Perfection in Miniature

Mar30

‘The townland, and chief part of the demesne of Ledwithstown, are in this parish (Shruel), though the dwelling house and offices are in the parish of Kilcommack. It has been long the residence of a respectable family of the name of Ledwith, who possess a considerable property in this neighbourhood.’ A Statistical Account, or Parochial Survey, of Ireland, 1819.
In 1976 Maurice Craig wrote of Ledwithstown, County Longford, ‘there can be few houses of its size in Ireland more thoroughly designed, and with internal decoration so well integrated.’ The house has long been attributed to Richard Castle and is one of three such properties considered to have been designed by the architect, the other two being Gaulstown, County Westmeath (see Gallia Urba est Omnis Divisa in Partes Tres, February 24^th 2014) and Whitewood Lodge, County Meath (see An Appalling Vista, February 9^th last). In their form and composition this triumvirate demonstrates a steadily growing assurance, with Ledwithstown displaying by far the greatest sophistication and thus inclining to the idea that it was the latest, probably dating from the second half of the 1740s (Castle died in 1751). Relatively little is known of the building’s history, other than that until 1911 it was owned, although not always occupied, by the Ledwith family who settled in the area around 1650. Members of that now-vanished class, the gentry, the Ledwiths played their part in local society as Grand Jurors and High Sheriffs but otherwise came little to public notice. The same is true of their former home, which despite its considerable charm, can be passed unnoticed on the public highway: again like Gaulstown and Whitewood, Ledwithstown lies at the end of an exceptionally long, straight drive.

As with Gaulstown and Whitewood, Ledwithstown is a three-bay house of two storeys over a semi-raised basement. With all three the main entrance is approached by a flight of stone steps; in this instance, the supporting walls splay out to create the impression of a ceremonial approach to the door. In the case of the other two properties, the doorcase is relatively plain, of cut limestone with a fanlight (that at Gaulstown also has side lights). Ledwithstown’s south-facing doorcase is altogether more elaborate, a cut-stone tripartite Tuscan design incorporating tetrastyle pilasters resting on rusticated base and surmounted by carved pediment. Such an entrance immediately indicates this is a building with greater aspirations than those of its siblings. In other respects, however, the facade of Ledwithstown is closer in spirit to Whitewood than to Gaulstown, sharing the same heavy parapet wall concealing the greater part of a slated roof with a pair of substantial chimneystacks (those at Gaulstown are at either gable end). Likewise Ledwithstown and Whitewood have raised corner quoins which add further gravitas to the building, the most striking differences between the two being that Whitewood’s facade is of cut stone (as opposed to roughcast render over rubble stone) and Ledwithstown’s first floor fifteen-pane sash windows share the same proportions as those one storey below (their equivalents at Whitewood are smaller).

The interior design and decoration of Ledwithstown is much more elaborate than either of the two houses with which it bears comparison. Although measuring just forty-eight by forty-seven feet, it can be considered a country house in miniature, the layout being identical to that found in many larger properties. There are, for example, two staircases, that to the west, of carved wood, serving only the ground and first floors while secondary service stairs of stone to the east also descend to the basement area. Immediately inside the entrance hall are doors to left and right providing access to the former morning room and study; a matching pair to the rear open to the staircases while one in the centre of the back wall leads to the drawing room. Here and in the adjacent dining room, the walls retain their mid-18^th century plaster panelling, that in the drawing room being especially fine with a combination of lugged and round topped panels topped by swags or baskets of fruit and shells. Similarly the main staircase, lit by a round-topped window, has timber wainscoting and leads to a panelled first floor landing with egg-and-dart and dentil cornicing; one of the rooms on this level is entirely panelled in wood and others still contain their shallow limestone chimney pieces. The basement likewise keeps much of its original character with a sequence of rooms opening off a central stone-flagged and vaulted central passage.

