Tag Archives: Architectural History

High Victoriana


Based in County Sligo, the O’Haras are an ancient Irish family, their surname an anglicisation of the original Ó hEaghra, descendants of Eaghra Poprigh mac Saorghus who died in 926. The family’s ancestry is attested by the Book of O’Hara (Leabhar Í Eadhra), a volume of bardic poetry written on vellum for Cormac O’Hara in 1597 and acquired by the National Library of Ireland almost 20 years ago. It might therefore have been expected that during the upheavals of the 16th and 17th centuries, when so many other similar Gaelic families lost everything, the O’Haras would suffer the same fate. However, in this instance, by adapting themselves to changing circumstances, they survived and continue to live in the same area as did their forebears hundreds of years earlier. When Cormac’s son Tadgh O’Hara died in 1616, he left two infant boys, the elder another Tadgh, the younger Kean, who were raised as members of the Established Church by the Court of Wards. In consequence, despite some confiscations, they managed to hold onto more of their ancestral lands than was customarily the case, and although never rich (and frequently in debt) they survived. Their circumstances were helped, as often occurred, through judicious marriages which brought into the family property in northern England and also in Dublin: included in the latter was a site on Essex Street where the original Custom House once stood and another on Wellington Quay today occupied by the Clarence Hotel. 





Tadgh O’Hara the younger died unmarried in 1634 and so the estates passed to his brother Kean whose two elder sons also dying without direct heirs in turn the O’Hara lands passed to another Kean. Of the next generation, the elder son Charles sat for some time in the Irish House of Commons but is best remembered now as the close correspondent and almost father-figure to Edmund Burke. Meanwhile his younger brother Kane O’Hara became well-known as a playwright and composer who in 1757 co-founded the Musical Academy in Dublin with the Earl of Mornington (again a talented composer and father of the future first Duke of Wellington). Five years later, he scored a success on stage with Midas, the first-known burletta (a kind of parody of opera seria) to be performed in English. After being performed in Dublin’s Crow Street Theatre, it reached Covent Garden in London in 1764 and was succeeded by a number of other burlesques written by O’Hara. In 1774 he opened Mr. Punch’s Patagonian Theatre on Dublin’s Abbey Street. This was a theatre which staged puppet versions of operas and burlesques and later also transferred to London. The Irish tenor Michael Kelly, who would later sing in operas by Mozart, Gluck and Paisiello, performed in O’Hara’s premises while a young man. Meanwhile his nephew, another Charles O’Hara, duly inherited the family estate in Sligo and, like his father before him, sat in the House of Commons, although described in 1782 as ‘a very dull, tedious speaker.’ He opposed the Act of Union, but then sat in the Westminster parliament representing Sligo until his death, when he was succeeded by his son, Charles King O’Hara who did not stand for election but remained in Ireland where he was prominent in relief efforts during the Great Famine. Dying childless, his estate went to a nephew, Charles William Cooper, with the condition that the latter changed his surname to O’Hara. It is his descendants who have continued to live on the site to the present day. 





The O’Haras were never particularly wealthy, were often heavily indebted and their estates remortgaged: it didn’t help that on several occasions there were legal disputes among them over inheritances (a common phenomenon in late 17th/early 18th century Ireland). In the 1790s, financial circumstances had become so bad that they were facing bankruptcy, and large portions of their property had to be sold to pay some outstanding debts. The family’s base was always close to the town of Collooney, which they sought to improve, not least by establishing a bleach mill there. Likewise they tried to modernise and better the land they owned a few miles to the south-west of Collooney. The house there is now called Annaghmore but for a long time named Nymphfield (or Nymphsfield). A succession of buildings seems to have occupied the site, the first one, which may have been a tower house or fortified manor, thought to have been demolished in the 1680s. Its replacement, on which much money was lavished in 1718, lasted until the start of the 19th century, perhaps around 1822 when Charles King O’Hara inherited the estate. Surviving images of this building show it to have been of two storeys with single storey wings on either side, very typical of the Regency villa. In the early 1860s Charles William O’Hara, having inherited the estate and changed his surname according to the terms of his uncle’s will, embarked on a substantial enlargement of the house, by now called Annaghmore, its design attributed to the ubiquitous James Franklin Fuller. It is this house, a full expression of high-Victorian taste, which can be seen today, all fronted in crisp limestone ashlar. The facade was graced with an Ionic portico, a second storey added to the wings and the building extended to the rear, although part of this was demolished in the last century. Largely unaltered over the past 150 years, the interiors are wonderfully florid, reflecting the bold confidence of this period, post-Famine and pre-Land Wars, when estate owners embarked on a flurry of building work. Long may it remain as a celebration of that era. 

