Tag Archives: County Laois

Upon Entry



After Monday’s post about the main house at Woodbrook, County Laois, here are the the south gate lodge and gate screen into the estate. The lodge itself is a curious structure which may, or may not, have been designed by James Shiel at the same time as he was coming up with proposals for the house. The facade is dominated by an substantial ashlar pediment with window beneath, the latter flanked by deep recesses, one of which has a door into the building. So generous are the recesses that the pediment has to be supported by a pair of slender iron columns. The gate screen itself, of limestone ashlar and wrought iron, is more standardised with its piers, quadrant walls and arched niches in the outer sections. Here also is an old milestone advising that Dublin lies 47 miles distant.



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Making A Swift Connection



The name Woodbrook has been given to a number of houses in different parts of Ireland, and the natural assumption would be that it derives from the property having once had a brook in woodland. In the case of Woodbrook, County Laois, however, it combines the second syllable of original owner Knightley Chetwood’s surname along with the first syllable of that of his wife Hester Brooking: hence Woodbrook. An article written by Walter Strickland and published in the Journal of the Archaeological Society of the County of Kildare in 1918 provides a detailed account of the origins of the Chetwood family and their arrival in Ireland following the restoration of Charles II in 1660. There is some uncertainty as to how Knightly Chetwood, whose family had been impoverished English gentry, managed to acquire the lands in County Laois on which Woodbrook now stands: Strickland proposes that it may have come to him via his spouse, but without being able to say precisely how this should have been the case. In any case, some years after the couple’s marriage in August 1700, despite living contentedly in County Meath, he embarked on a project to build a residence on his midland’s property, albeit with some reluctance: at one stage he implored a friend to find him another house in Meath, since otherwise he would be condemned to ‘go and live in a bog in a far off country.’ Indeed, being as Strickland says ‘an uncompromising Tory,’ following the accession of George I in 1714, Chetwood found it best to live, if not in a bog then certainly in a far-off country, spending a number of years in mainland Europe before returning to Ireland around 1721 when he took an oath of allegiance to the Hanoverian monarch and abjured the Stuart pretender. It may have only been after this time that serious work commenced on the house at Woodbrook.





We know more about the early development of the Woodbrook estate than would usually be the case thanks to surviving correspondence between Knightley Chetwood and Dean Swift, who not only provided its proprietor with advice but visited the place on a number of occasions. There was likely some kind of residence already on the site, not least because Chetwood was able to write letters from there even before his new house had been built. Strickland cites a note from Swift to his host dated 6th November 1714 and composed when he had arrived at Woodbrook to find the Chetwoods away from home. The following month, after the dean’s departure, Chetwood informed him, ‘This place I hate since you left it.’ Swift is believed to have been responsible for planting a grove of beech trees close to the house, although these were cut down in 1917 for sale to the then-Government. The two men also make regular reference to an area of the estate called the ‘Dean’s field.’ Once Chetwood returned from his self-imposed exile and turned his attention to erecting a new house, Swift’s opinion was again sought, the dean recommending in June 1731, ‘I can only advise you to ask advice, to go on slowly and to have your house on paper before you put it into lime and stone.’ Unfortunately, it was around this time that the friendship of almost twenty years came to an end. Chetwood seems to have had a tricky, volatile character. He had already become estranged from his wife, husband and wife formally separating in 1725, and he was inclined to find himself embroiled in rows on a regular basis: that he and Swift should fall out accordingly seems to have been inevitable. Chetwood died in London in 1752 and Woodbrook then passed to his elder surviving son, Valentine but since he spent most of his life out of Ireland, it was the younger son Crewe Chetwood who stayed in Laois. The next generation, Jonathan Cope Chetwood, did live at Woodbrook from the time he inherited the property in 1771 until his own death in 1839. As he had no immediate heir, the estate went sideways passing to Edward Wilmost, a great-grandson of Crewe Chetwood, who duly took the additional surname of Chetwood. However, following the death during the Boer War of Edward Wilmot-Chetwood, Woodbrook passed to another branch of the family, being inherited by Major Harold Chetwood-Aiken; his widow lived there until 1965 when what remained of the estate was taken over by the Land Commission. 





