Tag Archives: Georgian Architecture

Tremendous Swagger



Francis Andrews was born in Derry 1718. The official Trinity College Dublin website describes his father as being a man ‘of independent means’, but the Dictionary of Irish Biography notes that contemporary gossip proposed Andrews senior had been imprisoned for debt. In any case, the parent died when his son was aged only two, after which the widow Andrews married a Mr Tomkins who took such good care of the boy, that the latter was able to attend Trinity College Dublin, graduating in 1737 and elected a Fellow three years later. He then read law at the Middle Temple in London and was called to the Irish Bar in 1746. Andrews was a noted bon viveur and his legal practice does not appear to have interfered with a very busy social life, at one time involving travel to Italy on a Grand Tour. Nevertheless, Andrews did possess scholarship, impressing professors in Padua with his knowledge of Latin and classical authors. The most momentous change in his circumstances occurred in 1758. He happened to be in London when it was announced that the Provost of Trinity College Dublin, Richard Baldwin, had died. A month later, Andrews was appointed by George II to the position, the first layman to hold the post since 1626. His close friendship with John Russell, Duke of Bedford and Richard Rigby, then respectively Lord Lieutenant and chief secretary of Ireland, are believed to have played a major role in securing him the Provostship as did – according to the same aforementioned gossip – lobbying by the popular actress Peg Woffington. In 1759 he was elected to the Irish House of Commons for the first time and to the Irish privy council two years later. Thereafter, despite – or perhaps thanks to – his responsibilities in the college, he served on innumerable committees and boards, as well as maintaining an already hectic social round. Not surprisingly, in 1774 he was obliged to travel abroad for the sake of his health, but died on his way back to Ireland. During his time as Provost, Andrews was responsible for establishing a number of new professorships, as well as a chair in music (its first incumbent was Garrett Wesley, first Earl of Mornington and father of the Duke of Wellington). He also oversaw much building work within the college, not least the construction of a residence for himself and his successors, the Provost’s House. 





Unquestionably the most splendid private residence remaining in Ireland’s capital, Number 1 Grafton Street is otherwise known as the Provost’s House. The building was commissioned by Francis Andrews in 1759, in other words almost immediately after he had taken up his new post; previous provosts had occupied lodgings in the college quadrangle, so this was something of a departure, not least because the house with its substantial forecourt closed off from the street by a high stone wall, looks more like a nobleman’s palace than an academic’s residence.  The splendour of the place was immediately and widely recognised. In September 1764, a London newspaper, the St James’s Chronicle, reported ‘The King of France has not so splendid a palace in all his Dominions as that the University [of Dublin] has lately erected for its Provost.’ The building is thought to have been designed by Dublin architect John Smyth, although as is well known the facade is a shameless copy of the garden front of General Wade’s London residence, designed by Lord Burlington in 1725 (and demolished in the 1930s). That design was, in turn, taken from one of Andrea Palladio’s drawings owned by Burlington. Smyth had form here: St Thomas’s church on Marlborough Street, Dublin which he designed around the same time was directly modelled on Palladio’s church of the Rendentore in Venice (the church was destroyed in 1922 during the Civil War). As for the Provost’s House, even at the time its indebtedness was noted; in 1761 George Montagu, then living in Dublin while his cousin the Earl of Halifax was Lord Lieutenant, wrote to Horace Walpole, ‘The provost’s house of the university is just finished after the plan of General Wade’s, but half of the proportions and symmetry were lost at sea in coming over.’ The only difference between the earlier buildingsand this one is that the Provost’s House is flanked by long, low pedimented single-storey wings.





