Tag Archives: Historic Interiors

Decidedly Quirky



Ardress House, County Armagh is a wonderfully quirky building that appears to have begun as a modest farmer’s residence but then, as we say in Ireland, ‘got notions.’ The earliest part, a gable-ended brick house of five bays over basement, probably dates from the late 17th century when constructed for one Thomas Clarke. In 1760 heiress Sarah Clarke married Dublin architect George Ensor who in due course enlarged Ardress by adding a further bay to either side of the east facade (and probably the small limestone Tuscan portico) and a large extension to the rear accommodating a grand drawing room. Within a few years of his death, further changes took place , the front enlarged by a further bay on either side with tripartite windows, their lower parapets decorated with urns and undulating dressed stone at each corner. The extension to the north contains rooms but that to the south is just a blank wall, as can be seen by going around to the garden where it becomes one of a pair of quadrants with blind recessed panels and statuary niches, the latter holding busts representing the Four Seasons. Formerly a conservatory ran the length of the five ground floor bays on this side, helping to provide some unity, but without this structure, the imbalance created by the double bays to the east is more apparent, thereby adding to Ardress House’s quirky charm.





Text here…The interiors of Ardress House, County Armagh are as idiosyncratic as its exterior. To the front of the building immediately inside the entrance is a large arch opening into a sitting room, while through a door on the other side lies a small parlour. The main staircase in an extension to the north rises to a landing which then divides to give access to bedrooms in different parts of the building. Meanwhile, another eccentric feature of Ardress House is the location of the dining room, which would customarily be located to one side of the entrance hall: here it is located behind the drawing room but not accessed from it. Instead, the dining room is reached via a corridor to the rear of the building and then through a small external door (originally a small glazed building provided coverage for diners).





As mentioned earlier, in 1760 heiress Sarah Clarke married architect George Ensor, who oversaw a number of additions to Ardress House, County Armagh. One of these was the creation c.1783 of a large, rectangular drawing room behind the original building, its walls and ceiling elaborately decorated with neoclassical plasterwork, its design attributed to the preeminent Irish stuccodore of the period, Michael Stapleton. The tripartite ceiling is composed of a circular section with demi-lunes on either side, the former containing a centrepieces featuring Aurora in a chariot drawn by two winged horses. Other panels and medallions around the walls show various classical figures, including Cupid bound to a tree and observed by three females and a warrior kneeling before Minerva and another goddess. Between these, garlands of husk chains and ribbons swoop and  fall across the walls in a breathtaking, and unexpected, display of sophisticated craftsmanship in rural Ulster. Ardress House is today under the care of the National Trust and open to the public. 


Well Fort



Hillsborough Fort, County Down has been considered here before (see Hillsborough Fort « The Irish Aesthete) but on that occasion the Irish Aesthete was unable to gain access to the building at its centre. Completed c.1650 by Colonel Arthur Hill, the little square forthouse was Gothicised just over a century later, perhaps to the designs of Christopher Myers and, having been a place of defence became instead a place of delight, used for entertainments. Inside, the ground floor consists of a narrow entrance hall with vaulted ceiling, doors to front and rear, and a number of small rooms on either side. A staircase in one of the flanking towers leads upstairs to a great chamber occupying the entire space, lit by three arched windows and with a high flat roof. At the moment, the building sits empty but there plans are afoot for its restoration and reuse.


Addio del Passato



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





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





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



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

Corbalton



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







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







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


A Rare Survivor



For more than half a century, conservationists have rightly lamented how much of 18th century Dublin has either faced neglect, clumsy restoration or, at worst, demolition. During this period, vast swathes of the capital have seen the loss of their architectural heritage. However, that unhappy state of affairs has a precedent: our Georgian forebears did their best to obliterate almost every trace of the mediaeval city. Admittedly, after the turmoils of the 16th and 17th centuries, much of Dublin was in poor shape. Nevertheless, it is remarkable how few buildings dating from before 1700 survive today. One of them is the city’s only remaining mediaeval parish church: St Audoen’s. 






