Tag Archives: County Armagh

This Beautiful Mansion


In May 1610 John Brownlow of Nottingham was granted by the English government some 1,500 acres of land to the south of Lough Neagh, undertaking to settle a number of English families in this area. Within a year, the Brownlows had begun building two bawns having brought over six carpenters, one mason, a tailor and workmen and by 1619, Nicholas Pynnar could report that there now stood a ‘fair Town, consisting of 42 Houses, all of which are inhabited with English Families, and the streets all paved clean through also to water Mills, and a Wind Mill, all for corn.’ This urban settlement came to be known as Lurgan and was to remain the Brownlows’ base for several centuries although, like many other settlers, they were temporarily displaced during the Confederate Wars of the 1640s and their castle and bawn destroyed. Nevertheless, the family then returned to Lurgan and appear to have rebuilt the castle which, with various alterations and additions, continued to be occupied by them until in the early 1830s it was replaced by a new house. In the meantime, both the Brownlows and Lurgan prospered, the latter becoming a major centre for the development of Ulster’s linen industry: in 1708 Samuel Molyneux, on a visit to the town described it as being ‘at present the greatest mart of Linen Manufactories in the North, being almost entirely peopled with Linnen Weavers.’ Meanwhile, successive generations of Brownlows served as MPs for the area. Charles Brownlow succeeded to the estates in 1815 and continued to represent the constituency until 1832 when he lost his seat. It has been suggested that this may have been due to his advocacy of Catholic Emancipation and the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland, neither popular stances in a fiercely Protestant part of the country. Perhaps as a consolation, he then embarked on constructing what is now known as Brownlow House, commissioning its design from Scottish architect William Henry Playfair. He was also created first Baron Lurgan in 1839. 






Ulster possesses a superfluity of country houses designed in the Tudor/Jacobethan manner but perhaps none display quite the same exuberance as Brownlow House, the exterior faced in red sandstone shipped over from Ardrossan in North Ayrshire. The house incorporates parts of its predecessor to the west and south west but the main block is of Playfair’s design, the entrance front having angled sides to form an irregular forecourt distinguished by a multiplicity of kneelered gables above which rise chimneystacks each carved with different motifs. In the midst of these and projecting forward between canted bay windows, is a door into the building. Behind and climbing above the facade can be seen one of the house’s most unusual features: an ogee domed tower set diagonally and decorated with ornamental panels on each side. The former garden front to the east, now overlooking an expanse of tarmacadam, comprises a further series of steep gables and canted bays, in the midst of which can be seen a Tudor-arched opening with the cipher of William Brownlow and his second wife Jane McNeill, together with the date 1833. The north side has another shallow courtyard with a long, two-storey wing to the west: this originally contained the family apartments. In August 1966 Brownlow House was badly damaged in an arson attack and the former family wing remains unrestored, although plans were presented last year for its refurbishment as a wedding and conference venue. 






The interior of Brownlow House is more restrained than might be expected from its exterior. The main reception rooms are on the first floor and reached by a narrow mural staircase, at the top of which is a small anteroom. This opens into the central chamber of the building, an octagonal saloon, the panels of its walls painted to imitate marble competing with gilded overdoors in the Louis Quatorze manner and a white marble chimneypiece likewise French in style. Here, as elsewhere, the flat ceilings are covered with strapwork in a variety of patterns. None of the other reception rooms is so elaborately decorated, but at least in part this may be as a result of reconstruction in the aftermath of the 1966 fire: both the original staircase of carved oak and adjacent stained glass window were completely destroyed and have since had to be replaced, as well seemingly as a number of the house’s contents. It is difficult now to imagine the house in its heyday. In 1863, John Ynyr Burges of Parkanaur, Co. Tyrone (see Without Any Debt « The Irish Aesthete) paid a visit and noted in his diary, ‘The interior of this beautiful mansion is wonderfully arranged. The furniture and fitting-up is most costly, the dinner exquisite and the whole establishment in excellent order.’ However, the Brownlows were not to enjoy their splendid property for long. The disposal of much of the estate and heavy indebtedness meant that in 1893 they had to sell the house and surrounding land, which was then bought by the Lurgan Real Property Company Ltd, before being sold on 10 years later to Lurgan Loyal Orange District Lodge, which owns it still and opens the main reception rooms to visitors, with the former dining room now a public tea room. Meanwhile, the 18th century landscaped demesne was sold to the local district council for £2,000 and is now a public park. 

