Mounting Concern

Jan14

In April 1801 Sir Henry Browne Hayes, a widower approaching fifty, was brought to trial in Cork for abducting a Quaker heiress Mary Pike four years earlier and forcing her to participate in a spurious marriage. Given that the facts of the case were common knowledge and that Hayes had voluntarily surrendered to the authorities, it did not take long for a guilty verdict to be reached and for the felon to be sentenced to death. On the recommendation of Ireland’s then-Lord Lieutenant, the Earl of Hardwicke, this was commuted to transportation for life to Botany Bay. Hayes’ passage was less grim than that of the average Irish convict, since he was provided with his own cabin and allowed to bring a manservant. A year after arriving in Australia, he purchased a property immediately north-east of Sydney and there built himself a house called Vaucluse which still stands and is today managed by the Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales.
After sundry adventures (he seems to have been incapable of leading a quiet life), including founding Australia’s first Freemason lodge and being sent to work in a coal mine for backing Governor William Bligh during a period of dispute in the colony, Hayes eventually secured a pardon and was allowed to return to Ireland. Even this journey was fraught, since the vessel on which he travelled, the Isabella, was shipwrecked off the Falkland Islands. Among the other passengers on board was Joseph Holt, a County Wicklow man who had been one of the leaders of the 1798 Rebellion and who, like Sir Henry, had been given transportation, and subsequent pardon, rather than the customary execution. On their arrival in Ireland it was ironically noted the crimes of both men involved pikes: Hayes had abducted one and Holt had distributed many.

Back in Cork, Sir Henry settled into his family residence where he died at the age of 70 twenty years later in 1832.* That house, Vernon Mount, featured last week in the Irish Times where it was reported that the relevant local authority, Cork County Council, had taken steps to secure the building’s future. There are few houses in the region more deserving of preservation, and yet, despite repeated calls for intervention, Vernon Mount has suffered shameful neglect in recent decades.
Located to the south of Cork city on a raised site with panoramic views over the Lee valley, Vernon Mount is highly unusual in design, a two-storey over basement villa, the curved entrance front having symmetrical convex bows on either side. For a long time it was thought the house dated from c.1784 and had been built by Hayes’ father, Atwell Hayes a prosperous merchant involved in brewing, milling and glass manufacture. However, an advertisement in the Cork Courier of December 10th, 1794 announced ‘a new house Vernon Mount to be let, with from 160 acres of meadows, lawns, shruberries etc’ with the house described as being ’finished in a superb style, with painted ceilings, elegant chimney pieces, grates.’
If the place was only then deemed new, the supposition is that it had been designed by Abraham Hargrave (1755-1808), a locally-based architect who worked during this period on a number of projects in Cork City and County. Evidently the house was not let by Hayes, since he brought Mary Pike there after her abduction. Incidentally, Vernon Mount’s name is a salute to George Washington and his own residence Mount Vernon in Virginia; a number of Irish house owners paid similar tributes to the American War of Independence as a means of showing their political sympathies.

There is a further connection between Vernon Mount and the United States: the artist responsible for the house’s remarkable painted interiors, Nathaniel Grogan the elder (1740-1807) spent a number of years on the other side of the Atlantic before returning to his native city. Here he was commissioned to work on the decoration of Vernon Mount, including a ceiling painting on canvas in the drawing room. Within an octagonal frame, this depicts Minerva Throwing Away the Spears of War, a reference perhaps to the cessation of hostilities at the end of the American War of Independence. Around the central work are a series of lozenge-shaped panels and roundels featuring floral motifs, angels and centaurs.
Additional examples of Grogan’s handiwork exist on the first floor, reached by a splendid cantilevered stone staircase with neo-classical wrought-iron balustrade, the whole lit by a large arched window. On the oval upper landing are eight marblised Corinthian columns interspersed with seven doors painted with tromp l’oeil niches ‘containing’ classical statues and urns; these doors lead to the house’s bedrooms and a concealed service staircase.

