Tag Archives: Georgian Architecture

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.


A Charmer



Located on the outskirts of New Ross, County Wexford, Woodville dates from the first years of the 19th century and may have been built in 1807 when the property’s owner Edward Tottenham married Henrieta Alcock, daughter of Sir John Alcock; the Tottenhams had long been settled in this part of the country. Woodville’s site was clearly chosen because the land in front then drops away down to the river Barrow. However, this view was obscured in 1887 when the Dublin and South Eastern Railway opened a branch to New Ross, the line running along the banks of the river (the railway is long since closed). Of five bays and two storeys over basement, the house was originally two bays deep but was extended towards the end of the 19th century, with further alterations made during an extensive restoration in 2006. The Woodville estate was acquired by Patrick James Roche in 1876 and is still owned and occupied by his descendants who have developed charming and extensive gardens both in front and behind the main house. 


Period Piece


Back in 2010, while reviewing a biography of Derek Hill, the Irish Aesthete managed to affront a number of people by suggesting the artist’s reputation was less substantial than either he or his admirers might have wished. Indeed, some 24 years after his death, the question is likely to be asked in some circles: Derek who? Born in Southampton in 1916, after leaving school in 1933 Hill originally studied theatre design in Munich, before travelling eastwards through Russia, eventually visiting China and Japan. Returning to England, he took a job as costume designer at Sadlers Wells Theatre but then, encouraged by the couturier Edward Molyneux, he took up painting in a serious fashion. During the Second World War, he worked on a farm as a conscientious objector but still found time to paint and in 1943 had a one-man exhibition in London. In the aftermath of war, he spent a great deal of time in Italy, often staying with art historian Bernard Berenson at his villa I Tatti outside Florence. And he continued to paint, specialising in the genres of landscape and portraiture. Hill demonstrated a distinct aptitude for the former, especially when working on a small scale – in larger pictures he seemed to lose his way – and when presented with the kind of rugged prospect found in the north-west of Ireland, where he spent more and more time. The influence of Corot was always evident in this work, aligned with the beneficial impact of Cezanne. His portraits are more problematic, veering between acute character study and superficial likeness. Some of the finest are little more than preparatory studies; he could overwork a portrait and thereby mislay the sitter’s personality. But in their enormous number these pictures offer an insight into the scope of his social life, which took in everyone from Irish farmers to English grandees. That he had a weakness for aristocracy and royalty cannot be denied (he loved to go on painting holidays with Prince – now King – Charles); it was another aspect of his essentially old-fashioned persona. There is a well-known anecdote of Hill once being decried as a snob, to which he supposedly responded: “How amazing. I was only talking with the Queen Mother a few days ago, and she said just the same thing.” There were two drawbacks to his maintaining a busy social life, flitting from one grand house to the next: it made him appear trivial in the eyes of many people and it took him away from his work. Although he spent periods entirely focused on his work, and quoted Degas’ remark that “if the artist wishes to be serious . . . he must once more sink himself into solitude”, he was unable to apply this policy with sufficient rigour.






Derek Hill first came to Ireland in the late 1940s, invited here by the wealthy  Philadelphia-born socialite and art collector Henry McIllhenny who in 1938 had bought Glenveagh Castle, County Donegal, an estate some 15 miles south-west of where his forebears had lived until emigrating to the United States the previous century; at the time of their meeting, McIllhenny was working as Resident Art Historian at the American Academy in Rome. The two men thereafter remained lifelong ‘frenemies’ (to use a wonderful neologism) and in due course also neighbours because in 1953 Hill bought an old rectory, St Columb’s, just a few miles south of Glenveagh. Five years later, he visited Tory, a small island off the north coast of Donegal, where he rented a hut and spent time each summer painting for himself and also encouraging members of the local fishing community to do likewise, thereby creating a school of naïve painting, known as the Tory Island Painters, the best-known of whom was James Dixon. In 1982 Hill donated St Columb’s and its contents to the Irish State (McIllhenny had done likewise with Glenveagh Castle and gardens three years earlier) and thereafter lived in a small cottage nearby although he spent more time than hitherto in England. He died in London in 2000. 






