Domat Omnia Virtus*

Jan27

It seems only fitting that Lough Cutra, County Galway should be battlemented and turreted, and have the, admittedly deceptive, appearance of impregnability since for a long time it was associated with military families. But the spot on which it stands is deeply romantic: the castle is reached at the end of an exceptionally long drive through open parkland and eventually one arrives at a spot which, as the Knight of Glin and Edward Malins wrote in their 1976 book on Irish demesnes, is ‘picturesquely situated high above the banks of the lough, whose waters lash the terrace walls.’ Glin and Malins likewise admired the ‘extensive and deep planting of woods and plantations, and wooded islands with ruins of churches and mountains in the background.’
Based around the 1,000 acre lake several square miles in extent and from which the estate takes its name, Lough Cutra’s ruins indicate how long there has been human settlement here. The present owners explain succinctly the history of the estate, noting that ‘the local area is rich in remnants of churches, cells and monasteries due to the introduction of Christianity. A number of the islands on the lake contain the remnants of stone altars. It is quite likely that St. Patrick passed Lough Cutra on his travels and St. Colman MacDuagh was a relative of Gort’s King Guaire. A holy well with a cross with the date 1745 lies on the Eastern shore of Lough Cutra. The ruined church of Beagh on the North West shore was sacked by the Danes in 866 A.D. and war raged through the district for nearly 1000 years.’
From the 12th century onwards, this territory was controlled by the Ó Seachnasaigh (anglicised as O’Shaughnessy) family. The last to hold the land, Sir Roger O’Shaughnessy, supported James II at the Battle of the Boyne in July 1690 and died seven days later in his castle at Gort. His son and heir William went into exile and eventually became a general in the French army. In 1697 the O’Shaughnessy lands were seized and presented to Sir Thomas Prendergast who likewise became a general. The two men, O’Shaughnessy and Prendergast, would fight on opposing sides at the Battle of Malplaquet in September 1709 during which the latter was killed (O’Shaughnessy lived another thirty-five years in exile).

Despite the best efforts of successive O’Shaughnessys they never regained their former estates which remained in the possession of the Prendergasts, a branch of a family which had likewise been in Ireland for many centuries, descendants of from Maurice de Prendergast, a Norman knight who came to the country in 1169. Following the death of Sir Thomas Prendergast at Malplaquet, the newly-acquired estates in County Galway passed to his seven-year old son, also called Thomas, who in adulthood managed to sit in both the Irish and British Houses of Commons. Since he had no children, on his death in 1760 the property passed to a nephew John Prendergast Smyth, youngest son of Sir Thomas’ sister Elizabeth. Having begun life in the army, he subsequently became a parliamentarian (although in 1793 he was appointed Colonel of the Limerick Volunteers) and joined the peerage first as Baron Kiltartan in 1810 and then six years later as Viscount Gort. He died in 1817, again without children and so once more the estate passed to a nephew, his sister’s son Colonel Charles Vereker. Of Dutch origin, the Verekers had come to Ireland in the middle of the 17th century and prospered despite supporting the two unfortunate Stuarts, Charles I and James II.
Like so many of those who owned Lough Cutra before and after, Charles Vereker was an army man: leading the Limerick Militia established by his uncle, in September 1798 he checked the advance of the French force led by General Humbert at Collooney, County Sligo and later took part in the Battle of Ballinamuck where he was wounded. For all that, again like his uncle he was vehemently opposed to the 1800 Act of Union, declaring ‘I have defended my country with my blood, and there is nothing in the gift of the Crown that would tempt me to betray her by my vote.’ After the Union he represented Limerick in the British House of Commons until becoming second Viscount Gort. Incidentally, he was also last to hold the ancient feudal post of Governor and Constable of the Castle of Limerick.

The second Lord Gort inherited some 12,000 acres from his uncle, and even before then he had received that part of the estate which included Lough Cutra (then often called Lough Cooter). Here he decided to build a new residence, his initial intention being to commission an Italianate villa at a spot called Situation Hill on the opposite side of the lake from where the house actually stands. However at some date he saw architect John Nash’s own property, East Cowes Castle on the Isle of Wight. Supposedly accompanying the Prince Regent on a visit to East Cowes, he exclaimed ‘How I wish I could transport this Castle to the banks of Lough Cooter’ to which Nash replied, ‘Give me fifty thousand pounds and I will do it for you.’
In fact the eventual cost was closer to £80,000, probably because extensive work had to be carried out on creating the demesne envisaged by landscape designer John Sutherland: in 1855 J.B. Burke’s Visitation of Seats and Arms reported that the greater part of the area around the house and outbuildings ‘was blasted to a considerable depth out of the solid rock, and the gardens then filled with rich soil carried from distant spots, their walls being formed of limestone laboriously cut to the size of bricks…the undulating sward, which extends from the castle towards the lake is also to a great extent artificial.’ In addition, because of the site’s slope a terrace had to be built up in front of the lake before work on the house could begin.
Although Nash designed Lough Cutra, it is unclear what part, if any, he played in its actual construction. He does appear to have visited Ireland at least once: in 1821 he told the landscape artist and diarist Joseph Farington that he ‘had travelled in the three Kingdoms 11,000 miles in the year and in that time had expended £1,500 in chaise hire.’ The work at Lough Cutra was supervised by James Pain who had been apprenticed to Nash and was highly regarded by the latter. Pain came to Ireland in 1811, and remained here the rest of his life, being joined by his younger brother George Richard in 1815 after which the siblings ran a very successful practice for several decades.