It should be evident from this description that Vernon Mount is a house of enormous architectural importance, to be treasured and protected. But, as already mentioned, of late this has not been the case. Occupied as a family residence until the middle of the last century Vernon Mount and its surrounding parkland were bought in the 1950s by the Cork and Munster Motorcycle Club, which developed a motor race track around the house. However, the latter was well-maintained until the whole place was acquired in the 1990s by a consortium of developers led by San Diego-based IT entrepreneur Jonathon Moss and his colleague in Cork Olaf Maxwell. This consortium applied to redevelop the house and surrounding grounds as an hotel, but when the proposal was refused by Cork County Council (which described the proposal as ‘a gross over development of the site’ that would ‘be seriously detrimental to the setting, scale and character of a listed building’), the owners settled down to do precisely nothing.
Shamefully Cork County Council chose to mimic this inactivity and as a result Vernon Mount’s condition was permitted to deteriorate. The Irish Georgian Society repeatedly called for intervention but to no avail, and in 2008 the organisation arranged for the building to be placed on the World Monuments Fund List of 100 Most Endangered Sites. Still the local authority failed to act, even though two years earlier at a council meeting it had been agreed that if something were not done soon the building would be lost forever.
It appears that local residents groups, keen to have the entire area designated a public park and amenity, have taken to lobbying the county council; finally last month it used powers available under the country’s existing planning acts to carry out essential repairs to the roof of Vernon Mount. Of course this is excellent news, but the fact remains that the local authority could have availed of the same powers to take action sooner; that it failed to do so is a disgrace. One of the unanswered questions remains the condition of the interior with its unique Grogan paintings; for a long time it has long been impossible to persuade the owners to allow regular access. Australia cherishes Vaucluse and the United States Mount Vernon. In Ireland, on the other hand, there will be more scenarios like that at Vernon Mount unless and until the statutory bodies charged with responsibility for ensuring the welfare of the state’s architectural heritage actually do their job. This is a shabby tale, from which neither the consortium nor the county council emerges with credit.

*Poor Miss Pike, carried off in the night by Hayes, never recovered from her ordeal and around the same time as her abductor died, so did she – in a lunatic asylum.

Offering You the Quays of the City

Jan9

A prospect that never fails to gladden the eye: Dublin’s north quays looking west from Essex Bridge towards the Four Courts. The view has inspired artists for more than two centuries, not least thanks to the varied rythym of the facades, their diversity of form, height and fabric. One must be concerned over the future of the large white structure at the centre of this picture. It is the old Ormond Hotel, incorporating premises of the same name which feature in James Joyce’s Ulysses. In 2004, on the centenary of the year in which the novel is set, Dublin City Council bloody-mindedly granted permission for the hotel to be demolished and replaced. This never happened although the Ormond closed for business in 2006 and has sat empty and progressively more neglected ever since.

Netterville! Netterville! Where Have You Been?*

Dec24

Located midway between Slane and Drogheda, and immediately north of the river Boyne Dowth is today known as the site of one of a number of important Neolithic passage tombs in County Meath, others in its immediate vicinity including Newgrange and Knowth. But Dowth deserves to be renowned also for an important mid-18th century house which is due to be auctioned at the end of January.
Dowth Hall dates from c.1760 and was built for John, Viscount Netterville (1744-1826). His family, of Anglo-Norman origin, had been settled in the area since at least the 12th century: in 1217 Luke Netterville was selected to be Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland. That religious streak remained with them and come the 16th century Reformation the Nettervilles remained determinedly Roman Catholic. For this adherence some of them suffered greatly; when Drogheda fell to Oliver Cromwell in September 1649 the Jesuit priest Robert Netterville was captured and tortured, subsequently dying of the injuries sustained. Nevertheless, the Nettervilles survived, and even acquired a viscouncy. They also held onto their estates, one of a number of families – the Plunketts of Killeen Castle and the Prestons of Gormanston spring to mind – who retained both their religious faith and their lands, thereby disproving the idea that Catholics automatically suffered displacement during the Penal era.

The sixth Viscount was only aged six on the death of his father, the latter dismissed by Mrs Delaney as ‘A fop and a fool, but a lord with a tolerable estate, who always wears fine clothes’ and otherwise only notable for having been indicted the year before his son’s birth for the murder of a valet (he was afterwards honourably acquitted by the House of Lords).
The young Lord Netterville was raised by his widowed mother and spent much time in Dublin where the family owned a fine house at 29 Upper Sackville (now O’Connell) Street. The old castle in Dowth seems to have fallen into ruin and so a few years after coming of age Viscount Netterville undertook to construct a new house on his Meath estate.
As is so often the case, information about the architect responsible for Dowth Hall is scanty. The common supposition is that the building was designed by George Darley (1730-1817), who had been employed for this purpose by Lord Netterville in Dublin where he was also the architect of a number of other houses. And indeed from the exterior Dowth Hall, rusticated limestone ground floor and tall ashlar first floor with windows alternately topped by triangular and segmental pediments, looks like an Italianate town palazzo transported into the Irish countryside; not least thanks to its plain sides, the house seems more attuned to the streets of Milan than the rich pasturelands of Meath.