In 1911 Ledwithstown was bought from the original family by Laurence Feeney. However, following his premature death just six years later, the house was let to a variety of tenants none of whom took care of the property; seemingly a brother and sister who lived there for a while removed all the door and shutter knobs, while another family allowed the chimneys to become blocked and then knocked holes in the walls to permit smoke escape. In 1976 Maurice Craig described Ledwithstown as being ‘unhappily in an advanced state of dilapidation, perhaps not beyond recovery’ and two years later Mark Bence-Jones wrote that the place was ‘now derelict.’ However, around this time the original Laurence Feeney’s grandson, likewise called Laurence, married and he and his wife Mary began to consider the possibility of restoring Ledwithstown.
The couple, together with their children, initiated work on the house and in 1982 they were visited by Desmond Guinness. Soon afterwards the Irish Georgian Society offered its first grant to Ledwithstown, the money being put towards replacing the roof. Further financial aid from the IGS followed, along with voluntary work parties to help the Feeneys in their enterprise. By 1987 Ledwithstown had a new roof and parapet and was once more watertight. Inevitably sections of the reception rooms’ plaster panelling and other decoration had been lost to damp, but enough remained for it to be copied and replaced. The same was true of the main stair hall and sections of the first floor wood panelling, all of which was gradually replaced: when new floors were installed on this level in 1990 surviving panelled walls had to be suspended in mid-air to facilitate the removal of decayed boards. Ledwithstown demonstrates that even the most rundown building can be saved provided the task is approached with enough commitment. Today, more than thirty years after they embarked on their mission, the Feeneys remain happily living in what is, above all else, a family home. So too are both Gaulstown and Whitewood Lodge, making this another trait all three houses share.

Truncated

Mar28

The stump of an 11^th century round tower at Dysert O’Dea, County Clare. A little shy of six metres in diameter, this is one of the largest such structures recorded, believed to have risen to a height of 30 metres. However, the tower has been in a state of ruin probably since the 1650s and now serves as an attractive feature in the graveyard surrounding the 12^th century church dedicated to its founder, St Tola.

Almost a Remembrance

Mar25

The gatelodge at Ballynegall, County Westmeath. Designed by Francis Johnston in 1808 the building provided a perfect introduction to the estate, its features emulating in miniature those of the main house. Tragically some twenty years after its exceptional contents were sold at auction, the house was stripped and gutted in the early 1980s, and is now a roofless shell. The lodge on the other hand remains, a sad remembrance of what once stood but has been lost at the end of the drive.

On the Town III

Mar23

Trim, County Meath can be described as an urban might-have-been. Site of the largest Norman Castle in Ireland, it is also the location for a Church of Ireland cathedral and almost became a university town in the 16^th century. However aside from the castle which still dominates the skyline, little enough of Trim’s former aspirations are evident today. Instead over recent decades the place has often displayed a resolutely disinterested attitude towards its distinguished past, despite ample signs advising visitors that this is a heritage town.
The name Trim derives from the Irish ‘Baile Átha Troim’, meaning ‘town at the ford of the alder trees’, since it is located on the banks of the river Boyne. Originally a monastery was founded here – the peripatetic St Patrick is inevitably said to have been involved – and in the 12^th century it was refounded as St Mary’s Abbey under the Augustinian order. A wooden statue of the Virgin reputed to work miracles made the abbey a site of pilgrimage, at least until the Reformation when the statue was burnt and the abbey dissolved. Several other religious orders had a presence in the vicinity of the town. The Franciscan Grey Friary, established in the early 14^th century and dedicated to St Bonaventure, stood on the site of the present courthouse; following the dissolution of the monasteries, its buildings were destroyed and the church turned into a tholsel. A Dominican friary was also established in 1263 by Geoffrey de Genneville who had married the heiress Maud de Lacy, fought in the Eighth Crusade and served as Marshall of England. At the end of his life, he entered the friary he had founded in Trim and died there in 1314. Close by also were the abbey church or Cathedral of Newtown Trim as well as the Hospital Priory of St John the Baptist. These religious settlements were a reflection of Trim’s importance after this part of the country had been granted by Henry II to Hugh de Lacy in 1172 in return for the service of fifty knights. On a raised site overlooking a fording point on the Boyne de Lacy built a motte and bailey with double palisade and external ditch, although these defences were insufficient to stop the structure being subsequently attacked and burnt the following year by Rory O’Connor, High King of Ireland.