Differing Fates I



The two-storey gatehouse which formerly provided the main entrance to the Rockingham estate in County Roscommon; this building, like most of the others here, was commissioned by Robert King, first Viscount Lorton from architect John Nash. The gatehouse, however, is not in the classical idiom employed elsewhere at Rockingham but instead is an exercise in Tudorbethan Gothic with a crenellated parapet and pointed-arch windows, sandstone used for the main body of the building and limestone for the dressings. For the past half century this part of the former estate has been in public ownership, jointly managed by the local authority and Coillte. It might therefore have been thought that the historic buildings under their care would be decently maintained, but instead the gatelodge, under which many visitors pass as they arrive at the site, has been allowed to fall into neglect; hardly an impressive introduction to the place. Instead of being left in its present condition, the building ought to be restored, and could repay investment by being offered for holiday lets.


Scattered Stones


The surname O’Gara is an anglicized version of the Irish Ó Gadhra, meaning Descendent of Gadhra, a personal name that in turn derives from the word ‘gadhar’ meaning hound or mastiff. The family originally occupied an area known as Luighne, on the borders of what today are counties Mayo and Sligo. However, by the late 13th century they had been driven out of this part of the country by the MacSurtains (otherwise Jordans) and MacCostelloes, and so moved to what became known as the barony of Coolavin, County Sligo, where they remained in power until the late 16th century. Here, close to the north-west shores of Lough Gara (Loch Uí Ghadhra), they would build a large castle known as Moygara. 





In its present form, Moygara Castle consists of a large square bawn, each side measuring 51 metres, with a slightly angled residential tower in every corner and the remains of a gatehouse on the western side. The tower in the south-west corner is three storeys high, whereas those in the other corners rose just two storeys. Investigation of the site by the Moygara Castle Research & Conservation Project suggests originally a tower house stood here prior to the construction of the castle at some period between the early 16th to early 17th centuries. In 1538 Manus O’Donnell, after capturing Sligo Castle marched on and took the castle at Moygara, his son being killed by a shot fired from within the building. More than four decades later, in 1581, Moygara Castle was again attacked, this time by a number of Scots mercenaries in the hire of Sir Nicholas Malby, Lord President of Connaught. They burnt the castle and killed the son of Cian O’Gara.





By the 17th century, Moygara and its surrounding territories belonged to Fearghal Ó Gadhra who is believed to have attended Trinity College Dublin. Ó Gadhra is remembered for being the patron of The Annals of the Four Masters, a history of the country compiled by a number of Franciscan friars led by Mícheál Ó Cléirigh during the 1630s. There is some dispute over why Ó Gadhra should have assumed this position: it may be that while an undergraduate he had come into contact with antiquarian scholars James Ussher and James Ware and this inspired an interest in Irish history. Alternatively it may have come about because when young Ó Gadhra had been a ward of Sir Theobald Dillon, first Viscount Dillon who had close associations with the Franciscan order. In the aftermath of the Confederate Wars, the family’s lands were confiscated and it may be around that time that Moygara Castle began to fall into ruin. The later years of Ó Gadhra are unclear, although it is thought he was still alive at the time of the Restoration of 1660. One of his grandsons was Oliver O’Gara, an ardent Jacobite who, after the Treaty of Limerick, went into exile and joined the Irish Brigade in the French army. 

A Final Trace


Dominating the local landscape, this is Castleboy Tower, County Galway. Five storeys high and thought to date from the opening years of the 19th century, the building was once part of an estate owned by a branch of the Persse family, who also lived at the adjacent estate of Roxborough (childhood home of Lady Gregory) , and it would appear to have been constructed as a folly, or perhaps converted into one using an earlier building on the site. When the Land Commission divided up the estate, the tower was left stranded to one side of a small road constructed to provide access to various small farms and now provides the only surviving memory of the Persses’ presence here.