St Audoen’s derives its name from the seventh century Frankish saint Ouen (or Audoin), thereby indicating that it was established by the Normans following their arrival in the country; it has been proposed the building was first erected c.1200 during the episcopacy of John Cumin, the first Norman archbishop of Dublin. The church has a complex history, involving periods of expansion and contraction. The earliest part consisted of a nave and chancel in the section now known as St Anne’s Chapel and today housing an exhibition centre. Towards the end of the 13th or early 14th century, the north (riverside) wall of St Audoen’s was rebuilt as a four-bay arcade to create an enlarged nave: this part of the building continues to be used for services by the Church of Ireland. Meanwhile, a royal patent of 1430 granted licence for the conversion of the original, southerly nave into a chantry chapel for the Guild of St Anne, the most significant religious guild in the city. The guild supported six chantry priests who each daily celebrated mass at his assigned altar, one dedicated to the Virgin, the other five to SS.Anne, Catherine, Nicholas, Thomas and Clare. A domestic range, in which the priests lived, stood to the immediate south. Over half a century later, St Audoen’s was further enlarged when a second chantry chapel was erected to the immediate east, as wide as the existing structure and like it divided into two parts by an arcade, in this instance of three bays. The new chantry chapel, built in honour of the Virgin, was funded by Richard FitzEustace, first Baron Portlester who served as Lord Treasurer of Ireland, Keeper of the Great Seal and, on two occasions, Lord Chancellor. His tomb, and that of his wife Margaret, originally placed between the chancel and the chapel, was moved in 1860 to its present location beneath the tower at the west end of the church. By the 16th century, St Audoen’s was one of the capital’s wealthiest and finest places of worship, Richard Stanyhurst noting in 1568 that it ‘was accounted the best in Dublin for the greater number of Aldermen and Worships of the city living in the Parish.’ However, that was all about to change. 






Although chantries and guilds were officially suppressed during the Reformation, that dedicated to St Anne and associated with St Audoen’s survived until the end of the 17th century when an Act of 1695 officially dissolved all chantries in Ireland. In the interim, having been transferred to the Church of Ireland and with few parishioners to support it, the building began to suffer from neglect. Fashionable new districts were developed elsewhere and the wealthy preferred to live (and worship) there, meaning those who remained living in the area had little money to spend on the church. In 1773, the chancel and Portlester Chantry were unroofed: a drawing by George Petrie shows the latter in 1829 with lines of washing strung across the arcades. Around the same time, the main arcade was bricked up, with St Anne’s Chapel abandoned and the north nave established as a parish chapel. Such remains the case. The present tower at the west end dates from the 17th century but has been repeatedly repaired and indeed was remodelled in 1826 by architect Henry Aaron Baker. Vulnerable to collapse, it underwent remedial work in 1916 and then a major restoration some 40 years ago. More importantly, in 2000 St Anne’s Chapel was re-roofed and turned into the aforementioned visitors’ centre with the insertion of a steel gallery along the west and north walls. Beside this is the present parish church, its south wall still displays the late 13th/early 14th century arcade, with sandstone piers supporting arches; the space between them would once have been open. At the east end of the north wall are two funerary monuments dating from some time between 1600-30 and commemorating the Duffe and Sparke families. At the other end of the nave is a late 12th century font while in St Anne’s Chapel are the remains of another monument, this one Alderman John Malone (who died in 1592) and other members of his family. As mentioned, the Portlester tomb is now below the tower. It depicts the recumbent figures of a knight and his lady, together with an inscription recording the endowment of 1482. St Audoen’s is open daily (from the months of March to November) and admission is free. The former graveyard to the west end of the church has been extensively landscaped and is now a public park. 