Since James Pain arrived here in 1811 it is assumed that work started on Lough Cutra around that time. It was still going on in October 1817 since in that month the Limerick Gazette reported ‘with deepest regret’ that earlier in the month when Pain ‘was surveying some part of the beautiful building now going forward at Loughcooter Castle, County Galway, the intended mansion of Lord Viscount Gort, the scaffolding on which he stood gave way, and he was precipitated from an eminence of four stories high – his side first reached the ground, with the head inclining downwards – the collar bone has been broken, the brain has received a severe concussion, and several bruises on different parts of the body. – A report was current in the town on Sunday that he was dead, but we are happy to say, the arrival of Surgeon Franklin who (together with Surgeon Gibson of the City Regt. pofessionally [sic] attended) has not only contradicted that rumour, but has been given sanguine hopes of a speedy recovery.’ Indeed he did make a full recovery, living until 1877.
As originally built, Lough Cutra was more compact than later became the case, with sufficient variation in the disposition of towers and windows to give interest to the exterior. Inside, the main block of two storeys over sunken basement has a vaulted entrance hall behind which runs three reception rooms overlooking the lake. A round tower to one side contains the staircase leading to the first floor bedrooms opening off a top-lit central corridor.
It would appear that not only did Lord Gort spend much more on the property than had been intended but when he inherited his uncle’s estate it was discovered to carry debts of some £60,000. As a result he was rather impoverished and following his death in 1842 so too was his heir. The third Viscount did his best to provide assistance to his tenants during the years of the Great Famine by not collecting rents and providing work on the estate. The consequence was that he bankrupted himself and in 1851 Lough Cutra was offered for sale by order of the Encumbered Estates Court. Some sections of the estate were parcelled off and in 1852 the castle and immediate land was purchased by James Caulfield, in trust for a Mrs Ball, Superior of the Loreto Convent, Rathfarnham, County Dublin for £17,000. Lord Gort moved to England and ironically a few years later as a result of his second marriage came to own East Cowes Castle, the inspiration for his own former property. It was occupied by the family until requisitioned by the army during the Second World War during which the building suffered severe damage. East Cowes Castle was eventually demolished in 1960.

For a short period of time Lough Cutra Castle became a convent school. However in 1854 it reverted to private ownership after being bought by Field Marshall Hugh Gough, first Viscount Gough. Like the Verekers, the Goughs were another family long settled in this part of Ireland, being descended from three brothers, all Anglican clergymen, who had come here in the early 17th century. Likewise they subsequently became stalwarts of the British army, Hugh Gough’s father serving with Charles Vereker in the Limerick Militia during the 1798 Rebellion. Hugh Gough entered the forces when still in his teens (he was already promoted to the rank of Lieutenant a month before his fifteenth birthday) and fought with the future Duke of Wellington during the Peninsula War. After being responsible for the British forces in China during the First Opium War, he became Commander in Chief of the army in India and was responsible for the defeat of the Sikhs in two wars. It was following his retirement and advancement to the peerage that he decided to buy Lough Cutra, also purchasing back much of the original estate.
Following his acquisition, the castle was considerably extended to the designs of an unknown architect. In April 1855 the Civil Engineer and Architect’s Journal advised readers, ‘Loughcooter Castle…the property of General Lord Viscount Gough, is now undergoing vast alterations and improvements There is a new tower at present in a state of progression; there have been large numbers of artizans and labourers employed during the last four months, and from the extensive works about to be executed are likely to be constantly employed for the next two years.’ In the late 1890s the third Viscount Gort commissioned a further extension, known as the Library Wing, from architect George Ashlin to house his grandfather’s war spoils: this was demolished in the 1950s and the cut stone used in the restoration of Bunratty Castle, County Clare. Changes were made to the interior also, some of which have survived. In the drawing room, for example, the walls are papered with the Gough coat of arms created by Coles, and the elaborately painted ceiling is believed to be by John Gregory Crace.
Commentators have often been rather sniffy about the Goughs’ interventions at Lough Cutra, one author opining ‘The additions were heavy and ill-proportioned and turned a neat and successful composition into an unwieldy and rambling one.’ But photographs of the building from the late 19th/early 20th centuries show that some of the changes were not unattractive. Full-length projecting window bays on either side of the main entrance, for example, probably increased the amount of light in the hall immediately behind, while the drawing room certainly benefitted from a similar window overlooking the lake: all of these have long since gone.