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Just Dotey



Further to Monday’s piece on The Argory, County Armagh, (see Where Time Stands Still « The Irish Aesthete), to the north of the house and yards is an expansive lawn overlooking the adjacent river Blackwater. This concludes in a long, curved rampart of rock-faced masonry, at either end of which stands a little, square pavilion. While sloping ground means one sits higher on a bastion above the path below than does the other, the pair otherwise have the same decorative features, such as rusticated quoins and pyramidal roofing with central polygonal chimneystack. They are, to use an Irishism, just dotey*


*Dotey: meaning adorable or charming.

Where Time Stands Still



When Joshua MacGeough died in 1817, he left Drumsill House, County Armagh to his younger son Walter, but with the provision that his three daughters took precedence in occupying the property until they either married, died or moved elsewhere. In the event, none of the trio married (and the last of them lived until 1861), so Walter, who would change his surname to MacGeough Bond, decided to build a new residence for himself on land owned by the family elsewhere in the county. In 1819, he commissioned designs for a house from siblings John and Arthur Williamson; they were related by marriage to Francis Johnston and John had also worked for a time in Johnston’s office as a drawing clerk. Nevertheless, the house the brothers produced shows little of Johnston’s influence. Faced in Caledon sandstone, The Argory is long and low, a two-storey, seven bay building, the east front almost entirely plain except for a porch added a few years after the main building had been completed. The west-facing facade is more elaborate, with a central, two-stepped breakfront, the upper portion of which has a horned pediment, the lower distinguished by fluted Doric columns supporting an entablature. Below this a wide elliptical arch has a lion’s head serving as the keystone, its extended tongue taking the form of an acanthus leaf. The main block of The Argory had barely been completed in 1824 before work started on a service wing on the building’s north side (the house has no basement). Behind this wing are a series of enclosed yards. 






The interiors of The Argory, County Armagh appear to have changed little if at all over the past century or more, retaining much of their late-19th century decoration and furnishings: it is as though time has stood still. In standard tripartite fashion, on either side of the entrance hall lie the drawing  and dining rooms, both of which have elaborate overdoors added in the 1850s to the designs of Thomas Turner, those in the latter room featuring scallop shells filled with fruit. Similarly, both rooms have splendid white marble chimneypieces with carved centre panels, that in the drawing room depicting the Death of Cleopatra, while in the dining room Ceres can be seen reclining with her Horn of Plenty. To the rear of the house, what had originally been a morning room was subsequently converted into an inner hall, with a massive chimneypiece of black marble and, above the door leading to the front of the building, a plaster frieze depicting a battle between warriors and Amazons, its design derived from that found below the entablature on the Temple of Athena Nike in Athens. 






The bow-ended entrance hall of The Argory, County Armagh is dominated by a  cantilevered Portland stone staircase that snakes up to the first floor with brass balusters and mahogany handrail. The walls here are painted to imitate sheets of Siena marble while at the foot of the stairs is the original cast-iron stove of Greek pedestal design, topped by a copy of the Warwick Vase and installed in the house in the early 1820s. A wide landing on the first-floor accommodates a large cabinet organ, initially commissioned in 1822 from James Davis but following the latter’s retirement, the work passed to James Chapman Bishop who completed the instrument in 1824; it was thereafter played to accompany morning and evening prayers for the household. Although part of the original furnishings of The Argory, the organ’s dimensions meant cutting into the vaulted ceiling to accommodate it in this location. On either side of the landing, long corridors lead to a succession of bedrooms which, as elsewhere in the building, are still furnished in the style of the late 19th century. The Argory continued to be owned by the MacGeough Bond family until 1979 when it was presented to the National Trust. Last weekend, the trust celebrated the 200th anniversary of the house’s completion with a variety of events on the property.


