Tag Archives: Dangan

Once One of the Grandest Places in Meath


‘The place is really magnificent; the old house that was burnt down is rebuilding. They live at present in the offices; the garden (or rather improvements, and parks, for it is too extensive to be called a garden), consists of six hundred Irish acres, which makes between eight and nine hundred English. There is a gravel walk from the house to the great lake, fifty-two feet broad, and six hundred yards long. The lake contains 26 acres, is of an irregular shape, with a fort built in all its forms. I never saw so pretty a thing. There are several ships, one a complete man-of-war. My godson [Garret Wellesley, later first Earl of Mornington] is governor of the fort, and lord high admiral; he hoisted all his colours for my reception, and was not a little mortified that I declined the compliment of being saluted from the fort and ship. The part of the lake that just fronts the house forms a very fine bason, and is surrounded by a natural terrace wooded, through which walks are cut, and variety of seats placed, that you may rest and enjoy all the beauties of the place as they change to your eye. The ground as far as you can see ever way is waving in hills and dales, and every remarkable point has either a tuft of trees, a statue, a seat, an obelisk, or a pillar.’
Mrs Delany writing to her sister from Delville on October 15th 1748.





‘Dangan, the former seat of the Wesleys, is distant about seven miles from Trim, and about twenty from Dublin. On the death of Lord Mornington, it became the property of the Marquis of Wellesley, from whom it was purchased by a gentleman named Boroughs, who, after residing there some time, and adding to it many improvements, let it on lease to Mr. Roger O’Connor. While in his possession the house and demesne were dismantled of every article that could be converted into money; the trees (of which there was an immense variety, of prodigious height and girth,) rapidly fell beneath the axe; the gardens were permitted to run waste. An application to the Lord Chancellor proved utterly ineffective, and at length, the premises being largely insured, the house was found to be on fire, and was of course consumed before any assistance could be obtained to extinguish it. One portion of the building, the walls of which are of prodigious thickness, is still inhabited by a farmer, who superintends the property.’
From Ireland: Its Scenery, Character, & by Mr and Mrs S.C. Hall, 1841.





‘Dangan was once one of the grandest places in Meath: all that remains of it now is a ruinous and roofless mansion of cut stone in Italian style, showing by its long range of window opes, and the mouldings of the window-jambs how lordly a dwelling it once was. All of the upper part of the mansion is gone, and of the walls all is destroyed above the height of the parlour windows. Grass grows and cows graze up to the walls. A tree has taken root in what was once the grand hall, and cattle shelter in it at night. An ancient park wall, gapped and broken, encloses what was once an extensive park of over 500 acres. Large herds of cattle have taken the place of deer, and range over it, the property of dairymen, tenants of the park. Long vaulted passages, with groined brick arches, connect the kitchen and the offices with the dwelling-house; these arched ways, once noisy with servants attending upon the gay company that thronged the mansion, are now damp and cheerless and silent as the grave. A large French grille, or gate of florid scroll work, once gave entrance to the park; but grass now grows on each side of the gate, showing how long it is since it was opened to let in company.’
From Dangan and Roger O’Connor by John P. Prendergast in The Irish Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 127 (January 1884)

 

Taking Flight

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The column terminating a vista in front of Furness, County Kildare (see A Gentle Evolution, May 26th last). Originally this column stood in the parkland of Dangan, County Meath, once the property of Richard Colley Wesley, first Baron Mornington (and grandfather of the first Duke of Wellington). When Mrs Delany visited Dangan in 1749 she wrote that in the grounds ‘there is a fir-grove dedicated to Vesta, in the midst of which is her statue; at some distance from it is a mound covered with evergreens, on which is placed a Temple with the statues of Apollo, Neptune, Proserpine, Diana, all have honours paid to them and Fame has been too good a friend to the mentor of all these improvements to be neglected; her Temple is near the house, at the end of the terrace near where The Four Seasons take their stand, very well represented by Flora, Ceres, Bacchus and an old gentleman with a hood on his head, warming his hands over a fire.’ All now gone unfortunately, but the column – topped by a copy of Giambologna’s Mercury – was rescued in the last century and set up in the grounds of Furness to mark the 21st birthday of a previous owner.

The Lonely Sentinel

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A solitary obelisk standing on raised ground in what was once the parkland of Dangan Castle, County Meath. Dangan was the seat of Richard Wesley, created first Baron Mornington in 1746. He spent a great deal of money improving his house and grounds, and Bishop Pococke in his 1752 Tour in Ireland described the former as being ‘situated on a most beautiful flat, with an Amphitheater of hills rising round it, one over another, in a most beautiful manner; at the lower end is a very large piece of water, at one corner of which is an Island, it is a regular fortification, there is a ship a sloop and boats on the water, and a yard for building; the hill beyond it, is improved into a beautiful wilderness: on a round hill near the house is a Temple, and the hills round are adorned with obelisks: Pillars and some buildings, altogether the most beautiful thing I ever saw.’ Mrs Delany also visited Dangan several times, being godmother to Mornington’s heir Garret, future first Earl of Mornington and, in turn, the father of Arthur Wellesley, future Duke of Wellington who likewise spent much of his childhood here. Yet before the end of the century the family had sold the estate, the house was accidentally destroyed by fire and in 1841 J. Stirling Coyne could write ‘The noble woods, too, which adorned the demesne, have shared in the general destruction; and all the giants of the sylvan scene have been prostrated by the ruthless axe.’ Today there remain few signs of Dangan’s former splendour other than this obelisk rising in the midst of a field, and another not far away, the latter restored of late with help from the Meath branch of An Taisce.