A view of the circular lantern at the top of the back stairs in Tullynally, County Westmeath. Dating from the early 19th century, this was probably designed by James Shiel as part of a programme of work intended to make the house more gothic in style. Yet there is nothing heavy or oppressive about the space. On the contrary, thanks to Shiel’s lightness of approach, the lantern seems not to sit upon but to hover effortlessly above the stairs.
The popularity of the gothic style for domestic buildings in early 19th century Ireland owed something to a desire among landed families to suggest longer residence here than was often actually the case. The Levinges, for example, only came to this country in the aftermath of the Williamite Wars when the Derbyshire-born lawyer William Levinge was appointed Irish Solicitor-General and Speaker of the House of Commons; he later became Attorney-General and Lord Chief Justice. As a reward for his services, in 1704 he received a baronetcy and duly became Sir Richard Levinge of High Park in the County of Westmeath.
Today the property is known as Knockdrin, built close to a late mediaeval castle once belonging to the Tuite family; it was their lands that Sir Richard acquired and on which he built a new house. However by the early 19th century this had fallen into disrepair and so the sixth baronet, also called Sir Richard Levinge, embarked on a rebuilding programme that would give him a splendid gothic castle and all the links with an ancient past this implied.
It is not known for certain who was responsible for the design of Knockdrin Castle. Sir Richard Morrison produced a design for the entrance front but while elements of this were incorporated into the eventual building it cannot be attributed to him. Instead Knockdrin is assigned to James Shiel, believed to have trained in the office of Francis Johnston an architect who created some of the finest gothic revival castles in Ireland, not least Charleville, County Offaly. Like Charleville, Knockdrin’s late-mediaeval trappings are lightly worn: this is essentially a Georgian country house in fancy dress. The entrance front presents a degree of asymmetry, primarily thanks to a long castellated curtain wall leading to a two-storey gatehouse providing access to the service courtyard. But the battlemented main block, of rubble limestone with dressed window surrounds and featuring a wide fanlit doorway flanked by square towers, has only superficial quirks, such as a slim turret on the south corner. And notice how standard rectangular sash windows are used on the upper storeys.
A similarly familiar sense of order can be found inside where once more the usual forms are followed, albeit decked out in gothic flummery. As in so many Irish houses the rear of the entrance hall has a screen but in this instance it is composed of three pointed arches supported on slender cluster-shafted columns. Doors to either side open onto the library and dining room (the latter now regrettably divided in two). But another door provides access to Knockdrin’s most striking feature: a top-lit staircase with the stairs (like the doors throughout the building) made of carved oak. The elaborate first floor is decorated with a gallery of fluted shafts and sequence of ogee-headed niches around the walls. Abundant light provided by a central glazed dome helps to create a fluid, elegant space possessing none of the heaviness customarily associated with the Gothic Revival movement. On the other hand, despite high ceilings emblazoned with plasterwork of Tudor roses and the like, the enfilade of ground floor reception rooms – ballroom, drawing room, library – is less distinguished, although a line of full-length, south-facing windows means that like the staircase hall they are exceptionally bright.
Knockdrin remained in the possession of the Levinge family until the last century. Within weeks of the outbreak of the First World War the tenth baronet, another Sir Richard Levinge, was dead after being hit in the neck by a bullet as he walked along a trench at Ypres. His widow and only son moved to England and the house was let to various tenants; at one point it served as a school and in the early 1940s was occupied by members of the Irish army who inevitably inflicted a certain amount of damage on the building. Finally in 1943, the greater part of the estate having already been broken up by the Land Commission, the castle and surrounding land was sold by the Levinges, thereby ending a link of almost 250 years. The present owners bought the place in 1961 and have cared for it ever since. One should not try to make exaggerated claims for Knockdrin. It is certainly not a house of the first importance, but can be considered noteworthy as an example of the transition from classicism to gothic, when the latter was still a style and not yet an ideology and the former’s principles survive beneath a veneer of ornamentation. Below is a portrait of Sir Richard, the sixth baronet who commissioned the house. The picture was painted by the minor English artist Thomas Shew in 1828 and includes a view of Knockdrin, presumably imaginary since Shew never came to Ireland.
The handsome cut-limestone pedimented doorcase and sidelights of Huntingdon, County Westmeath. A typical Irish 18th century gentleman farmer’s residence, the house dates from c.1770 and is of three bays and two storeys over basement, just one room deep and with a central bow at the rear to accommodate a staircase. An exercise in elegant restraint.