St Columb’s dates from 1828 when, according to Samuel Lewis’s Topographical Dictionary of Ireland (1837) it was constructed thanks to a gift of £400 and a loan of £380 from the Board of First Fruits; the surrounding glebe land ran to 25 acres. It remained in use as a Church of Ireland rectory until the death of the second resident clergyman, the Rev Henry Maturin in 1880, after which the building was leased to tenants before being sold. In 1898 it opened as St Columb’s Hotel, and continued to be used for this purpose until being bought by Derek Hill in 1953, the majority of guests over the intervening period coming to this part of the country either for fishing or shooting. Of two storeys and three bays, the house retains much of its original appearance, although a large and elaborate cast-iron single storey veranda to the rear seemingly was brought here from somewhere else. Inside, it has a typical tripartite design, with reception rooms on either side of a narrow entrance hall, that to the right presumably serving as a small study since the staircase immediately behind takes up considerable space. The decoration throughout is as it was when St Columb’s was occupied by Derek Hill and displays a fondness for Victoriana and William Morris papers, for needlepoint cushions and Staffordshire figures. The house is now a period piece, preserved as though its former owner had just stepped out for air, and deservedly ought to be kept as such even if, rather like Hill’s paintings, this will not be to everyone’s taste. It is open to the public for tours during the summer months, while, the adjacent yard buildings have been converted into a gallery space which hosts temporary exhibitions each year.

For more information about the house and gallery, see Glebe House and Gallery | Explore a world-class collection of art (glebegallery.ie)

 

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. 


Remembering a Hero



Following last Monday’s post about Lucan House, here is a monument found within the surrounding garden and dedicated to Patrick Sarsfield, first Earl of Lucan and hero of the 1691 Siege of Limerick. While he never lived here (the property was owned by his older brother William), toward the end of the 18th century either Agmondisham Vesey or his nephew and heir Colonel George Vesey is thought to have commissioned this work from James Wyatt. Originally located elsewhere on another site to the west, the monument was moved to its present location on an elevated mound in the mid-1980s when the greater part of the old demesne became a public park. On a stepped base, three tortoises support an elaborately carved Portland stone triangular pedestal, with medallions on two sides featuring classical figures (the third for some reason has been left blank). And to finish it off, on top of this rests a substantial limestone urn. 


Addio del Passato



Last Monday, the Presidents of Ireland and Italy jointly inaugurated a new public park in Lucan, County Dublin, the space henceforth to be known as Parco Italia. The reason for this somewhat unusual name? Since 1942 Lucan House, which stands at the centre of the 30-acre park, has been the official residence of successive Italian ambassadors to this country. The building here has, like so often, a long and complex history but in its present form was commissioned in the early 1770s by the estate’s then-owner Agmondisham Vesey who, although he consulted several eminent architects, played an active role in the eventual design. Vesey’s house replaced an earlier one, probably dating back to the Middle Ages but much altered over the centuries. A painting by Thomas Roberts produced shortly before its demolition shows what appears to be a late-mediaeval tower house with a fortified manor house with castellated roofline to one side. Vesey’s wife Elizabeth, a noted bluestocking (and close friend of Elizabeth Montague) lamented the destruction of the older building, ‘with its niches and thousand other Gothic beauties,’ but her husband was determined to start afresh. To do this, he not only had to overcome his spouse’s opposition but also the original house’s associations with noted Irish patriot Patrick Sarsfield, first Earl of Lucan. His forebear, Sir William Sarsfield, had acquired the Lucan estate in 1566 and although temporarily dispossessed during the Confederate Wars, several generations of the family lived there until the marriage in 1696 of heiress Catherine Sarsfield (a niece of Patrick Sarsfield) to Agmondisham Vesey, father of the man responsible for building Lucan House. 





