision


Last May, the Irish Aesthete looked at the sad fate of St Loman’s, Mullingar, a vast range of buildings dating from the 1850s and originally opened as a lunatic asylum (see Squandering National Resources « The Irish Aesthete). St Loman’s continued to offer long-term residential care for psychiatric patients until it was closed in December 2013. Since then, the state body responsible for the property, the Health Service Executive, has done nothing with it, allowing the place, which might be restored and used for a number of other purposes, not least housing, to fall into steadily worse condition. For the HSE, these circumstances are not unusual: the organisation owns some 200 buildings at least 110 of which have been categorised as ‘surplus to requirement.’ Deemed unfit for their original purpose, these properties have often been neither repurposed nor passed on to new owners. Instead the HSE appears to prefer that they sit vacant and deteriorating. At the end of last month, the Irish Independent reported that the health body had been presented by local authorities with a total bill of almost €800,000 in derelict site levies, some 50 per cent of which remained unpaid, with the largest bill linked to a former nurses’ building at University Hospital Galway where the organisation was being charged €245,000. It is worth pointing out that these buildings are the property of the Irish people, and supposedly in the care of the HSE. Too often that care is not forthcoming and instead one state body is expected to fine another, the money coming out of the same public purse, as funded by the taxpayer. Fortunately, there are exceptions to this sad and repetitive tale, as can be seen in Enniscorthy, County Wexford.






St Senan’s dates from a decade after St Loman’s but was intended to serve the same purpose: to act as Enniscorthy District Lunatic Asylum. Located on a site some 250 yards above the river Slaney and a prominent local landmark for more than a century and a half, the building was designed by architects James Bell and James Barry Farrell, and cost in the region of £40,000 to construct. Primarily faced in red brick produced on the site, with yellow brick used for the dressings, the hospital sits on a plinth of locally quarried granite. Opened in 1868, the building is an astonishing 650 feet (225 metres) long and follows an unusual asymmetrical plan centred on a thirteen-bay, three-storey central block with projecting five-bay wings on either side, much of the rest of the facade being broken up with a sequence of five-storey Italianate towers, most of them intended to store water. While the central block was used for administration, a chapel, dining hall and so forth, the long wings on either side provided accommodation for male and female inmates, of which there were originally supposed to be 232 of each sex, although this number would later rise: some 250 staff were employed on the site in different roles. St Senan’s remained in use until early in the present century. In 2010, it was one of three hospitals ordered by the Mental Health Commission to cease admissions, with the property described as ‘dilapidated, depressing and not fit for human habitation.’ By 2014, it was being used by the HSE for same-day respite care and administrative offices, but had been placed by An Taisce on the latter’s top 10 nationally significant buildings at risk. St Senan’s closed in 2015. 





In January 2017, less than two years after closing to patients, St Senan’s on a site of some 46 acres was offered for sale by the HSE with a guiding price of  just €780,000. The property was bought by a local development company, Bree Investments Ltd, which, working with GKMP Architects, is now in the midst of an imaginative and ambitious job of converting the former hospital into 60 large apartments. What this project shows is that it is possible for an old building to be given new purpose, one quite different from that originally envisaged but no less needed, especially today. If a commercial entity can undertake such a job on the basis that eventually profit will be realised, one must ask why the HSE, which is constantly short of funds (and consistently overreaching its annual budget) could not do likewise. Instead of sitting on assets which decline in value through want of maintenance, it should either engage in restoration and regeneration, or dispose of the property to a third-party which will do so. St Senan’s offers an alternative vision of what can happen to such historic properties.

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Three Quarters Left



After last Monday’s concern over the fate of Ballyteige Castle, County Wexford, here is an example of what can happen to a neglected historic monument. This is Barnaderg Castle, County Galway, a five-storey tower house believed to have been built by Malachy O’Kelly in the 16th century. Standing on a low mound and in an area prone to flooding, even in summer, the building was probably once entirely surrounded by water and reached via a drawbridge. Today, only three sides of the tower house survive, the south being entirely gone and those on both the west and east (where a mullioned window can be seen on the fourth floor) are vulnerable.



