Tag Archives: Georgian Architecture

Kenure Park



After Monday’s post about the melancholy fate of Kenure Park, County Dublin, here are the other remains of the estate: two gate lodges. The first of these, close to the centre of Rush town and erected around the mid-19th century, stands inside curved quadrant walls of wrought iron concluding in granite piers with vermiculated bands and concluding in spherical finials, this work. believed to date from c1740. The lodge itself, of single storey and three bays with a pedimented central breakfront, appears to be currently unused and suffers from having the render stripped from its exterior. The second lodge, which lies to the north of the now-demolished house, is again of single storey and three bays with a central pedimented breakfront. Thought to date from c.1830, the building retains its render which features boldly vermiculated quoins. In this case, however, the gate piers are in a much poorer state of repair.

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Two Days to Demolish the Work of Centuries


Rush is a coastal town lying some 15 miles north of central Dublin. Following the Anglo-Norman settlement in the late 12th century, much of the land in this area fell under the control of the Butler family, although the latter’s main base was further south in what are now Counties Kilkenny and Tipperary. As a result, during the medieval period the property was leased to a succession of tenants. In the mid-17th century, the estate was owned by James, the 12th Earl of Ormond and future first Duke of Ormond and according to the Civil Survey of 1654, the property was then occupied by one Robert Walsh. Estimated to extend to 300 acres, and valued at £120, the estate consisted of ‘one Mansion House of stone & one slated house of Office, a Barne & Stable slated, one thatcht Barne two other houses of office thatcht, six tenements, five cabbins part of an old castle Valued by ye Jury at five hundred poundes, a garden plott, one young orchard with some young trees set for ornament, a ruined Chappell of Ease, one horse mill now out of use & one decayed Pigeon House.’ Subsequently, a branch of the Hamilton family held the estate: within the walls of the ruined St. Catherine’s church is a tomb remembering ‘the affable, obliging, exemplary, wise, devout, most charitable, most virtuous and religious, the RT. Hon George Lord Hamilton, Baron of Strabane’ who died there in 1668. However, the Rush property was once more in the possession of the Butlers until 1715 when the second Duke of Ormond’s was attainded after he had fled to France and given his support to the Jacobite cause. The estate was then acquired by Henry Echlin whose great-grandfather Robert Echlin had moved from Scotland to Ireland where he was appointed Bishop of Down and Connor in 1612. A judge and ardent bibliophile, Henry Echlin was created a baronet in 1721 and on his death four years later, the title and estate in Rush passed to his grandson, Sir Robert Echlin. The latter’s wife Elizabeth (née Bellingham) continued the family’s engagement with books, being a writer and friend of Samuel Richardson (she is remembered for having penned an alternative, less shocking, end for Clarissa). Like George Hamilton before him, Sir Robert, who died in 1757, is buried in the now-ruined St Catherine’s church, his tomb reading
‘Here lies a man without pretence,
Blessed with plain reason and common sense,
Calmly he looked on either life and here
Saw nothing to regret or there to fear.
From nature’s temperate feast rose satisfied
Thanked Heaven that he lived, and that he died.’
Readers familiar with the works of Alexander Pope will recognised that the first two lines are a variant of those written by the poet for his On Mrs Corbet, who died of a Cancer in her Breast, while the other four come from Pope’s epitaph to Elijah Fenton. 