The real delight of Dowth lies in its extravagantly decorated interiors, where a master stuccadore has been allowed free hand. The drawing room (originally dining room) is especially fanciful with rococo scrolls and tendrils covering wall panels and the ceiling’s central light fitting suspended from the claws of an eagle around which flutter other birds. None of the other ground floor rooms quite match this boldness but they all contain superlative plaster ornamentation, with looped garlands being a notable feature of the library. Again, the person responsible for this work is unknown, but on the basis of comparative similarities with contemporary stuccowork at 86 St Stephen’s Green in Dublin (on which George Darley is supposed to have worked) Dowth Hall’s decoration is usually attributed to Robert West (died 1790).
Although not as extensive, there is even a certain amount of plasterwork decoration in the main bedrooms on the first floor, which is most unusual. And the house still retains its original chimneypieces (that in the entrance hall even has its Georgian basket grate), along with fine panelled doors and other elements from the property’s original construction. This makes it of enormous importance, since many other similar buildings underwent refurbishment and modernisation in the 19th century during which they lost older features.

There are reasons why Dowth Hall has survived almost unaltered since first built 250 years ago. The sixth Viscount Netterville, somewhat eccentric, fell into dispute with the local priest and was banned from the chapel on his own land; in retaliation, he built a ‘tea house’ on top of the Neolithic tomb from which he claimed to follow religious services through a telescope. But then he seems to have given up living at Dowth and moved back to Dublin. He never married and on dying at the age of 82 left a will with no less than nine codicils. One of these insisted that the Dowth estate go to whoever inherited the title, but it took eight years and a lot of litigation for the rightful heir, a distant cousin, to establish his claim. He did so at considerable cost and so, despite marrying an heiress, was obliged to offer Dowth for sale; the last Lord Netterville, another remote cousin, died also without heirs in 1882 and the title became extinct. Meanwhile Dowth was finally bought from the Chancery Court in 1850 by Richard Gradwell, younger son of a wealthy Catholic family from Lancashire. His heirs continued to live in the house for a century, but then sold up in the early 1950s when the place changed hands again. It did so one more time around twenty years later when acquired by two local bachelor farmers who moved into Dowth Hall. Following their respective deaths (the second at the start of last year), a local newspaper reported that the siblings had gone ‘to Drogheda every Saturday night, would attend the Fatima novena at 7.30pm then would walk over West Street to see what was going on, although they never took a drink or went to pubs.’
Now Dowth Hall is for sale, and there must be concern that it finds a sympathetic new owner because the house is in need of serious attention. It comes with some 420 acres of agricultural land, which means a sale is assured but that could be to the building’s disadvantage: it might fall into further desuetude if the farm alone was of interest to a purchaser. Too many instances of this have occurred in the past and it must not be allowed to happen here. One feels there ought to be some kind of vetting process to ensure prospective buyers demonstrate sufficient appreciation of the house. Only somebody with the same vision and flair as the sixth Lord Netterville should be permitted to acquire Dowth Hall.
This last image is taken from Georgian Mansions in Ireland by Thomas Sadleir and Page Dickinson published in 1915.

*From a poem by John Betjeman, written after he had visited Ireland as an Oxford undergraduate and met the last surviving members of the family responsible for building Dowth Hall.

A Template for Temples

Dec19

Birr, County Offaly is one of Ireland’s most perfectly planned towns. From 1817 onwards St John’s Mall was developed in an easterly direction by local landlord, the second Earl of Rosse. In 1833 at mid-point between two terraces of houses on the mall he built this impeccably simple, single-storey limestone Ionic-porticoed temple to commemorate his second son, the Hon John Clere Parsons, who had died five years earlier of scarlet fever just days before his 26th birthday. Since then John’s Hall, as it is called, has served a variety of purposes but almost 180 years after construction the building now stands empty awaiting a new use.