No Demesne So Entirely Lovely


‘Probably there is not in the kingdom a demesne so entirely lovely as that of Muckross, the property of W.H. Herbert Esq., one of the members for the county. And now let us visit the renowned “Abbey”; it is in the demesne and close to the old entrance from the main road. It was built for Franciscan monks, according to Archdall, in 1440; but the Annals of the Four Masters give its date a century earlier: both, however, ascribe its foundation to one of the MacCarthys, Princes of Desmond. It was several times repaired, and once subsequently to the Reformation…’






‘…The cloister, which consists of twenty-two arches, ten of them semi-circular, and twelve pointed, is the best preserved portion of the Abbey. In the centre grows a magnificent yew-tree, which covers, as a roof, the whole area; its circumference is thirteen feet and its height in proportion. It is more than probably that this tree is coeval with the Abbey; that it was planted by the hands of the monks who built the sacred edifice three centuries ago…’






‘…The building consists of two principal parts – the convent and the church The church is about one hundred feet in length, and twenty-four in breadth; the steeple, which stands between the nave and the chancel, rests on four high and slender pointed arches. The dormitories, the kitchen, the refectory, the cellars, the infirmary and other chambers are still in a state of comparative preservation; the upper rooms are unroofed.’


Extracts from A Companion to Killarney by Mr and Mrs S.C. Hall (London, 1878) 

 

A Little Gem


A dear little former glebe house in Killincoole, County Louth. Dating from c.1800, the building’s design is attributed to Francis Johnston who was then involved in a number of other projects in this part of the country. Of two storeys over basement, the house has a pronounced projecting gabled central bay featuring the main entrance, a square-headed limestone doorcase approached via a short flight of stone steps with cast-iron rails to either side.


Memento Mori



Attached to the south side of the now-ruinous medieval parish church in Stamullen, County Meath is a chantry chapel dedicated to St Christopher. Dating from c.1458, this chapel was erected by the Prestons, Viscounts Gormanston who until the middle of the last century lived nearby at Gormanston Castle. Inside are two remarkable tombs, the first featuring effigies of William Preston the second viscount (died 1532) and his second wife Eleanor Dowdall, he depicted in ‘white armour’ (fully covering the body in steel plate without the use of chain mail) with a sword at his side, she wearing a jewelled cap with veil, both their heads resting on pillows and their hands clasped in prayer.



Directly behind the Prestons, can be seen one of the oldest cadaver tombs in Ireland, this one believed to date from the mid-15th century. It shows the skeleton of an unidentified young woman, her shroud pulled back to expose vermin feasting on the remains: such funerary sculptures had become common throughout Europe in the aftermath of the Black Death.


Vast and Magnificently Furnished


According to Burke’s guide to Irish Landed Gentry published in 1899, the Gerrards of Gibbstown, County Meath were ‘a branch of the family to which belonged Sir Gilbert Gerrard, 1st bart., of Fiskerton, co. Lincoln (a descendant of the Gerrards of Ince). During the English Civil War, Sir Gilbert had been an ardent royalist, which may explain why the Gerrards wished to claim association with him. In fact, they were an old Anglo-Norman family who for centuries had been based not far from Gibbstown at the now-ruined Clongill Castle. Gibbtown, meanwhile, belonged to a branch of the Plunket family, who built a tower house here. At some date in the second half of the 17th century, after the lands had been confiscated from the Plunkets, they were acquired by Thomas Gerrard, who died at Gibbstown in 1719, leaving it to his eldest son John. His two other sons were Thomas, who was left Liscarton (see Liscarton « The Irish Aesthete) and Samuel who lived at Clongill from where he corresponded with the likes of Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope. Meanwhile, the main branch remained at Gibbstown, while also spending time at another County Meath property, Boyne Hill. When travelling through Ireland in 1776, Arthur Young visited Gibbstown and met its owner, another Thomas Gerrard with whose farming methods he was much impressed (‘he has made many covered drains with stones, the effect of which is great; and he has his fields fenced in the most perfect manner by deep ditches, high banks and well planted hedges’). At the time the estate ran to 1,200 acres bringing in annual rent of £1,300. Following the second Thomas’ death in 1784, Gibbstown was inherited by his only son John Gerrard, who married a County Galway heiress but the couple had no children, so in 1865 the estate passed to a nephew, once more called Thomas. He likewise had no children, and so following his death in 1913 the place was inherited by a nephew, Major Thomas Gerrard Collins, who two years later assumed the additional surname of Gerrard. He would be the last of the family to live here as by 1927 the Land Commission had moved in and the Gibbstown estate was broken up. The following decade it became a Gaeltacht area (now called Baile Ghib) in which Irish speakers from Donegal, Mayo and Kerry were settled on small holdings of 22 acres each. 