Trim Castle stands in the midst of a three-acre site surrounded by a curtain wall with a series of semi-circular towers along the south and east sides. Soon after O’Connor’s attack it was rebuilt and presumably reinforced so that as better to withstand future assault. Work is believed to have been completed around the end of the second decade of the 13^th century. Local limestone is the predominant material and, as has been noted, with little superfluous ornament the overriding effect is one of massive strength. While the river flows past the north and east sides, a ditch was cut on the other two so that water from the Boyne would cut off the castle and limit access except via a drawbridge. The Town Gate, for example, through which most visitors enter the complex, is today approached by a ramped roadway but formerly would have been reached across a drawbridge. It is one of two access points, the other being the Barbican Gate which by its design was intended to force opponents into a confined passageway where they could be more easily defeated. Within the walls rises the great three-storey castle, a square with similar corner turrets plus four-storey towers projecting in the middle of each side (that on the north long-since demolished). Different reasons have been advanced for this variant on the Greek cross design, among them that it was the best solution to a need for many rooms or that the complex architecture was intended to make a statement of authority. Whatever the reason, it continues to create a powerful impact on anyone approaching, especially since some of the other buildings in the complex, such as the great hall that once ran along the north defensive wall, are now gone. By the 17^th century the castle seems no longer to have been much in use; in fact from around the mid-14^th century onwards it ceased to be permanently occupied. In the following century, during which the building reverted to the crown, the Irish parliament met there on several occasions and a mint operated within the grounds. In the aftermath of the Williamite Wars, it was granted to the Wellesleys who retained ownership until the first Duke of Wellington sold Trim Castle to the Leslies. It then passed to the Plunketts of Dunsany and remained in their possession until sold to the state in 1993: after a programme of restoration it has been open to the public since 2000.

Trim it is claimed contains more mediaeval buildings than any other town in Ireland. Certainly there are ample remnants of its past to be seen, not least what is known as the Yellow Steeple, so called because of the hue it takes when hit by sunlight at dawn and dusk. Situated across the Boyne from Trim Castle, this is the seven-storey east wall of the steeple of St Mary’s church, part of the former Augustinian establishment that housed the supposedly-miraculous statue of the Virgin. To the south-west, and directly above the river stands the so-called Talbot’s Castle, its name deriving from a belief that Sir John Talbot, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland for several years from 1414 was responsible for the building’s construction soon after his arrival in this country. However more recently the suggestion has been made that the core of the building was the refectory of the Augustinian house. In the early 18^th century, Jonathan Swift, when he was living in the area prior to becoming Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, advised Esther Johnson, otherwise known to posterity as ‘Stella’ that the local diocesan school had become ‘thin.’ A few years after she bought the building and either sold or gave it to Swift, after which it became the home of the Diocesan School and remained such until the 19^th century. It has since served as a private residence. Elsewhere on the southern side of the Boyne are such historic structures as the vast rusticated limestone screen wall of the former gaol designed by John Hargrave in 1827, a fitting match for the castle immediately north, although the two are separated by a singularly modest police station. Then there is the Wellington Monument of 1817, a Corinthian column on top of which stands a statue of the Iron Duke whose former family estate, Dangan Castle, lies a few miles south of the town.