In the 20th century the Gough family, no longer as affluent as had been the case and with the greater part of their estate taken by the Land Commission, could no longer afford to maintain the castle and in the 1928 the family converted part of the stable yard into a residence. Thereafter Lough Cutra stood empty except during the years of the Emergency (1939-45) when it was occupied by members of the Irish army; as with East Cowes Castle at the same time, the outcome was not beneficial for the house. In 1952 the estate was placed on the market and eventually bought by the seventh Viscount Gort, great-grandson of the man who had sold it a century earlier. Lord Gort is today remembered for having bought and restored Bunratty Castle in the 1950s (when stone from parts of the Gough extensions to Lough Cutra were used to make repairs). He gave Lough Cutra to his great-niece the Hon Elizabeth Sidney who in 1966 married Sir Humphrey Wakefield. Together the Wakefields embarked on a restoration of Lough Cutra which by this date was in a near-derelict condition, with much of the interior decoration including the staircase pulled out. Had they not done this work, almost certainly the castle would no longer stand.
However in 1971 the Wakefields divorced and once more the estate was put onto the market. As is well-known Sir Humphrey, who worked in the furniture department of Christie’s before becoming a director of Mallet, went on to buy and restore Chillingham Castle in Northumberland. Here he has one significant souvenir of Lough Cutra: an equestrian statue of the first Viscount Gough. The work has had a troubled history: it was designed by John Henry Foley who died before its completion and there was then difficulty finding a site. Eventually the statue was placed in Dublin’s Phoenix Park where on Christmas Eve 1944 the figure of Lord Gough was beheaded and his sword removed. In November 1956 the right hind leg of his horse was blown off and the following July the entire statue was hurled from its base by a huge explosion. It then languished for almost thirty years in storage before being bought by Robert Guinness, a friend of Wakefield, who afterwards brought the statue to Chillingham where it can now be seen.
As for Lough Cutra, in the aftermath of the Wakefields’ departure the estate was bought by the present owner’s family. Since then the programme of refurbishment has been ongoing, with a new roof on the main body of the castle completed in 2003 and other remedial work done on the tower roofs, plus attention given to buildings such as lodges and yards, as well as the woods and what survives of the once-extensive gardens. As is so often the case, this is a project without visible end but thanks to the commitment and enthusiasm of the owner it is also an enterprise that exudes success. Nash’s East Cowes Castle today can be recalled only through old photographs but what might be described as its progeny Lough Cutra Castle looks set to enjoy a long and happy life yet.

The Lough Cutra estate hosts a wide variety of events. For more information, see: http://www.loughcutra.com/

*Virtue Overcomes All Things: the motto of the Gough family.

Flying High

Jan22

A crowning with laurel occurs in the central section of a painted ceiling in one of the first-floor rooms at Rathfarnham Castle, County Dublin. Measuring just eighteen by sixteen feet and formerly known as the breakfast or small dining room, this space has on stylistic grounds been attributed to James ‘Athenian’ Stuart; the proposal is supported by a comment made by Lady Shelburne in 1769 that some of the castle’s interiors were then being decorated ‘after Designs of Mr Stuart’s.’ For a long time it was also believed that the ceiling itself had been painted by Angelica Kauffmann who certainly came to Rathfarnham during her visit to Ireland during the winter of 1771-72, and while in the country painted a portrait of the building’s then-residents, the Earl and Countess of Ely, together with the latter’s two nieces (now in the collection of the National Gallery of Ireland). However, as Grainne Madden has observed, while quite delightful, the quality of workmanship here ‘is not as highly finished as one would expect from comparisons with authenticated works’ by Kauffman.

A Thundering Disgrace

Jan13

Many visitors arriving at Dublin airport are likely to take a route into the city centre that leads them along Amiens Street. This takes its name from Viscount Amiens, an honorary title of the Earls of Aldborough, the second of whom, Edward Augustus Stratford, built the last great free-standing town house of the 18th century around the corner on Portland Row. Travelling along this route visitors will notice the present dreadful condition of that building.
The earl’s long-lost country seat Belan, County Kildare has already been discussed here (Splendours and Follies, September 30th 2013) and now it looks as though Aldborough House could likewise be consigned to oblivion as a result of ongoing failure by state and civic authorities to intervene in its preservation.
Today marooned amidst neglect and decay (the organisation Irish Business against Litter last week declared this part of Dublin the dirtiest urban area in the State) Aldborough House is an extraordinary building, after Leinster House the biggest Georgian private residence in the capital and a testament to one man’s regrettably misplaced ambition. The earl, who already had a perfectly fine property next to Belvedere House on Great Denmark Street, was determined to construct a new one that would serve as testament to his wealth and social position, and also serve as centre-piece to a westerly extension of the city beyond that already achieved by the Gardiners. Portland Row is a continuation of the North Circular Road, running from the Phoenix Park to the docks, and it made sense to plan for development in this part of Dublin. Unfortunately Lord Aldborough failed to take into account the consequences of the 1800 Act of Union (for which he voted) which led to a precipitate decline in the city’s fortunes and left his great town house stranded.

