Tag Archives: Oak Park

A Grand Approach II



The façade of Oak Park, County Carlow, designed by William Vitruvius Morrison in the early 1830s for Colonel Henry Bruen. The building incorporates an earlier house and was originally a grand villa, of two storeys and five bays, one on either side of the giant tetrastyle portico. The latter, featuring four Ionic columns with wreaths in the frieze above, is almost identical to that at Ballyfin, County Laois and can also be seen at Barons Court, County Tyrone and Mount Stewart, County Down, on all of which buildings the Morrisons, father and son, worked. Oak Park was greatly extended in the 1870s and also extensively restored after a fire in 1902, but some of the original interior decoration survives, notably in the entrance hall and the former library. The last of the Bruen family to live in the house died in 1954; some time earlier his wife had run away with an impoverished Montenegran prince, Milo Petrovic-Njegos.  After various legal disputes and changes of ownership had occurred, Oak Park and several hundred acres was acquired by the Irish State; today it serves as the headquarters of Teagasc, the Agriculture and Food Development Authority.


A Grand Approach I



A triumphal arch that formerly announced entrance to the Oak Park estate in County Carlow. Constructed of crisp granite, it dates from the late 1830s when designed by William Vitruvius Morrison for owner Colonel Henry Bruen. The external side has flanking screen walls and a carriage turn, while there are paired Ionic columns on either side of the arch. The park side is simpler with Doric pilasters. It seems the architect and his father, Sir Richard Morrison, had previously proposed a similar design to both Barons Court, County Tyrone and Castle Coole, County Fermanagh, so this is a case of third time lucky. There are rooms on either side of the arch which seemingly was occupied up to 1970. The gates which once stood inside the arch are long-since gone as this is now a public road.