The fine vaulted entrance hall of the Provost’s House in Trinity College Dublin is divided into two sections by a pair of substantial arches, behind which lie two ground floor reception rooms and a pair of staircases. The walls here are rusticated in wood, painted to imitate stone, that material used for the flagged floor and the chimney piece on the south wall. To the rear on the ground floor, the drawing room is surprisingly modest but the neighbouring three-bay dining room, in keeping with Francis Andrews’ fondness for social life, is altogether more substantial and elaborate in its decoration. Here the stuccowork, as elsewhere in the building, was undertaken by siblings Patrick and John Wall, while James Robinson and Richard Cranfield were responsible for the carving. Moving upstairs,  the first-floor saloon is one of the great rooms of 18th century Dublin, only comparable to that in 85 St Stephen’s Green (see The Most Beautiful Room in Ireland? « The Irish Aesthete).. Running the entire length of the building, the saloon is lit by a west-facing central Venetian window flanked by pairs of sash windows. With its deep coved ceiling, the space is divided in three by two Corinthian columnar screens, while elaborately carved chimneypieces can be found on either side of the door giving access to the saloon. At the southern end of the space hangs a portrait of the man responsible for its creation, the aforementioned Francis Andrews, painted by Anton von Maron, presumably when both men were in Rome. Facing him at the other end of the room is a portrait by Thomas Gainsborough of John Russell, Duke of Bedford, Chancellor of the University, 1765-1771 and old friend of Francis Andrews. A room of tremendous swagger, the saloon, like the rest of the Provost’s House, testifies to the assurance of Ireland in the mid-18th century.


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.



Let us Leave Something to Testify that we have Lived


Originally from Cumberland, Sir John Ponsonby came to Ireland in the early 1650s and was appointed a commissioner for taking the depositions of Protestants concerning murders said to have been committed during the Confederate Wars: as a reward for his labours, he was granted a large parcel of forfeited lands at Kildalton, County Kilkenny. These had previously belonged to the Anglo-Norman D’Alton family (hence the name Kildalton, meaning Church of the Daltons). Appointed Sheriff of Counties Wicklow and Kilkenny in 1654, and elected to represent the latter in the first post-Restoration Irish parliament, Sir John Ponsonby married as his second wife an heiress, Elizabeth Folliott, in whose honour he renamed his Irish estate Bessborough. (For more on this house and its history, please see In the Borough of Bess « The Irish Aesthete and Back to Bessborough « The Irish Aesthete) When he died in 1668, he was buried in the church at Fiddown, several miles to the south of his property. Inside this building and to the immediate right of the east wall window, is a simple framed memorial declaring ‘Here lies ye body of Sir John Besborough who departed this life Anno Dom 1668 in ye 60th year of his age.’ Generations of his descendants came to be laid to rest in the same place, and today the little church remains a rare example in Ireland of a church filled with monuments to the same family. 





A religious settlement is thought to have been established at Fiddown in the sixth century, but the origins of the present building can be traced back to c.1200. Like so many others, the church evidently underwent some vicissitudes during the 17th century and in 1731 Dr Edward Tenison, then Bishop of Ossory, reported it was in need of a new roof and that the walls needed to be pointed; the following year, ‘the roof was taken down in order to put on a better one.’ The rector during this period, the Rev Robert Watts, was energetic in his ambition to improve the condition of the building and ensure its future. To the left of the east window, a white marble plaque framed in black Kilkenny marble advises ‘This Chancel was Rebuilt and Beautified by Revd Robert Watts M.A. Dean of St Canice and Vicar of Fiddown 1747 who after a Contest at Law and in Equity Carried on for Nineteen Years and Fifteen hundred Pounds Expended by him Recovered the Great Tithes of the Parish from the Subtractor for the Benefit of all Succeeding Incumbents. Quatenus nobis Denegatur dui Vivere Relinquamus aliquid que nos vixisse testemur.’ (Insofar as it is denied to us to live, let us leave something to testify that we have lived). Evidently at some earlier date, a righ to the tithes from this parish had been granted to someone else, but the Rev Watts was determined to have them back and went to law in order to make sure this happened. In 1748 he presented the church with a set of communion plate., no doubt benefiting from the additional income he now enjoyed thanks to the restitution of tithes. The building continued thereafter to be in excellent repair; at the start of the 19th century it was reported to have been ‘very handsomely fitted up by the late Earl of Bessborough’ (presumably the second earl who had died in 1793). Following a visitation by the Bishop of Ossory in 1829, the church was described as being ‘in excellent repair both inside and outside, all the wood work has been recently painted, and a new Gallery and Vestry Room have been erected.’ Average attendance at services was given as 40. The earliest Ordnance Survey maps show the building to have been considerably larger than what can be seen today on the site. Following the construction of a new Church of Ireland church in Piltown in 1859-62, the main body of its predecessor at Fiddown was taken down, leaving only the chancel which by then had been serving for almost 200 years as the Ponsonby family’s mortuary chapel.