In Carrickfergus


‘For several miles before the traveller reaches Carrickfergus, his attention will be arrested by its fine old castle, built upon a rock, which, though not lofty, yet projecting into the sea, causes it to stand out conspicuously. It consists of a massive and lofty keep, surrounded by an embattled wall of considerable circuit, fortified by towers at intervals, and having a frowning gateway, protected by two half-moon towers, connected by a curtain wall; the draw-bridge has disappeared, and the moat is filled up, but the portcullis and the apertures for letting stones, melted lead, &c., fall on the heads of assailants, are still to be seen.
The exact period at which the castle was built and the town of Carrickfergus founded, seems to be involved in some degree of doubt. M’Skimin, the accurate and laborious historian of the town, informs us that “the founding of this building is lost in the depths of antiquity;” elsewhere he, however, states that a colony was established here in 1182 by the celebrated John de Courcey, who “soon after began to erect castles and forts to secure his conquests” in Ulster. Perhaps the earliest distinct mention of the castle of Carrickfergus occurs in the account of King John’s journey in the year 1210. From the itinerary compiled by Thomas Duffus Hardy, F.S.A., from original records and published by the Record Commissioners, we find that John remained at Carrickfergus from the 19th to the 28th July, and a dispatch from him to his father, Henry II, king of England, dated at Carrickfergus, in which he mentions having taken the castle, is said to be still extant among the MMS. in the library of Trinity College Dublin. The architecture of the castle clearly shows it to have received many additions and alterations at various periods. The assizes for the county of Antrim were long held within its walls. It has at all times been esteemed an important fortress, and from time to time has been accordingly repaired; in 1793 it was converted into a barrack, as which it was until recently occupied, the great tower serving as an armoury, magazine, and ordnance storehouse. A ramble through its court-yards, along its walls, and into many of the obscurer parts of this ancient fortress, will amply reward the tourist for a short delay.’
From Belfast and its Environs (Dublin, 1842)






‘Carrickfergus Castle is supposed to have been founded by De Courcey about the end of the twelfth century, and is a place of considerable importance in the history of Ireland. From the middle of the fourteenth to the end of the sixteenth century, it was the only stronghold north of Dundalk which remained uniformly in the hands of an English garrison, and to the loyalty of the townsmen of Carrickfergus is chiefly to be attributed the recovery of the Northern Pale in the reign of Elizabeth. The castle was besieged and taken by Edward Bruce in 1315; it is said that the garrison, before surrendering, were driven to devour thirty Scots whom they had made prisoners. In 1333 the Irish overran all the south part of the county of Antrim, and the garrison of the castle with the inhabitants of the town that had arisen under shelter of its walls, were left alone in the midst of enemies. In 1386 the town was burned by the island Scots, and suffered again in 1400. In 1503 Gerald, Earl of Kildare, lord-deputy, afforded some relief to the struggling colonists by garrisoning the castle. In 1555, he Scots undere Mac Donnell, Lord of Cantyre, laid close siege to the castle until July 1556, when Sir Henry Sidney relieved the garrison with great slaughter of the besiegers. In 1573 the town was burned by Brian Mac Phelimy O’Neill, chief of Claneboy, who was hanged here along with Mac Quillan, chief of the route, in 1575…’
From The Penny Cyclopedia, Vol.VI (London, 1836) 






‘The year 1760 is memorable as being the year in which the French, under the command of Commodore Thourot, landed in Carrickfergus and attacked the town. Though the castle was in a most dilapidated state, a breach being in the wall next to the sea fifty feet wide, no cannons mounted, and the garrison few in number, yet Colonel Jennings, encouraged by the mayor and other inhabitants, bravely met the invaders, and when driven back by the superior strength of their assailants, they retreated into the castle and repulsed the French, even though they forced the upper gate. But all the ammunition being expended, a parley was beaten, and the garrison capitulated on honourable terms. During the attack several singular circumstances occurred. When the French were advancing up High-street, and engaged with the English, a little child ran out playfully into the street between the contending parties. The French officer, to his honour be it recorded, observing the danger in which the little boy was in, took him up in his arms, ran with him to a house which proved to be his father’s, the sheriff, and having left him safe, returned to the engagement. This really brave and humane man was killed at Carrickfergus Castle gate…The French kept possession of Carrickfergus for some time; but the alarm having been carried all over the country, and troops gathering fast to attack them, they were constrained to embark on board their vessels and set sail; and two days afterwards were attacked off the Isle of Man by an English squadron, when Commodore Thourot was killed, and the French ships captured, and so ended an expedition which was better executed than planned, cost the French money, men and ships, without one single advantage to be derived which any man of experience or military discernment could possibly look for.’
From The Dublin Penny Journal, No.15, Vol.I, October 6 1832