Worth a Squint

Dec17

Delvin, County Westmeath is one of those small Irish towns through which it is easy to pass without paying attention to the place. In other words, except for residents it is never a point of destination. This is regrettable, because Delvin does have interest, although – again like so many small Irish towns – first impressions would not indicate that to be the case. Essentially a single straggling, untidy street Delvin lacks coherence and order, lacks the kind of communality of vision and presentation that make its equivalents in other countries so satisfying. The town has some fine buildings – there are a number of pretty early 19th century houses – but just as many, if not more, that destroy whatever chance Delvin might have of detaining visitors.
Those prospective visitors would be interested to know that among the reasons they should linger is the town’s appearance in a novel which caused a sensation almost a century ago. Published in 1918, The Valley of the Squinting Windows was written by Brinsley MacNamara (1890-1963), the pseudonym of a local man, John Weldon whose father James was principal of a national school elsewhere in the county. The book is a rather overwrought tale of a young teacher seduced by a wealthy, dissipated man and how a trainee priest who has fallen in love with her avenges this outrage. It owes more to 19th century melodrama than 20th century realism, and is closer in spirit to Peyton Place than to Madame Bovary, the latter presumably being what MacNamara had hoped to emulate.

The Valley of the Squinting Windows would likely be forgotten now but for the stir it caused on publication in Delvin. MacNamara always claimed that Garradrimna, the village in his novel, was representative of any small community in Ireland: ‘I used certain descriptions of characters and events because they were typical, were easily identified with local people and happenings. But people in Clare and Limerick have been able to do exactly the same in the case of their own villages. So could people in any county in Ireland.’ However, Garradrimna’s topographical details fix it so precisely as Delvin that locals understandably took umbrage, especially as there are really no attractive characters in the book, everyone being small-minded and greedy, obsessed with discovering and relishing the misfortunes of their neighbours. Seemingly when the novel was published there was great excitement in the region but this quickly changed to indignation once its contents were known: obviously no one thought to notice the title provided a fair warning of what lay inside. Instead of sensibly allowing the work slip into oblivion, the people of Delvin publicly burnt a copy in the centre of the village. Worse, they organised a boycott of children attending James Weldon’s school, as though he were responsible for his son’s novel. In response, Weldon brought a law suit for £4,000 against Delvin’s parish priest and seven parishioners for arranging the prohibition. He lost the case and was forced to emigrate. The Valley of the Squinting Windows has ever since been synonymous with small town pettiness.

Among the features of Garradrimna that made it easily identifiable as Delvin are several references to a de Lacy castle at one end of the village. Just such a structure remains in place to this day, popularly believed to have been built by the Norman soldier Hugh de Lacy who came to Ireland with Henry II in 1171 and over the next 15 years erected many such structures in this part of the country. Delvin Castle is supposed to date from a decade later, after which it was given to de Lacy’s son-in-law, Gilbert de Nugent whose descendants, later Earls of Westmeath, remained in the area until 1922. Originally a massive keep with four circular corner turrets, the castle is now only half its former size, the north wall having long since gone. The owner of the abutting corner house told me his grandmother who used to live there, on being informed she was responsible for the castle and its upkeep, handed the property over to the Office of Public Works, which seems to have done little since.
Nearby, and even more dejected in appearance, is St Mary’s, the former Church of Ireland church which incorporates a mid-16th century belfry into an otherwise predominantly early 19th century building. Deconsecrated and unroofed in 1963, the building and graveyard have recently undergone refurbishment at the hands of industrious residents, which was necessary for its well-being but has had the unintentional effect of removing much of the site’s romantic charm.

Goodness knows, otherwise romantic charm is hard to discover in Delvin; opposite the stretch occupied by castle and church, for example, a large site is occupied by a private house presumably dating from the 1970s, never attractive and now an derelict eyesore.
At the other end of the town stands the Roman Catholic Church of the Assumption, unlike its Anglican counterpart still very much in use, designed by George Ashlin in 1873 and described by Christine Casey and Alistair Rowan as ‘an accomplished small-scale essay in French Gothic’, although one imagines the French original would not be surrounded by quite so much tarmac. In fictional guise it also appears in The Valley of the Squinting Windows.
MacNamara had little good to say about Garradrimna/Delvin, damning not just the local populace but also the physical appearance of the village itself, describing it as mean and fly-blown, with ugly houses. No doubt the resident population today is quite different to that he castigated: there is even an annual Delvin Garradrimna Book Fair. But it remains the case that the novel was as much a condemnation of place as people. MacNamara’s observations on how Delvin looked – and still looks – have yet to be addressed. If that happened, even visitors unfamiliar with The Valley of the Squinting Windows would be encouraged to linger for longer than is now the case.