Sir Robert Echlin had no direct male heir and so the Rush estate and baronetcy passed to his nephew, Sir Henry Echlin who appears to have been something of a wastrel and who dissipated the greater part of his inheritance before dying suddenly in 1799. Long before then, gambling debts had cost him the Rush estate which in 1780 was bought by his cousin Elizabeth. A daughter of Sir Robert, she had been left a mere shilling by her father who disapproved of what he deemed Elizabeth’s unsuitable marriage to Francis Palmer of Castle Lacken, County Mayo (for more on the Palmers and Castle Lacken, see https://theirishaesthete.com/2022/09/12/castle-lacken). Thus the estate passed into the hands of the Palmers who chose to rename the place Kenure Park (from the Irish Ceann Iubhair, meaning the Headland of the Yew Trees), by which it has been known ever since. Francis and Elizabeth Palmer’s son, Roger, on his death in 1811 bequeathed ‘May Money’ to the area. According to the terms of his will, £2,500 was to be laid out in Ireland ‘in proper securities at 6% p.a. compound interest, and I desire that the interest be employed every succeeding year, in the month of May, for the purpose of giving a marriage gift to ten women. Never married, between the ages of twenty & thirty-two years, at the rate of £10 each.’  Furthermore, ‘They must be from the poorest & born upon any part of my estate in the County of Dublin, but women born in the environs of the town of Rush, within two miles of my estate be preferred.’ Seemingly this fund still exists, although now dormant. Meanwhile, successive generations of Palmers lived on the estate until the death without a direct male heir of Lt. General Sir Roger Palmer, fifth baronet, in 1910. Kenure Park then passed to Colonel Roderick Henry Fenwick-Palmer who retained the property until 1964 when, unable to maintain it any longer, he sold the place to the Irish Land Commission for £75,500. Most of the land was divided between local farmers, with the rest acquired by Dublin County Council for housing and playing fields.





A succession of houses were constructed on what eventually became known as the Kenure estate. The scant remains of what is thought to be a late-medieval tower house lie to the north of the later Palmer residence, and this may have been the ‘Mansion House of stone’ mentioned in the Civil Survey of 1654. In any case, that building was succeeded by another, constructed either during the time of the dukes of Ormond or else soon after the estate came into the hands of the Echlins. A description of this house survives, since it was visited in June 1783 by the antiquary Austin Cooper who noted that ‘About half a mile from the (Roman Catholic) Chapel is Rush House, once the seat of the Echlin family, and which now belongs to a Mr. Palmer. It is a large quadrangular building in the old style, terminated by a hewn parapet ornamented with urns. In the front is a small pediment supported by four Tuscan pillars, which evidently appears to be a modern addition. The situation of it is low, but the view of the sea agreeable. The improvements about it are very neat and kept in good order.’ This late 17th/early 18th century house appears to have remained intact until the outbreak of fire in 1827 but the damage cannot have been too serious since photographs show both the bow-ended drawing room and the room above it had elaborate rococo ceilings in the style of Robert West. In 1842-44 extensive work was carried out on the building to the designs of George Papworth, the exterior refaced in stucco in the manner of a Nash London terrace and a tremendous pedimented Corinthian portico of granite added to the facade. Inside, the entrance hall was given engaged Doric columns and walls covered in yellow scagliola. Beyond this rose a top-lit Imperial staircase with ornate wrought-iron scrolled balustrading, further Doric columns on the ground floor and Ionic pilasters above. All  survived until 1964 when the house was sold and a four-day auction held to dispose of the contents, which realised a total of some £250,000. Contemporary reports noted that a pair of Buhl cabinets went for just £120, while a Chinese Chippendale display cabinet, sold to a London dealer, made £6,800, seemingly the highest price yet paid for a single piece of furniture at auction in Ireland. Today these figures seem absurdly low. To give a couple of examples: in June 2008, that same Chinese Chippendale cabinet was sold at auction by Christie’s for more than £2.7 million. And in October 2006, two mid-18th century chairs attributed to the London cabinet makers William and Richard Gomm and once part of a set of five in Kenure Park, sold for US$408,000.  Meanwhile, an undignified fate awaited the house itself, which was left standing empty by the county council, subject to the inevitable decay and equally inevitable assault by vandals who eventually managed to set fire to the place. Finally, after 14 years of neglect, the authority sought tenders for Kenure Park’s demolition, although after local petitioning, Papworth’s great portico was left standing, a melancholic reminder of what had been lost. As a headline in the Irish Times noted in September 1978, it took ‘Two Days to Demolish the Work of Centuries…’