A detail of the plasterwork around a door leading from dining room to drawing room at Ballinlough Castle, County Westmeath. This extension to the much earlier house dates from c.1790, its design generally attributed to the amateur architect Thomas Wogan Browne. Browne also undertook similar work at Malahide. where the chatelaine Margaret Talbot was sister to Ballinlough’s then-owner Sir Hugh O’Reilly. The style is an eclectic blend of classical and gothic, and yet the assured delicacy with which it is applied (who can resist an ‘eggcup’ urn perched atop the pilaster) makes the result irresistible. As for Browne, he died – seemingly by his own hand – in 1812, two years after which his brother sold the family estate in County Kildare to the Jesuit order; ever since it has been a boarding school for boys known as Clongowes Wood College.
The entrance to a bedroom on the first floor gallery of Ballinlough Castle, County Westmeath. Probably dating from c.1740, the oak door frame is notable for exaggerated height and narrowness. Its geometric formality and that of the adjacent wainscotting provide a decisive contrast to the exuberant rococo plasterwork above the frame, a feature repeated throughout the two-storey hall and stairs to create an enchantingly theatrical interior.
In 1971 when Anthony Powell published the tenth volume of his roman fleuve A Dance to the Music of Time he gave it the title Books Do Furnish a Room. Perhaps he was thinking of the library at Tullynally, County Westmeath? After all, Powell was married to Lady Violet Pakenham whose family has been based at Tullynally since the mid-17th century. This has to be one of the most enticing rooms in Ireland, not least because books provide the greater part of its furnishing. Discovering the weighted shelves at Tullynally is akin to attending a party and encountering lots of old friends while being introduced to just as many new ones. (It has to be said the success of this metaphor is assisted by the presence of a drinks table in one corner of the room).
Previously known as Pakenham Hall, Tullynally was deservedly deemed, ‘an early 19th century Gothic Palace,’ by John Betjeman when Britain’s future Poet Laureate stayed there in September 1939. As the late Mark Bence-Jones observed, ‘with its long, picturesque skyline of towers, turrets, battlements and gateways stretching among the trees of its rolling park, Tullynally covers a greater area than any other country house in Ireland’ and looks ‘not so much like a castle as a small fortified town; a Camelot of the Gothic Revival.’ But buried far beneath its romantic carapace of castellations and battlements lies a plain two-storied Georgian house that once served as home to the Pakenham family.
Thomas Pakenham believes the first alterations to the old building were made soon after the marriage of his forebear and namesake Thomas Pakenham to heiress Elizabeth Cuffe; most likely with her money a third storey was added to the house. That earlier Thomas was created Baron Longford in 1756 and almost twenty years later his widow became Countess of Longford in her own right. The second Baron Longford’s accounts record improvements carried out to the building around 1780, mostly raising ceiling heights and altering windows but perhaps more was done since the person responsible for this work was a ‘Mr Myers.’ He could be the Christopher Myers responsible for gothicising Moore Abbey, County Kildare some years earlier.
In any case it was the second Earl of Longford who initiated the real transformation of Tullynally from house to castle. Two of his brothers were professional soldiers and a portrait of one, Major General Sir Edward Pakenham hangs over the polished limestone chimneypiece in the library. He was killed at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815 and for purposes of preservation his body was returned to Ireland in a cask of rum; since he had been known to have a surly temper, one of his relatives laconically remarked, ‘The General has returned home in better spirits than he left.’
Despite his soldier brothers, and his brother-in-law being the first Duke of Wellington, the Earl of Longford seems to have preferred less militant pursuits and carried out extensive improvements on his Irish residence. Between 1801 and 1806 the pre-eminent Irish architect of the period, Francis Johnston worked at Tullynally, adding what one observer has since called ‘little more than a Gothic face-lift for the earlier house,’ notably two round towers projecting from the corners of the main block and battlements around the parapet. In 1817 Lord Longford married and no doubt it was the incentive of a new bride and soon-expanding family that encouraged him a few years later to embark on a second round of work at Tullynally, this time using Johnston’s former clerk, James Shiel. From 1839 to 1842 the third Earl, a bachelor, employed architect Sir Richard Morrison to embellish Tullynally further and to design two castellated wings linking the house with its stable courtyard; a final flourish was added by the fourth Earl in 1860 with the construction of a pinnacled tower at the northern end of the site.
