The entrance front of Tullynisk, County Offaly. Dating from the early 19th century and replacing an older property on the site, the house is a mixture of the classical and gothic, the former evident in the doorcase with its Ionic columns, the latter in the window directly above. The combination of the two is as unselfconsciously assured as the sheep grazing in the immediate vicinity.
And yet the books will be there on the shelves, separate beings,
That appeared once, still wet
As shining chestnuts under a tree in autumn,
And, touched, coddled, began to live
In spite of fires on the horizon, castles blown up,
Tribes on the march, planets in motion.
‘We are,’ they said, even as their pages
Were being torn out, or a buzzing flame
Licked away their letters. So much more durable
Than we are, whose frail warmth
Cools down with memory, disperses, perishes.
I imagine the earth when I am no more:
Nothing happens, no loss, it’s still a strange pageant,
Women’s dresses, dewy lilacs, a song in the valley.
Yet the books will still be there on the shelves, well born,
Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights.
And Yet the Books by Czeslaw Milosz.
Photographs of the library at Clonalis, County Roscommon (https://clonalis.com)
The former church of St John the Baptist in Stonehall, County Westmeath. Built in 1809 thanks to a grant of £600 from the Board of First Fruits, the building was described by Samuel Lewis in his Topographical Dictionary of Ireland (1837) Samuel Hall as ‘a plain, badly constructed edifice, in indifferent repair.’ Nevertheless it survived to serve its purpose until taken out of service in 1962: since then the church has fallen into its present ruin.
Looking like a miniature fort, this is the former gatelodge to Belmount, County Cork which sits across a bridge spanning a tributary of the river Bride. The main part of the building rises three storeys, with two-storey castellated extensions to the rear running along the waterfront. Above the entrance are the remains of an Oriel window, a finial over that bearing the date 1837: sadly now roofless, there are only traces remaining of how the interior once looked.
The light of evening snakes its way through successive doors in the lower yard at Ardbraccan, County Meath. And so 2018 comes to a close. But soon dawn will break and a new year make its debut. The Irish Aesthete wishes all friends and followers the very best fortune for 2019.
Conna Castle, County Cork, few owners of which appear to have enjoyed happy lives. Situated on a limestone outcrop above the river Bride, work on this tower house began in 1554 and seemingly took ten years to complete for the FitzGeralds, a branch of the Earls of Desmond. Hoping to inherit the title, they did not participate in either of the Desmond Rebellions and following the death of the fifteenth earl in 1583 petitioned Elizabeth I to be recognised as his successor. Unfortunately, they were descended from a marriage between the fourteenth earl and his own grandniece, judged to be outside the acceptable boundaries of consanguinity, thus making offspring from the union illegitimate. James FitzThomas FitzGerald, who had hoped to become the sixteenth earl, on his return to Ireland from London was mockingly known as the the Sugán or ‘Straw’ Earl. In 1598 he joined in the rising initiated by Hugh O’Neill but was defeated and went into hiding, eventually being betrayed to the English forces by a cousin Edmund FitzGibbon, the White Knight: taken to London, FitzGerald died in the Tower of London apparently having become insane. The lands around Conna then passed through a number of hands before becoming part of the territory owned by Richard Boyle, first Earl of Cork. In 1645 during the Confederate Wars it was captured by the third Earl of Castlehaven: five years later the English forces made an unsuccessful attempt to take the castle back. However damage occurred a few years later owing to a fire which also claimed the lives of the steward’s three daughters. Conna has been in state ownership since 1915.
The garden front of Clonalis, County Roscommon. Ancestral seat of the O’Conor Don (one of Ireland’s most ancient families, descended from the country’s last High Kings), the present house replaced an earlier one elsewhere on the estate. As seen today, Clonalis was designed in 1878 by Frederick Pepys Cockerell, one of his few Irish commissions. It was one of the very first houses in Ireland constructed using concrete, with a cement render finish to the exterior and in a manner that is customarily judged to have blended elements of the Queen Anne style with Italianate classicism. The entrance front (below) is dominated by a three storey tower that projects forward to create a porch for the door on the ground floor. Clonalis is significant for being one of the rare Irish houses still to remain in the hands of the original family
More from Clonalis early in the new year…
The Irish Aesthete wishes a Happy and Peaceful Christmas to all friends and followers.
From A Statistical Survey of the County of Sligo by James McParlan (1802): ‘Ballynafad Castle – near the town of that name, was not built by the McDonoghs, as Mr Grose erroneously states. It was built by Captain John St. Barbe, according to an inscription on Mr St. Barbe’s tomb, who died in A.D.1628.’
A pyramid by the banks not of the Nile but the river Slaney, this is the Aldborough Mausoleum in Baltinglass, County Wicklow. The Earls of Aldborough have been discussed here before, both in relation to Belan, County Kildare (see Splendours and Follies, September 30th 2013) and Aldborough House, Dublin (see A Thundering Disgrace, January 13th 2014 and A Thundering Disgrace No More?, February 27th 2017). The family’s architectural ambitions are reflected in this tomb, which dates from 1832 and was built to the immediate south of the chancel of the former Cistercian abbey church in Baltinglass, a curious juxtaposition of two different styles. The monastery had been suppressed in 1536 but the chancel here was later converted into a parochial church for the Church of Ireland, remaining in use for this purpose until 1883. The Aldborough Mausoleum is similar to but smaller than the Howard Mausoleum elsewhere in County Wicklow (see A Fitting Memorial, January 10th 2018). Both take the form of a pyramid on a square base and both are constructed from local granite. A door on the north side of the Baltinglass monument gave access to the interior, now stripped of any contents (the pyramids of Egypt not being the only ones subject to grave robbers…)
