Tag Archives: Johnstown

Salvaged



Dating from c.1796-1801, St Mary’s Church in Johnstown, County Kilkenny is typical of the form such buildings took at the period, aided by support from the Board of First Fruits. Of three bays with windows on the south side but none on the north and the entrance through a tower at the west end, it conforms to type except for two features, one being the aforementioned door and the other being the window at the east end. Both of these are late-medieval and believed to have come from another church a few miles away at Fertagh. This had been the site of an Augustinian priory and, after the Reformation, served as a parish church for the Church of Ireland. When that building’s roof collapsed in 1780, it was abandoned and then the present church built in Johnstown. Below are a couple of early memorials found on the east wall, one of them to John Hely of nearby Foulkscourt, who had been responsible for developing the village in the 1770s.



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When All Those Rooms and Passages Are Gone



A handsome ashlar limestone triumphal arch marking the former entrance into the Johnstown estate, County Tipperary. This structure presumably dates from the last quarter of the 18th century and was erected at the same time as the main house, commissioned for Peter Holmes, M.P. for Banagher, County Offaly in the Irish House of Commons. In typical fashion of the time, he called the place after himself: Peterfield. Members of his family continued to live there until 1865 when the estate was bought for more than £13,000 by William Headech. He had arrived in Ireland around a quarter-century earlier as secretary to the Imperial Slate Quarry Company at Portroe. Headech later bought the company and made a fortune from slate production, allowing him to buy Peterfield, which he renamed Johnstown.



Headech’s descendants continued to live at Johnstown until the 1930s when the property was acquired by the Land Commission. The house, of three storeys over basement and believed to have been designed by architect William Leeson, was unroofed in 1941 and then demolished a couple of decades later, so that today just fragments of this fine property remain.
Below are two older images of the Johnstown, the first taken from a late 18th century engraving by Jonathan Fisher made when the property was still called Peterfield, the second, a photograph by the late Paddy Rossmore, taken in the 1960s when the building, although roofless, was still standing.
Lines from Yeats’ Coole Park come to mind:
‘Here, traveller, scholar, poet take your stand,
When all those rooms and passages are gone,
When nettles wave upon a shapeless mound
And saplings root among the broken stone…’

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Johnstown, County Kildare derives its name from a now-ruined church dedicated to St John and believed to have been built in late-Medieval period by the Knights Hospitallers (now otherwise known as the Knights of Malta). The centre of the building is now dominated by a large High Cross commemorating Richard Bourke, sixth Earl of Mayo who was assassinated in 1872 while serving as Viceroy of India; his home was at nearby Palmerstown. An earlier owner of this property was the Flatesbury family, and set into the north wall of the church is a grave slab featuring their coat of arms and those of the Wogans, below an eight-armed cross. This carries the date 1289 although the slab is thought to date from the 15th century.


For the Chop

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Further instances of the near-ubiquitous urban dereliction now found in Ireland: houses close to the central square of Johnstown, County Kilkenny, a town laid out in the 18th century by the Hely family who lived nearby in Foulkscourt House. The latter has since been lost, although some of the associated buildings survive. However, it looks like these little properties will not last much longer.

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Small but Perfectly Formed

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A cottage in Johnstown, County Kildare. This is one in a series of two terraces that runs along a side of the village’s main street, once a busy thoroughfare since it lay on the main route running from Dublin to Cork and Limerick; since the advent of the nearby N7 it has become much quieter. These single-storey, three bay cottages date from c.1880 and were therefore presumably built by Dermot Bourke, seventh Earl of Mayo who was then the local landlord and lived close by in Palmerstown. Their distinguishing feature are the gothic double-windows to either side of the open porch. Thankfully the owners have resisted the urge to modernise the buildings and thereby destroy the charm of their uniformity.