Brought to Book

Dec3

Back in 1980 photographer Simon Marsden published a book on Irish country houses with the self-explanatory title In Ruins. It quickly sold out and has since become a bibliophiles’ favourite. Many more such works by other photographers subsequently followed, so many that one began to gain the impression of vultures gathering to feast on a corpse even before the death certificate had been issued. Sometimes it seems as though the fewer historic properties of worth that Ireland possesses, the more they will be appreciated: like the Dodo, their value will only be fully understood when the last one has fallen into irreversible ruin.
The crumbling Irish house is a staple of our national literature (think the wondrous Molly Keane, together with many others before and since) and so too are books which apparently thrive on depicting yet another building in terminal decay. It is easy to understand the appeal of these publications, essentially romantic and inspired by a concept of the past that helps to make illusory television series like Downton Abbey so popular. It is a vision of history that regards old buildings, and in particular Ireland’s great houses, as having the same kind of use-by date as found on supermarket food, after which they can serve no further purpose. According to this erroneous attitude they should be allowed, if not actively encouraged, to fall down, thereby permitting a myth to be constructed in their absence.

These somewhat melancholic thoughts were inadvertently inspired by an admirable new publication, Irish Country Houses: A Chronicle of Change. Author David Hicks discusses 24 properties spread across the four provinces and has had the original idea of featuring old photographs of the houses in their heyday alongside images of how they look now. The comparisons are rarely kind, although not always as Hicks intended. He is, for example, more generous than really ought to be the case about Adare Manor, County Limerick and Farnham in County Cavan, both converted into hotels with a singular want of sympathetic taste. And he includes Powerscourt, County Wicklow which is a travesty of restoration and deserves nothing other than condemnation. This really is an instance where the ruin was preferable to what has since been done.
That is the criticism out of the way, because otherwise Hicks’ book merits congratulation, not least thanks to texts which are both well-informed and well-written, a rare phenomenon in this genre where writers can display scant interest in researching the history of buildings they present. As a rule he is sympathetic but not sentimental, clearly passionate about his subject but not (perhaps with the exception of Powerscourt) to the exclusion of objectivity.

And the photographs are just fascinating, albeit occasionally in a ghoulish way. The first picture at the top of this piece, and the two that follow, are of Downhill, County Londonderry, the immense palace built on a cliff top overlooking the Atlantic by that notable eccentric Frederick Hervey, Earl-Bishop of Derry (1730-1803). Admirers of Amanda Foreman’s biography of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire may be interested to know that the Duke’s long-time mistress (and eventual second wife) was the Earl-Bishop’s daughter, Lady Elizabeth Foster. Downhill was aptly named: within fifty years of Hervey’s death it started to go irreversibly down hill, not least thanks to a disastrous fire in 1851 which gutted much of the interior and destroyed some of the finest contents. Although rebuilt twenty years later, by the early 1950s the building had been dismantled; it is now in the care of the National Trust, as is the ravishing Mussenden Temple, the adjacent domed rotunda also built by the Earl-Bishop.
The next two photographs show a house at the other end of the country, Castle Bernard in County Cork. Originally called Castle Mahon and part of the territory controlled by the O’Mahonys, in the 17th century it was acquired by an English settler, Francis Bernard whose descendants became Earls of Bandon; they greatly extended the property, with major rebuilding taking place in the early 19th century. Despite a jumble of styles, the eventual result looks charming in old photographs. In June 1921 the fourth Earl and his wife were forced out of the castle by a branch of the IRA before the building was set on fire. Lord Bandon, a septuagenarian, was then kidnapped and held hostage for three weeks before being released. Seeing the gutted shell of Castle Bernard, his niece wrote ‘The ruin is absolute and all one can do is wander across the mass of debris in those precious rooms.’

Finally, above is Clonbrock, County Galway, a house needlessly lost within living memory. The estate belonged to the long-established Dillon family who built Clonbrock in the 1780s to replace a previous residence which had been burnt, seemingly by a firework let off to celebrate the birth of the then-owner’s heir. Various additions, such as the Doric portico and the two low wings, were made during the first half of the 19th century but the central block remained unaltered, notable for the refined neo-classical plasterwork of its main rooms. The Dillons were ardent photographers and their archive today provides one of the best sources of information for life in the Irish country house.
Successive generations of the family lived at Clonbrock until 1976 when economic circumstances forced the sale of house and contents. The building was then placed on the market but despite various statements of interest it failed to find a buyer and in 1984 was destroyed by fire; I remember at the time meeting a German family who had hoped to take over Clonbrock and were dismayed by what occurred. Now it stands as yet another testament to our want of aesthetic appreciation – or maybe to our perverse preference for romantic ruins…

