Tag Archives: Architectural History

This Magnificent Building


The Irish line of the Esmonde family is believed to be descended from Geoffrey de Estmont of Lincolnshire, one of the thirty Norman knights who accompanied Robert FitzStephen to land at Bannow, County Wexford in 1169. Seemingly, Estmont built a motte and bailey at Lymbrick in the Barony of Forth in Wexford, where his son Maurice constructed a castle on the same site. Following the latter’s death in 1225, this building was abandoned, his son John erecting another castle on a new site, which came to be named Johnstown Castle and which survived until 1945. The property remained in the possession of the Esmondes until the mid-17th century when, as members of the Roman Catholic Confederate alliance, they suffered expulsion: Oliver Cromwell is said to have spent a night here immediately prior to his forces sacking Wexford town in early October 1649. Johnstown Castle was subsequently granted to one of his troops, Colonel John Overstreet, but eventually in 1692 it was bought by John Grogan whose descendants lived there until 1945: in the early 1800s, the Grogans were the largest untitled landowners in Ireland, with estates running to some 20,000 acres. Presumably they occupied and perhaps enlarged a house already on the site, but no evidence of it is immediately apparent today, so thorough was the reordering of the building in the second quarter of the 19th century. Before then, one member of the family, Cornelius Grogan, became involved in the 1798 Rebellion, being made commissary-general of the local rebels;’ army. Whether he assumed this role voluntarily or under compulsion has remained open to question: at his trial, Grogan pleaded that he had been forced to take a nominal lead but had committed no overt act of treason. However, this was insufficient to stop his being hanged and beheaded, and for the Johnstown estate to be escheated by the British authorities: on payment of a substantial fine, it was recovered by the former owner’s youngest brother John Grogan.





As seen today (and visited on a singularly miserable, wet day), Johnstown Castle is largely the creation of John Grogan’s son Hamilton Knox Grogan-Morgan who in 1836 commissioned designs for both the building and its gardens from Daniel Robertson, although in Home Sketches (1852), Thomas Lacy wrote that the now-lost main staircase had been the work of English-born Thomas Hopper. Meanwhile, at Johnstown, Robertson appears to have been assisted by Wexford architect Martin Day, who signed many of the preparatory drawings for the building. A late exercise in fanciful Gothick, most of the castle is constructed of local shale, with the Carlow granite employed for quoins, and dressings around windows, doors and archways. The aforementioned Thomas Lacy devoted several pages to enthusing over the transformed castle, summarising it as ‘this magnificent building.’ Despite claiming that he dared not attempt a detailed description of its ‘elegantly furnished rooms, the ceilings, the rich and gorgeous papering, the magnificent curtains and drapery in general,; the mantlepieces and articles of vertu that ornament them; the splendid mirrors, the vases, the candelabra, the tables, chairs, sofas, ottomans, and the other indescribable articles,’ somehow Lacy managed to wax lyrical for several pages. The main hall, for example, he wrote ‘presents a massive and truly characteristic appearance; so much so, that if an intelligent person was brought thither in his sleep, he would, upon awaking, be at once convinced that he was within the hall of some grand castle or stately palace.’ In the library, ‘The furniture of this grand apartment is in keeping with its character; the chairs, sofas, tables and bookcases are all of the choicest and best description; this is such a room as Bacon, Newton, Locke or Walter Scott, would like to call his own.’ Of the dining room he declared, ‘oak panelling and carving can be seen; the darkness of the oak is finely relieved by the rich gilding of the ceiling and the other parts of the chamber. This room has a really gorgeous appearance, and reminds one of the House of Lords, which, in some measure, it resembles both in form and decoration.’ And so, despite protestations of inability to attempt an adequate description, Lacy goes on, room after room after room. 