The evolution of the house now standing at Woodbrook is complex, even by Irish standards. The original building commissioned by Knightley Chetwood can be seen in a pencil drawing reproduced in Strickland’s 1918 article and shows the long east-facing entrance front, seemingly single-storey but with two-storeys visible to one side and dominated by a great doorcase beneath a steeply-pitched roof. A 1770 ground floor survey is described by Colum O’Riordan in House and Home as depicting ‘a vaguely L shaped building with an indeterminate number of accretions around an older core.’ Much of this structure appears to have been damaged or destroyed in a fire in the early 19th century, after which Jonathan Cope Chetwood undertook extensive alterations to the house, not least the addition of a new neo-classical entrance front facing south. Designed c.1815 by James Shiel, it included a spacious hall off which opened drawing and dining rooms. The older part of the building contained the library and staircase, and, beyond these, service quarters including a double-height kitchen one wall of which was filled with a great dresser and above which, according to Strickland, were painted the words ‘BE CLEANLY. HAVE TASTE. HAVE PLENTY. NO WASTE.’ Later in the 19th century, further changes took place, not least in the drawing room where the walls were covered with 15 murals representing scenes of the Scottish Highlands: still extant (although some are currently undergoing restoration), they were painted in 1840 by artist David Ramsay Hay, commissioned by Lady Jane Erskine, daughter of the 25th/8th Earl of Mar and wife of  Edward Wilmot-Chetwood, as reminders of her native country. At some unknown date, a five-storey polygonal tower was added towards the rear of the house on the east side.
Alas, the later decades of the last century were not kind to Woodbrook. All the ancient trees, not least those lining the avenue to the house, were all cut down in 1969. The lake to the immediate east, created by Jonathan Cole Chetwood, also suffered devastation causing the loss of what was said to have been the largest heronry in the country. Then, in the 1970s, the owners of the house demolished almost all of what had stood behind Shiel’s early 19th century extension, everything that had remained from the original building constructed by Knightley Chetwood, along with the great kitchen and the polygonal tower. This strangely truncated property somehow survived until the present century when another owner ambitiously reconstructed the sections that had been reduced to rubble just a few decades earlier. In consequence, at least on the exterior, Woodbrook looks much as it did when still occupied by the last members of the Chetwood family. Just under two years ago, the house and surrounding lands changed hands once more, and the current owners have embarked on an ambitious and admirable programme of restoration and restitution, with thousands of trees being planted, the lake being brought back to life and the surrounding lands improved. Similar considerate work is taking place inside the building so that in due course Woodbrook will once again take its place among County Laois’s finest country houses. It’s always thrilling to visit a property which is undergoing renewal, and the owners of Woodbrook deserve all the applause and support they can get. 


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Three-Sided




The three remaining sides of Tullomoy Castle, County Laois. Like so many other Irish ‘castles’ this is actually a tower house, possibly originating in the 16th century but then undergoing alterations in the 17th when larger windows with hood mouldings were inserted, along with the cut limestone chimneypieces with hood mouldings still visible inside some of the walls. Originally it was of three storeys over basement but the top floor is now almost entirely gone, as are the internal divisions and the eastern wall. The history of this building appears to be unknown. It may have suffered serious damage during the Confederate Wars of the 1640s and their aftermath and never been repaired thereafter, or perhaps only been abandoned as a habitation some time later.



Held Hostage



Gortnaclea Castle, County Laois is a 16th century tower house originally built by the Mac Giolla Phádraig family on a site overlooking the Gully river. It is famous for having been the place where in April 1600 Thomas Butler, 10th Earl of Ormond, a long-time ally of the English crown but by then aged almost 70, was held hostage by Owny MacRory O’More. At the end of the month, O’More sent his demands to the government, which included the removal of all English garrisons from that part of the country. This stipulation – and sundry others – were not met but the earl, by then in poor health, was eventually released after the payment of £3,000 (and lived for another 16 years). Of five storeys, Gortnaclea is a typical tower house of the period but unfortunately its easterly entrance front has long since collapsed, bringing down the spiral staircase which would have been immediately inside the main door; the graceful curving wall of the staircase can be seen on the north-east corner.