In 1584 when Trim was being suggested as the site for Ireland’s first university, the local rector Robert Draper advised that the town was ‘full of very faire castles and stone houses builded after the English fashion and devyded into five faire streetes.’ Aside from the great castle, the others of that name have gone and so too have most of the old stone houses. And, a problem by no means unique to Trim, much of what survives has suffered from a shaming want of due care. Directly to the south of the castle and facing its walls, for example, is a terrace of ten early 19^th century cottages with decorated bargeboards and canopied porches, and mullioned windows. Several of these are visibly decaying, with panes of glass broken and vegetation sprouting in the gutters: hardly a good advertisement for a heritage town. Nor is the adjacent hotel built a decade ago after much controversy and the production of an independent report criticised a government minister for ignoring objections to the development from the relevant officials in his own department. Not only is the resultant building ill-considered for its location but also poorly designed and demonstrating little awareness of this most sensitive location. On the other hand, such insensitivity is widespread in Trim. At the top of Market Street stands a substantial mid-18^th century five-bay, three-storey market house with first floor Venetian window and Diocletian window above. All have suffered from the insertion of uPVC (like so many other buildings throughout the town) while the ground floor is defaced with crassly-executed contemporary shop fronts. Richard Morrison’s nearby Courthouse of 1810 similarly is afflicted by a recent development to one side that shows no respect for the context or for Trim’s history. Elsewhere old buildings, and even new ones, are allowed to remain fallow, and this in an era when shortage of housing is constantly lamented. Vacant sites litter the streets and more recent additions display no regard for the original urban layout. The difficulty of securing a clear view of the Wellington Monument embodies all the place’s problems: nobody seems to have noticed what has happened to the town’s architectural heritage and moved to have matters improved. Everywhere one turns there appears to be a want of coherence or planning, and the complete absence of any vision. The outcome is that Trim fails to capitalise on its advantages as a heritage town, with obvious economic consequences. An unfinished housing estate on the edge of Trim, a victim of the recent recession, rejoices in the name Maudlin Vale: enough said.

Ireland: Crossroads of Art and Design IV

Mar19

When this walnut desk and bookcase entered the collection of Chicago’s Art Institute in 1957, it was catalogued as having been made in England c.1710, even though an article published a year before in Antique Collector had suggested an Irish provenance. However after half a century in the Institute’s collection, a pencil inscription was discovered on the bottom of the lower-right drawer bearing the words ‘John Kirkhoffer/fecit/1732’. Believed to have been born in Germany, by this date Kirkhoffer had moved to Dublin where he worked as a cabinet maker: a not-dissimilar piece attributed to him and now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London is reputed to have belonged to Dean Swift. However, the discovery of the inscription makes the Chicago example at present the earliest signed and dated example of Irish furniture.

Ireland: Crossroads of Art and Design II

Mar17

A portable harp produced by Dublin craftsman John Egan around 1820. Responding to a wave of interest in ancient Irish tradition encouraged by authors such as Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan (whose 1806 novel The Wild Irish Girl is essential reading) and musicologist Edward Bunting, Egan created these light gut-strung instruments with rounded sound boxes that could be easily carried and played by ladies in their drawing rooms. Often, as in this instance, they were painted green and decorated with appropriate motifs like gold shamrocks. In the Chicago exhibition, the harp rests on top of a mahogany Pembroke table made in Ireland c.1740-60.
The Irish Aesthete wishes a Happy St Patrick’s Day to all readers.

Greetings from Chicago

Mar15

As some readers are no doubt aware, in the coming days the exhibition ‘Ireland: Crossroads of Art and Design, 1690–1840’ opens at Chicago’s Art Institute. Featuring more than 300 items including painting, sculpture, and furniture as well as bookbinding, ceramics, glass, metalwork, musical instruments and textiles, the show is a celebration of the country’s cultural achievements during what has come to be known as the long eighteenth century. An exhibition of this kind has never been held anywhere before and all the items are on loan from private and public American collections: a reflection of how much of Ireland’s heritage has been lost to its country of origin. Over the next week the Irish Aesthete will be posting every day from Chicago and featuring a succession of the exhibits. To begin, here is how the show itself starts: a wall covered with one of James Fennell’s marvellous panoramic photographs offering a view of County Wicklow from the steps of Russborough.

In the Naughty Corner

Mar14

Apologies to all readers for the absence of a post earlier today: a technical glitch which one trusts will not happen again. Meanwhile, here is a view of the niche in the entrance hall of Grey Abbey, County Down.

Flying High

Mar11

More superlative rococo plasterwork by Robert West, this time in the double cube former ballroom of Castlemartyr, County Cork. The room was added to the existing house in the second half of the 1760s by Richard Boyle, second Earl of Shannon. The house remained in the family until the beginning of the last century and more recently has become a hotel. Anyone in the area should remember that at present this room contains many of the original Boyle portraits which formerly hung here and have now temporarily returned to their former home.