We know a great deal about the construction of Aldborough House, thanks to research on the subject conducted by Aidan O’Boyle and carried in Volume IV of the Irish Georgian Society’s annual journal Irish Architectural and Decorative Studies. This text, like all others on the subject, is indebted to O’Boyle’s admirable work. It is clear from his analysis of extant material that the building of Aldborough House was fraught from the beginning, not least because the earl’s aspirations were greater than his budget. Although pailings were erected and foundations dug around the start of July 1793, there were many stops and starts as unpaid workmen left the site and replacements had to be found. O’Boyle quotes several piteous letters from various architects, plasterers, painters and other skilled craftsmen who became enmeshed in the project and then found they had to plead for monies owed. It did not help that Lord Aldborough during this period was in the throes of sundry legal battles, one of which led to his temporary imprisonment.
Yet somehow the work went on and the house rose ever higher. In style, Aldborough House was something of an anachronism, a last gasp of Palladianism with its tall central block flanked by quadrants that led to pavilions, one containing a chapel the other a private theatre, thereby satisfying the earl’s spiritual and cultural needs. At least in its early stages the architect responsible appears to have been Richard Johnston, older brother of the better-known (and better) Francis Johnson. After his departure several other hands were involved but most likely it was Lord Aldborough himself who had the greatest input into the plans: a extant drawing from his hand of the theatre wing confirms just how decisive was his influence on the project.

Facing north, the main block of Aldborough House is tall and narrow, three storeys over sunken basement and seven bays wide with the three centre bays advanced and pedimented, the whole clad in granite. The pediment contains an elaborately carved Stratford coat of arms in coade stone while the rusticated ground floor features a Doric portico bearing the motto Otium cum Dignitate (Leisure with Dignity). The most striking feature is the line of exaggeratedly elongated windows on the piano nobile; these emphasise the building’s height and thereby distort is overall proportions. An eaves parapet, since removed, was surmounted by alternating eagles and urns on all four sides. A plinth in the centre of the forecourt carried a copy of the Apollo Belvedere.
The side and rear elevations are all faced in a now-mellowed brick, originally rendered to resemble ashlar and with large central bows on the east and south sides. At some point the chapel wing to the west was demolished but that originally containing the easterly theatre survives, terminating in a bow facing the street; its interior is gone. The exterior of the two wings both had blind round-headed arches with sunken panels below and lion and sphinx figures along the parapets.
The interior of the main house begins with an entrance hall which in turn leads to an immense top-lit stair hall, with wrought-iron balusters set into the cantilevered Portland stone steps, the effect likened by the late Maurice Craig to that of ‘a well-shaft, mine or one of Mr Howard’s penitentiaries.’ On the ground floor a sequence of rooms lead off on all sides, library, dining room, small dining room and so forth, with a circular music room to the rear from which a double-perron staircase led to the garden. Some, but not much of these rooms’ decoration survived until recently such as friezes above the Adamesque doorways; after the horrendous neglect of recent years does any of this still remain? It is believed that Pietro Bossi, who tendered for the stuccowork in the house, provided the main chimneypieces but these were removed at the end of the 19th century. The first floor featured another sequence of rooms still loftier than those below and primarily intended for entertaining as they included a ballroom above the library on the east side of the building. A much quoted description by the newly-arrived vicereine Lady Hardwicke in 1801 gives an account of the staircase’s astonishing sequence of paintings which mostly seem to have been given over to apotheosising the earl and his wife. Again, these have all long vanished.

Costing over £40,000 Aldborough House was largely completed by 1798 but its owner did not enjoy the comfort of his new residence for long since he died in January 1801. Without a direct heir and in dispute with his brothers, he left the property to his widow who subsequently remarried but was likewise dead eighteen months after her first husband. There followed more than a decade of litigation before Lord Aldborough’s nephew Colonel John Wingfield was confirmed in possession of the house; he promptly sold its entire contents. The building was then let to the splendidly named Professor Gregor von Feinaigle, a former Cistercian monk and mnemonist, who opened a school there. Six years later von Feinaigle died and by 1843 the house had become an army barracks. In 1850 the garden statuary was all sold and in the 1940s the garden itself was lost, used by Dublin Corporation for social housing so that today Aldborough House has effectively no grounds.
As for the house itself, coming into public ownership it served as a depot for the Department of Posts and Telegraphs during the last century. During this time and especially in later decades the property was compromised by various ill-considered alterations such as the vertical divisions of rooms to create office space and the effective gutting of the former theatre. Nevertheless, the house remained in use and in reasonable condition. In 1999 the state telecommunications company Telecom Eireann was privatised as Eircom and that organisation offered Aldborough House for sale. The Irish Music Rights Organisation (IMRO) considered it for a new headquarters but then opted not to go ahead with the scheme and in 2005 the building was sold for €4.5 million to a company called Aldborough Developments, part of a network of businesses connected with would-be tycoon Philip Marley whose Ely Property Group has been much in the news of late, none of it for particularly positive reasons. Thereafter matters of ownership grow increasingly complex with only one irrefutable fact: for the past nine years this important part of the national built heritage has been allowed to fall ever further into a decline which, as the photographs above (taken in 2010) and below (taken last week) demonstrate, now risks becoming irreversible.