A number of memorials inside Fiddown church commemorate members of the Briscoe family, who also lived in this part of the country. (The surrounding graveyard contains a tomb marking the burial place of one Edward Briscoe, ‘of Crofton in the County of Cumberland in England, who departed this life the 20th day of July Anno Dom 1709 and in the 58th year of his age.’ Sir John Ponsonby’s first wife, Dorothy Briscoe likewise came from Crofton, Cumberland, so it seems safe to assume that Edward was some relative of the family). But the greater part of the church’s interior is dedicated to celebrating the Ponsonbys, with the north wall dominated by a large memorial devoted to Brabazon Ponsonby who in 1744 rebuilt Bessborough, five years after he had been created first Earl of Bessborough. This splendid monument features the earl and his wife dressed as ancient Romans atop an engraved sarcophagus, the whole set within a frame of Sienese marble columns supporting a pediment carrying the family arms. The inscriptions reads ‘Under this Marble lie the Remains of Brabazon Ponsonby, Earl of Bessborough, Viscount Duncannon and Baron Bessborough in Ireland, and Baron Ponsonby of Sysonby in Leicester Shire in Great Britain, and of Sarah his wife Grand Daughter and Heiress to Primate Margetson. The Virtues of their Private lives need not here be Recited, they are Engraved in the Hearts and Minds of many who will deliver them from one Generation to another beyond the duration of a Perishable Tomb. This monument is Erected, not as a necessary Memorial of them but as a Testimony of Gratitude and Respect owing from their son William Earl of Bessborough.  He had the Honor of Serving his Majesty King George the 2nd in Several Publick employments of great Trust and Dignity and Departed this Life July 1758 aged 81. She in May 1733 aged 52.’ The work is signed on one side by W Atkinson of London (d.1766). Both the second and third earls lived for the greater part of their lives in England and the church therefore has no monuments to either; it was only in the 19th century that the fourth earl and his family settled back at Bessborough and thereafter further memorials were added to the interior so that today they stretch back over three centuries. As already mentioned, cuch buildings are not common in Ireland, although a similar example stands not too far away at Clonagam, County Waterford which is likewise filled with funerary monuments, this time to the de la Poer Beresfords, Marquesses of Waterford (please see Awaiting the Day of Judgement « The Irish Aesthete). 

A Monument to Past Follies


Follies, the name given to buildings that serve no purpose other than to delight the eye, were as popular in 18th century Ireland as they were in other parts of Europe during the same period. James Howley’s invaluable The Follies and Garden Buildings of Ireland (1993) notes that part of the charm of these buildings lies in their inconsistency, their failure to comply with recognisable categories of style. ‘In one sense, their designers are architecture’s greatest plagiarists, happy to quote unashamedly from anything good that is going, with a rather cavalier attitude to time and geography.’ Even reaching consensus on what qualifies as a folly is something of a challenge, although in Monumental Follies (1972) Stuart Barton rather neatly summarised them as ‘foolish monuments to greatness and great monuments to foolishness.’ In the same year as this work appeared, the late Mariga Guinness claimed that Ireland had more follies to the acre than anywhere else in the world, and while that assertion has yet to be put to the test, it is certainly true that this country has an ample supply of such buildings, although alas many of them have now fallen into a ruinous state. One such folly can be found in Nurney, County Kildare.