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Norman Wisdom


Nine years ago, Wexford County Council opened the first phase of ‘The Norman Way’, a 65-kilometer self-guided heritage trail along the south-east coast, which leads to a variety of mediaeval buildings in diverse stages of repair. According to the website promoting this route, while the Normans invaded England in 1066, ‘a century later they came to Ireland,’ thereby suggesting that their arrival in this country was an altogether peaceable affair. Furthermore, apparently, ‘as generations of Normans made their home here, their Norman way of doing things enhanced everyday life in Ireland.’ It’s open to question whether the native Irish were delighted to welcome the arrival of Norman wisdom. As Tony Canavan of History Ireland has observed, ‘from a historian’s point of view, on the trail’s website and information panels, ‘the presentation of the Normans (setting aside questions of definition) may raise an eyebrow’ since they are portrayed not as invaders but as though they were modern-day immigrants. It is easy to understand the appeal of creating such a route – the official site expresses hope that this initiative will stimulate commercial and community benefits in the areas through which it runs – but this ought not to be at the expense of historical accuracy. 





Although of Norman origin and hard to miss as it rises above the flat Wexford countryside, Ballyteige Castle is not one of the sites included in The Norman Way. For several hundred years, this was one of the seats of the Anglo-Norman Whitty family, with references to its members being found in Irish documents from 1247 onwards; in 1418 Robert Whitty of Ballyteige became Bishop of Ferns, an office he held for the next 40 years. The original castle is said to have been burned by Art Mac Murrough Kavanagh in 1408, so what can be seen today – a four-storey tower house – was constructed after that date. What makes the site particularly fascinating, and important, is that so much remains, including much of the bawn wall and two large circular towers at the north-east and north-west. Attached to the tower house and running along the east side is a later house, now abandoned and boarded up, and behind this is what would have been a substantial courtyard enclosed by the western wall. It is known that the Whittys remained in occupation of Ballyteige until the mid-1650s when, like so many other Roman Catholics, Richard Whitty had the property taken from him. Ballyteige was then granted to the Colcloughs of nearby Tintern Abbey (see The Little Sister « The Irish Aesthete) and it was later sold to an Edward Meadows. It appears to have been occupied until relatively recently, but is now abandoned and falling into dereliction. 





Some two miles north-east of Ballyteige Castle can be found a cemetery surrounding what remains of a mediaeval church called Grange, thereby suggesting it was once part of a monastic estate. On the church’s interior north wall is a large and well-preserved monument to Walter Whitty of Ballyteige. In April 1594 he had been kidnapped by Spanish sailors whose vessel was then passing along the Wexford coast, and carried back to their country after they declined payment for his release, declaring that ‘they desired more the credit in Spain of having taken a great gentleman prisoner, than any ever so great ransom.’ (cited in Journal of the Waterford & South-East of Ireland Archaeological Society, Vol IV, 1898). Somehow, Walter Whitty managed to find his way back home and spend the rest of his days at Ballyteige where he died in 1630, but the marble monument inside the church dates from 1647. The Whitty coat of arms features a lion rampant, but locals, perhaps unfamiliar with these animals, preferred to believe it was a cat. This, in turn, gave rise to a legend that a feline murderer was responsible for Whitty’s demise. There seem to be two versions of the story. In one, Walter Whitty, having failed to shoot any rabbits while hunting, took out his wrath on a cat he saw sitting on a sandbank. When he returned home to Ballyteige Castle, a cat on the premises took its revenge by lunging at his throat and killing him. In the other version, Whitty seduced the daughter of a local witch and then, having taken her out to see in a boat, drowned the girl. Hearing of this, the witch transformed herself into a cat, lunged at Whitty’s throat and killed him. Strangely, neither account features in the Norman Way literature. Neither does Ballyteige Castle, which could benefit from official attention as a building that holds evidence of human habitation across many centuries, from the Normans to the present day. 

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A Picturesque Feature



Named after John Audley who owned the property in the 16th century, Audley’s Castle, County Down dates from the middle of the previous century when constructed on a rocky site high above Strangford Lough. Still retaining its bawn wall, on the south side the building has two projecting towers linked at roof level by an arch. In 1646 the castle was sold to BernardWard family whose descendants in the 18th century, built a new residence – Castleward (see A Special Friendship « The Irish Aesthete) – after which this building became a picturesque feature of the demesne at the end of a long canal.



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A Fitting Memorial


In 1887, Constance Duguid, daughter of a wealthy wine merchant based in Dover, came to Ireland to visit her sister Madeleine who lived in Myshall, County Carlow as wife of the local rector. During her visit, Constance met Rupert George Inglis Brady, heir to his family estate and then living in Myshall Lodge. The couple became engaged, but while out riding she was thrown from her horse and died. Constance was buried in the churchyard at Myshall, where her father John Duguid erected a life-size white marble statue from Dublin sculptor Thomas Farrell: it depicts a young woman in gauzy garments holding a dove. When Duguid’s wife Adelaide died in 1903, she asked to be buried beside her daughter, but by this time Farrell’s work had begun to show signs of weathering. Therefore, a decision was taken not just to move it indoors, but also to build a new church in which the sculpture would be placed.




