Tag Archives: Irish Country House

A Complex History


The name of Newcastle, County Longford would seem to indicate that the present house, or an earlier one on or near this site, replaced a more ancient building. The earliest information on the place seems to be from 1680 when the lands of its demesne, formerly part of the O’Farrell territory, are recorded as being purchased by Robert Choppyne (or Choppin) who built here ‘a fayre house and a wooden bridge.’ By this date, he had already become High Sheriff of Longford three years earlier and would go on to represent County Longford in the Irish House of Commons in 1692 before dying a year or two later. The Newcastle property was left to his nephew Anthony Sheppard who continued to acquire more land in the area, but not so fortunate when it came to continuing his line: he and his wife had four sons who died young and one who survived to adulthood, only to predecease his father. And while the estate was left to Sheppard’s daughter Mary, who had married Arthur St. Leger, Viscount Doneraille, she also died without heirs not long after.  So Newcastle passed to Anthony Sheppard’s widowed sister, Frances Harman (her late husband, Sir Wentworth Harman, had died in 1714 when ‘coming in a dark night from Chapel-Izod, his coach overturning, tumbled down a precipice, and he dies in consequence of the wounds and bruises he received’). For many years, the estate was managed by her younger son, the Rev Cutts Harman, who appeared here some months ago with regard to Castlecor (see A Worthy Recipient « The Irish Aesthete). Once again, the direct line failed and so, on the death of the Rev Harman, Castlecor passed to his nephew, Laurence Harman Parsons, on condition that the latter adopt his uncle’s surname: accordingly, he became Laurence Parsons Harman. He would also, in due course, be created Baron Oxmantown, then Viscount Oxmantown and finally first Earl of Rosse in 1806. His only surviving child was a daughter, Frances, who married Robert King, first Viscount Lorton, of Rockingham, County Roscommon. Their younger son, Laurence Harman King-Harman inherited both the Newcastle and Rockingham estates; on his death in 1875 the two were divided, with Newcastle passing to a younger son, Colonel Wentworth King-Harman. The  estate reached its largest extent during this period, running to some 38,616 acres and described in 1900 as ‘a master-piece of smooth and intricate organisation, with walled gardens and glasshouses, its dairy, its laundry, its carpenters, masons and handymen of all estate crafts, the home farm, the gamekeepers and retrievers kennels, its saw-mill and paint shop and deer park for the provision of venison. The place is self-supporting to a much greater degree than most country houses in England.’





The core of Newcastle could date from the late 17th century when Robert Choppyne built his ‘fayre house’ here. However, there is no visible evidence of this building, at least on the exterior where the main facade suggests a classic house from the early-to-mid 18th century of seven bays and two storeys (with perhaps the third added later). Around 1785, soon after Laurence Harman Parsons had inherited the estate, enlargements were made with the construction of slightly projecting wings, single-storey to the east and two-storey to the west. Further alterations took place in the mid-19th century when Newcastle passed into the possession of Laurence Harman King-Harman; the Dutch-style gable over the centre bay probably dates from this period, along with the entrance porch containing a family coat of arms. Internally, the building has undergone many alterations also, so that it is now not easy to detect what is from any particular period. However, there are striking – and now highly coloured – neo-classical Adamesque ceilings in the former drawing and dining rooms, the former featuring a large oval set in a rectangular frame, in which corner panels depict musical instruments. The dining room ceiling is centred on a diamond pattern decorated with urns and scrolling foliage. There is also some extant neo-classical plasterwork on the main staircase.  