Made to Last For Ever

Mar9

‘It were also to be wished that even our gentlemen would in their country-seats imitate Colonel Newburgh, a great improver in the Co. of Cavan, who as well as several others, does not only use stucco work, instead of wainscot, but has arched his fine dwelling-house, and all his large office-houses, story over story, and even all their roofs in the most beautiful manner without any timber.’
Samuel Madden, Reflections and Resolutions Proper for the Gentlemen of Ireland, Etc. 1738.
‘This seat, for beauty and magnificence, may vie with any in Ireland. There is an ascent to it by several terraces from the river, which are adorned with ponds, jets d’eau, fruit and flowers. The house is about 140 feet in front – it is made to last for ever – the roofs and all the apartments being vaulted, and curiously finished with stucco work; and yet scarce any house in Ireland has so brisk and lively an aspect – the just mixture of the brick and hewn stone, and the proportion of the parts adding life to one another; the large court and offices also behind it are all vaulted. It is not easy to pass by this fine seat without delaying at it, but to do justice to the house, its various apartments, gardens, vistas, avenues, circular walks, roads and plantations rising to the tops of all the hills around, would require a description that would draw me too far from my present design.’
Rev. William Henry, Upper Lough Erne, 1739.
‘The affairs of Ireland being sometime happily settled, the gentlemen of the country now began to quit their cottages, and build mansion houses, suitable to their estates and fortunes. The arts hitherto unknown in Ireland, architecture in particular, began to receive encouragement; of which no gentleman of private fortune gave juster and more useful specimens than Mr Newburgh. His dwelling house as well as offices being arched throughout, in the upper as well as lower stories are thereby of course, free from the danger and power of fire. The compliment that the late Dean Swift paid to Mr Newburgh on the planning such a singular but useful edifice, was as uncommon, as there is reason to believe it sincere, viz. That it was not only the best, but the only house he had seen in Ireland.’
Particulars relating to the Life and Character of the Late Brockhill Newburgh Esq. ,1761.

As part of James I’s plantation of Ulster, in 1609 John Taylor of Cambridge received a grant of 1,500 acres in an area of County Cavan called Aghieduff. Here he established the town of Ballyhaise and, according to a mid-19^th century report, ‘built a strong Bawn of lime and stone for his own residence, on the site of the present castle, which, from it position, commanded the ford over the river.’ Further English and Scottish settlers were encouraged to move into the area and when Nicholas Pynner undertook his government-commissioned survey of the province’s plantation in 1618-19 he found eighteen such families living at Ballyhaise ‘and everything around the infant colony appeared in the most prosperous condition.’ The disturbances of the 1640s were a setback to the enterprise but by the time of Charles II’s restoration to the throne in 1660, Ballyhaise’s settlement was once more progressing. John Taylor had married the daughter and heiress of Henry Brockhill of Allington, Kent and their elder son was duly christened Brockhill Taylor; he served as Member of Parliament for the borough of Cavan in the 1630s. On his death he left no son but two daughters one of whom, Mary inherited the Cavan estate. She married Thomas Newburgh and the couple had several sons, the second of which, Colonel Brockhill Newburgh, was the next owner of Ballyhaise since his elder brother died in 1701 without heirs. During the Williamite Wars, Colonel Newburgh had raised a company of soldiers and participated in several battles in support of what would prove to be the winning side. In 1704 he was appointed High Sheriff of Cavan and served as an M.P. from 1715 to 1727, as well as acting as chairman of the local linen board. However it is for the building projects he undertook on his Ballyhaise estate that Colonel Newburgh is best remembered. In 1703 he and another local landowner rebuilt the bridge here as an eight-arched stone structure, and during the same period he also embarked on a grand scheme to lay out a new town, described after his death as being ‘in the form of a Circus, the houses all arched, with a large circular market house in the center; a building, in the opinion of some good judges, not unworthy the plan of Vitruvius or Palladio; and which (if we may be allowed to compare small things with great) bears no distant resemblance to the Pantheon at Rome, but with this difference, without the opening of the convex roof at the summit, contrived to give light to the latter.’ Unfortunately in 1736 the market house collapsed and had to be rebuilt; in 1837 it was reported to be ‘an arched edifice built of brick and of singular appearance.’ It has since gone and the present market house, with ill-considered uPVC windows, does little to improve what remains of Colonel Newburgh’s once-elegant and innovative programme of urban planning.