Decidedly Quirky



Ardress House, County Armagh is a wonderfully quirky building that appears to have begun as a modest farmer’s residence but then, as we say in Ireland, ‘got notions.’ The earliest part, a gable-ended brick house of five bays over basement, probably dates from the late 17th century when constructed for one Thomas Clarke. In 1760 heiress Sarah Clarke married Dublin architect George Ensor who in due course enlarged Ardress by adding a further bay to either side of the east facade (and probably the small limestone Tuscan portico) and a large extension to the rear accommodating a grand drawing room. Within a few years of his death, further changes took place , the front enlarged by a further bay on either side with tripartite windows, their lower parapets decorated with urns and undulating dressed stone at each corner. The extension to the north contains rooms but that to the south is just a blank wall, as can be seen by going around to the garden where it becomes one of a pair of quadrants with blind recessed panels and statuary niches, the latter holding busts representing the Four Seasons. Formerly a conservatory ran the length of the five ground floor bays on this side, helping to provide some unity, but without this structure, the imbalance created by the double bays to the east is more apparent, thereby adding to Ardress House’s quirky charm.





Text here…The interiors of Ardress House, County Armagh are as idiosyncratic as its exterior. To the front of the building immediately inside the entrance is a large arch opening into a sitting room, while through a door on the other side lies a small parlour. The main staircase in an extension to the north rises to a landing which then divides to give access to bedrooms in different parts of the building. Meanwhile, another eccentric feature of Ardress House is the location of the dining room, which would customarily be located to one side of the entrance hall: here it is located behind the drawing room but not accessed from it. Instead, the dining room is reached via a corridor to the rear of the building and then through a small external door (originally a small glazed building provided coverage for diners).





As mentioned earlier, in 1760 heiress Sarah Clarke married architect George Ensor, who oversaw a number of additions to Ardress House, County Armagh. One of these was the creation c.1783 of a large, rectangular drawing room behind the original building, its walls and ceiling elaborately decorated with neoclassical plasterwork, its design attributed to the preeminent Irish stuccodore of the period, Michael Stapleton. The tripartite ceiling is composed of a circular section with demi-lunes on either side, the former containing a centrepieces featuring Aurora in a chariot drawn by two winged horses. Other panels and medallions around the walls show various classical figures, including Cupid bound to a tree and observed by three females and a warrior kneeling before Minerva and another goddess. Between these, garlands of husk chains and ribbons swoop and  fall across the walls in a breathtaking, and unexpected, display of sophisticated craftsmanship in rural Ulster. Ardress House is today under the care of the National Trust and open to the public. 


A Model Village


‘What immediately strikes the stranger is the substantial and comfortable appearance of the mill and its surroundings. At Bessbrook each house consists of from three to five rooms, according to the size of the family occupying it. Every arrangement necessary to promote cleanliness and health is resorted to. As you pass up, some of the first buildings you come to are the schoolrooms, which are for girls and boys, and for lads in the evening who are engaged during the day. The infant-school attached is the most interesting feature; but you will be pleased with the clean appearance of the boys and girls—with their intelligence and readiness to learn. The staff of masters and mistresses employed is evidently superior…Every householder has to send his children there, or whether he sends them or not he is charged a penny for the schooling of each child. £100 is subscribed annually, I believe, by the mills, and there is, besides, a Government grant. The playground attached to the school is an extensive one, and the view from it very fine.
A few doors further on, and we come to the Dispensary. There are ills to which all flesh is heir, and to remove which the services of a medical man are required…All here are expected to subscribe to a medical club, and the Firm supplement the subscription with a handsome one of their own. Thus a doctor is secured, who comes to his Dispensary on certain days of the week, and who also, of course, visits the serious cases in their own homes.
Further on, we come to a building which we ascertain to be the Temperance Hotel. This is the club and newsroom of the place. In the winter-time it is highly popular. Many Irish papers and a few English ones are taken in, and, I may add, most diligently perused. Here also are Punch and Zozimus, or the Dublin Punch. There also chess and draughts are played, and smoking is permitted. Boys are here indulging in games, while the advanced politician has his favourite organ—Conservative or Liberal; and those who care for neither, discuss matters connected with the neighbourhood, and the state of affairs at home.’
Extract from Bessbrook and its Linen Mills by J. Ewing Ritchie (London, 1876)