While the Newcastle estate may have run to more than 38,000 acres in the 1880s, by the time Colonel Wentworth King-Harman died in 1919, various land acts meant that it had shrunk to less than 1,000 acres. His son, Major Alexander King-Harman, sold more land to the Department of Lands in 1934, leaving just the demesne thereafter. Following the major’s death in 1949, Newcastle was inherited by a cousin, Captain Robert Douglas King-Harman, who two years later sold the house and surrounding land for £11,000 to a religious order, the Missionary Sisters of the Holy Rosary. The house was used as a retirement home for nuns and also as a boarding school, but the Missionary Sisters remained for less than two decades, leaving in 1968, after which Newcastle changed hands on a number of occasions and was run as an hotel. Although it is not open to the public at the moment, the property’s current owner, a Hong Kong businessman, applied to the local authority last August for planning permission to create a holiday park on the surrounding land, incorporating 99 mobile homes, together with ‘an area for touring pitches and casual camping spaces’, a reception hut, a playground and separate grass play area. The adjacent woodland accommodates a Centre Parcs holiday resort which also intends to expand its facilities.





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Second Time Around

Dowth Hall, County Meath was first discussed here in December 2012, when the house and surrounding land were offered for sale. Now, more than a decade later, the place has come back on the market. Below is the original text, along with fresh photographs of Dowth Hall taken in recent weeks. 



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. 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 viscountcy. 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 all 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 to 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 smaller 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, again died 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 again changed hands. 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.



Dowth Hall, along with 420 acres, was sold in January for €5 million. Now with 552 acres, the house is back on the market for €10 million. 

An Excellent Example





Dromdihy – otherwise Dromdiah – County Cork has featured here a couple of times, the first occasion almost eight years ago, when the building was in a very poor condition and looked as though it were destined to go the way of so many other abandoned Irish country houses: into oblivion (see pictures above). However, a couple of years later, the property was bought by a couple determined to bring it back to life and when the Irish Aesthete revisited in 2018 (see pictures immediately below) work had begun on clearing the site and parts of Dromdihy hitherto submerged in vegetation had re-emerged. The interior also, much of it previously inaccessible, was likewise visible and even possible to explore (albeit only at basement level, the upper floors having long-since been lost). Further progress was made, but then the pandemic intervened, putting something of a halt to proceedings. Now, however, work on the site has resumed and considerable changes occurred, as can be seen by the latest number of photographs (see bottom series). All being well, within another year or two, Dromdihy will habitable and once more be a family home. 





As was noted here back in 2015, Dromdihy dates from the early 1830s when constructed for Roger Green Davis, agent for the absentee landlord Sir Arthur de Capell-Brooke. A description of the house thirty years after being built noted that it ‘consists of a centre and two wings, ornamented with Doric columns and with a portico at the eastern end, by the hall is entered, and off which are hot, cold, vapour and shower baths. The first floor comprises five sitting-rooms; on the second floor are four best bedrooms, with dressing-rooms and water-closet…’ Evidently Green Davis spared no expense on the property: it is said that the stone was cut by craftsmen brought from Italy for the purpose. But if the design was admirable, its execution left something to be desired: seemingly from the start Dromdihy suffered from damp, the roof leaking and the interior manifesting both dry and wet rot. Green Davis’ son John, a barrister, sold the place to William Stopford Hunt, an Assistant Land Commissioner and well-known cricketer. He retained ownership of the estate until 1923, at which time the house and surrounding ninety acres were purchased by the O’Mahony family. They ran a manufacturing and timber business on the estate but by 1944 the house was deemed uninhabitable and its roof removed. It went into decline thereafter, one that until recently looked irreversible. But, as has already been mentioned and as these pictures demonstrate, provided sufficient determination and imagination exist, no building is beyond salvation. Dromdihy deserves to be held up as an example of what can – and should – be done in this country.




A Pocket Castle



The former gate lodge to Flesk Castle, County Kerry, both now in ruinous condition. Of two storeys over basement, the brick-and rubble rendered lodge takes the form of an octagonal tower with castellated roofline and Tudoresque hood mouldings over the door and windows, the former having quatrefoil-decorated spandrels. It would appear there was only one room per floor, and with no signs of an internal staircase, J.A.K Dean (in his gazeteer of Munster gate lodges) suggests access between different levels must have been via an external staircase. Flesk Castle was designed by and built for owner John Coltsman in the second decade of the 19th century, so presumably he was also responsible for this building.