Work on the construction of the Adelaide Memorial Church of Christ the Redeemer began in 1907, its architect being George Coppinger Ashlin, who as a young man had worked with Edward Welby Pugin, eventually marrying the latter’s sister Mary: before their partnership broke up in 1870, Pugin and Ashlin designed a number of churches in Ireland, not least the cathedral in Cobh, County Cork. Ashlin was 70 when he took on the commission in Myshall, and took his inspiration from Salisbury Cathedral, with which the new building has similarities, although contrary to popular belief, the church is not a miniature copy of the English cathedral. Thought to have cost Duguid some £50,000, it was consecrated a few months after his own death in May 1913. The Adelaide Memorial church is in the early English style, cruciform in design with an ornate tower and spire rising above the entrance porch in the south-west corner. Below a steeply pitched roof of Westmoreland slate, the extensively buttressed walls are faced in limestone resting on a five-foot base of locally quarried granite.





Inside the church, a nave without aisles leads to the chancel at the east end, with transepts on either side, that to the north serving as a mortuary chapel to the Duguids, that to the south fronted by a pulpit incorporated into an oak screen with the vestry beyond. Throughout the building, the walls and vaulted ceiling are entirely faced in pale Bath stone, with a variety of marbles, including stones from Galway and Kilkenny, used for columns and other architectural elements. The bosses at the intersection of each bay on the ceiling are either foliated or else are carved with images of the evangelists, the Duguid coat of arms, or the intertwined initials of Adelaide and John Duguid. Below the chancel’s east window is a panel in mosaic, mother of pearl and gold leaf depicting the Last Supper. Many of the church’s decorative details came from English manufacturers. The black and cream mosaic floor, for example, was provided by Oppenheimer and Co of Manchester, while James Powell & Sons was responsible for the stained glass. The clock in the tower came from Joyce of Whitchurch in Shropshire, and the bells were made by Taylors of Loughborough. The mortuary chapel in the north transept is particularly fine, its archway carved with thistles and roses (emblems of the respective countries of origin for John and Adelaide Duguid). Thought to have been inspired by a screen in St Giles’s Cathedral, Edinburgh, that in the mortuary chapel is made of wrought iron and copper, and features doves carrying olive branches, roses, fleur-de-lis and the Duguid couple’s entwined initials. Inside, the space is dominated by Farrell’s white marble statue, set on a six-foot-high pedestal of Peterhead marble which carries the following inscription: ‘Remembering the admiration with which she used to view similar monuments in Italy, this statue of Innocence fit representing her, is placed here to the memory of “Conny” Constance Louise Eugenie Duguid by her sorrowing parents, 1888.’ The remains of both her parents are interred in the same space. Still wonderfully maintained, despite the high costs involved, the Adelaide Memorial church is one of the unexpected delights of this part of the country.


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If You Go Down to the Woods…



At the top of a long, tree-lined laneway and adjacent to the very fragmentary remains of a sixth century monastery founded by a disciple of Saint Ciarán of Clonmacnoise, this is Leitir or Letter House, County Offaly. A two-storey residence dating back to the 17th century, sadly it is now in an advanced state of dilapidation and at risk of being lost forever. The building’s most distinctive feature are the tall stone chimney stacks, located not at either gable end but on the rear wall.



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Beautifully Situated on a Fine Declivity


Mount Juliet, County Kilkenny dates from the 1760s when commissioned by Somerset Butler, 8th Viscount Ikerrin and 1st Earl of Carrick from an unknown architect. Located on an estate he had bought towards the end of the previous decade. The house sits on high ground above the river Nore and across from Ballylinch, a property which had anciently belonged to the monks of Jerpoint Abbey and which had passed through a number of hands before being inherited by Eleanor Redman, who married James Butler, third viscount Ikerrin: they were the paternal grandparents of Somerset Butler. The original name of the land on which Mount Juliet stands was Oldtown but this was changed to Waton’s Grove, after the Waton family who lived there until they forfeited their property in the aftermath of the Cromwellian settlement. It then passed through a succession of owners, including James II, until finally being purchased by Somerset Butler, probably in the late 1750s: a bridge over the river in front of the house carries the inscription, ‘This bridge was built at the private expense of Somerset Hamilton Earl of Carrick in the year 1762.’ Having acquired the place, he chose to call it Mount Juliet, after his wife, Lady Juliana Boyle, a daughter of the first Earl of Shannon. 