In Memory




After Monday’s post about the Ponsonby tombs at Fiddown, County Kilkenny, here is a less well-preserved old church: the shell of an early 18th century building at Anatrim, County Laois. A simple barn-like structure, it is distinguished by the stocky, three-stage tower at the west end and a Venetian window, now largely blocked with stones, to the east. The church ceased to be used for services when a new one was built to the immediate south in 1840. What survives in the interior are a couple of fine wall monuments, one to the Delaney family of Ballyfin with a coat of arms inside a cartouche flanked by urns beneath a pediment (†1731-1770), and the other a plain tablet with broken segmental pediment commemorating Isaac Sharp of Roundwood (†1756). In the surrounding graveyard is the Sharp family’s barrel-vaulted mausoleum.



Acts of Folly


Follies of all varieties have featured here in the past, but one genre is especially interesting: the building designed to look older than was actually the case. In Ireland, some of the earliest examples of this style, in the form of faux-antique rusticated buildings, can be found at Tollymore Park, County Down (see Do the Wright Thing « The Irish Aesthete), the design of, or at least inspiration for, which came from Thomas Wright who visited the estate in September 1746. Wright is also credited with being responsible for the Rustic Arch at Belvedere, County Westmeath (see Very Mannered « The Irish Aesthete) which dates from around the same period as he was in this country. But the fashion for such structures lingered long after his departure, as is demonstrated by the gatelodge at Bracklyn, County Westmeath (see Refined Rusticity « The Irish Aesthete) where a shield above the bellcote arch bears the date 1821, although the building may have been constructed earlier. Nevertheless, it provides evidence that rusticity achieved nationwide popularity, with one fine example being found in County Laois.





The grotto at Ballyfin, County Laois probably dates from the third quarter of the 18th century, when the estate belonged to William Pole who lived there with his wife, Lady Sarah Moore. The couple were responsible for laying out the demesne in the newly-fashionable arcadian manner, not least by the addition of a large, man-made lake, close to which the grotto can be found. And like the lake, this structure was intended to look as though designed by nature, rather than a clever piece of artifice. The grotto lies below a mound on top of which once stood a long-since lost summer house, a suitable destination for a stroll from the main house. And while the latter would have demonstrated the civilised character of its owners, the grotto was, in parallel, intended to display their romantic sensibilities, influenced by Rousseau-esque notions of the noble savage. A roughly circular space in front of the little building is centred on a small pond, fed by a stream that trickles over stones down one side of the mound. The grotto occupies a generous portion of the circle, and takes the form of a primitive temple, with the substantial portico supported by large vertical boulders imitating columns, complete with uncut capitals. Beyond the portico are three openings, the middle one providing an entrance to the interior, one large room, the floor inlaid with pebbles around another circular pool. Above this rises the vaulted ceiling, a rustic version of that found in the Pantheon in Rome complete with central opening. In this instance, however, the view is not of open sky but of another giant stone seemingly hovering in space (although in fact it is supported by a number of other boulders not visible while inside the chamber). As already noted, the grotto at Ballyfin was envisaged to look as though nobody had been involved in its construction but instead had just happened, like a cave. But also highly popular during the same period were another kind of artificial building: the sham ruin.





The same romantic sensibility that led to the construction of Ballyfin’s grotto was also responsible for inspiring the ‘ruin’ seen at Killua Castle, County Westmeath. The castle is itself a sham, since when originally constructed by Sir Benjamin Chapman around 1784 this was a strictly classical house. It was Sir Benjamin’s brother and heir, Sir Thomas Chapman, who , after inheriting the estate in 1810 set about transforming the building into the castle seen today. However, perhaps he was inspired by work already undertaken within the demesne by his sibling. In 1800 Sir Benjamin had acquired some of the stonework from the medieval Franciscan friary at Multyfarnham, elsewhere in the same county, and used this to create a charming ‘ruin’ visible from the garden front of the house and occupying a mound overlooking the lake he had created some years earlier. He was by no means the only, or even the first, estate owner to recycle materials from another, older site. In the demesne at Heywood, County Laois Michael Frederick Trench had built an artificial ruined abbey, incorporating fine traceried windows said to be 15th century and to have been brought from the former Dominican friary at Aghaboe, some twelve miles away. The sham ruin at Killua is not intended to look like the remains of an old religious establishment (Sir Benjamin simultaneously employed other stonework to ‘embellish’ the old St. Lua’s Church, lying to the south-east of the demesne), but instead to suggest these were the surviving sections of an old castle or fortified residence. It comprises a two-storey, octagonal tower on octagonal plan with an adjacent wall constructed to look like the remains of a gable end of a building. Like the grotto at Ballyfin, it served no practical purpose other than to delight the eye and to provide a destination when residents of the main house and their guests undertook a walk. Thankfully in recent years both these follies have been restored by their respective owners so that they can continue to do the same today. 