The near-contemporaneous accounts carried above give us an idea of Colonel Newburgh’s ambitious developments of his own house and grounds at Ballyhaise, and the impact these made on visitors to the area. The gardens, it is clear, were an elaborate baroque arrangement of ‘ponds, jets d’eau, fruit and flowers’ spread across a sequence of terraces that descended to the river before the land rose up once more on its far side. As for the house, its architect has long been the subject of speculation. It used to be attributed to Castle, but given that Colonel Newburgh is believed to have been born c.1659 (and died in 1741) and that certain elements of the building, not least the red brick used in its construction, are associated with Sir Edward Lovett Pearce, he now seems more likely to have been responsible. Ballyhaise was probably constructed on the site and incorporated parts of an earlier dwelling dating back a century to around the time of John Taylor’s arrival; one imagines this to have been defensive in character. Colonel Newburgh’s house, on the other hand, projects its owner’s assurance and the more tranquil character of the time.
The core of the building was of two storeys over half-basement, and of seven bays. As already mentioned red brick was used except for the three centre bays which are of limestone with Ionic over Doric pilasters below a full entablature supporting a pediment. The narrow entrance is reached at the top of a flight of steps, a garland of carved flowers fitted beneath the door case’s segmental pediment containing a scallop shell. In 1746 the architect and designer Thomas Wright who was then visiting Ireland as a guest of Lord Limerick (see Do the Wright Thing, July 28^th 2014) made a sketch of the front of Ballyhaise as it then was. This can be seen above and indicates the house was the centrepiece of a Palladian scheme extended on either side by quadrants before terminating in pavilion wings. None of this remains today and the interior has likewise undergone changes since first completed when it was vaulted throughout, allegedly as a precaution against fire. What remain largely unaltered are the entrance hall and rooms immediately on either side; one of these, the so-called Peacock Room, contains wall paper from the first half of the 19^th century, covered in varnish at some later date but otherwise in good condition. To the rear of the entrance hall is the room which best evokes Colonel Newburgh’s house, a small oval saloon. Its walls covered in plaster panelling beneath a shallow coffered dome, the saloon contains a simple Kilkenny marble chimneypiece and two windows on either side of what surely must once have been an opening onto a balcony at the centre of the projecting bow.

Ballyhaise remained in the possession of the Newburgh family until around 1800 when it was sold to William Humphreys, a Dublin merchant who had made his fortune in the wood trade. By then the house must have looked very old-fashioned and it was therefore subjected to a complete overhaul. The quadrants and wings were demolished and the main block extended on either side to hold drawing and dining room respectively, both lit by generous tripartite windows. The contrast between these and the original early 18^th century windows is only one of a number of incongruities, accentuated on the exterior by the unmistakable difference in tone of brick. Inside rather narrow passages provide access to the main reception rooms which are large and mostly plain although the overdoors carry floral friezes. The main staircase, squeezed into too tight a space, leads to the first floor former bedrooms which are also simple although some, such as that immediately above the oval saloon, retain their Georgian decoration and chimney piece. Mr Humprheys’ heirs enjoyed the advantages of his wealth for barely a century before it ran out and the house was once more sold, this time to the state which in 1905 bought the estate to run as an agricultural college. Ballyhaise has served this purpose every since, a mixed blessing for the place. Inevitably there have been losses, not least to the surrounding parkland where no evidence of Colonel Newburgh’s fantastical gardens survive; of course, these may well have been swept away when the property was modernised by Mr Humphreys. Recent additions to the building stock in the grounds are pedestrian in design, but the old stable blocks remain and have suffered relatively little compromise. And most importantly the house itself survives and has of late benefitted from remedial works, particularly to the roof. Not all is as was when Colonel Newburgh embarked on his improvements but the words of the Rev. William Henry written in 1739 still ring true: Ballyhaise appears to have been ‘made to last for ever.’

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