When Arthur Young visited Mount Juliet  in 1776, he described it as ‘beautifully situated on a fine declivity on the banks of the Nore, commanding some extensive plantations that spread over the hills, which rise in a various manner on the other side the river: a knole of lawn rises among them, with artificial ruins upon it…’ Another visitor in 1818 describes walking around ‘the flower gardens and to the green house which is on an uncommon plan and then round the back lawn, which is very pretty, well wooded with pretty oak between the boles of which is a beautiful view of distant woods and hills and here and there a reach of the river.’ However, the writer thought the house ‘very large, old fashioned and not pretty,’ although he did allow that it seemed ‘comfortable and convenient.’ 





Designed by an unknown architect, Mount Juliet is of three storeys over-basement. The house originally faced north-east looking down towards the river with a seven bay facade between two shallow curved bows with arched windows on two storeys. The central breakfront has Venetian windows on the two upper storeys above a tripartite pedimented and fan-lit doorway (since enclosed within a porch). There is a perron and double steps in front of the door, with iron railings  At the start of the last century, the entrance was moved to the other side of the building, with a single-bay three-storey projecting entrance bay added. Much of the interior decoration was commissioned by the second earl, Henry Thomas Butler, who inherited the estate in 1774, also the year in which he was married. The main reception rooms have splendid plasterwork, again by unknown hands, although in the style of Michael Stapleton,not least the dining room, the walls of which are lined with medallions enclosing classical figures in relief and surrounded by delicate garlands of grape leaves. But each room has its own distinctive character, as well as a variety of fine marble chimneypieces, many of which were installed when the house underwent alterations in first decades of the last century. The second earl was also responsible for the entrance hall dominated by an Imperial staircase supported by a screen of fluted Ionic columns. When the house’s orientation was altered at the start of the last century, a room was added immediately beyond the stairs’ return. 





While the first two Earls of Carrick appear to have lived within their means, the same cannot be said of the third. Soon after he died in 1838, leaving two infant sons, an auction was held at Mount Juliet where lots on offer included ‘the entire household furniture, plate, and plated ware, valuable paintings, books, piano forte, china, glass, &c.; as well as horses, carriages, farming implements and all livestock. Then in 1852, a large part of the family’s land, ‘‘upwards of 7,000 acres statute measure’ was sold by the court for the Sale of Incumbered Estates in Ireland, the auction realising a total of £40,200. By this date, all that remained was the townland of Mount Juliet and its house, which had been inherited by the fifth earl, Somerset Arthur Butler, who entered the Grenadier Guards as an ensign in 1856 and took part in the Crimean War, retiring from service as a captain in 1862. Unmarried, seemingly in later years he became a recluse and following his death in 1901 is said to have left much of his personal fortune to the Plymouth Brethren of which he was a member. Title and what remained of the estate then passed to a cousin, Major Charles Henry Butler, who never lived in the property but passed it on to his eldest son, the future seventh earl who in turn leased Mount Juliet to the wealthy General Sir Hugh McCalmont. 





Just before the outbreak of the First World War, General Sir Hugh McCalmont bought Mount Juliet from the seventh Earl of Carrick. The McCalmonts were responsible for carrying out a number of alterations to the house, not least changing its orientation and creating a ballroom in one of the wings. The family remained at Mount Juliet until 1988 when they in turn sold the property. Since then it has operated as a luxury hotel with a Michelin starred restaurant. Over the past year, the hotel’s new owners have undertaken an extensive restoration and redecoration of the house.


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A Memory of What has Gone



The gates and gatelodge which once led to Ryehill, County Galway. The estate here originally belonged to a branch of the Redington family, whose main residence was elsewhere in the county at Kilcornan. In 1832 Eleanor Redington, who had inherited Ryehill from her father four years earlier, married Stephen Roche of Granagh Castle, county Kilkenny and it may have been around this time that the main house was constructed; of two storeys over raised basement, it was of seven bays, the three central ones forming a shallow bow. The building was unroofed in the 1950s and has now gone, but the gatelodge, believed to date from around the time of the Redington-Roche marriage, serves as a reminder of what once stood here. Of one storey, it has a particularly fine pedimented limestone Doric portico flanked by ashlar quoins. A substantial two-storey extension has been added to the rear in recent years. 


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