Last May, RTE television carried a report warning that Aldborough House was now Dublin’s most endangered historic building; this information was provided by An Taisce which for several years has been at the forefront of efforts to ensure the property is saved. In 2006 Aldborough Developments secured approval from the city council for the conversion of the house into a forty-bedroom ‘Day Hospital Medical Care Facility.’ The scheme never went ahead, the property crash occurred and Aldborough House started slithering into decay. Some years ago the council served enforcement proceedings against the owners to carry out repairs to the roof; this did not take place and inevitably the lead was all stolen from the valleys and parapet gulleys leading to terrible water damage. In December 2011 the council, having received a grant from central government of €80,000 and provided an additional €20,000 carried out emergency repairs to the roof. According to the city architect’s office, this work went ‘some way towards weatherproofing this vulnerable building until such time as the building’s owners are in a position to implement further urgent and necessary repairs in line with their statutory obligations.’
Those obligations have yet to be met: last spring, following an arson attack that could have been fatal but was caught in time, further enforcement proceedings were served on the owners to have the house’s windows, doors and other openings secured to prevent access. The city council’s Planning and Development Department’s Executive Manager Jim Keoghan commented at the time, ‘We would be concerned that there would be long-time damage done to the property in question’ as though this was a future possibility rather than something which had already occurred.
The RTE report explained that 75% of Aldborough Developments is owned by a company which is in liquidation, and this in turn is wholly owned by another company that the Bank of Ireland has placed in receivership. Astonishingly, the house remains outside the receivership process, allowing both the receiver and the bank to disclaim all responsibility for its upkeep, even though the latter has a charge on Aldborough House. No doubt legally this is the case, but where is the Bank of Ireland’s sense of corporate responsibility? Where its concern for the welfare of this country? Where its engagement with the society in which it operates? Likewise why is it that Dublin City Council, which could issue a Compulsory Purchase Order, has failed to do so? And why is it that the state, which has a department devoted to heritage, has ignored the shameful deterioration of an important historic building? Are those responsible in all three bodies suffering from collective blindness that they do not see what is happening to a property under their watch, and for the fate of which they will be held culpable? Or are they simply indifferent to what is taking place?
Last September when a farmer lost his High Court challenge over the compulsory purchase of his land, the presiding judge Justice John Hedigan declared that ‘the national interest must outweigh the interests of the individual.’ It is in the national interest that Aldborough House be saved and that all those who can act should do so now. Dear visitors: welcome to Ireland where we talk a lot of guff about history and heritage but – as you cannot fail to observe on your drive into central Dublin – where we have no qualms about allowing the remains of our past fall into dereliction.

Aside from Aidan O’Boyle’s essay in Volume IV of the Irish Georgian Society’s Irish Architectural and Decorative Studies, you can see more images of Aldborough House, and its present sorry state, on the archiseek forum: http://www.archiseek.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=7878&sid=7637199907bad5a71623348e7c96d9a0&start=25
For the news report that appeared on RTE television in May 2013 see: http://www.rte.ie/news/player/2013/0509/3530477-dublin-georgian-house-is-capitals-most-endangered-historic-building/

Sturdy as an Oak

Jan6

In recent months this site has featured more than a few derelict historic properties, and is likely to do so again in the months ahead. Today however the focus is on a house which might easily have been lost altogether but instead has been admirably and impeccably restored. Ballinderry Park, County Galway was built during the first half of the 18th century, perhaps some date in the 1740s. For much of the Middle Ages the lands on which it stood belonged to the Franciscan friars of nearby Kilconnell (see Where There is Darkness, Light, November 18th 2013) but in the late 16th/early 17th century they passed into the hands of English-born judge Sir Charles Calthorpe who in 1584 was made Attorney-General for Ireland. Sometime after his death in 1616, they came into the possession of the Church of Ireland Diocese of Clonfert which thereafter remained the landlord until the third quarter of the 19th century.

Ballinderry was leased by the Church of Ireland to the Stanford family, one of whom was a revenue collector in the area in the 1680s. The Stanfords, who are recorded as living not far away in Aughrim Castle in 1837, in turn sub-let the Ballinderry estate to the Wards of Ballymacward. The latter were long-settled in the area, having served as hereditary poets to the O Kellys, Lords of Uí Maine, since ancient times the dominant family in this part of the country. In 1786 the tenant was Lewis Ward whose sister Sabina that year married Andrew Comyn, tenant of a small property at Ryefield, County Roscommon. Ultimately their son Nicholas inherited the tenancy and after the Church of Ireland was disestablished in 1871 he purchased the freehold of Ballinderry on 547 acres. His son, another Andrew Comyn, married Mary O’Connell, grand-daughter of Daniel O’Connell. In the 1911 Census he is listed as aged 79 and living in the house with his three sons along with two male and three female servants. The Comyns remained at Ballinderry until 1947. Following the family’s departure the Irish Land Commission subdivided the land with the house, yards and a few immediate acres being bought by Mr. Callanan, a local man.