Until 1865 the Gerrard family at Gibbstown had occupied what appears to have been a long, two-storey 18th century dwelling attached to the late-medieval tower house. However, when Thomas Gerrard inherited the estate from his uncle, despite being a bachelor he decided to embark on constructing a new residence for himself elsewhere on the estate. This was no modest building but a vast Italianate palazzo designed in the early 1770s by William Henry Lynn. Of three storeys and seven bays, faced with cut limestone and entered beneath a Doric portico, the house also featured a long colonnade which led to a free-standing campanile; it was commonly believed that the cost of building and fitting out the new Gibbstown had run to £250,000. A description of the property in the Irish Times in 1912 noted that the centre of the house was dominated by a hall rising some 80 feet and topped by a stained glass dome, with galleries running around the upper floors off which opened the main bedrooms, each of which were ‘vast and magnificently furnished, the adjacent dressing rooms also being large beyond custom, and each set of rooms was furnished with a different suite of furniture, which formed an interesting study in itself…A circular marble corridor formed an imposing feature of the building, and on the first floor were two great sitting rooms, a long and magnificent drawing room, and a dining room; where the roof and tapestried walls harmonised well with the richness of the furniture.’ Alas, Mr Gerrard and his nephew did not enjoy these surroundings for very long before much of them were destroyed: in April 1912 fire broke out in Gibbstown, largely gutting the two upper floors and destroying the aforementioned stained glass dome in the central hall. Fortunately many of the contents were rescued, including a large collection of Chinese porcelain including some pieces, according to the Irish Times, which had come from Paris’s Tuileries Palace, destroyed in 1871. In May 1913 Thomas Gerrard died at the age of 78, by which time Major Thomas Collins Gerrard had already embarked on a restoration of the house, the architect this time being the ubiquitous James Franklin Fuller. But as already noted above, change was in the air and Gibbstown would not be occupied for much longer. In June 1930, Battersby & Co began auctioning the house’s contents, so substantial that it took a fortnight to dispose of them all. Among the best-sellers was a Chinese Chippendale table that made 110 guineas, a satinwood reading table that went for 30 guineas, a carved Italian marble chimneypiece (33 guineas) and an ormolu and bronze clock surmounted by a figure representing Alexander the Great (22 guineas). So it went on, day after day until everything was gone. Five years later Major Gerrard presented the Royal Dublin Society with a bronze vase four feet, eight inches high on a two-foot high pedestal by Major Gerrard. The vase features the figures of Day and Night after Thorvaldsen from plaques exhibited at the Great Industrial Exhibition held in Dublin in 1853: now painted blue and white and beside a plaque announcing that it had been given on permanent loan by ‘the last Gerrard of Gibbstown’ it can still be seen outside the RDS’s premises. 