Curiously not mentioned by Howley, the Nurney Folly, like so many of its kind, sits on a rise so that it can be seen from some distance and also offers views over the surrounding countryside. The lower part of the structure is square and built of rubble stone, with openings at the centre of each side. The interior, a single chamber, is lined in brick, with a brick floor and a vaulted ceiling which has a small opening at its centre. To what would have been the rear of the folly, where the land drops steeply towards a tributary of the river Barrow, there is a lower floor, with two openings. Most likely this was a storage area where food and drink could be prepared by servants for those visiting the room above. On top of that space rises a great brick octagon, considerably taller than the square base on which it rests. On this level there is only one opening, facing north. From the ground, no trace of a roof can now be seen. Who was responsible for commissioning the building appears to be unknown. The nearest owners of a substantial property were the Bagot family who lived in Nurney Castle (since demolished), so perhaps the folly was constructed for them. They remained in Nurney until the mid-1830s but had departed by the time Samuel Lewis published his Topographical Survey of Ireland in 1837 when the property was occupied by one J.W. Fitzgerald Esq. It transpires that Nurney Castle’s previous resident, Captain Charles Bagot, had emigrated with his family to Australia: in Adelaide they built a new home, which in memory of their old one, they called Nurney House. 





In design, the Nurney Folly bears similarities with two others in this country, one at Waterstown, County Westmeath (see The Wings of the Dove « The Irish Aesthete), the other at Emo, County Laois (see Deep in the Woods « The Irish Aesthete). Although more elaborate in their decorative detail, both feature octagons resting on square bases, and both have been attributed to Richard Castle, suggesting they were built during the second quarter of the 18th century. Noble & Keenan’s map of Kildare, produced in 1752, shows the folly, indicating that it is of the same period as the other two. The earliest Ordnance Survey map, dating from the late 1830s, describes the building as a Pigeon House (and the surrounding area as Pigeonhouse Hill). It may be that the upper portion of the folly was used for this purpose, as was also the case at Waterstown, while the lower part served as a destination in the demesne of Nurney Castle, a place in which to pause and take tea (or something stronger). Or it could be that by the time of the survey was being undertaken, the original purpose – or lack of purpose – of the folly had been forgotten and therefore this function was given to it. Whatever the case, today it stands forlorn on the edge of the village, a monument to the follies of earlier generations. 

A Feature on the Landscape


Currently on the market with some 70 acres, Landscape House, County Waterford is thought to date from c.1790 when it was owned by the Congreve family: their main residence, Mount Congreve, lies some 20 miles to the south-east.  On a raised site overlooking the south bank of the river Suir, it’s a relatively small building, three bays and two storeys over basement, and was perhaps intended to serve as a dower house or perhaps a residence for a land agent. Samuel Lewis in his Topographical Dictionary of Ireland (1837) refers to it as a seat of the Congreves, but it may have been let. Certainly, in 1853 Captain Charles Boycott rented Landscape House for a year before he moved to Mayo where he became agent for the then-Earl of Erne and, owing to subsequent events, unwittingly bequeathed a new word to the English language. 




Landscape is a curious building, both grand and yet modest. Like other small country houses of the period, it borrows features from larger properties in order to indicate the owner’s aspirations. Here, for example, on either side of the front, symmetrically curved curtain walls conceal modestly-proportioned yards, each of which holds a single-storey pavilion, the interior of which is lit by a generously-proportioned arched Gothick window (one of these pavilions was discreetly extended some decades ago and turned into guest accommodation). The curtain walls and pavilions pay  homage to Palladian grandeur, but on an altogether less ostentatious scale. Current taste is acknowledged, even emulated, without being precisely copied. 