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A Prize for Bravery


August 2015

March 2018

April 2023

Regular readers of this site may remember that five years ago, the Irish Aesthete established an annual prize for owners of historic houses here, kindly sponsored by the O’Flynn Group and organised in conjunction with Historic Houses of Ireland (HHI). This year’s recipients of the prize are the owners of Dromdiah, County Cork, about which more can be read here: The Age of Austerity « The Irish Aesthete.
When first visited almost a decade ago, the house was a roofless shell, smothered with vegetation both inside and out, and widely regarded as beyond salvation. Not long afterwards it was bought and since then has undergone a painstaking restoration that now nears completion (the owners hope to move into the building later this year). The work at Dromdiah shows that no property is beyond salvation and once again demonstrates a new wave of interest in bringing Ireland’s historic houses back to life. As such it is a very worthy recipient of the 2025 HHI-O’Fynn Group Heritage Prize.







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A Peculiar Melancholy Air



As previously mentioned, George Moore’s 1886 series of essays Parnell and his Island describes a duck shoot that brings him and another man to the ruins of Castle Carra, County Mayo. After leaving that building, the pair walk on an come across ‘the ruins of what is almost a modern house; there is a vast courtyard, and in the centre a colossal stone fox, and farther away is the ruin of a great gateway, and on the hill stand colossal foxhounds.’ This was what remained of a residence built probably at the start of the 18th century by Sir Henry Lynch and then abandoned by his son Robert. There was an earlier mention of the same property in 1836 when the Rev. Richard Butler of Trim and his wife Harriet (née Edgeworth) together with Harriet’s sister Maria and step-mother Frances came to stay with George Moore’s grandparents at Moore Hall, located to the south east of Castle Carra. The went to see the latter site which ‘had that peculiar melancholy air of modern decay belonging to houses which have been abandoned within the memory of man, and on passing through it to the grounds beyond, the party were startled at seeing immense busts on pedestals still standing in the long grass, the remains of former decorations. Ben Johnson, Congreve and some other of the later dramatists of Charles II’s time, were here, presenting a strange grotesque appearance, stained and weather-beaten in this wild and remote corner of the world.’ Since the time of the Butlers, and indeed of George Moore, the busts, as well as the colossal stone fox and hounds, have long disappeared, and the remains disintegrated much further, so that it is even more challenging to imagine how this great house and its surroundings once appeared. The best surviving remnants are the two immense stone gateposts, rising some 17 or 18 feet high. The ‘peculiar melancholy air’ observed by Harriet Butler also continues to hang over the place.



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A Handsome House



‘Not far from Douglas is a handsome house adorned with a cupola and good plantations, the residence of Mr Richard Newenham, merchant in Cork, a gentleman who is the largest dealer in Ireland in the worsted trade, and employs some thousands in different parts of this country in spinning bay yarn, which he exports to Bristol.’ From The Ancient and Present State of the County and City of Cork by Charles Smith (1750).
The Newenhams are believed to have settled in Cork in the early 17th century and to have prospered as merchants: in 1671 one of their number, John Newenham, served as Mayor of Cork city. One branch of the family would come to live at Coolmore (see Trans-Atlantic Links « The Irish Aesthete). Believed to have been born around 1705, Richard Newenham was the son of another John, a clothier who some years earlier had become a Quaker. His father-in-law, Thomas Wight, who also began professional life as a clothier, was author of A history of the rise and progress of the people called Quakers, in Ireland, from the year 1653 to 1700. The eldest of seven children, Richard Newenham prospered and, as noted by Charles Smith, developed a thriving textile business. As Daniel Beaumont has noted, he may also have been involved in the manufacture of sailcloth, because the village of Douglas, close to Maryborough, had become an important centre for this industry. Newenham also went into partnership with a number of other men in the business of ‘sugar making and sugar boiling’ on the southern outskirts of Cork city. In 1738 he married Sarah Devonsher, member of another successful Quaker family which was responsible for building Kilshannig (see Exuberance « The Irish Aesthete).