Ballinderry Park’s current owners George and Susie Gossip write so eloquently that it is best to rely on their own description of the building: ‘The house dates from the first half of the eighteenth century and is largely unaltered, with the exception of a two-storied return at the rear. Two stone-built stable ranges, one mid 19th century and the other considerably earlier, form an enclosed courtyard behind the house, with a pair of tall gates at either end.
Ballinderry is a comparatively small building; seven bays wide and of two stories over a basement. The steeply pitched roof has end gables and hides a third storey, lit by small windows high in the gables. Unusually, the roof over the full-height central bow is taken right up to the level of the main ridge, rather than being returned at a lower level. This gives the house the appearance of having a central tower, rather like a small French château. Apart from the heavy cornice at the eaves and the fine pedimented door case, the façade is free from decoration.
The blank monotony of the end elevations is relieved by the massive stacks, while the rear has been considerably altered, probably on several occasions. In front, the basement is below ground, with its windows opening onto a sunken area like a Dublin town house, but it is several feet above the level of the yard at the rear.
As befits a house of this size the interior is plain, with good shouldered architraves, panelled doors and shutters of heavy 1750s joinery. The staircase, while slightly lighter in style, is the finest internal feature and appears to be original. Were it not for this one would be tempted to suggest that the house could even be earlier, perhaps dating from the 1730s, and this may even be the case. Ballinderry’s chief interest lies in the main façade and in the arrangement and details of the staircase and principal rooms – solid rural grandeur in a miniature scale.’

When the Gossips bought Ballinderry in 2001, ‘it was in a sorry state, used as a store for country furniture, old farm carts, and an amazing variety of agricultural implements and artifacts. While the roof looked intact from the front, the three large Victorian dormer windows at the rear had collapsed, causing considerable damage, both to roof and to the internal fabric. In addition, vandals had smashed the windows and looted the chimneypieces (which in any case were Victorian replacements).’
The first task was to strip the roof so that its main timbers could be repaired and made good while surviving slates were either saved or replaced. The house is constructed of fieldstone covered in lime render which had become defective and had to be removed. This revealed stone lintels, which showed the original positions of the drawing room and dining room windows since reinstated by local masons. As for the windows these were restored to what the Gossips believed to be their original appearance with unequal sashes on the ground floor using heavy early-Georgian glazing bars in the main house and thin Regency glazing bars in the wing, all specially made for the house.
Internally, although the floors were extremely decayed it was possible to save most of the joists; the boards have now been replaced with wide pine boards sawn from old reclaimed beams. The decorative woodwork had been badly attacked by woodworm but all principal doors and most of the shutters were salvaged, together with enough architrave for it to be copied. The skirting had deteriorated beyond repair and the chair-rail had been removed many years ago, so these also had to be replaced.
Apart from shutters and doors, nothing remained of the original decoration in either the drawing or dining rooms. Both were given new ceilings and the walls paneled in the early 18th century style. The drawing room now contains an early Kilkenny marble chimneypiece from a house in County Waterford, the dining room has an early 18th century slate chimneypiece. Similar extensive work took place in the staircase hall and the first floor bedrooms.

Thanks to the ministrations of the Gossips, one suspects that Ballinderry today looks better than at any time in its history. The house has a particularly evocative atmosphere, extremely comfortable and aesthetically satisfying. None of the rooms is especially large but there is everywhere a sense of generous space. In part this is due to the ample staircase, its treads wide and deep, and leading to a first floor landing lit from front and rear and of such generous dimensions that it might serve as another sitting room.
Just as importantly, Ballinderry serves as an example of what can be done to save a house that looks on the verge of being lost forever. Of course it takes imagination and patience to bring back a building like this from the brink of ruination but as the accompanying photographs indicate the result more than justifies the effort. Many abandoned houses in Ireland could still be restored provided prospective owners approach the task with the same determination and flair as did the Gossips. The name Ballinderry derives from the Irish Baile an Daoire meaning town, or town-land, of the oak trees. Today the house is once more as sturdy as an oak and ought to survive for as long.

Ballinderry Park welcomes guests. For more information about the house, including further details of its restoration, see: http://ballinderrypark.com

Wyatt Thing

Jan4

A detail of the plaster frieze running around the walls of the staircase hall at Ardbraccan, County Meath. We know that in 1773 James Wyatt produced drawings for the centre block of the house. These were commissioned by Henry Maxwell, Bishop of Meath whose brother Barry Maxwell, Earl of Farnham would likewise employ Wyatt to design a new house for him in County Cavan a few years later. In the event, the architect’s plans for Ardbraccan were modified to incorporate elements from schemes by both Thomas Cooley and Daniel Beaufort, the latter a gifted amateur who was also Rector of nearby Navan. However, the staircase hall’s plasterwork is distinctly Wyatt’esque and so it is surely not too fanciful to imagine that at least this part of his proposal was executed without intervention from other hands.