Records show a ‘bookroom’ existed within the house from 1740 onwards, and the first inventory of books there was compiled in 1790, with a second made in the mid-19th century. Thomas once told me he could reconstruct the whole library as it was on either of those dates and compare them with its present holdings. The current contents of 6,000 volumes representing 2,000 titles have been meticulously catalogued across 14 different fields including author, name, subject, language and date of publication.
It comes as no surprise that Tullynally is such a bookish house since the Pakenhams are a dauntingly literary family. Earlier generations might have been renowned for their military prowess but the pen has now decisively vanquished the sword. Thomas’ uncle Edward, sixth Earl of Longford wrote many plays as well as several volumes of poetry. He and his wife Christine (also a playwright) were generous supporters of Dublin’s Gate Theatre from 1930 onwards and later founded the Longford Players. Following his death, he was succeeded by his brother Frank, well-known politician and human rights campaigner as well as author and his wife Elizabeth was an historian. Their children include authors Antonia Fraser and Rachel Billington as well as Thomas who is another distinguished historian but probably now more widely known for his books on trees. Thomas’ wife Valerie has written a number of excellent books and a few years ago their daughter Eliza wrote a history of the Pakenhams in the late 18th/early 19th century.
Examples of all their works can be found in Tullynally’s library, the form if not the finish of which dates from the time of Francis Johnston’s intervention. He enlarged the room by stealing a bay from its immediate neighbour so the library now has three south-east facing windows and one facing south-west. It is worth considering what are the elements that make this room aesthetically so satisfying. Obviously its ample proportions help, as does the want of superfluous decoration: the gothic ornamentation found elsewhere is employed very sparingly here. The mellow oak bookshelves covering all four walls and rising from floor to cornice make the greatest impact, especially since most of them carry an amplitude of complementarily-toned leather bindings. Note how the sequence of ten shelves is graduated in height, with smaller volumes occupying the upper levels. The only other feature of note is a set of handsome busts running along the top shelf in one corner of the room. Predating the present library by more than half a century, they represent what were then deemed ancient and modern writers of note. While the library has shutters the absence of poles or even marks in the window embrasures to indicate supports suggests there have never been curtains here. Aside from some Turkey rugs, abundant and comfortable seating, a scattering of mahogany tables and enough lamps to provide light when evening falls, nothing more is required. The library at Tullynally indicates that books do not just furnish a room, they also make it beautiful.
Tullynally’s splendid gardens (and tearoom) are now open and well worth a visit especially since the weather has, at last, improved. For information, see: http://www.tullynallycastle.com
Last year there was a flurry of correspondence in Irish newspapers about the national postal service’s tendency to remove charming old post boxes without notice and substitute drearily standardised replacements. Well here is one that has so far survived the attentions of An Post. Set into a stone wall in front of the former Church of Ireland parish church (now a private residence) in Drumcree, County Westmeath, the box’s two initials indicate it dates from the time of George V, the last British monarch to claim authority in this part of the country.
A first-floor room in Ballinlough Castle, County Westmeath which has preserved its early 18th century wainscotting and corner chimneypiece which, as was the style of the period, lies almost flush with the wall. It’s all quite simple, and quite perfect. Unquestionably one of the most charming houses in Ireland, Ballinlough will be the subject of more thorough exploration before too long.
This is an engraving of Broadstone on the north side of Dublin dating from 1821 and based on a picture by George Petrie. The most prominent building is the King’s Inns, designed by James Gandon in 1800 and by that date nearing completion. It looks little different today but the surprise is to find a harbour immediately in front since this has long gone. As the picture’s caption reveals, the harbour was constructed to serve the Royal Canal, its site chosen because of proximity to many key resources such as the city markets as well as the Linen Hall and various penitentiaries and workhouses.
Although Broadstone Harbour is no more the Royal Canal survives, despite sundry attempts over the past 150-plus years to damage it irreparably. Linking Dublin to the river Shannon and intended to encourage greater trade between the west and east of the country, the enterprise was plagued with problems from the very start. Not the least of these was the presence of the rival Grand Canal which follows a similar route further south and on which work had started in 1757. Construction of the Royal Canal on the other hand only began in 1790 by which time the senior waterway was almost finished and already taking large quantities of commercial and passenger traffic. So when a group of investors established the Royal Canal Company, they had to petition the Irish Parliament for financial support, receiving £66,000 to add to the £134,000 already raised from subscribers.