As mentioned above, Agmondisham Vesey, displayed a keen interest in architecture despite his involvement in many other activities: a Member of the Irish Parliament, he was also a Privy Councillor and Accountant and Controller General of Ireland. Like his wife Elizabeth he liked to keep abreast of cultural developments: in 1773, during the period that work was underway on the new house, he was elected to the ‘Club’, the informal dining and conversational group established by Samuel Johnson and Joshua Reynolds 10 years earlier. Johnson and James Boswell granted him the notional title of ‘Professor of Architecture,’ and the latter wrote that Vesey had ‘left a good specimen of his knowledge and taste in that art by an elegant house built on a plan of his own at Lucan.’ Boswell exaggerated his friend’s role in the matter because while Vesey undoubtedly had a hand in Lucan House’s appearance, so did a number of architects, not least Sir William Chambers who in 1773 sent him now-lost ‘Designs for a Villa.’ It is thought that the facade of the building was based on this work, not least because in March 1774, Vesey wrote to Chambers, ‘I am much more intent in finishing the South front of your Plan at Lucan this summer.’ The aforementioned facade is of seven bays and two storeys over basement except for the breakfront three centre bays which feature an additional attic storey beneath a pediment (despite Vesey reminding Chambers ‘You have taught us to think pediments but common architecture). This central section is faced in granite ashlar with four half-engaged giant Ionic columns above a rusticated ground floor. Originally at that level the two bays on either side were given rusticated render, as can be seen in an engraving of the house produced by Thomas Milton in 1783, but this was removed at some later date. Lucan House’s design looks to have been the inspiration for Charleville, County Wicklow, designed by Whitmore Davis in 1797, although the facade of that building is entirely faced in ashlar and runs to nine bays. Meanwhile, at Lucan, the house forms a rectangular block, other than a three-bay bow to the rear that, as with the facade, rises three storeys over basement. 





If Sir William Chambers was involved in designing the exterior of Lucan House, James Wyatt, together with his Irish representative Thomas Penrose, can claim much credit for the building’s interiors, with Michael Stapleton responsible for much of the plasterwork found on many of the walls and ceilings in the ground floor, as well as the main staircase and first-floor lobby. Lucan House has some of the finest examples of neo-classical decoration in Ireland, beginning with the entrance hall, to the rear of which a screen of columns and pilasters painted to imitate Siena marble, provide access to the principal reception rooms. That to the immediate left here, now called the Wedgewood Room but originally the breakfast room, is a perfect square, its walls rising to a gently domed ceiling at the centre of which is a medallion depicting a warrior kneeling before Minerva accompanied by her maidens. Around the room, floral drops surround panels containing what appear to be grisaille paintings: in fact, these are in fact prints overpainted at some date when age had caused them to fade. To the rear is the drawing room, although this was intended to be the dining room. Its walls were left undecorated (and today covered in paper) but again the ceiling has been covered in plasterwork centred on another medallion, this one, somewhat unusually, featuring the Christ child and infant John the Baptist together with a lamb. The rear of the house is taken up by what is now the dining room but was originally intended to be the drawing room. The ceiling decoration here is simpler than that in the previous rooms, but the walls are decorated with plaster girandoles, their design found among those created by Michael Stapleton. Oval in shape, the bow in the window is echoed by a similarly curved wall centred on a door leading back into the entrance hall. This arrangement of the two rooms  – hall with screen of columns to the rear and central door opening into an oval room – is found in Castle Coole, County Fermanagh designed in the early 1790s by James Wyatt.
Agmondisham Vesey died in 1785 and having no children, left the estate to his nephew Colonel George Vesey. The latter’s only child, Elizabeth Vesey, married Sir Nicholas Colthurst and their descendants lived at Lucan House until the property and its contents were sold in September 1925 by Captain Richard Colthurst (later eighth baronet), after which it was occupied by Charles Hugh O’Conor and then his son-in-law William Teeling. In 1942 the building and surrounding gardens were rented by the Italian government and then bought 12 years later, to serve as a residence for its ambassador. It continued to serve the same purpose until this month, at the end of which the present ambassador leaves his position and the property passes into the hands of a new owner, the local authority, South Dublin County Council. What happens to both house and grounds in the future remains to be seen. 



For anyone wondering, the bronze buffaloes seen in the grounds and fibreglass horse in the entrance hall, all by contemporary Italian artist Davide Rivalta and placed in their present positions last year, are due to remain on site. 

Corbalton



Corbalton Hall dates from 1801 when the house was designed by Francis Johnston. The foremost architect of the period, Johnston was responsible for some of Ireland’s most significant buildings, such as Dublin’s GPO and the Chapel Royal in Dublin Castle, as well as many other country houses. His client on this occasion was Elias Corbally, a wealthy miller who bought the estate along with an older house, since demolished, called Cookstown. To commemorate his family, Corbally decided to name the new house Corbalton Hall. A flawless example of fashionable neo-classical taste, Corbalton is faced in crisp limestone, the two-storey facade defined by a freestanding Ionic portico. The windows on either side are set in shallow recesses with semi-elliptical fluted panels above them. Inside, the building follows a typical tripartite plan, with a central entrance hall flanked by the main reception rooms, accessed through meticulously finished mahogany doors. To the rear of the hall is the cantilevered staircase in pale Portland stone, the whole space amply lit by a generous bowed window on the return and leading up to a series of bedrooms.