Irish Country Houses: A Chronicle of Change is published by Collins Press

The Abomination of Desolation

Nov26

Lying two miles south of the town of Claremorris, County Mayo, Castle MacGarret was associated with the Browne family for more than 350 years. The present house has a complicated history. The original castle stood closer to the river Robe but was found to be unsafe and abandoned towards the end of the 17th century; its ruins, smothered in ivy, can still be seen. Meanwhile, a new residence was built further from the water and served successive generations until largely destroyed by fire in 1811. A contemporary report in The Gentleman’s Magazine noted the blaze had originated in the kitchen ‘and the Cook perished.’
Following this disaster, the house’s stables were converted for use as a house. The architect Sir Richard Morrison drew up various plans for a new, elaborately gothic building but none of these was executed, presumably because Castle MacGarret’s then-owner Dominick Browne was too busy realising his political ambitions. Between 1814 and 1836 he managed to represent County Mayo for the Whig interest in seven Parliaments. This enterprise was his undoing since he was obliged to spend a fortune on each election to ensure success; one of them is said to have cost him £40,000 of which £600 alone went on lemons for whiskey punch.

As a reward for his political diligence, Dominick Browne was made a Privy Councillor of Ireland in 1834 and two years later created an Irish peer as Baron Oranmore of Carrabrowne Castle and Baron Browne of Castle Macgarret. But an Irish title did not automatically carry the right to sit in the House of Lords at Westminster and he therefore energetically lobbied for an English peerage. Three British Prime Ministers turned down his request, the reason being they had heard the newly-ennobled Lord Oranmore and Browne was on the verge of bankruptcy. This he denied, even though his debts amounted to an astonishing £199,320. The Irish Great Famine of 1845-8 completed his ruin and in a series of sales during the first half of the following decade, the majority of the Browne lands, including a large portion of Galway city, were sold through the Encumbered Estates Court.
Having lost most of their land, and therefore income, the Brownes were in no position to improve their accommodation. Finally in the early 1900s the third Lord Oranmore and Browne employed Richard Caulfield Orpen to remodel and extend the old stables. An older brother of the painter Sir William Orpen, this architect has the questionable honour of being credited with introducing the bungalow into Ireland.

Although claims have been made for the house as exemplifying Arts and Crafts principles Orpen’s revamped Castle MacGarret cannot be deemed particularly alluring, at least on the exterior. Its cement-rendered form lacks grace, the two irregular wings that jut out to create a forecourt each featuring a small crenellated tower as though to justify the building’s use of the title castle. The interior is more successful, beginning with the staircase hall that rises to a first floor gallery, the walls carrying plaster swags in which the Browne arms are quartered with those of heiresses the family had married. The well-proportioned drawing and dining rooms have elaborate neoclassical stucco ceilings copied from those designed by James Wyatt for Leinster House in Dublin. The drawing room contained a notable collection of Meissen porcelain, the hall a large number of miniatures by Anne Mee. The library, previously the billiard room, had a beamed ceiling and walls lined with mahogany bookcases. Hicks of Dublin made the chimneypieces while the panelling came from Crowthers of London. The cost of the refurbishment was £21,422.7s.6d.

In the early 1920s Castle MacGarret survived the War of Independence and the Civil War, although the house was raided by armed men one night in May 1922. The following year it was occupied by Free State troops who only left in June 1924. Despite being responsible for its rebuilding, understandably Lord Oranmore and Browne preferred to live in England, where he bought the Palladian Mereworth Castle in Kent. However, following his death in 1927, the next Lord Oranmore and Browne returned to Castle MacGarret, remaining there for more than thirty years.
While married to heiress Oonagh Guinness he had access to ample funds for the house’s upkeep, but after the couple divorced in 1950 it became a struggle to make the place economically viable. Eventually he had to abandon the struggle. In July 1960 the contents of Castle MacGarret, everything from a pair of old Waterford glass decanters to a Chippendale mahogany side table, were dispersed in a four-day auction held on the premises after which Lord Oranmore and Browne moved to London.
In 1964 Castle MacGarret, along with its surrounding 1,750 acres, was bought by the Irish Land Commission for £95,000. Having parcelled out most of the estate among local farmers, the organisation offered the house and surrounding 125 acres for sale. An order of nuns, the Sisters of Our Lady of Apostles, bought the place and tacked on an extension evidently inspired by the worst excesses of Soviet social housing. Castle MacGarret was run as a retirement home until 2005 when, at the height of Ireland’s economic boom, the canny nuns sold house and 120 acres for some €5 million to a business consortium. The latter’s members intended to convert the house into a hotel and spa. That plan never came to fruition and Castle Macgarret now sits empty, a prey to the damp that seeps through every missing slate. So another part of Ireland’s architectural and social heritage disappears forever into already-saturated ground.