Major Gerrard died in 1945, but even before then the great Italianate house, built barely 70 years earlier, and rebuilt after the fire just over 30 years before, stood an empty anachronism. In this instance however, unlike many other such buildings, it was not demolished but instead taken down, with the stones carefully numbered before being brought to the Cistercian monks at Mellifont, outside Collon, County Louth; the intention was that they would be used in the erection of a new church. However, that never happened and instead, over a period of time, the stonework was sold off piecemeal and used in various other properties around the area. Meanwhile, a wrought-iron aviary from Gibbstown ended up being used in an arcade in Drogheda, County Louth. So, the late 19th century house has gone, but its predecessor remains – just about. It will be remembered that before Thomas Gerrard embarked on his grandiose scheme, the family had lived in an older building, an extension to the late-medieval Plunket tower house. This structure was incorporated into an immense series of 18th and 19th century yards, including stables, coach houses, animal sheds, staff accommodation and much more. These are in turn linked to very substantial walled gardens, the whole offering testimony to the high standards of farming here noted by Arthur Young back in the 1770s. Internally the house consists of a series of rooms often opening one into the next or connected by long, narrow corridors, suggesting the building is relatively early in date and may even have originated in the 17th century. And a couple of the rooms retain at least some of their charming rococo plasterwork. How much they continue to do so is open to question, since in recent years the site has been used as an urban assault airsoft venue (in which participants attempt to eliminate each other using replica weapons). Good clean fun, no doubt, but not necessarily beneficial for the buildings. It will probably be only a matter of time before the surviving remnants of the Gibbstown estate disappear for good.

Quite Batty




The former Roman Catholic church at Derrycunnihy, County Kerry dates from the last quarter of the 19th century and is thought to have been built on the instructions of local landowner Valentine Browne, fourth Earl of Kenmare whose family, despite their large estates, had always remained Catholic. Located close to Ladies View and offering panoramic prospects over the surrounding countryside, the church is almost set into the rocky surroundings, its relatively plain design distinguished only by the polygonal apse. Seemingly it was damaged by fire in the 1950s and then abandoned for services the following decade after which it fell into disrepair. However, the state has now begun restoration work on the property, which is home to a number of protected species including Lesser Horseshoe Bats and Barn Owls.



A Handsome Gothic Structure


‘Callan; a market town of mean appearance in the barony of Kells, and a corporation, sending two representatives to parliament; it is situated on the King’s river, and was formerly a walled town and of great note.
Augustinian Friary. A friary for Augustinian Eremites was founded here, as some writers affirm, by Huge de Mapilton, who was Bishop of Ossory from 1251 to the year 1256; but the real founder was James, father to Peter, Earl of Ormond; James died 16th April 1487, and was interred here.’*





*There is some uncertainty regarding the first foundation of the Augustinian Monastery in Callan…One fact, however, is admitted by all who have written on the subject, that a convent of the Hermits of St Augustine was established in Callan by one of the Butlers, some time before the end of the fifteenth century. It is a matter of very little importance whether the convent established at that time was a new foundation or only a reparation of the old. Before the Act for the suppression of monasteries it was richly endowed by the Ormonds, and was noted for its learned community, its library rich in manuscripts, holding a duplicate of all the rare works in the library of the celebrated Abbey of Jerpoint; also for the richness of its church utensils &c; but above all for its care of the poor…The church was a handsome Gothic structure, but it was destroyed with the rest of the town, at its capture by Cromwell. There are, however, some vestiges of the choir and tower, with the walls of the church itself, still remaining; which denote the former beauty of its style of architecture.’





‘William O’Fogharty was the last prior, and at the time of his surrender was seized of a church and belfrey, a dormitory, hall, three chambers, &c., with three gardens and some closes, containing three acres, the whole in a ruinous state, and of no value, besides reprises; he was also seized of three messuages, a bake-house, two gardens, and one acre of meadow of the yearly value of 20s. 8d. Irish money, besides the reprises. He was also seized of a water-mill, then in ruins and called the New Mill, and a small parcel of pasture ground adjacent, called the Inch, being half an acre of land of small measure, of the annual value of 2s. 6d. Irish money (these were concealed by Sir Thomas Butler, Knight of the Garter); also a parcel of land within the liberties of Callan, called Gortnemragher, containing one stang, or the fourth of an acre of land, which was also concealed by the same, and valued at 4d. Irish money.
This friary, with three gardens containing three acres and three perches, with an acre of meadow in Callan, was granted 15th April 1557, together with the Abbey of Athassel, to Thomas Earl of Thomond.’


Extracts from Monasticon Hibernicum, or A History of the Abbeys, Priories and Other Religious Houses in Ireland, by Mervyn Archdall, edited by the Rev. Patrick F. Moran, 1876.