Following Hamilton Knox Grogan-Morgan’s death, his widow Sophia married Sir Thomas Esmonde, so that, at least temporarily, the Johnstown estate reverted to the original family. The property was then inherited by the Grogan-Morgan’s elder daughter Jane, married to George Forbes, seventh Earl of Granard. In turn, Johnstown passed to the couple’s younger daughter Adelaide, wife of Lord Maurice FitzGerald, a younger son of the fourth Duke of Leinster. Following her death in 1942, the estate was inherited by her grandson Maurice Victor Lakin. Two years later, the contents of the castle, running to 1,187 lots, were sold at auction over a period of five days by Jackson, Stops & McCabe. Some 114 of the items on offer, about one-tenth of the total, were bought by the Office of Public Works, not least because in certain cases there were few other potential purchasers. For example, according to a contemporary report in the Irish Press, ‘It was hard to find bidders for some of the massive oak furniture. An oak side table on carved pillars, 7ft long, brought only £5 and the same sum bought the carved oak pedestal sideboard.’ Happily the majority of these lots can be seen in the building today. In 1945 the Johnstown estate was given to the Irish State by Maurice Lakin in lieu of death duties. The castle itself was taken over the the Department of Agriculture and initially served as an educational college, before becoming a centre for agricultural research, with laboratories established on site. Since 1976, an agricultural museum has operated in the yards. Less hearteningly, during the second half of the last century some serious losses occurred, not least the medieval tower attached to the front of the building: a residue from the original Esmonde era, it stood to the immediate left of the porte-cochère but was swept away soon after the property passed into state hands. Inside the castle, the greatest loss was the demolition of the magnificent Imperial staircase, a confection of neo-Gothic carving, cleared out to make way for a library for the college. Today, while the building is owned by Teagasc, Ireland’s Agriculture and Food Development Authority, it is managed by the Irish Heritage Trust which for the past decade has been gradually undertaking restoration work here, as funds permit. In addition, the IHT, which opens the castle to the public, has been refurbishing some of the main rooms, thanks to a mixture of purchases, loans and gifts, with some pieces now returned to their original home. A happier story than has often been the case for Irish country houses. 


The Irish Aesthete is generously supported by

The Tomb of the Unknown Family



Today being Hallow’een, here are some rather dejected looking family mausolea in the graveyard of St Mary’s, Croom, County Limerick. One or two of them can be identified, an example being that carrying the notification, ‘This Vault was erected by Denis Lyons Esqr in Memory of his Eldest Son, and as a Burial Place of the Family, AD 1802.’ Another carries the motto ‘Fortes fortuna juvat’ (Fortune favours the Brave), along with the name of Dickson and the date 1806. The families whose remains were interred in several others, however, are no longer known and they are gradually sliding into ruin.


The Irish Aesthete is generously supported by

Scotland in the West of Ireland



Although looking like a Scottish Baronial castle, this is the former Royal Irish Constabulary Barracks in Cahersiveen, County Kerry, designed in 1865 by Enoch Trevor who five years earlier had joined the Irish Board of Works where he served as Assistant Architect until his early death in 1881. Built in the early 1870s to protect the telegraphic cable link between Europe and America which had been laid in 1866, the four-storey building overlooks the river Ferta. Its white-washed rubble stone walls have stepped gables and circular towers with machicolated conical roofs on the north-west and south-east corners. The barracks were burnt by retreating anti-Treaty forces during the Civil War in August 1922 and left a shell until the early 1990s when restored under the auspices of a local community initiative. It now houses a local museum.  



The Irish Aesthete is generously supported by

All Aflutter



Herewith the dovecote in the grounds of Woodstock, County Kilkenny. According to http://www.buildingsofireland.ie, the building dates c.1750, but it does not appear to be on the earliest Ordnance Survey map produced in the second quarter of the 19th century, so it may be later. In any case, the dovecote has a rubble stone exterior and is circular in plan with a conical slate roof on top of which sits a miniature version of the building through which pigeons had access to the interior: the latter, with brick-lined walls and ceiling, contains 293 nesting boxes, an indication of how many of these birds would have been eaten during the winter period.



The Irish Aesthete is generously supported by

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. 


The Irish Aesthete is generously supported by

Look Up



The extraordinary ceiling in the drawing room of Fota House, County Cork. This part of the building dates from the mid-1820s when Sir Richard Morrison was employed by Fota’s owner, John Smith-Barry. The plasterwork, which had deep borders of floral wreaths containing birds alternating with lozenges of bay leaves containing trophies of musical instruments and hunting paraphernalia, bears similarities with what can be seen at Ballyfin, County Laois where the same architect was employed. However, unlike the latter where the ceilings are predominantly monochrome, at Fota the Dublin firm of Henry Sibthorpe & Son was hired towards the end of the 19th century to decorate both the drawing room and its adjacent ante room, gilding the borders while the main surface was covered with an elaborate multi-coloured scheme, partly painted and partly stencilled. 