Symmetry and order are paramount in Johnston’s neo-classical houses, so Corbalton Hall’s drawing room and dining room have exactly the same proportions, although the former has a large east-facing bow window offering views across the surrounding demesne. All the windows on this floor are set in shallow recesses holding the shutters, at the top of which can be seen a design detail typical of Johnston’s work: a fan-like fluted, semi-circular motif. In 1970 the original Cookstown House was demolished, leaving an empty space between Johnston’s villa and the stable block which he had also designed. At the start of the present century, however, an extension designed by conservation architect David Sheehan was added to the rear of Francis Johnston’s Corbalton Hall, on the footprint of the demolished building, thereby restoring coherence to the site. Fortunately the handsome stable yard survives and beyond it lie further work yards leading to a pair of substantial walled gardens (the first of them terraced), all essential features of a functioning country house. 







It is worth noting that Elias Corbally was a Roman Catholic, and a keen campaigner for the repeal of the Penal Laws, together with full civil rights for members of his faith. As a result, the Corballys became associated through marriage with other notable Catholic families elsewhere in County Meath. In 1817, for example, Elias’s only daughter Louisa Emilia Corbally married Arthur Plunket, 10th Earl of Fingall who lived not far away at Killeen Castle which had only recently been enlarged and altered by Francis Johnston. The Fingalls had always been Catholic, as were the Prestons, Viscount Gormanston: in 1842 Elias’s son and heir Matthew married the Hon Matilda Preston, daughter of the 12th Viscount. In 1865 their only child, and Elias’s granddaughter, Mary Margaret Corbally would marry Alfred Stourton, 24th Baron Segrave whose family title went all the way back to 1283; like the others, his ancestors had always remained Catholic.  Their son, Colonel the Hon Edward Plantagenet Joseph Corbally Stourton was the last of the family to live at Corbalton Hall, selling the property in 1951. It then passed through several owners before being acquired a few years ago by the present owner who has carried out extensive restoration and refurbishment work on the building. 


Another Light Hand


No.36 Westland Row, Dublin and its exquisite neoclassical plasterwork has featured here before (see A Light Hand « The Irish Aesthete) Home for more than 150 years to the Royal Irish Academy of Music, the building was originally constructed in 1771 as a private house but in the 19th century, like so many others, became used for commercial purposes. Somehow, its interiors remained intact, not least one of the first-floor reception rooms, the ceiling of which has an elaborate decorative scheme with a classical scene painted by an unknown hand at its centre. Meanwhile, on either side of the chimney-breast are substantial fluted niches, with various classical figures inside ovals. As mentioned before, the stuccowork here has been tentatively attributed by Conor Lucey to Michael Stapleton, drawing on designs made by Thomas Penrose. The latter acted as agent for the English architect James Wyatt who during this period had many clients in Ireland.

Evolving Over Time



At the start of the 18th century, Peter Aylward, who came from Aylwardstown at the southern boundaries of County Kilkenny, married Elizabeth Butler. Her father, Sir Richard Butler, owned property at Paulstown further north in the county and the young couple settled here in an old tower house which they then modernised and extended. The new range had a recessed centre with projecting bays on either side, one of which was the original tower house.  This building appears to have survived unchanged for a century until some date in the 1820s/30s when a further single bay extension was added and the whole exterior crenellated, so that the house was thereafter called Shankill Castle; this work has been attributed to local architect William Robertson. In 1861, a conservatory designed by Sir Joseph Paxton and opening off the drawing room was added, but then taken down 100 years later. What does survive is another conservatory on stilts at the back of the building, accessed from a return on the main staircase. Shankill Castle remained home to Peter Aylward’s descendants until 1991 when it was sold; the property has since been owned by historian Geoffrey Cope and his artist wife Elizabeth.