Photographs by Cosmo Brockway

The Old Town looks the Same

Oct29

Ramelton, County Donegal is marketed as a ‘heritage town’ and with the place’s history and excellent stock of old buildings there is every reason to consider the moniker well deserved. However, as so often proves the case in Ireland a sizeable gap opens between aspiration and actuality. Ramelton has potential, but the greater part of it remains unrealised. And given both the country’s economy and an habitual Irish inability to recognise obvious opportunity, that scenario is unlikely to change any time soon.
The town’s situation is particularly lovely. The main approach is from Letterkenny further south, the road suddenly descending until it comes to a halt on Ramelton’s quayside, grandiloquently named the Mall. Across the river Lennon the land is densely wooded, a perfect counterpoise to the urban development it faces and a reminder of how the entire area once looked.
While people have been living in this part of the world for thousands of years Ramelton is essentially a planters’ town, settled by English and Scottish immigrants in the 17th century; tellingly, a meeting house dating from around 1680 (and today the local library) is believed to be the oldest centre for Presbyterian worship in Ireland. The reason for the site’s appeal to settlers is that it lies at a point where the Lennon widens to join Lough Swilly and thence flows into the Atlantic Ocean.

So Ramelton developed as a port with ships regularly travelling between this part of the country and British, French and Spanish colonies in the Caribbean, their holds filled with produce like corn and bacon and dairy products. A series of stone warehouses along the quays bears witness to the town’s former prosperity, aided by the regional success of the linen industry: by the early 1840s Ramelton had Donegal’s largest linen bleaching works, evident in a still-extent complex of buildings called the Tanyard at the west end of the Mall.
Decline set in soon after, with Belfast’s emergence as Ireland’s pre-eminent centre for linen, along with the silting of the Lennon and the arrival of the railway to Letterkenny. Like so many other Irish towns, from the second half of the 19th century onwards Ramelton suffered from that peculiarly indigenous combination of neglect and apathy.
The trouble is that in large measure it still does. As elsewhere, the boom years saw plenty of building work but on the periphery of the town. Here you’ll find the customary unimaginative new housing estates with names like The Elms (and, naturally enough, not a single example of the species to be seen).

Meanwhile the historic centre was allowed to slide into dereliction. On almost every street there are gaps where houses have been demolished and sites left vacant; Ramelton is a beauty whose smile reveals advanced dental decay. Typically, on Back Lane a row of old houses which could be utterly winning have fallen into such decrepitude that ‘windows’ are now painted onto boarded-up fronts.
Many of the handsome quay warehouses have fared no better; their sturdiness is being severely tested by wilful neglect. Next to one of them on Shore Road, a typically pointless public amenity has been created on a vacant site: a so-called park featuring quantities of unalluring hard grey surfaces and only a margin of grass. Except as a short-cut for pedestrians, it looks little used – as evidenced by a local farmer parking his tractor and trailer so close to the entrance gate that access was well-nigh impossible.

There is apparently a local Tidy Towns committee and no doubt the members work hard to keep Ramelton as litter-free as possible. But their efforts can only go so far. What’s needed here – and elsewhere – is an understanding of how to capitalise on Ramelton’s currently dormant charm. A similar town in France or Italy would not be filled with vacant sites but instead with visitors enchanted by the distinctive character of the place. Ramelton could be a tourist hub – and recover some of its economic viability – if only serious restoration work were undertaken. There’s no point calling it a heritage town if the heritage is then disregarded.

When nettles wave upon a shapeless mound*

Oct20

This 18th century mahogany hunt table is due to be auctioned on Sunday by de Vere’s of Dublin. The last time it came on the market was in 1932 when offered in the house contents sale of Coole Park, County Galway, residence of Lady Gregory who had died earlier that year. Some time later, the chairman of Ireland’s Board of Works declared that while Lady Gregory’s place in the pantheon of Anglo-Irish literature was assured, ‘it is straining it somewhat to suggest that her home should be preserved as a National Monument on that account.’ Coole Park, which today would be a place of pilgrimage, was accordingly demolished in 1941.
*from ‘Coole Park’ by W.B. Yeats
Addendum: The table sold for €4,000.