As seen today, Bessbrook, County Armagh dates from the mid-19th century when it was developed as a model village by the Quaker businessman John Grubb Richardson. From the second quarter of the 17th century to the end of the 19th century, the land on which the village stands was owned by the Caulfeilds, later Earls of Charlemont. Taking advantage of the river Camlough, a linen mill with bleaching green was established here in 1760 by the Pollock family, and in 1802 this business passed into the hands of Joseph Nicholson; the village’s name derives from that of his wife Elizabeth, or Bess. Following a fire in the scutching mill in 1839, the complex went into decline before being acquired by Richardson who had previously worked in his family’s successful family linen export company, JN Richardson Sons and Owden. It was Richardson who transformed the existing settlement into a model village for the workers in his linen mill which lay a short distance to the south and came to employ around 2,000 workers. A precursor of the better-known Bournville established by another Quaker family, the Cadburys, near Birmingham in England, by the end of the 19th century Bessbrook accommodated some 3,000 persons in 700 houses, many of them living in two-storey houses of rubble granite with red brick dressings. Two large squares – Charlemont Square and College Square – were linked by Fountain Street with a number of other streets running off this. All major Christian denominations, Church of Ireland, Roman Catholic, Methodist and Presbyterian, were provided with plots on which to construct a place of worship and as a Quaker Richardson provided a meeting house for members of his faith. As was noted by J. Ewing Ritchie in 1876, Richardson established a school for boys and girls, and built houses for its teachers, along with providing very many other facilities for the town’s residents: a dispensary, savings bank, orphanage, convalescent home, allotment gardens, gas lighting and hydro-electric tramway.He paid for a large building, called the Institute but known as the Town Hall, where meetings and recreational activities could be held. And, as also noted by Ritchie, he built an hotel where no alcohol was served. Richardson’s principles were based on the ‘Three P’s’: that there should be no public houses, no pawn shops and, as a result, no need for police. His son, James Nicholson Richardson wrote ‘From far-famed model Bessbrook/Where Bacchus is unknown/Where lack of public-houses/Has starved him off his throne/(Police, pawn-shop, nor publican,/Come nigh this realm of ease/The envious call it in their wrath/“The city of three P’s”)’. Many people were deeply impressed with Richardson’s philanthropic enterprise, but not everyone delighted in the place. After visiting it in 1879, George Bernard Shaw wrote, ‘Bessbrook is a model village where the inhabitants never swear or get drunk and look as if they would like very much to do both.’ 





The decline of linen production from the middle of the last century onwards eventually led to the closure of the Richardson’s mill at Bessbrook in 1970. Around the same time, owing to the onset of the Troubles, the British Army needed a substantial base in South Armagh and therefore requisitioned the buildings, which were converted into a major military base. For a period thereafter, seemingly the former mill became the busiest heliport in Europe, with army helicopters taking off and landing low over Bessbrook every few minutes. Inevitably, the consequent security issues had consequences for the village which suffered economic decline. The army finally left in June 2007, and in recent years work has been undertaken to restore the centre of historic Bessbrook, although more still needs to be done (the former Temperance Hotel, on the corner of Fountain Street and Charlemont Square, for example, sits empty and disconsolate). As for the vast old mill complex, since the departure of the British army, this site has sat largely empty. However, in the autumn of 2022 plans were announced by Farlstone Construction, a company based elsewhere in County Armagh, for a £60 million redevelopment of this area, with the buildings being converted into apartments, offices and retail units. Whether this scheme comes to fruition remains to be seen. 

The Most Elegant Summer Lodge




In January 1799 Isaac Corry was appointed Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer, and five months later, in order to raise money for Britain’s war against France, he introduced a property tax, based on the number of windows in any building, which for obvious reasons made him deeply unpopular throughout the country. Born in Newry in 1753, Corry was the descendant of a Scotsman who had settled in Ireland in the first quarter of the previous century. The family flourished (Rockcorry, County Monaghan derives its name from one of them), not least thanks to their involvement in trade: Isaac Corry’s father was both a merchant and an MP for Newry, his son succeeding him in the latter position. Although called to the bar, Corry does not seem to have practised much as a lawyer, preferring political life although he had limited private means during a period when election campaigns could be expensive affairs and candidates therefore needed to be wealthy. In 1788 he became Clerk of the Irish Ordnance, and the following year a Commissioner of the Revenue before being made a Privy Counsellor in 1795. As the 18th century came to a close, Corry became an ardent supporter of the union with Britain, bringing him into conflict with Henry Grattan who, on one occasion, described him in the House of Commons as ‘a half-bred lawyer, a half-bred statesman, a mock patriot, a swaggering bully and finished coxcomb, a coward, a liar and a rascal.’ The two men subsequently fought a duel, one of a number in which Corry participated during his lifetime and on this occasion he was wounded. It has been claimed that the actual Act of Union was drafted in the drawing room of Corry’s country house, Derrymore, County Armagh. 