Living Art



In North Tipperary, particularly around the area bordering on County Offaly, one frequently comes across variants of the same late 18th century house: tall (usually three storeys over basement), narrow (often only one room deep), grey and plain, its facade only relieved by a limestone pedimented doorcase reached via a flight of steps. Milford conforms to this type and, as is frequently the case, its external austerity – another regularly encountered characteristic, and one not confined to this part of the Irish countryside – gives way to an interior full of delights. 





Milford was built by a branch of the Smith family, the origins of which are believed to have been in Durham, north-east England. Initially they settled in Ballingarry, presumably occupying the castle there but then built a house at Lismacrory north of the village. That building no longer stands; as early as 1841, the Ordnance Survey Name Books description says ‘it was a very commodious house of the modern style of architecture with extensive offices attached to it, but it is now falling into ruins, the last occupier was Rev. Mr. Smyth of Ballingarry.’ The Reverend in this instance was John Smith, a Church of Ireland clergyman who died in 1813. His brother Ralph appears to have been responsible for constructing Milford, some five miles to the west of Lismacrory, perhaps around the time of his marriage in 1772 to Elizabeth Stoney. Two further generations of the family, both with heads called Ralph, occupied the property but in the aftermath of the Great Famine, like so many others they seem to have found themselves in an impecunious position. In July 1852 over 800 acres of the estate of Ralph Smith Smith was advertised for sale and five years later, the remaining estate of his son Richard Flood Smith, a minor, which included Milford and its demesne, was on the market. The Smiths subsequently emigrated to New Zealand and Milford was bought by a local farming family called Murphy, apparently keen advocates for both Roman Catholic causes and women’s education. The property changed hands several times during the last century and much of the land around it was divided by the Land Commission so that today the house stands on 17 acres. It then stood empty for some 15 years (the only residents being long-eared bats) before Milford was purchased by the present owners in 2020. 





The site on which Milford stands was originally called Lisheenboy and owned by the once-dominant O’Carroll family. While there is evidence of human habitation here going back to the 11th century, the earliest surviving remains of construction can be found to the south of the present building where a sunken rectangular walled structure suggests that a fortified house or bawn once stood here. And within those remains are a number of bee boles which have been dated to 1650. At that date the lands would still have been in the hands of the O’Carrolls, but in the aftermath of the Williamite Wars, they lost their remaining property. However, at some prior date a farmhouse was constructed at Lisheenboy and it was directly in front of this building that Milford was erected. This addition is of five bays, with a single bay breakfront. The entrance doorcase is flanked by narrow sidelights and these are replicated on the two floors above, widely spaced on either side of a central arched window to produce a charmingly provincial variant on the Serlian window. The internal plan is typical of such houses, with the entrance hall having doors to left and right for access to drawing and dining rooms, while directly behind is the toplit staircase. In the hall a frieze below the cornice contains what seems to be a random selection of motifs including agricultural implements, classical figures and wreaths of leafs. The friezes in the dining and drawing room are more typical, the former incorporating trails of vine leafs and grapes, the latter regular repeats of lyres and profiles linked by more sinuous lines of foliage. The drawing room’s current Chinese-inspired wall decoration was introduced by an earlier occupant. As already mentioned, three years ago, Milford was bought by artists Deej Fabyc and MJ Newell, and they are gradually restoring the house as funds and time permit. They run a number of events here and also offer workspaces for up to eight artists in residence through their organisation, Live Art Ireland. 