The Irish Aesthete is generously supported by

Something of a Rarity



Originally from Yorkshire, in 1657 Montifort Westropp settled in Limerick city and three years later was comptroller of the port there. Subsequently he purchased various parcels of land in Co. Clare where he held the office of High Sheriff in 1674 and 1690, as well as being appointed a Commissioner for the county by an Act of Irish Parliament in 1697. Following his death the following year, several of his sons continued to prosper: one son, also called Montifort – a forebear of the antiquarian Thomas Johnson Westropp – purchased the Attyflin estate near Patrickswell, County Limerick from the Chichester House Commissioners in 1703, and the same year, another son, Thomas Westropp bought an estate in the same county at Ballysteen. Some kind of castle or tower house evidently stood here, but it was replaced by the present building in the last quarter of the 18th century, perhaps by the original Thomas’s grandson (also called Thomas) who died in 1789.





Following Thomas Westropp’s death in 1789, the Ballysteen estate was inherited by his only surviving son, General John Westropp. However, when he died in 1825 without issue, Ballysteen reverted to one of the children of his sister Sara who in 1775 had married Colonel Thomas Odell of Ballingarry, County Limerick. The couple’s third son, Edmond, duly inherited his uncle’s estate and changed his name to Westropp. His grandson Edward also had no son but two daughters, one of whom, Elizabeth, in 1942 married Maurice Talbot, son of the Dean of Cashel and himself, from 1954, Dean of Limerick. Ballysteen was in due course inherited by the present generation of the family who have, for the first time in its history, offered the property for sale. 





As seen today, Ballysteen is a two-storey, five-bay house, with east-facing rendered facade and a west-facing, four-bay garden front, as well as lower two-storey wings on either side of the main block. Internally, the house appears to have been last undergone alterations around 1820, or perhaps soon after 1825 when it was inherited by Edmond Odell Westropp. To the front, much of the space is taken up by a substantial, three-bay entrance hall, with the staircase in an adjacent area to the immediate north. Behind the entrance are the two principal reception rooms, drawing and dining, and all three have white marble chimneypieces typical of the late-18th/early 19th century. They also retain some mahogany furniture from the same period: the dining room, for example, has a pair of arched niches each of which holds an identical buffet with slender spiral twist legs, while the entrance hall has a pair of bookcases with similar decorative detail, suggesting they all came from the same workshop at the same time. A sitting room/library is accommodated in the south wing while the kitchen, pantry, scullery and so forth, together with the service staircase, can be found in its northern equivalent. Upstairs are six bedrooms, some with dressing rooms. Thanks to being left unaltered for so long, Ballysteen retains the appearance and character of an Irish country house once widespread but today something of a rarity. One must hope that whoever is fortunate to acquire the property, while updating some of the facilities, retains that wonderful character. It is too precious to lose.



The Irish Aesthete is generously supported by

The Heavy Hand is Uppermost




After last Friday’s text about the Massy mausoleum in the graveyard of Ardagh, County Limerick (Blessed are the Dead « The Irish Aesthete), here is another such monument in the same site. In this instance, it commemorates William Smith O’Brien, one of the key figures in the Young Ireland movement who, following a failed armed uprising in 1848, was transported to Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania), although pardoned and permitted to return to his native country in 1856. Erected the year after O’Brien’s death in 1864, the mausoleum was designed by Limerick-born architect William Fogerty in the Hiberno-Romanesque style. It contains the remains not just of O’Brien but also his wife Lucy Caroline Gabbett, who predeceased him, and the couple’s eldest son Edward William O’Brien, described on an inscription  as “A Just Man, Lover of His People.” Above the cast-iron panelled door can be seen the O’Brien coat of arms carved in sandstone. The chevron pattern mouldings above the door are supported by Connemara marble columns, and note how the outermost limestone arch concludes in balls of shamrocks. Inside the tympanum is O’Brien’s motto,  ‘Is laidir an lamh in uachtair’ (The heavy hand is uppermost) Sandstone and limestone are also employed in alternate bands around the rest of the building, with a series of blind arches on three sides.