A substantial thatched cottage orné, Derrymore dates from c.1777. The architect is unknown, although it has been proposed that the landscape designer John Sutherland was responsible, since Sir Charles Coote wrote in 1804 that Sutherland had been responsible for laying out the surrounding demesne; Coote also described the house as ‘the most elegant summer lodge I have ever seen.’ Although of one storey over basement, Derrymore is more substantial than might initially appear to be the case, since it consists of an elongated U, two substantial wings projecting back from the central block, creating a slim courtyard between them. The main entrance is at the top of the courtyard, a fanlit doorcase leading to a hallway on either side of which are domed and curved vestibules that give access to the wings. Directly in front is the drawing room, a plain space notable for its exceptionally large bay window that runs almost the full height of the building flanked by quatrefoils under hood mouldings. The bay is composed of 82 panes of glass and there are further mullioned windows on each of the wings, which ought to have left Corry paying a very substantial tax bill following the introduction of his own legislation in 1799 – except that a clause in the bill allowed for any window, no matter how big, to be considered as just one provided each pane did not exceed 12 inches in width. Nevertheless, financial difficulties eventually obliged him to sell the property some years before his death in 1813. Derrymore then passed through several hands before being donated to the National Trust in 1952. Today the wings are occupied by tenants and the drawing room only intermittently open to visitors.



Quite Mad


Loughgall, County Armagh is an exceptionally handsome and well-preserved village, laid out in the 18th century by the Cope family, who were resident landlords. It comprises one long street lined on either side with residences other than at one point where an extraordinary set of gates and gate houses announce entry to the Cope estate. The family had come to this part of the country in 1611, after land here was either granted by the crown or purchased by Sir Anthony Cope of Oxfordshire. He passed the property onto one of his younger sons, also called Anthony but the latter then sold part of the estate called Drumilly to a brother, Richard Cope, so that there were two branches of the same family living adjacent to each other. Drumilly was an exceptionally long house, its facade running to 228 feet, and comprised a central, two storey-over-basement block linked to similarly scaled pavilions by lower, six-bay wings; when Maria Edgeworth visited in 1844, she thought it ‘one of the most beautiful places I think I ever saw.’ Not long afterwards, a vast conservatory with curved front was added to the entrance. In the middle of the last century, the house and land came into the ownership of the Ministry of Agriculture and Drumilly was used as a grain store, with the result that it fell into disrepair. A contents auction was held in 1960 and six years later, the building was demolished; the Belfast MP Roy Bradford described this as ‘a Philistine Act of the most heinous irresponsibility embarking on a reckless course of artistic nihilism.’ Today nothing remains of the place, meaning only Loughgall survives to represent the former presence of the Copes in the area. 





It is difficult, if not impossible, to miss the entrance to the Loughgall estate. The architect responsible is unknown, although the design has been attributed to William Murray who had spent many years working with Francis Johnston and succeeded as architect at the Board of Works. Over a period of 15 years, Murray was involved in the construction of nine district lunatic asylums and indeed, there is something a little mad about the Loughgall entrance. Set back from the road, it begins with sweeping, semi-circular stone balustrades sitting on top of polygonal rubble walling and topped with stocky urns. This is duly terminated by pairs of square piers on either side of the actual entrance, their form alternating prismatic and vermiculated bands before concluding in fleur-de-lys from which emerge fire-breathing dragons. The wrought-iron wicket and double-carriage gates are signed and dated ‘R.Marshall, Caledon 1842’ and above the latter once rose an overthrow at the centre of which hung a lantern; seemingly this was hit by a lorry in the 1960s and not restored. Beyond the gates are a pair of identical lodges, equally fanciful and looking like miniature Jacobethan mansions.  In fact, these L-shaped buildings are single-storey and only held two rooms: it didn’t help that so much space was given up to the porch supported by a tapering pier. Constructed of more polygonal rubble, the two most prominent walls have oriel windows below fanciful gables featuring a series of steps topped by finials: the apex finials originally had carved animals but these have since gone. Inside each gable can be seen the Cope quarterings and the motto ‘Equo adeste animo.’ All this work was undertaken by Arthur Cope in the years immediately prior to his death at the age of 30 in 1844, when the estate was inherited by a cousin, Robert Wright Cope Doolan, who duly changed his surname to Cope. 