For more information on Live Art Ireland, please see: live art Ireland – Ealaín Bheo Centre for Art Research and Development at Milford House (live-art.ie)

A Worthy Recipient



As some readers may be aware, last week the latest recipient of the Historic Houses of Ireland – O’Flynn Group Heritage Prize was announced. The prize is an initiative first devised by the Irish Aesthete in 2020 to acknowledge the importance of our privately-owned heritage properties and to recognise the invaluable work by their owners. For this reason, the prize is hosted by Historic Houses of Ireland, a charity established in 2008 to promote the immediate and long-term future of the country’s privately owned historic properties. All HHI members are owners of such buildings and they understand better than anyone the sector’s particular problems, especially over recent years. Worth €5,000 and adjudicated by a small group of assessors, the prize is generously sponsored by the O’Flynn Group, which has shown itself keenly aware of the importance of providing a viable future for historic buildings, as can be seen in the company’s own redevelopment of the early 19th century former barracks site in Ballincollig, County Cork. The third recipient of the prize is Castlecor, County Longford. 





At first glance, Castlecor appears to be a typical small Georgian residence, its otherwise plain three-bay, two storey facade relieved by a central pedimented tripartite doorcase. But venture to either side, or even inside the building, and its design proves to be much more complicated. So too does its history, not least because nobody can be sure when work first began on the site. In the 18th century, the land on which Castlecor stands belonged to the Harman (later King Harman) family, the first of whom was Nicholas Harman who settled in County Carlow in the first quarter of the 17th century. His great-grandson, Wentworth Harman married as his second wife Frances Sheppard, heiress to a large estate in County Longford, with their main residence at Newcastle, just a few miles to the east of Castlecor. This explains how the Harmans came to be based in the Midlands, but does not help to settle on a date when Castlecor was built. The oldest part of the building is often thought to have been commissioned by one of Wentworth and Frances Sheppard’s sons, the Rev. Cutts Harman, a Church of Ireland clergyman who in 1759 was appointed Dean of Waterford and six years later inherited the main Newcastle estate following his childless brother’s death. As we shall see, it is open to question whether the Rev Harman was responsible for the work here, but in any case, following his own death with a direct heir, the Longford property passed to a nephew, Laurence Harman, later Lord Oxmantown and eventually first Earl of Rosse. Around 1820 the second Earl of Rosse sold Castlecor to one Captain Thomas Hussey who is believed to have added an extension to one side of the existing property so as to provide more rooms. However, in 1855 the house and 268 acres of land were offered for sale by the Encumbered Estates Court, and after being briefly owned by David Dunlop Urquhart of Fair Hill, Lanarkshire, Scotland, the property was acquired by Thomas Bond, member of another Longford family. In 1913 his granddaughter Emily Bond and her husband Captain Charles James Clerk employed Dublin architect Adam Millar to enlarge the building further, and it was he who designed the present facade. During the War of Independence, the Clerks moved to England and sold first the contents and then Castlecor itself, the house being bought by a local family. In the mid-1940s they in turn sold it on to an American women’s religious order who used it as a Rosary Convent for Novitiates. Sold again in 1973, Castlecor stood empty for four years until it became a nursing home, serving this function some 30 years before being left vacant again. Finally, in 2009 the present owners bought the place and, as funds become available, have gradually been restoring Castlecor. 