 

Derailed



Last July, the government published an All-Island Rail Review proposing a transformation of the current train system through electrification, faster speeds, improved frequency, and new routes for people and freight. It might also have included the preservation and restoration of many old buildings associated with that mode of travel, such as this one, the Mountrath and Castletown railway station in County Laois. It was designed by Sancton Wood, an English-born architect who in 1845 was responsible for Kingsbridge (now Heuston) Station in Dublin, built for the Great Southern & Western Railway Co., which then commissioned him to design smaller stations along the company’s route to Limerick Junction. Most of these buildings were in the Gothic style seen here and some are still in use but not this one which closed in 1976 and has since fallen into its present state of dereliction.


A Rare Appeal



The Fair Green in Castletown, County Laois is a triangle occupying the centre of the village, dominated by a large and not especially impressive former Christian Brothers novitiate (now a retreat house run by another religious order). However, a number of charming, substantial private residences survive on the north-west and south sides of the green, as shown here. Dating from the second half of the 18th to the early 19th centuries, they are each different – some two-storey, some three, some five bay, some three – one of the largest having (immediately below) featuring a pretty Venetian window on the first floor. Although seemingly many of the original interiors have been altered, and some of the fenestration is not of the best quality, their collective survival gives the village an attractive appearance too rarely found in Ireland.


A Neighbourhood Replete with History



A modest village in County Laois, Aghaboe (from the Irish Achadh Bhó, meaning ‘field of cows’), has been briefly mentioned here before (see Happily Disposed in the Most Elegant Taste « The Irish Aesthete) in relation to Heywood, some 12 miles away, where a pair of mediaeval windows have been incorporated into an 18th century folly. But Aghaboe itself deserves attention, since it was once the site of an important early Christian monastery, adjacent to which is now a restored early 18th century house along with other buildings of interest. 





The original abbey at Aghaboe was established in the 6th century by St Canice, who was interred here and around whose tomb would grow a substantial monastic settlement. In the 8th century, one of the abbots was St Fergal (otherwise Virgilius), mathematician and astronomer who would later move first to France and then to Austria where he became Abbot of St Peter’s Abbey in Salzburg. Nothing from this period in the monastery’s history survives due to repeated assaults on the place. The abbey was attacked and plundered by the Vikings in 913 before being rebuilt in 1052 with the relics of St Canice enshrined here. It was burned again in 1116 and rebuilt in 1189. In 1234 an Augustinian priory was established on the site (a Norman motte and bailey had already been constructed nearby). However, both the priory and a town which had grown up around it were burnt in 1346 by Diarmaid Mac Giollaphádraig, St Canice’s shrine being destroyed in the process.  In 1382 Finghan MacGillapatrick, Lord of Upper Ossory established a Dominican friary here and this survived until its suppression in 1540. What remains at Aghaboe are traces of the Dominican church, a long, barn-like building without aisles typical of the mendicant preaching orders, with one transept at the south-west end. There is a fine window at the east end of the nave and an ogee-headed piscina nearby on the south wall. In the transept, the east wall features a tall arched niche and there are also a couple of smaller aumbries. A watercolour by Daniel Grose dated 1792 depicts an elaborately carved doorcase on the south side but this has since disappeared. A few other traces of the church’s former decoration survive on the exterior of the Church of Ireland church lying behind the ruin: this dates from 1818 although the curious tower here – the lower portion square-shaped, the upper an awkwardly-placed octagon – may be a survivor from the Middle Ages, along with the three much-weathered heads over the west door. 