A Piece of Stage Scenery


Around 1783 Peter Daly, then a young man of 20, left home to seek his fortune. Daly was a younger son whose father, Darby Daly, had died some years earlier leaving the family property, Dalysgrove to his eldest-born, Francis. The Dalys could trace their ancestry in this part of the country back to Dermot O’Daly of Killimor, whose five sons were the forebears of many prominent East Galway landowners thereafter, not least the Dalys of Dunsandle (see Dun and Dusted « The Irish Aesthete). Unlike their cousins, however, the Dalys of Dalysgrove remained Roman Catholic while managing to hold onto their estate. In adulthood, Peter Daly might have followed the example of other young adventurers and moved to France, or Austria or Italy, or even North America, then just achieving independence. Instead, he travelled to Jamaica where he became the owner of several coffee plantations, the crops of which were exported to England. In 1806, he married Bridget Louisa MacEvoy, daughter of Christopher MacEvoy, another substantial plantation owner in the West Indies; the couple would have three sons. Interestingly, Peter Daly named his Jamaican estate Daly’s Grove, after the family property back in Ireland. Eventually, in the late 1820s, he had made sufficient money in the Caribbean that he was able to buy the original Dalysgrove in County Galway from his elder brother Francis. By this time, he had also acquired another property in the same part of the world, Corbally, which had previously been owned by a branch of the Blake family.





The Blakes were one of the Tribes of Galway, the 14 families who dominated trade in that city during the MIddle Ages. Like many of the other Tribes, they began to buy land in the surrounding counties and according to an account of the family records published in 1905, Peter Blake, third son of Sir Richard Blake of Ardfry, County Galway (for more on this house, see All Washed Up « The Irish Aesthete), was in December 1679 granted the castle and lands of Corbally by patent. His descendants remained living there until 1829 when the property was sold to Peter Daly. (Incidentally, Sir Henry Blake, the 19th century British colonial administrator who was successively Governor of the Bahamas, Newfoundland, Jamaica, Hong Kong and Ceylon – now Sri Lanka – was the grandson of Peter Blake who sold the estate to Daly). Occupying a prominent site on high ground, Corbally began as a late-mediaeval tower house but c.1780 the Blakes built a large classical house in front of this. An old photograph shows that the building’s facade was of three storeys over basement and of seven bays, the centre bay in a pedimented breakfront with a typical tripartite doorcase on the groundfloor approached by a short flight of stone steps and an oculus within the pediment. Directly below this, and between the two third-floor windows was a large panel displaying a coat of arms. Following Peter Daly’s acquisition of the property, the house’s name was changed to Castle Daly and significant changes were made to the garden front, where the old tower house was given a twin to create a pair of projecting wings with a forecourt between them. The roofline of both towers was ornamented with limestone crenellations supported on corbels. While these helped to convey an impression of antiquity, the two bays between them retained the 18th century Venetian tripartite doorcase with a Diocletian window directly above, although the roofline was again given crenellations. Similar work was carried out at Dalysgrove after it too had been acquired by Peter Daly. 





As mentioned, thanks to the fortune he had made in Jamaica, Peter Daly was able to buy both the Corbally (thereafter Castle Daly) and Dalysgrove estates, and return to live in Ireland where he carried out significant alterations to both properties. It helped that in November 1835, he was awarded £2,318, 11 shillings and six pence by the British government. Why so? Because this sum was compensation for the abolition of slavery in the Caribbean colonies. Peter Daly had hitherto had 113 slaves working for him on his Jamaican plantation and, following the Slave Abolition Act which came into effect in 1834, owners were entitled to seek recompense from the government for loss of revenue. Daly was among 170 people in Ireland who so benefitted under the terms of the act (for more on this, see Dirty Money « The Irish Aesthete). Peter Daly had two sons who survived to adulthood, and following his death in 1846 the elder, James, inherited Castle Daly while the younger, Peter Paul was left Dalysgrove; curiously both men died in the same year, 1881. While the Castle Daly estate ran to 3,495 acres of land, that at Dalysgrove had just 500. However, by 1906, presumably following sales under the terms of the various Land Acts, Castle Daly was surrounded by just 100 acres of untenanted demesne. The last of the family to own this property was Dermot Joseph Daly who in July 1945 sold Castle Daly. Two months later, an advertisement announced that various items removed from the house – shutters, windows, chimneypieces, wooden flooring, staircases – were being offered for sale in convenient lots. The house built by the Blakes was later demolished but for unknown reasons the garden front, as composed by Peter Daly, was left standing, a strange spectacle on the horizon looking, as Mark Bence-Jones noted, ‘like a folly, or a piece of stage scenery.’ Down in the village below and in a prominent position in front of St Teresa’s Catholic church (and formerly facing the entrance gates to the estate) can be seen the Daly Mausoleum which dates from 1860.