While the 19th and 20th century additions to Castlecor are of a high standard – not least Millar’s first-floor octagonal gallery that provides the entrance hall with ample light – they rather pall by comparison the building in its original form. Rightly described by Casey and Rowan in 1993 as ‘perhaps the most unusual building of the C18 anywhere in Ireland,’, the property was not intended to be a permanent residence but instead a hunting lodge, of two storeys with the lower floor containing kitchens and service rooms for the single Great Room above. And what a great room it proves to be: a vast octagonal space, 42 feet across with round-headed windows on every second side and single rooms (measuring 20 by 14 feet) opening off the other four.  To heat such a substantial area, the centre of the room is taken up by a four-sided fireplace, each of them directly facing one of the windows, the light from which is reflected in mirrors set above the chimneypieces. The structure is framed in each corner by a towering Corinthian column, these supporting a richly ornamented entablature, each having at its centre a mask of Apollo. A single octagonal column then climbs to the coved ceiling. The rest of the walls are covered in 19th century neo-Egyptian stencil work, thought to have been inspired by illustrations in Owen Jones’s Decoration, published in 1856. As mentioned, quite when this extraordinary building was constructed – and by whom – remains open to conjecture, as does its source of inspiration since it is quite unlike anything else in the country. Albeit on a much smaller scale, the building shares some characteristics with Stupinigi, the hunting palace outside Turin designed by Juvarra in the 1720s for the Duke of Savoy, and Maurice Craig also noted similarities with the hunting lodge at Clemenswerth in Lower Saxony, designed a decade later by Johann Conrad Schlaun for Prince Clemens August, Elector-Archbishop of Cologne. Closer to home, as Casey and Rowan note, in 1739 the English architect and pattern-book publisher William Halfpenny, then resident in Ireland, was commissioned to produce designs for a new Bishop’s Palace and Cathedral in Waterford: although none of these was used, some of the plans for the latter building are not unlike what can be seen at Castlecor. Perhaps it was Halfpenny who came up with the idea of the house’s unusual form, but if so it was constructed much earlier than  1765 when the Rev. Cutts Harman inherited the Newcastle estate.  We may never know, but at least we can be confident that thanks to the enterprise of Castlecor’s present owners, the future of this wonderful building is secure, making them deserved recipients of the Historic Houses of Ireland – O’Flynn Group Heritage Prize.


Text here…Historic Houses of Ireland – O’Flynn Group Heritage Prize.

 

Back to Front



The somewhat unsatisfactory entrance front of Mount Juliet, County Kilkenny is explained by the fact that until the start of the last century, this was actually the rear of the house: the original facade, with main door approached via double steps above a raised basement, is on the other side where the land drops steeply down to the river Nore. Mount Juliet dates from the third quarter of the 18th century when built for Somerset Hamilton Butler, first Earl of Carrick. His descendants continued to own the estate until 1914 when it was sold by the sixth earl to Major Dermot McCalmont who had inherited a fortune from his second cousin, Hugh McCalmont; it was then that the house underwent considerable modifications. The interior, much of its decoration commissioned by the second Earl of Carrick in the 1780s, contains plasterwork in the style of Michael Stapleton, including these medallions with classical figures. The McCalmont family sold the property in 1988 and it has since served as an hotel.


In the Summer Time


Summerhill, County Meath has featured here before (see My Name is Ozymandias « The Irish Aesthete)  and is well-known as one of Ireland’s great lost country houses. But its namesake in County Mayo is probably less familiar to readers, although its striking remains are hard to miss when travelling through that part of the island. This second Summerhill was built and occupied by a branch of the Palmer family, which has also featured here (see Lackin’ a Roof « The Irish Aesthete). According to Burke’s Landed Gentry of 1846, ‘This family, long settled in Co Mayo, derives from a common ancestor with the Palmers of Palmerstown and Rush House, and is presumed to have been originally from Kent.’ By the second half of the 18th century, the Palmers owned a number of estates in north Mayo, Summerhill being one of them. 





Summerhill may have been built by Thomas Palmer, who died in 1757, or perhaps by his son, also called Thomas (as were successive generations of this branch of the family), meaning it was likely constructed around the mid-18th century. In 1798 the property was let to one John Bourke who, in August, following the landing nearby of a French force under General Humbert, organised to have the house secured. This proved a wise precaution as a number of other such properties in the area, including Castlereagh, seat of Arthur Knox, and Castle Lacken, owned by Sir John Palmer, were attacked and pillaged by a mob. Bourke’s home found itself under siege by the same band until a French officer based in Killala, Col Armand Charost, despatched a number of his troops, as was later reported, ‘to Summerhill to appease the mob, and another party of men to Castlereagh to save what remained of the provisions and liquors. The appearance of the emissaries ended the siege at Mr. Bourke’s house; but the Castlereagh party, which consisted entirely of natives, could think of no better expedient for preserving the spirits from the thirsty bandits that coveted them than by concealing as much as they could in their own stomachs. The consequence was that they returned to Killala uproariously drunk. As for Castle Lacken, it was completely gutted, and the occupant and his large family were driven out to seek shelter as best they could find it.’ Within a few years of these events, the Palmers were back in residence at Summerhill, and recorded as living there by Samuel Lewis in 1837 and also by Burke in his 1846 guide to landed gentry. However, in the second half of the 19th century, the property was sold to the McCormack family, who remained there until c.1929 when what remained of the estate, running to some 296 acres, was broken up by the Land Commission and the house subsequently abandoned. 