Another Light Hand


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

Quaint and Old-Fashioned


‘Whoever has travelled by the coast road in County Antrim which connects the towns of Larne and Ballycastle, may have observed at the distance of five miles from Larne, after passing one of the boldest promontories on the entire coast, a castellated edifice, standing immediately on the roadside at the head of a beautiful and romantic bay. Nor can anyone with a taste for the picturesque have seen it – backed by an amphitheatre of mountains and fronted by the Irish Channel coast – without bestowing upon it at least a passing admiration…This castle was for many years the hospitable residence of the Shaws of Ballygally, who came originally from Greenock, in Scotland, where, from very early times, their ancestors occupied a very high position in Renfrewshire. The first of the Shaws, who came to Ireland in the beginning of the seventeenth century, was one of the Scottish settlers who were located in Ireland by King James I. In the Irish wars of 1641, the castle of Ballygally, garrisoned by its own tenantry, afforded shelter to the Protestants of the district, and in the Revolutionary wars of 1688-90, the name of Lieutenant-Colonel Show is often honourably mentioned.’
From The Architect, March 1st 1879.





James Shaw is thought to have been born around 1594, the son of Scotsman John Shaw who settled in Ireland with his family in the early 17th century and duly received a grant of land from the Earl of Antrim. One grant was made on 1st February, 1634, to ‘John Shaw, the elder, of Ballygellie, in the county of Antrim, gentleman,’ of ‘all that eighteen score acres of land in Ballygellie, aforesaid, Tarnemoney, Nogher, Carncaslen, and Corcermain’ to hold forever in fee farm, at the yearly rent of £24.  James Shaw subsequently married Isabel Brisbane, also of Scottish birth, and the couple were responsible for constructing a castle which in style very much reflects their country of origin. In form, the building is a four-storey rectangular tower with a steep gable-ended roof and at each corner cone-topped bartizans supported by corbels and flanked by little dormer windows. The castle was formerly surrounded by a bawn wall, necessary given the time and place in which it was built. Early photographs do not show the small circular turrets at the corners of the grounds, so these must be a late-19th century addition to the site. Inside, above the stone door giving access to a spiral staircase can be seen inscribed ‘GODIS PROVIDENS IS MY INHERITANS’ and the date 1625, and over this a coat of arms with the initials JS and IB, standing for James Shaw and Isabel Brisbane. This used to be on the exterior of the castle but was moved to its present location around 1760 when alterations were made to the building, some of which – such as a panelled room on the first floor and sash windows – still remain.





Thought to be the oldest continually-inhabited building in Northern Ireland, Ballygally Castle remained occupied by successive generations of the Shaw family until the early 19th century. Unfortunately a litigation over ownership of the property in the 1780s left them heavily indebted and in 1820 some 450 acres around the castle had to be sold. Thereafter it appears to have been rented to a variety of tenants. In 1834, for example, it was reported as being ‘the dwelling of the chief officer of the coastguard for the prevention of smuggling, from which it would appear that it has been subject to a complete reversal of destiny, having been supposed at one time to have been a stronghold for smuggling.’ Four decades later, the Presbyterian minister and historian Classon Porter was living there and described the castle as ‘quaint and old-fashioned but that I like, and it is very warm and comfortable, the walls being 5 or 6 feet thick so that we never feel the greatest storm that blows.’ After the First World War, Colonel William Agnew Moore, whose great-grandmother had been a Shaw, came to live in the castle, the last member of the family to do so. Within a few years, he had put the building up for sale and in 1936 it was bought by the Earl of Antrim (whose ancestor had first granted the land on which it stood to John Shaw). A local newspaper reported that the earl ‘is busy at present converting this ancient mansion into a modern hotel’ which duly opened in 1938. It was sold again in the early 1950s, this time to entrepreneur Cyril Lord (who had a carpet factory in neighbouring County Down). He refurbished and extended the property before it changed hands once more. Today Ballygally Castle continues to operate as an hotel, the late Charles Brett deeming additions to the north to be ‘unobjectionable.’ while ‘more lurid, Disneylike proposals were fortunately disallowed in 1984.’ 