Just a few hundred yards south-east of the ruined and present churches, and overlooking both, stands Aghaboe House, a curiously double-fronted residence. The south facade, thought to date from c.1730, is of seven bays and two storeys, with a fine limestone pedimented doorcase. The north side is some 40 years later and is of five bays, centred on fan-lit doorway below a Venetian window above which a pediment breaks the shallow roofline. Internally, the house – which may incorporate elements of an older residence – is similarly divided into two parts, suggesting it was originally one room deep, with the larger rooms to the north, not least the double-height staircase hall with benefits from the Venetian window on the upper floor. Recently offered for sale, Aghaboe House was in a semi-ruinous condition when bought almost 40 years ago in 1984 by its present owner who has since gradually restored the building, along with others on the site, including another two-storey block diagonally to the immediate east. This might once have had a match on the western side; if so, it has long since disappeared. For much of the last quarter of the 18th century, Aghaboe House was home to the historian and Church of Ireland clergyman Rev Edward Ledwich (author of the text accompanying Francis Grose’s Antiquities of Ireland, published 1791-95) which suggests it could have served as a glebe house until a new one was built in 1820. The enlargement of the main house might even have been undertaken by Ledwich while he was in residence, since he and his wife had at least four daughters and four sons. Along with its neighbours, Aghaboe House contributes to an assemblage of buildings covering some 1,500 years of Irish history.



For more information about Aghaboe House and its sale, see: Aghaboe House, Aghaboe, Ballacolla, Co. Laois – Property.ie

A Death on Main Street



Portarlington, County Laois has featured here on a couple of previous occasions (see A Boarded Up Boarding School « The Irish Aesthete and On the Market « The Irish Aesthete). In both instances, astonishment was expressed that so many historic buildings in what could be a jewel of a town – and a magnet for tourism in Ireland’s Midlands – were being left to fall into ruin. In Andrew Tierney’s 2019 guide to Central Leinster, Portarlington is politely described as ‘once elegant’, thereby only gently suggesting the place’s chronic decay and shabbiness. As mentioned previously, the town takes its name from Sir Henry Bennett, Baron Arlington, who was granted land here in 1667 by Charles II and created a settlement on his property. However, it was only at the end of the 17th century, after Portarlington had passed into the hands of Henri de Massue, second Marquis de Ruvigny (subsequently Baron Portarlington and Earl of Galway) that the town really began to prosper. The marquis was a Huguenot and, like many other members of his faith, had fled France after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. Spending much time in this country, he encouraged his co-religious to move to Portarlington, which soon became an important centre, not just for trade, but also for education; a considerable number of schools were established in houses around the town. However, the schools have long-since gone, and so too has all evidence of the town’s prosperity. 





Today’s pictures show the former Rectory on Portarlington’s Main Street. Although a considerable part of the town’s population in the 18th century was Huguenot, the Church of Ireland also had a presence here, as evidenced by this building, constructed around 1780, although somewhat altered a century later. Of five bays and two storeys over basement, its significance is indicated by the fact that the house has been slightly set back from the road, the door approached by a flight of stone steps. At some date, either late 19th or early 20th century, a small pavilion or kios, was erected in front of and linked to the southern part of the building. In due course, the rectory was used as offices while the kiosk served as a local branch of Allied Irish Bank, until it was closed down in October 2012. Since then, it would seem that the entire site has sat empty and left to fall into its present state of appalling dereliction; part of the rear of the old rectory has collapsed, its condition not helped by the demolition of the adjacent building to the immediate north. Last year, the former rectory was placed on the derelict sites list and this may have been responsible for the owners,  a County Monaghan-based development company, to apply for conversion of the property into a series of flats, with the additional construction of a three-storey block to the rear. On the other hand, the same company was previously granted permission for almost the same conversion in June 2019, and since then things have only grown worse. A death of Main Street: this is a sad state of affairs, but one now typical of Irish cities and towns in the 21st century.