Great Gas

Dec28

The ceiling of the library at Killyleagh Castle, County Down. Although the building dates back to the 12th century when constructed by the Norman knight John de Courcy, its present appearance is the result of a complete renovation undertaken 1849-51 to the designs of Charles Lanyon. Exterior and interior alike display terrific exuberance, as well as a wide variety of sources of inspiration, as this ceiling demonstrates. Originally a gasolier would have hung from the centre of the plasterwork.

Acts of Mercy

Dec25

Founded in the late 12th century, St Mary’s Cathedral in Limerick contains many attractive features, not least the only surviving mediaeval misericords in Ireland. The lip of these seats was designed to allow members of the cathedral chapter to rest during long services without being seen to sit down, hence their name which derives from the Latin word ‘misericordiae’ (acts of mercy). Those in St Mary’s date from 1480-1500 and are carved in oak from the woods of nearby Cratloe, County Clare. Each one is different and they feature both men and beasts, the latter real as well as imaginary. There are 23 misericords which at some date in the 19th century were removed from the main body of the church and stored in the crypt. Thankfully they survived and can now be seen in the north transept.
The Irish Aesthete takes this opportunity to wish all readers a very Happy Christmas and hopes they receive as much rest as those clerics who once celebrated the occasion by settling onto a misericord.

Unfurling the Foliage

Dec21

A section of the stair hall ceiling at Powerscourt House, Dublin. Designed in the early 1770s by Robert Mack, this served as the town residence for the Viscounts Powerscourt until sold to the government in 1807 for £500 less than it had cost to build. The house is rightly famous for its ebullient decoration, not least this ceiling by stuccodore James McCullagh which, along with the surrounding walls, features a riot of compartmentalised acanthus scrolls. The plasterwork in Powerscourt House is of superior quality but difficult to appreciate since the building, which has served as a shopping centre for the past three decades, is excessively cluttered with confusing signage.

A Place of Magic

Dec16

The earliest recorded mention of the County Clare village Sixmilebridge is in the 1681 journal of the English antiquary Thomas Dinely. As its name indicates, Sixmilebridge is located approximately six miles from Thomondgate in Limerick and is the site of a bridge erected over the O’Garney river in 1610 by Donough O’Brien, fourth Earl of Thomond.
Of particular interest in Dinely’s account of this part of the country is his reference to a castle ‘belonging to Henry Ivers, Esq, well scituate and capable of very considerable improvement, a draught whereof I took on the other side of this leaf…The gentleman, owner hereof, came over (a young man, clerk to one Mr Fowles, a Barrister), since the King’s Restoration, and hath in this time by his Industry, acquired one Thousand pounds a year. The first and chiefest of his rise was occasioned by being concerned in the Revenue as Clerk to the King’s Commissioners for settling the Quit Rents, and afterwards became their Deputy receiver, is now in commission one of his Ma’ties Justice of the Peace, not worth less than sixteen hundred pounds a year.’
Dinely is not altogether accurate since Henry Ivers had actually come to Ireland prior to the Restoration of 1660, being one of the beneficiaries of Cromwell’s sweep across the country. Quit rent was a tax imposed on new settlers granted land by the government and clearly whoever was responsible for its collection could do well, as indeed Ivers did. (By the time of his death in October 1691 he had acquired some 12,000 acres, of which almost half was deemed to be ‘profitable.’) But the great merit of Dinely’s work is that, as he wrote, he included a ‘draught’ or drawing of the old castle owned by Ivers and showing it to be a typical tall tower house of the kind built throughout Ireland in the 16th and early 17th centuries. A massive stone chimney piece in the south hall of the castle’s replacement, presumed to have been salvaged when the latter was demolished, carries the date 1648, which would have made its construction very late for such a building.

When Henry Ivers died, he left his estate to a second son, the eldest having been disinherited for marrying without his father’s approval, perhaps to a Roman Catholic. John Ievers (as the family now began to spell its name) was Colonel-in-Chief of the Clare Militia Dragoons and an MP for sixteen years. When he died in 1731, his heir – another Henry – clearly decided Dinely had been right half a century before that the old castle was ‘capable of very considerable improvement’ since he knocked it down and built a new house on the site, ever after called Mount Ievers.
We are in the rare position of knowing a great deal about the origins of the house, since the accounts for its construction survive. Mount Ievers was designed by the architect John Rothery (with his son Isaac assuming responsibility for the project after Rothery senior’s death in 1736) and work began in 1733 with completion four years later.
During this time masons working on site were paid five shillings a week, and general labourers five pence. In an average week 11 of the former and 48 of the latter were employed, with the labourers receiving not just their wages but also food and clothes including shoes and supplies of coarse linen woven at Mount Ievers. The house cost £1,478 pounds, seven shillings and nine pence to build, but Henry Ievers noted sundry other expenses incurred such as two horses he had given the architect valued at £15, as well as two mules (£4 and twelve shillings) and 3,000 laths (£1 and ten shillings). Slates priced at nine shillings six pence per thousand came from Broadford ten miles away, while the oak roof timbers, thirty-four tons in weight, came from Portumna; they were brought by boat to Killaloe and then hauled twenty miles overland to the site.