The interior of Landscape House manifests the same stylistic traits found outside, not least an aspiration to magnificence. The building was originally T-shaped, with three rooms to the front on each floor and behind them one very substantial room closed by a great three-bay bow that offers views down to the river. Seemingly in the 1940s, the areas on either side of the bow were filled in with flat-roofed, single-bay extensions in order to create more space inside the house, hence its present appearance. With its half-conical slated roof and lines of windows, those on the ground floor especially substantial, the rear of Landscape must have looked quite remarkable before alterations were made. It would then have had a very distinctive character, one that paid homage to contemporary architectural taste while simultaneously proposing an alternative option. And still today, the house lives up to its name by being a noteworthy feature on the landscape. 

Almost Identical Twins



The entrance gateway to the now-demolished Lissadorn, County Roscommon. Extant photographs show this to have been a fine house of three bays and three storeys over raised basement, possibly late 18th or early 19th century in construction. The design of this neoclassical triple archway, thought to date from c.1825, has been attributed to the Roscommon architect Richard Richards, not least because at that time he was working at Mount Talbot, some 25 miles to the south. The unfortunate history of that house has already been told (See An Unhappy Tale « The Irish Aesthete), and, as if to confirm that Richards designed the Lissadorn entrance, it is almost identical to that at Mount Talbot, the only difference being that the former lacks the keystones seen in the latter’s arches. 


For Gentlemen Farmers



Bloomville, County Offaly is a particularly charming late 18th century gentleman farmer’s residence, of two storeys and five bays with a somewhat anachronistic Gibbsian door at its centre. The original block is just one room deep but a three-bay extension to the rear provides additional accommodation, as do single storey wings on either side: that to the east contains a drawing room with generous bow window and conical roof.


A Repetitive Story


Twenty years ago this week, the contents of Lissadell, County Sligo were offered for sale at auction. The importance of accumulated house contents is insufficiently appreciated in this country. Often spanning hundreds of years of occupation by the same family, they represent changes in taste, and in affluence, not just of a particular property’s owners, but of the entire country. They inform our knowledge of Ireland’s history through both good times and bad, and provide enlightenment about how our forebears, of whatever status, lived. Accordingly, their dispersal represents the dissipation of knowledge, leaving us all less well-informed and thereby poorer. In the case of Lissadell, the house, and its predecessor, had been home to generations of the same family, among whom was the revolutionary politician Constance Markievicz. Her association with the building, along with that of many other distinguished figures in Irish history, led to a widespread public campaign for the property and surrounding estate to be bought by the state. As has been so often the case, before and since, this did not happen, and accordingly Lissadell’s contents were auctioned. One of the key losses from this event was a collection of furniture specifically commissioned by an earlier owner, Sir Robert Gore-Booth, for the house. Dating from the 1830s, these pieces were representative of taste in Ireland at the time and were believed to have been made by the Dublin firm of Williams & Gibton. Until the auction, Lissadell was the only house in Ireland to retain its original furniture by this company, so the dispersal was much to be regretted. The items’ importance can be gauged by the fact that most of the lots exceeded their estimates: a rosewood writing table, for example, which was expected to make €8,000-€10,000, fetched €19,000. In the dining room, a set of 17 mahogany chairs (€12,000-€18,000) fetched €22,000 and the dining table itself (€30,000-€50,000) went for €65,000. Forced to bid against other potential purchasers, Lissadell’s new private owners managed to acquire some pieces, such as a pair of handsome mahogany Grecian-style bookcases clearly inspired by the work of Thomas Hope and, again in the dining room, a sturdy mahogany sideboard. But many of the contents, first installed some 170 years earlier, now left for good and not just the Williams & Gibton furniture. There were, for example, a number of fine 17th century Italian baroque paintings, many in spectacular gilt frames, which had been acquired for the rooms by Sir Robert Gore-Booth. And then there were all the miscellaneous objects that build up in any house over generations, from sets of copper jelly moulds to discarded furnishings such as old curtains. These, as much as the more valuable pieces, are what inform the history of a building, and when they are gone, part of that history disappears forever. 