Sense and Insensibility

Oct8

Almost big enough to serve as a punchbowl, this exquisitely simple piece of Irish silver dates from 1778 and was made in Dublin by Matthew West, a member of the family which continued operating as the country’s oldest jewellers until its Grafton Street premises closed two years ago. Due to be auctioned by Adam’s on Tuesday, the bowl is one of a number of lots coming from Carrigglas Manor, County Longford.
Like a great many Irish houses, the Carrigglas estate has had what can best be described as a chequered history. Originally part of the estates of the Bishop of Ardagh, the lands were acquired by Trinity College, Dublin before passing into the hands of the Newcomen family who operated one of 18th century Ireland’s most successful banks; designed in 1781 by Thomas Ivory, its former premises still stands on Lord Edward Street, Dublin, albeit enlarged in size. Clearly the Newcomens appreciated fine architecture since they commissioned a range of new buildings on their Carrigglas estate from the greatest architect of the period, James Gandon, responsible for both the Custom House and the Four Courts in Dublin. Unfortunately, of Gandon’s designs only the main entrance gates and the double stable yard were completed before the Newcomen Bank went into decline; on its ignominious collapse in 1825, the institution’s head, Sir Thomas Gleadowe-Newcomen, 2nd Viscount Newcomen, shot himself in his office.

Following this catastrophe, Carrigglas was acquired by a successful Irish barrister called Thomas Lefroy. Today Lefroy is best remembered as the possible object of Jane Austen’s amorous attentions and, arising from this, as inspiration for the character of Mr Darcy in Pride and Prejudice; in the rather fanciful 2007 film Becoming Jane, Lefroy was played by James McAvoy. He certainly knew and saw a great deal of Austen in 1796, being mentioned several times in her letters and on one occasion was described by her as ‘a very gentlemanlike, good-looking, pleasant young man’ with whom she admitted to having flirted. However, the following year he became engaged to Mary Paul, sister of a college friend, marrying her on completion of his legal studies in 1799. Ultimately becoming Lord Chief Justice of Ireland in 1852, some fifteen years earlier Lefroy had requested architect Daniel Robertson to design a new house for him at Carrigglas in the Tudoresque idiom. This remained in the hands of successive generations of the family, finally being inherited in the mid-1970s by Jeffry and Tessa Lefroy. Like many other people in their position, they struggled with managing the place and trying to make it generate sufficient income. To this end, they opened the house to day visitors and paying guests. But by the start of the present millennium it was clear the battle for survival was never going to be won and in 2005 the Lefroys sold Carrigglas to a property company which trumpeted its intentions to preserve the estate. Writing in The Times in March that year, Tessa noted that many old Irish houses had been lost over the previous decades but ‘thankfully, Carrigglas’ future is secure: it is going to be turned into a country house hotel development with new homes in the grounds. The planning laws are now so strict that the house and yards must be restored to their former glory.’
Would that this had been the case. Far from taking care of the main house, stable yards and so forth, the only thing Carrigglas’ new owners, Thomas Kearns Developments, did was to strip large stretches of the parkland of trees and start throwing up rows of houses notable for their lack of sympathy with the surroundings. And before this work could be completed, the company ran into financial trouble; by autumn 2007 sub-contractors on the site had withdrawn their labour. The following spring the Bank of Ireland, which had advanced €35 million, called in accountants to assess the project’s viability. It was glaringly obvious this scheme had no future, especially after Thomas Kearns Developments went into liquidation and Carrigglas went into a limbo from which it may never emerge. Over the intervening four years, as these photographs make plain, the place has been allowed to suffer neglect, almost the only attention it receives coming from vandals.

The National Inventory of Architectural Heritage classifies the complex of inter-related structures at Carrigglas as representing ‘one of the most important demesnes in north Leinster.’ This designation did not stop the authorities of Longford County Council from granting permission for the estate’s irrevocable despoilment with that addition of over 300 residential units, a hotel, spa and inevitable golf course. Nor, it would appear, have the same authorities shown much concern for the preservation of what remains, not least the important group of Gandon buildings which are without peer anywhere else in the country. The silver bowl being auctioned on Tuesday will no doubt find a new owner and be much cherished. Regrettably the same good fortune cannot be hoped for Carrigglas. To paraphrase Jane Austen, It is a truth universally acknowledged, that an estate in the possession of a receiver, must be in want of a saviour.

With thanks to Brendan Harte and Mary Morrissey for their photographs.

*Insufficiently dispirited by what you have read and seen here? Watch John O’Neill’s short film showing the present wretched condition of Carrigglas: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYDKZ33pWX8&feature=plcp

Addendum: the bowl sold for €4,200.00 at Tuesday’s sale. What price Carrigglas?

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