Among the key shareholders of the Royal Canal scheme was the second Duke of Leinster, who insisted that the waterway pass by Maynooth, the County Kildare town beside his estate at Carton. This necessitated cutting through extensive rock at Clonsilla and creating an aqueduct to cross the river Ryewater at Leixlip, both of which added greatly to costs. By 1796 the canal had reached Kilcock and the first passengers were able to travel between this town and Dublin at a cost of one shilling and one penny, cheaper than a seat on the traditional stagecoach. However progress on moving the route further west was slow and more expensive than had been anticipated.
By 1811, despite being given almost £144,000 in government grants, the Royal Canal Company’s debts stood at £862,000. A parliamentary investigation into the business was undertaken and two years later the company was dissolved with responsibility for the project handed over to the Directors General of Inland Navigation who were instructed to complete work on the canal at public expense and with all due speed. In 1817 the Royal Canal finally joined the Shannon at a total cost of £1,421,954, seven times more than the original estimate. The following year a new Royal Canal Company assumed responsibility for the concern and built a branch line to Longford town which opened in 1830.
Now as then the Royal Canal runs for 90 miles (146 kilometres) through Counties Dublin, Kildare, Meath, Westmeath and Longford. The main water supply comes from Lough Owel near Mullingar which feeds the canal’s highest level. Its creation involved the building of 46 locks, four aqueducts and 86 bridges.
By the mid-1830s, goods traffic on the canal had grown to 134,000 tons annually, and passenger numbers stood at 46,000 in 1837 by which time the journey between Dublin and Mullingar took an average eight hours. But even at its peak, the Royal Canal was never as successful as the Grand Canal. And the arrival of railways the following decade had an immediate and devastating effect. In 1845 the Midland Great Western Railway Company bought the canal in its entirety for £289,059 with the intention of laying railway tracks on top of the route. The government did not allow this plan to proceed, but it explains why trains heading west from Dublin do so directly alongside the canal for many miles. In 1877 the old Broadstone canal harbour was filled in and the site used as a forecourt for the railway company’s new termimus; a branch line of the canal had already connected it to the Liffey at what is now known as Spencer Dock.
Meanwhile, the Royal Canal went into steady decline, with the annual quantity of goods being carried on its route falling to 30,000 tons and passenger traffic gone. In 1938 ownership was transferred to the Great Southern Railway and six years later to the national rail company Coras Iompair Eireann. In 1955 the last boat officially to pass the length of the canal made its journey and the waterway was closed to navigation in 1961 after which it fell into serious disrepair. In the mid-1970s a group of enthusiasts started a Save the Royal Canal campaign and thanks to their sterling efforts, the route, which passed into the care of the Office of Public Works in 1978, was gradually restored. It took longer to refurbish than it had to construct: work on the last part of the Royal Canal was only completed in 2010.
There are many reasons to celebrate the Royal Canal the most frequently cited being that it is an amenity beneficial to the tourist industry. That is certainly true and boats navigating its length bring visitors and income to towns and villages along the route. But let us leave matters economic to one side, not least because for over two centuries the Royal Canal has failed as a viable commercial proposition, inevitably costing more money than it generates. Though it might seem perverse to do so, this aspect of the waterway should be judged a cause for celebration, especially in the present era when the merit of everything and everyone seems to be based solely on the grounds of cost-effectiveness. Applying that criterion to the Royal Canal makes no sense, but instead demonstrates the fatuity of assessing value on economic grounds alone.
What’s more important in this instance is that the Royal Canal provides an example of successful intervention in the natural landscape. We are inclined to believe all man-made intrusions damage the environment, but the Royal Canal offers conclusive evidence this need not be the case: far from impairing its surroundings, the waterway often enhances them. And that is what matters most: the Royal Canal as an object of beauty. The original scheme may have been ill-conceived and sometimes ill-executed, over-time and over-budget in its completion, but we are all now the grateful beneficiaries. That gives it a value beyond price.
On a road leading out of Castlepollard, County Westmeath can be found this souvenir of an era when, to use an apt Irish expression, we lost the run of ourselves. A year after this sign was hammered into the ground, the nation’s banks crumpled under the weight of over-extended credit and the proposed scheme – for six townhouses and two blocks of eight apartments no doubt all of exquisitely faultless design – failed to materialise. Meanwhile, immediately beside the undeveloped site, another old building continues to moulder…