In his 1978 Guide to Irish Country Houses, Mark Bence-Jones noted certain stylistic similarities between Summerhill and Summergrove, County Laois (see A Gem « The Irish Aesthete). Both houses are of five bays and two storeys over raised basement, with the central pedimented breakfront single bay featuring a doorcase reached by a flight of steps and flanked by sidelights below a first-floor Venetian window. Summerhill’s facade has an oculus within the pediment, whereas Summergrove has a Diocletian window, but certainly the two buildings share many features. However, whereas the latter still stands and is in good condition, the latter is now a roofless shell: photographs from just a few decades ago show the majority of slates still in place, but the house is now open to the elements. When Bence-Jones visited, the interiors were still reasonably intact: he included a photograph of ceiling stuccowork, describing it as ‘in a simple and somewhat primitive rococo, complete with the odd rather amateurishly-moulded  bird.’ All now gone, as can be seen, and inside the house nothing left but bits of timber and plaster.  

En Garde



The facade of Castlegarde, County Limerick, the core of which is a five-storey tower house said to have been in continuous occupation since first constructed by the O’Brien family. After being confiscated by the crown and granted to Sir George Bourchier at the end of the 16th century, the building passed through various hands until 1820 when acquired by Waller O’Grady, a son of Standish O’Grady, future first Viscount Guillamore. Waller O’Grady commissioned the architect siblings James and George Pain to restore and enlarge the building, to which they added a castellated wing as well as restoring the bawn wall and adding a new gatehouse entrance to the site. The last of these has a most curious feature: inside and above the entrance on plinths are  three stone figures, much worn but said to represent Bacchus, Pallas Athene and Aphrodite.  Clearly these sculptures are of an earlier period, but what might have been their origin or how they came to be here looks to be unknown.


Sic Transit Gloria Mundi




The scant remains of Lixnaw Court, County Kerry. From the mid-13th to the late 18th century, this was a seat of the FitzMaurices, Barons Kerry. In 1723 the 21st Baron, Thomas FitzMaurice, was created first Earl of Kerry: 30 years earlier, he had married Anne Petty, only daughter of Sir William Petty. The earl was a proud and arrogant man: according to his grandson, the first Earl of Shelburne, he ‘did not want the manners of the country nor the habits of his family to make him a tyrant. He was so by nature. He was the most severe character which can be imagined, obstinate and inflexible…His children did not love him, but dreaded him; his servants the same.’ This provincial plutocrat transformed Lixnaw where, wrote his younger son John FitzMaurice, he spent ‘great sums building and furnishing a very large mansion-house’ along with making many other improvements in the gardens and demesne. However, all his work had started to fall into decay even before the end of the century thanks to the disinterest and extravagance of the third Earl of Kerry. Following the latter’s death in 1818, what remained of the estate was inherited by a cousin, Henry Petty-FitzMaurice, third Marquess of Lansdowne, whose Kerry base was in the south of the county. In consequence, the once splendid house and gardens at Lixnaw were left to moulder, as can be seen in Cornelius Varley’s painting of 1842. Today, a few outer walls survive and, in the surrounding countryside, evidence of the first earl’s great landscaping enterprises, not least a long canal which would once have been a feature of the formal Baroque garden.