 

Then and Now

 

In the middle of the 16th century, one Hans Fock moved from the north German city of Lübeck to Estonia, which was then coming under the control of Sweden. Around 100 years later, Queen Christina, shortly before her abdication, elevated Fock’s descendants to the Swedish peerage. After Sweden’s decisive defeat by Peter the Great at the Battle of Poltava in 1709 and the subsequent annexation of Estonia to Russian rule, Henrik Johann Fock moved first to Malmö and then to other parts of Sweden, where through marriage he came into possession of an estate. His heir, Jacob Constantin Fock acquired further property, including land at Råbäck in the county of Skaraborg; it is from this place that the family’s title, Baron de Robeck, derives. His son, Johan Henrik Fock, enjoyed a colourful career, including fighting against the British army during the American War of Independence, before moving to England where in March 1789 he married Anne Fitz-Patrick, heiress to a Galway landowner: four months after the wedding, by an Act of Parliament Fock was naturalised as a British subject under the name ‘John Henry Fock, called Baron de Robeck.’ The couple’s son, John Michael Henry Fock, after serving under General Sir John Moore in the Peninsula Wars, settled in Ireland where in 1820 he married the Hon Margaret Lawless, daughter of Valentine Lawless, second Baron Cloncurry. Famously, her parents had divorced after Lord Cloncurry had successfully sued Sir John Bennett Piers for criminal conversation with his wife. Alas, it proved to be a case of ‘like mother, like daughter’ and in 1828 the de Robecks were divorced after the baroness was found to be having an affair with Lord Sussex Lennox, a younger son of the fourth Duke of Richmond (the couple subsequently went on to marry and have three children). Baron de Robeck married a second time and in due course acquired a house in Dublin’s Merrion Square which at some date in the early 1850s he elaborately redecorated. 






Like its neighbours, 40 Merrion Square dates from the late 18th century and has a three-bay plain brick facade. Its interior was presumably decorated in similar style to those on either side, with neoclassical plasterwork and white marble chimneypieces. However, as mentioned already, the house underwent something of a transformation in the mid-19th century when occupied by the third Baron de Robeck. Here the two first-floor reception rooms were redecorated in elaborate Louis Quinze style, the walls covered with thin panels filled with pendants, urns, leaves, ribbons and musical instruments. Some of the panels were also filled with mirrored glass while pedimented roundels were inserted over the doors and, in the rear room, the central oval of the ceiling painted with a trompe-l’œil sky. The architect responsible for this scheme is unknown, although Christine Casey has suggested the Belfast firm of Lanyon, Lynn & Lanyon since soon afterwards it was commissioned by the fourth baron to design a new country house, Gowran Grange in County Kildare. He may have been inspired to do so by the unfortunate death of his father, the man who had undertaken the refurbishment of 40 Merrion Square. Aside from his residence in Dublin, the third baron also rented Leixlip Castle a few miles outside the city. While staying there in October 1856, he disappeared, his body only being found 11 days later; it would appear the baron, who had gone down to the edge of the river Liffey below the castle to see the Salmon Leap, had slipped and drowned. 






In the period after the third baron’s death, 40 Merrion Square served various purposes. During the First World War, it housed the Irish War Hospital Supply Depot, and at the time of the Easter Rising in 1916, it was transformed by Dr Ella Webb into an emergency field hospital capable of treating 50 patients. Later in the last century, the house’s neighbour, 39 Merrion Square, became the British Embassy until burned by rioters in the aftermath of Derry’s Bloody Sunday in January 1972. By that date, the state-owned Electricity Supply Board already owned 40-43 Merrion Square and the same body subsequently acquired and restored No.39. Various alterations were made to the buildings, not least openings made at different levels, allowing internal movement from one house to the next. A lift shaft was inserted to the rear of No.41 and the party walls between rear gardens largely demolished, with much of the ground covered in frankly prosaic buildings and sub-stations. In 2019 the ESB offered the quintet for sale as a single lot, bought two years later by a development company which has since undertaken a scrupulous restoration of the whole property, so that it now provides flexible workspaces for a variety of businesses. Today’s pictures show the first floor rooms of 40 Merrion Square before and after this recent refurbishment. 

Saint or Goddess?