In Ireland, it has long been apparent that if the remaining number of historic houses and contents are to survive, then a coherent strategy to secure their future needs to be considered. The first attempt to devise such a strategy occurred back in 1985 when a body called the Irish Historic Properties Commission, established three years earlier, produced a report written by the late Kevin B Nolan and Lewis Clohessy and called Safeguarding Historic Houses. This clearly stated that ‘our heritage historic properties cannot be preserved without the active and consistent support of the Irish Government.’ Eight years later, in 1993 the Irish Georgian Society and another body since gone, Irish Heritage Properties, held a conference on the future of the Irish country house, subsequently publishing a report on its proceedings. This makes for melancholy reading, since so many of the problems then highlighted remain to the present day, not least the want of sufficient support from central and local government. Ten years later again, Professor Terence Dooley of Maynooth University, at the request of the Irish Georgian Society and the Dept of Environment, Heritage and Local Government, produced a report, A Future for Irish Historic Houses? A Study of Fifty Houses. A year later, the same government department invited Indecon International Consultants to produce an Examination of the Issue of Trust-type Organisations to Manage Heritage Properties in Ireland. Most recently, in 2015 the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht in collaboration with Irish Historic Houses Association after extensive consultation with a wide variety of interested parties and stakeholders, issued an Action Plan for the Sustainable Future of the Irish Historic House in Private Ownership, a document which was duly approved by the Irish cabinet and appeared in 2016. In other words, no one can complain that the challenges facing the Irish country house and the retention of its contents have been insufficiently examined and analysed. Produced over a period of almost 40 years, these and other documents have constantly made the same point: that houses in private ownership, if they are to have a viable future and hold onto their original furnishings, need assistance from central and local government, the kind of assistance that is available in other European countries but has consistently failed to materialise to any adequate extent in Ireland.





Outside observers often note with surprise that in Ireland there is no equivalent of the National Trust which operates on the other side of the Irish Sea and in Northern Ireland. An attempt was made to create such an equivalent with the establishment of the Irish Heritage Trust in 2006. The IHT was largely the brainchild of the Irish Georgian Society’s current president Sir David Davies. The original purpose of this organisation was that it would, like the National Trust, acquire for public access significant heritage properties deemed to be at risk and for which the State did not want to assume direct responsibility. This would ensure that the houses and their contents would remain intact and preserved for future generations. At the time of its establishment and in recognition of the potential significance of IHT’s work, the government of the time earmarked €35 million for the organisation over the duration of the National Development Plan 2007-2013. Accordingly the IHT entered into discussions with the owners of a number of properties judged to be most suitable for such an arrangement. At all times the relevant government department – for Environment, Heritage and Local Government as well as the Department of Finance – was briefed on developments at Anne’s Grove and in 2008 all relevant parties agreed the IHT would assume responsibility for its first estate thanks to an endowment fund of €5 million (drawn from its National Development Plan funding) and associated tax credits. Then in December 2008, the department’s minister wrote to the IHT advising that due to changing circumstances it would not be possible to provide the necessary support. The IHT has since successfully reinvented itself, but the fact remains that there is still no equivalent of the National Trust in Ireland, and historic properties, along with their contents, continue to be lost because of want of state support for their survival. Today’s photographs show the empty interiors of Howth Castle, sold in 2019 after being occupied for more than 800 years by the same family. The house’s remaining contents were dispersed at public auction two years ago in September 2021. Unless there is a change in state policy towards these properties, and towards the histories they contain, more such sales will occur in the years ahead. And we will continue to be the poorer. 

Tomb to the Unknown



The modest graveyard of Killathy, County Cork contains the remains of a late-medieval church but is dominated by the roofless shell of a large mausoleum, its pedimented facade of limestone ashlar featuring rusticated pilasters on either side of a wide arched opening, access to the interior barred by substantial metal gates (and a great deal of vegetation). The cement-rendered sides and rear of the building are completely plain and there is no indication anywhere for whom it might have been constructed, no crest, no name, nothing. Killathy lies mid-point between Castle Hyde, home to generations of the Hyde family, and Convamore, now a ruin but once residence of the Hares, Earls of Listowel: perhaps this mausoleum was erected for one of these families?