Probably built not long before Charles Smith published his book on Cork in 1750 and thought to be on the site of an earlier house, Maryborough was then described as having a cupola, but that no longer exists. The main body of the house is rendered, of three storeys over a raised basement, and seven bays wide, the three-bay breakfront defined with limestone quoins. A substantial flight of steps leads up to the pedimented entrance doorcase, also of limestone. The rear of the house is similar, having a three-bay breakfront but with a Gibbsian doorcase and the two upper floors being slate-fronted, as is the upper section of an extension to the east. The latter’s two-storied facade is a substantial, three-bay bow. This part of the building is thought to be a later extension from c.1830 while behind it is another addition from the late 18th century, a gable-ended wing accommodating a cantilevered Portland stone staircase: Frank Keohane proposes this as the work of local architect Michael Shanahan (who also worked in Ulster for the Earl-Bishop of Derry). The interiors of Maryborough are relatively plain, as befitted the home of a member of the Quaker community, amongst whom there was strong disapproval of gratuitous ornament. However, one room on the first floor has an elaborately decorated rococo ceiling, heavily enriched with scrolling acanthus leaves and an abundance of floral bouquets. 





Following Richard Newenham’s death in 1759, Maryborough was inherited by his only son John, and after the latter died in turn his son, another Richard, inherited the property. In 1837 it was described by Samuel Lewis as ‘the residence of E.E. Newenham Esq., a noble mansion in a spacious demesne, embellished with stately timber.’
Maryborough remained in the ownership of the Newenhams until the late 19th century, although rented out for some years before being sold to Thomas Sherrard in 1889. His descendants lived there until 1995 when the place was sold to the present owners who turned the house into an hotel, with a large bedroom extension added to the south and, more recently, an orangery/function room to the immediate west of the old building.


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Unspoilt



Sitting in a graveyard on the edge of Strangford Lough, his little Roman Catholic church at Ardkeen on the Ards Peninsula, County Down dates from 1777, as legislation against dissenters from the Established Church was beginning to be revoked. It was erected by general subscription overseen by a local priest, Fr Daniel O’Dorman and initially served the entire peninsula but in the 19th century, as other churches were constructed, the building became less used and was reduced to the status of a mortuary chapel: seemingly it now hosts a service only once a year, on All Souls’ Day (November 1st). The church retains much of its original appearance, including arch-headed sash windows and a roof covered in rough-hewn ‘Tullycavey’ slates. Inside also little has changed, with the box pews still in place and on the south side of the altar a simple confessional box. In 2019 the church won one of the Ulster Architectural Heritage’s Angel Awards for Best Maintenance of a Community Building, but it now looks once more in need of  attention, as the condition of the window frames indicates.



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Resisting the Rector’s Request




Standing in a field just outside the walls of the graveyard at Mainham, County Kildare, this is the Browne Mausoleum dating from 1743. The man responsible for commissioning the work, Stephen Fitzwilliam Browne of Castle Browne (today Clongowes Wood College), had wanted the building to stand within the graveyard but the local rector wanted to charge him five guineas for the privilege, perhaps because Browne was a Roman Catholic. Refusing to pay, he latter opted to build the mausoleum on his own land instead; a stone slab over the entrance tells the story, the rector described as ‘the only clergyman in the diocese whose passion would prevent their church to be embellished or enlarged, and to deprive themselves and their successors from the burial fees; and he has been the occasion of obliging said Browne to erect said monument here on his own estate of inheritance, which said Browne thinks proper to insert here to show it was not by choice he did it. May the 1st 1743.’
Inside, the mausoleum holds a stone altar with the figures of Browne and his wife in relief, kneeling on either side of the crucified Christ, with the wall above embellished in stucco with fluted pilasters and a frieze of seraphim. On the north wall is an earlier monument to Thomas Browne (died 1693) featuring a seraphim at its base, a coat of arms and heraldic medallions above a lengthy inscription and on top a large urn flanked by skulls.