Later this week, February 1st will mark St Brigid’s Day. For those readers unfamiliar with her, Brigid is one of Ireland’s three national saints (the other two being Patrick and Columba), but not much is known about the woman. Supposedly she was born c.451, the daughter of a chieftain and a slave who had been baptised by St Patrick, was raised in a Druid household but then converted to Christianity and founded a religious house for women in what is now Kildare. Inevitably she also established other churches elsewhere in the country (early Irish saints were much given to roaming about the island) and performed many miracles. She is said to have died in 525 and a cult soon developed around her: the first account of Brigid’s life was produced during the following century by St Ultan of Ardbraccan. But did she actually exist? An increasingly popular theory proposes that Brigid was originally a pagan goddess, daughter of the Dagda (a kind of father-figure in ancient Irish mythology), and that with the arrival of Christianity her cult was simply transferred to a holy nun. The day on which she is annually celebrated, February 1st, happens to have been the occasion of a pagan festival marking the onset of Spring. This alternative image of Brigid is now widely promulgated: Dublin, for example, is about to host a five-day festival celebrating ‘the spirit and legacy of the Celtic goddess Brigit’, although quite what an imaginary deity’s spirit and legacy may be remains unclear. Meanwhile, in Kildare where the saint is supposed to have founded her community, the local authority is running Brigid 1500, a week-long festival intended to ‘celebrate and commemorate the extraordinary St Brigid, – A Woman, A Life, A Legacy- and the enduring impact of her life as we reach the 1500th anniversary of her passing.’





In the centre of Kildare town, St Brigid’s Cathedral is said to stand on the site where the aforementioned saint established a church and community of like-minded women in the year 480. This foundation survived long after Brigid’s death, becoming a double community of women and men, over which an Abbess ruled (as indeed, she held jurisdiction over the local bishop). Successive generations of nuns kept alive the memory of their founder by tending a fire which was never allowed to go out. In his Topographia Hibernia of c.1188, Gerald of Wales (otherwise known as Giraldus Cambrensis) wrote, ‘At Kildare, in Leinster, celebrated for the glorious Brigit, many miracles have been wrought worthy of memory. Among these, the first that occurs is the fire of St. Brigit, which is reported never to go out. Not that it cannot be extinguished, but the nuns and holy women tend and feed it, adding fuel, with such watchful and diligent care, that from the time of the Virgin, it has continued burning through a long course of years ; and although such heaps of wood have been consumed during this long period, there has been no accumulation of ashes.’ Gerald also noted that the fire was surrounded by a circular hedge made of stakes and brushwood, into which no man could enter. If any male was so foolish as to do so, ‘he will not escape the divine vengeance.’ Despite these supposedly secure defences, in 1220 Henry de Loundres, Archbishop of Dublin ordered the extinction of the fire. Meanwhile, the church first established by Brigid underwent similar traumas: it was pillaged and burnt by the Vikings in 835, then rebuilt before being burnt again on a couple of occasions in the mid-11th century and then plundered in 1136.





As seen today, St Brigid’s Cathedral was begun at some date in the 1220s by Ralph of Bristol, Bishop of Kildare. Like its predecessors, this suffered assault several times and, following the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the mid-16th century, fell into serious disrepair. The roof was taken off in 1588 and the building was judged ruinous in 1615. The diocese of Kildare was always among the poorest in the country, and this helps to explain why the cathedral was so often left in poor condition. In 1681 William Moreton embarked on restoring the building with what resources were available; he would write to the Duke of Ormond that he had ‘endeavoured the most since he came to Kildare to repair the insupportable ruins of it.’ Repairs to the choir, nave and chancel cost £500, of which £200 came from private subscriptions, with Moreton providing £112. Work was completed in 1686. Nevertheless, further dilapidation occurred and finally, in the mid-1870s and over the next 20 years, St Brigid’s Cathedral underwent a thorough restoration overseen by George Edmund Street, with an initial budget of £5,000 although the eventual cost was more than double this figure. This is the building seen today, rather severe with exposed stone walls and just a few ancient monuments, or parts of these, which had survived the various attacks on the fabric. Outside is a round tower, the second tallest in Ireland, which has similarly undergone repairs and improvements over the centuries. Brigid: Christian saint or pagan goddess? Take your choice…