*A helpful reader has pointed out that the NIAH proposes the mausoleum was erected by the Jackson family. 

A Palimpsest of Irish Architectural History


Descended from the late 10th century High King of Ireland Máel Sechnaill mac Domnaill, for much of the period following the Norman invasion, the O’Melaghlins (later McLoughlin) were a dominant family in what is now Westmeath. As such, they built various fortified residences for themselves, including the core of what is today called Moate Castle: the town of Moate derives its name from the motte and bailey which was erected here by the Normans. The O’Melaghlin castle is thought to have been constructed around 1500 and remained in their hands for a century until sold by Feardorcha O’Melaghlin to Hubert Dillon, who lived a short distance north of Moate at Drumraney. However, in the upheavals of the mid-17th century, Dillon’s son lost the castle, which was granted to an English soldier called Humphreys. In 1655 he, in turn, sold the property to another soldier, Captain John Clibborn, whose forebears came from Yorkshire and whose descendants would live in the place for the next couple of centuries. 






As mentioned, the Clibborns continued to live in Moate Castle for some 200 years; in Samuel Lewis’s Topographical Dictionary of Ireland (1837), it was listed as the residence of Cuthbert John Clibborn. Following his death in 1847, he was succeeded by his eldest son Thomas Strettel Clibborn, then aged just ten. Having graduated as an engineer from Trinity College Dublin, in 1859 Thomas Strettel Clibborn emigrated to Australia where he spent the rest of his life, where thanks to his keen interest in racing, he became secretary of the Australian Jockey Club, where he proved to be an outstandingly effective administrator, remaining in the position until shortly before his death in 1910. In Burke’s Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry of Ireland (published 1912), Clibborn’s eldest son George Holmes Clibborn’s elder son is listed as being ‘of the Castle, Moate, County Westmeath’ but he likely never lived there as even during his father’s lifetime it seems to have been rented to a succession of tenants, including Gilbert Nugent (later of Jamestown Court), a Quaker businessman called William Wooley and Edward Fetherstonhaugh. At the beginning of the last century, the local postmaster, a Mr Moore occupied the building, followed by Mr Gardiner, who taught at the local Church of Ireland school. For just over half a century, the property has been owned by the Mitchell Family who recently placed it on the market.






Moate Castle sits high above the town’s main street but what can be seen from here is actually the back of the building: the main entrance is on the other, north-facing side and looks out over several acres of enclosed land, presumably once laid out as gardens. The original castle is in the eastern section of the main house and is of two bays and three storeys. Various additions were made to this from the late 17th to the end of the 18th centuries, beginning with an extension to the immediate west which is likewise three storeys high and of three bays. At the western extremity and on the rear, a two-storey bow-fronted extension was also added at some unknown date. Returning to the facade, this shows a four-bay house of three storeys, the interior accessed via a relatively modest Gibbsian limestone doorcase. The building on this side is flanked by two-storey, gable-ended pavilions that createa a shallow forecourt; both of these are now in poor condition but must once have been fine structures. Beyond the eastern pavilion is the yard with stables and coach house: here a Sheela na gig has been inserted into the wall immediately above a Gothic arched. Stepping inside, the castle proves to be less substantial, and much more manageable as a home, than its external appearance might suggest. The entrance hall contains a  fine mid-18th century staircase giving access to the upper floors, with a drawing room to the immediate right and a passage leading to what might have been the original dining room and thence the kitchen in the old castle. Upstairs, a similar passageway leads to a number of bedrooms. Throughout the building, decoration is spare, reflecting the fact that the Clibborns were Quakers. Moate Castle deserves a thorough examination than it has been given hitherto as the house can be seen as a palimpsest of Irish architectural history across more than 500 years, reflecting changes in taste and material circumstances during that long period. The hope must be that a sympathetic new owner can be found for the property, sensitive to its significance and prepared to ensure that Moate Castle can continue to bear witness to the country’s past.