The Irish Aesthete is generously supported by

Sweet Innisfallen


‘Innisfallen, it is paying no great compliment to say it is the most beautiful in the king’s dominions, and perhaps in Europe. It contains twenty acres of land, and has every variety that the range of beauty, unmixed with the sublime, can give. The general feature is that of wood; the surface undulates into swelling hills, and sinks into little vales; the slopes are in every direction, the declivities die gently away, forming those slight inequalities which are the greatest beauty of dressed grounds. The little valleys let in views of the surrounding lake between the hills, while the swells break the regular outline of the water, and give to the whole an agreeable confusion. The wood has all the variety into which nature has thrown the surface; in some parts it is so thick as to appear impenetrable, and secludes all farther view; in others, it breaks into tufts of tall timber, under which cattle feed. Here they open, as if to offer to the spectator the view of the naked lawn; in others close, as if purposely to forbid a more prying examination. Trees of large size and commanding figure form in some places natural arches; the ivy mixing with the branches, and hanging across in festoons of foliage, while on one side the lake glitters among the trees, and on the other a thick gloom dwells in the recesses of the wood. The figure of the island renders one part a beautiful object to another; for the coast being broken and indented, forms bays surrounded either with rock or wood: slight promontories shoot into the lake, whose rocky edges are crowned with wood. These are the great features of Innisfallen; the slighter touches are full of beauties easily imagined by the reader. Every circumstance of the wood, the water, the rocks, and lawn, are characteristic, and have a beauty in the assemblage from mere disposition. I must, however, observe that this delicious retreat is not kept as one could wish…as to what might be made of the island, if its noble proprietor (Lord Kenmare) had an inclination, it admits of being converted into a terrestrial paradise; lawning with the intermixture of other shrubs and wood, and a little dress, would make it an example of what ornamented grounds might be, but which not one in a thousand is. Take the island, however, as it is, with its few imperfections, and where are we to find such another? What a delicious retreat! an emperor could not bestow such a one as Innisfallen; with a cottage, a few cows, and a swarm of poultry, is it possible that happiness should refuse to be a guest here?
From A Tour in Ireland, with general observations on the present state of that kingdom in 1776–78, by Arthur Young (London, 1780) 





‘Innisfallen Island, about half-way between the east and the west shores of the lake [Lough Leane], is interesting on account of the historical associations connected with it, the charm thrown around it by the poetry of Moore, and more especially for its own exceeding beauty. Of all islands it is perhaps the most delightful.
The island appears from the lake or the adjoining shore to be densely covered with magnificent timber and gigantic evergreens, but upon landing, the interior of the island will be found to afford a variety of scenery well worthy of a visit — beautiful glades and lawns, embellished by thickets of flowering shrubs and evergreens, amongst which the arbutus and hollies are conspicuous for their size and beauty. Many of the timber trees are oaks, out the greater number are magnificent old ash trees of remarkable magnitude and luxuriance of growth.
The Abbey, whose ruins are near the landing-place, is believed to have been founded about 650 by St. Finian, to whom the cathedral of Aghadoe was dedicated. In the east end are two lancet windows, which, with this gable, have been recently re- stored. A little away to the right is the small “Romanesque” church standing by itself. The round-headed West doorway, with remains of well-carved mouldings, is, architecturally, the best thing on the island, and may date back as far as the 11th century. ”Quiet, innocent, and tender is that lovely spot,” wrote the delighted Thackeray after his visit in 1842.’
From Black’s Guide to Killarney and the South of Ireland by Adam and James Black (Edinburgh, 1876)