From the gates, the drive runs straight, lined by limes and first dropping before rising sharply to Loughgall Manor. Designed by Dublin architect Frederick A Butler, this was built in the mid-1870s for Francis Robert Cope. After the flair of the entrance, the house is something of a disappointment, a relatively modest, two-storey Tudor revival block with only an irregular west-facing gabled facade providing any visual interest. Old photographs suggest that originally the building was not painted white but instead left with the cut stone exposed. At present, the bleak forecourt, devoid of grass or any planting, only adds to the disappointment. A gabled porch is fronted in sandstone and the hoodmoulded arch concludes in a pair of heads, one of which may represent the house’s then-owner (but if so, who is the woman, since he was unmarried at the time). The house and estate at Loughgall remained in private ownership until 1947 when it was sold by Field-Marshall Sir Gerald Templer, a descendant of the Copes. It was then bought, like Drumilly, by the Ministry of Agriculture, although in this instance the buildings were not demolished but are used as office space by a division of that body. 

There is no Frigate like a Book

There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us Lands away,





Nor any Coursers like a Page
Of prancing Poetry –
This Traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of Toll





How frugal is the Chariot
That bears the Human soul.


There is no Frigate like a Book, by Emily Dickinson 
Photographs of the wonderful Armagh Robinson Library, founded by Archbishop Richard Robinson in 1771. 

Circumstances of a Peculiarly Distressing Nature


Another funerary monument in St Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh, this one carved by Sir Francis Chantrey in 1826. It represents the Hon William Stuart, Archbishop of Armagh who died in London in 1822 at the age of 68 owing to an unfortunate error. As recounted by The Gentleman’s Magazine at the time: ‘The death of his Grace took place under circumstances of a peculiarly distressing nature, which have excited in the breast of every human being, to whose knowledge they have come, feelings of the deepest regret and commiseration. This melancholy event was unhappily occasioned by an unfortunate mistake in administering a quantity of laudanum instead of a draught. His Lordship was attended in the morning of the 6th by Sir H. Halford, who wrote a prescription for a draught which was immediately sent to the shop of Mr Jones, the apothecary, in Mount-street, in order that it might be prepared. His Lordship having expressed some impatience that the draught had not arrived, Mrs Stuart enquired of the servants if it had come; and being answered in the affirmative, she desired that it might be brought to her immediately. The man had just before received it, together with a small phial of laudanum and camphorated spirits, which he occasionally used himself as an external embrocation. Most unluckily, in the hurry of the moment, instead of giving the draught intended for the Archbishop, he accidentally substituted the bottle which contained the embrocation. The under butler instantly carried it to Mrs Stuart without examination, and that lady not having a doubt that it was the medicine which had been recommended by Sir H. Halford, poured it into a glass and gave it to her husband!- In a few minutes, however, the dreadful mistake was discovered; upon which Mrs Stuart rushed from the presence of the Archbishop into the street, with the phial in her hand, and in a state of speechless distraction. Mr Jones the apothecary having procured the usual antidote, lost not a moment in accompanying Mrs Stuart back to Hill-street where he administered to his Lordship, now almost in a state of stupor, the strongest emetics and used every means which his skill and ingenuity could suggest, to remove the poison from his stomach, all, however, without effect.’
And the moral of this unhappy episode: always check anything brought to you by the under butler…

Greatly Distinguished


The only full-length statue by French sculptor Louis-François Roubiliac can be found in Armagh Cathedral. It represents the doctor and philosopher Sir Thomas Molyneux, Physician General to the Army in Ireland and Regius Professor of Physic at Trinity College, Dublin who died in 1733. The work was commissioned some years later by his son Sir Capel Molyneux and after arriving in Ireland in 1752 was removed to the family seat, Castle Dillon, County Armagh where it was placed in a wood beneath a temporary wooden shelter, the idea being that a more permanent structure would be erected in the grounds. When this failed to materialise, the statue was moved to the vaults beneath the house. Finally when Castle Dillon was rebuilt in the early 1840s the statue was presented to Armagh Cathedral and placed in its present position. The plaque beneath the figure depicts a physician attending a bed-ridden patient, thereby emphasising Molyneux’s medical career. The inscription advises that he was ‘greatly distinguished in his generation for professional skill, varied learning and private worth.’