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Ill-Advised Indifference


While last Monday’s page told a cheering story of restoration and renewal, today’s story demonstrates that plenty of work remains to be done in order to secure the future of our urban architectural heritage. Waterford city has some fine Georgian buildings, a number of which have been restored in recent years. However, many others have been left to languish, such as that above, no.18 Lady’s Lane. This street was once an important thoroughfare, lined with fine houses of which no.18 is a particularly good example. Thought to date from c.1750, it is of five bays and three storeys, with a particularly splendid staircase and rococo plasterwork. An ugly extension was added to the rear in 1975  when the house served as a men’s hostel (doing so until 2012). Otherwise, despite a fire thought to have been started by vandals, the building retains much of its original character and appearance, although it hasnow  sat empty for many years. Likewise no.22 Lady’s Lane, which is of a later date (c.1800), but likewise of five bays and three storeys, and again suffering neglect. Aside from being a terrible waste of good housing stock, the impression conveyed by such dereliction in the city – where, incidentally, the local authority has hitherto spent over €24 million on consultants’ fees alone for a north quay scheme that has yet to get underway – is that the future Waterford’s historic centre remains under threat from ill-advised indifference.   

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Operation Transformation


Exactly eight years ago, the Irish Aesthete visited No.3 Henrietta Street, Dublin and subsequently wrote about the house (see Opportunity Knocks « The Irish Aesthete). It was then for sale and in pitiable condition, having been turned into a tenement in the last century, with many of the original features such as the main staircase and the main chimney pieces stripped out and rooms subdivided to create more units in which entire families could be accommodated. Like many such buildings in this part of the city, it had been comprehensively degraded and faced an uncertain future. 






As discussed before, the site of 3 Henrietta Street, along with its immediate neighbour, was originally owned by Nathaniel Clements who completed work on the building around 1740-41 and then sold to the Rev. George Stone, Bishop of Ferns. The latter occupied the building but did not finish paying for it, until 1747 when he was appointed Archbishop of Armagh and, in turn, opportunistically moved into the even grander residence at the top of the street constructed for his predecessor in that office, Hugh Boulter. No. 4 was then leased to John Maxwell, MP for County Cavan and later first Lord Farnham. When John Maxwell moved into the house, it came with a plot of land to the immediate east, perhaps serving as a garden. In 1754 Maxwell’s only daughter married another MP, Owen Wynne of Sligo and it is thought that No.3 was built around this time to provide a Dublin residence for the newly-weds. The interior of the building underwent alterations believed to date from 1830: this was perhaps when the main staircase was removed and the double-height entrance hall divided into rooms on two levels. However, particularly on the first floor, the rooms retained much of their original decoration, the pair to the front of the room having a deep frieze with strapwork and festoons, while below the walls were sectioned by plaster panelling. To the rear at this level was a wonderful room with rococo stuccowork in the coved ceiling which extended into the bow. 





As can be seen, when offered for sale in 2016, No.3 Henrietta Street was in poor condition and looked an unattractive proposition for any possible buyer. Fortunately, it found new owners who in the years that followed undertook a thorough, and thoroughly sensitive, restoration of the building. One of their main interventions was the reinstatement of the double-height entrance hall incorporating a staircase such as would have existed when the house was first constructed and as can still be found in a number of other houses on the street (see, for example, No. 7, Relics of Auld Decency « The Irish Aesthete). This completely transforms the interior, making it altogether lighter and offering a better idea of how such buildings would have appeared to both owners and visitors in the 18th century. Upstairs, all the rooms were similarly refurbished, not least the first-floor bow-ended room with its charming coved ceiling with rococo plasterwork. The Irish Aesthete often (perhaps too often for some readers) focuses on loss and debasement of this country’s architectural heritage, so it is a pleasure to offer more cheering news on this occasion, evidence that at least occasionally our historic buildings, can sometimes be brought back from what appears to be the brink of permanent loss. 


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The Ascent to Knowledge


Herewith the entrance hall and main staircase of the King’s Inns’ Library on Henrietta Street, Dublin. The site, located at the top of the thoroughfare, had previously been the location for a large, six-bay house built in the early 18th century for Hugh Boulter, Archbishop of Armagh and thereafter occupied by a number of his successors, hence the street was popularly known as Primate’s Hill. This building was demolished c.1825 and replaced with the present library, designed by Frederick Darley. The double-height reading room on the first floor is accessed via an imperial staircase lit by a large arched window filled with armorial glass made by Michael O’Connor.

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