‘Moore has sung the praises of this island in the following lines :
“Sweet Innisfallen, fare thee well,
May calm and sunshine long be thine!
How fair thou art let others tell
To feel how fair shall long be mine.
Sweet Innisfallen, long shall dwell
In memory’s dream that sunny smile,
Which o’er thee on that evening fell,
When first I saw thy fairy isle.”
Innisfallen Abbey is supposed to have been founded by St. Finan about the year 600. The ruins lie scattered about the island. The celebrated ” Annals of Innisfallen ” were composed here by two monks. This work, which is among the earliest records of Irish history, was written on parchment. The original manuscript, containing fifty-seven quarto leaves, is now in the Bodleian Library at Oxford; but it was preserved for several centuries in the Abbey of Innisfallen. It contains a History of the World down to the arrival of St. Patrick in Ireland in the year 432, and from that period it is a History of Ireland down to 1320. There are several copies of the work in existence, one of which is in the library of Trinity College, Dublin. From many passages in these Annals we learn that the monks did not seem to have enjoyed their little isle altogether unmolested in the so-called “good old times.” In one place we read thus: — “Anno 11 80. This Abbey of Innisfallen being ever esteemed a paradise and a secure sanctuary, the treasure and the most valuable effects of the whole county were deposited in the hands of the clergy ; notwithstanding which, we find the abbey was plundered in this year by Mildwin, son of Daniel O’Donoghue. Many of the clergy were slain, and even in their cemetery by the McCarthys. But God soon punished this act of impiety and sacrilege, by bringing many of its authors to an untimely end”.’ From Souvenir of the lakes of Killarney and Glengariff published by T Nelson & Sons (London, 1892)


The Irish Aesthete is generously supported by

Glenville House


In 1763 John Massy, who served as Treasurer of Limerick, bought an estate in the county called Glenville. John was the great-grandson of Hugh Massy, an English soldier who had come to Ireland during the Confederate War period and afterwards settled in this part of the country, being granted land at Duntrileague: when Burke’s Peerage first appeared in the 19th century, the Massys – several of whom had by then being granted titles – claimed descent from one Hamon de Massy who, seemingly, had accompanied William the Conqueror to England in 1066. Be that as it may, the family now firmly established themselves in County Limerick, intermarrying with other landed dynasties and with sundry younger sons becoming either Church of Ireland clergymen or soldiers: a cousin of John Massy, General Eyre Massey (for unknown reasons, he spelt his surname differently to other branches of the family) as a result of his distinguished military career was created Baron Clarina of Elm Park in 1800. And among the next generation of the family to live at Glenville, several sons of William Massy and his wife Ann Creagh – the couple would have no less than 23 children – served as clergymen and soldiers. Given the extraordinary number of offspring, it is hardly surprising that in the early 19th century the house was enlarged. 





From among the many children of William and Ann Massy, one of their sons John, again a Captain in the British army – inherited Glenville and lived there until his death in 1846. The property then passed to his son William but he opted to sell it to his uncle, Eyre Massy (another of William and Ann’s children). After he died in 1869, Glenville passed to his son, Jonathan Bruce Massy who, bucking the family trend for large families, had only two daughters. When he died in 1903, Glenville was left not to one of these two women, but to a nephew, Henry Eyre Massy, who lived in Australia. Seven years later, he sold the estate back to his uncle’s elder daughter, Frances who had married Thomas Crawford Coplen-Langford the same year as her father’s death but had then been widowed just a couple of years later: curiously, Thomas’s elder brother Richard also married a member of the Massy family. Meanwhile, his widow Frances, having bought Glenville in 1912, remained there until her death in 1956. The house was then occupied by Langford relatives until bought some years ago by the present owners who have since undertaken extensive work on the property.





Above a former carriage house in the yard to the rear of Glenville, a keystone carries the information ‘WM/AD/1803’ but at least part of the building is older than this date. What is now a wing to the right of the main block is probably the original residence here, a late 17th/early 18th century long house, one room deep and of two storeys. Evidently, given the size of William and Ann Massy’s family, this structure was insufficient, hence the addition of 1803. Below wide eaves, the south-facing new house, of coarse-dressed limestone and two storeys, has three bays with a central breakfront, the ground-floor door flanked by side lights. Internally, the layout follows a customary tripartite plan, dining room to one side of the entrance hall and drawing room to the other. The former has a Kilkenny marble chimneypiece, the latter one of white marble. Returning to the hall, there are two doors facing the entrance, with a fanlight between them. That to the right is blind, while that to the left gives access to a staircase leading to the first floor (and lit by the aforementioned fanlight). Behind the house is a generous yard, which has been partially restored by the present owners. This in turn opens into a substantial walled garden. Glenville is significant because it is an example of a gentry residence from the late Georgian period, similar in style to aristocratic country houses but built and decorated on a more modest scale. As the gentry class has disappeared in this country, so too have many of their properties, which makes the survival of Glenville all the more cheering.  


The Irish Aesthete is generously supported by