Writing about Mount Ievers in Country Life in November 1962, Mark Girouard proposed its design derived from that of Chevening in Kent, a house attributed to Inigo Jones and featured in the second volume of Colen Campbell’s Vitruvius Brittanicus (1717). Certainly there are many similarities between the two buildings and as Girouard pointed out, ‘an unusual feature shared by both houses, which makes it unlikely that the relation is a coincidence, is the stone cornice with pulvinated frieze below the eaves.’ Of course Mount Ievers was rather anachronistic by the time it was built, but that somehow adds to the place’s charm, as do the two fronts, that to the north faced in brick, that to the south in cut limestone, both of them of seven bays, three storeys over raised basement and with entrances approached by flights of steps. A detail missing from the accounts of the house is the source for the bricks; it is customarily proposed that they came from Holland, a Dutch mill owner who lived near Sixmilebridge shipping rape seed oil to his native country and the vessels on their return bringing bricks to act as ballast. Today after almost three centuries they have mellowed to a soft pink hue lightly dusted with lichen. The west and east sides of the house are rendered with very few windows other than those at either end of corridors running along the centre of each floor.
The tall narrow windows with their thick glazing bars (some of them restored in the last century having been earlier replaced by larger panes of glass), add to the impression of height as does a curious feature of the design whereby each storey is several inches narrower than that below, something almost undetectable to the eye until it is pointed out. The walls are very thick, between four and five feet, and so the entirety of the basement is a series of vaulted chambers needed to support this immense weight.

The interior of Mount Ievers is relatively simple, with most of the rooms retaining their original plaster panelling, elaborate cornices and panelled doors set in doorcases eight and half feet high. The north entrance hall, which takes up about a third of the ground floor includes a wonderful carved staircase, barley-sugar and fluted balusters alternating. This in turn leads to a very substantial first-floor hall off which open the main bedrooms. On the top floor is a long vaulted gallery, intended to provide a space in which ladies could walk on wet days or to serve as a ballroom, or possibly both. There are some very attractive chimneypieces in the ground floor rooms but these date from the second half of the 18th century and were installed around 1850.
In fact, these small changes made at that time were really the only significant ones the house has experienced. The Ievers family, although initially wealthy and powerful, gradually became neither, and it was a want of funds and of the need to impress that led their house to remain largely unaltered. A mural painted over the mantel in the drawing room not long after the house was completed shows the north front exactly as it is today, and while much of the surrounding formal gardens shown have disappeared other elements like the two brick sentry boxes at the end of the garden remain.
Mount Ievers is a place of quite haunting loveliness, a house that captures the hearts of everyone who has ever visited. ‘Magic is an overworked word,’ commented Mark Girouard, ‘but there is undoubtedly a magic about Mount Ievers. It is a mysterious house, shut away among woods with no outlet to the outer world.’ Similarly Maurice Craig, although observing that the house’s interior ‘is very grand but very, very inconvenient’ had to acknowledge ‘But for the pleasure of living in such a house one would endure much.’ Mount Ievers remains in the hands of the same family for whom it was first built. This adds to its exceptional character and so one hopes that long may an Ievers continue to be in residence.

The Irish Aesthete Recommends VII

Dec7

This year Derry has been celebrating its title as inaugural UK City of Culture with a wide programme of events. One might wish that the programme of events had paid more attention to Derry’s architectural heritage: it is the only remaining completely walled city in Ireland, those walls (seen in an old photograph above) dating from the second decade of the 17th century. Thankfully also this year a truly excellent guide to the place’s buildings has been published: City of Derry: An Historical Gazetteer to the Buildings of Londonderry written by Daniel Calley and published by the Ulster Architectural Heritage Society.
The book runs alphabetically through all of Derry, street by street, discoursing on each site, its history and architectural merits – or lack of same. One always appreciates an author who is unafraid to express a well-informed opinion. For example, of 34-40 Shipquay Street (one of the principal thoroughfares in the old city, lined with 18th and 19th century houses), he writes, ‘The round-headed rythym on the ground floor is utterly destroyed by the crass left-hand shopfront which replaced two-bays; definitely a homage to philistinism with its fascia signage and recessed expanse of plate-glass which is known in the retail industry as a deep-throat.’
Calley gives praise where it is due, and Derry is blessed that despite decades of disruption and the best efforts of urban despoilers so much of the city remains to delight. Replete with colour photographs this is an admirable book to take if visiting Derry, not just during its tenure as a City of Culture, but at any time. Below is a view of the former Bishop’s Palace, the core of which probably dates from the mid-18th century although its appearance was much altered in the first decades of the 19th. ‘Since 1945,’ Calley explains, ‘the building has served as a Masonic Hall whose custodianship has, despite the bst efforts of bombers bent on informal reordering, been on the whole well intentioned.’

City of Derry: An Historical Gazetteer to the Buildings of Londonderry by Daniel Calley can be purchased from the Ulster Architectural Heritage Society: http://uahs.org.uk/shop/

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