Rather Arch

Aug14

The gothick drawing room at Grey Abbey, County Down. Dating from the early 1760s the main part of the house was built in the classical manner by William Montgomery. Following his death in September 1781 while leading British troops at the Battle of Groton Heights during the American War of Independence, the estate was inherited by his brother Hugh. In 1793 the latter married the Hon Emilia Ward, daughter of the first Viscount Bangor who lived on the other side of Strangford Lough at Castle Ward. This house is famous for its dual architecture and decoration: owing to the differing tastes of Lord and Lady bangor one half is in the classical style, the other in gothick. It would appear the Hon Emilia preferred her mother’s predilection and thus caused the redecoration of Grey Abbey’s drawing room.

Relishing the Society of Friends

Aug12

‘Our eyes were charmed with the sweetest bottom where, through lofty trees, we beheld a variety of pleasant dwellings. Through a road that looked like a fine terrace walk, we turn to this lovely vale, where Nature assisted by Art, gave us the utmost contentment. It is a colony of Quakers, called by the name of Ballitore.’ Thus wrote an unknown visitor to this part of County Kildare in 1748. Ballitore has long been an area where members of the Religious Society of Friends settled. The sect was established in the late 1640s by the English dissenter George Fox but its tenets quickly found a response in Ireland where the first recorded Friends meeting for worship took place in 1654 at a house in Lurgan, County Armagh belonging to William Edmundson.
Before converting to Quakerism and adopting its pacifist principles, he had been a member of Oliver Cromwell’s Parliamentarian Army, as was his almost exact contemporary Colonel John Fennell who like Edmundson moved from England to Ireland. In 1675 Edmundson’s diary records travelling from Wales and attending a meeting at Fennell’s Irish house: ‘The wind coming fair we put to sea again and landed at Cork where Friends were glad of my coming. When I had visited Friends’ meetings in that quarter, I went to John Fennell’s in company with several Friends, where we had a refreshing, heavenly meeting. Here divers Friends from Mountmellick and thereabouts came to meet me, in whose company I returned home, where I met with my wife and children in the same love of God that had made us willing to part one with another for a season for the Lord’s service and truth’s sake.’ By this time Edmundson was settled in Rosenallis, County Laois (not far from another Quaker settlement, the aforementioned Mountmellick) while Fennell had acquired land at Kilcommon on the outskirts of Cahir, County Tipperary.

Despite being in (quietly reflective) opposition to the established church and its practitioners accordingly incurring various penalties, Quakerism soon established a presence in Ireland. Already by 1660, the sect had some thirty meeting houses around the country and their numbers continued to grow through the remainder of the 17th and early years of the 18th centuries. Their minority status meant Quakers often gathered together in settlements such as that at Ballitore. The land on which the village stands was purchased in 1685 by two Quakers John Barcroft and Abel Strettel, supposedly after they had discovered the spot while resting their horse en route from Dublin to Cork. The first planned Quaker settlement in these islands, it quickly grew and some forty years later saw the foundation of a boarding school by the Yorkshire-born Abraham Shackleton. Although run on Quaker principles, it was open to children of all denominations and its most celebrated ex-pupil was the orator, statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke.

Not far from Ballitore stands Burtown, originally built for the Quaker Robert Power in 1710 and marked on early maps as Power’s Grove. The house’s original appearance was somewhat different to what can be seen today: of three bays but only one room deep, it seems to have had wings of which just a faint outline remains. In the second half of the 18th century, the property was extended to the rear, notably by the addition of two large bow-fronted rooms one above the other and linked by a splendid staircase accessed via a broad elliptical arch. It is surmised that the ground floor room was intended for dining: it has a charming arched alcove filled with plasterwork representing tendrils of grapevine and flanked by Corinthian-capped pilasters on which sit classical vases. The space seems made for a sideboard which would certainly support the dining room theory. Meanwhile the equally fine room directly above, although now serving as a bedroom, would originally have been a piano nobile drawing room.
Burtown’s plasterwork, probably the work of a travelling stuccadore offering what were then fashionable flourishes, is one of the house’s greatest delights. There is more of it found in the entrance hall, rather Wyatt’esque in style compared with that seen elsewhere in the house. The ceiling is mostly covered in a sequence of swags while the walls have small oval medallions and, a delightfully quirky detail, classical busts on brackets in each of the corners. More work took place to the house in the early 19th century when the front was given its fan-lighted door and the roof those deep eaves so typical of the period.

Traditionally Quakers were renowned for their plain living with all forms of ornamentation eschewed. Burtown’s decoration suggests its owners were perhaps not the strictest adherents of their faith; tellingly William James Fennell who inherited the property in 1890 and was a keen horseman, was ‘asked to leave the Quaker persuasion because of his fondness for driving a carriage with uniform flunkies on the back.’ William James was a direct descendant of Colonel John Fennell and came to live at Burtown through his mother, Jemima Wakefield. The Wakefields had married into the Haughton family who in turn had married members of the Power family, Burtown thus passing several times through the female line. Jemima Wakefield had not expected to come into the property until her brother died after being hit by a stray cricket ball; who knew the game could be so dangerous?
William James Fennell was the great-grandfather of Burtown’s present owner, photographer James Fennell who lives in the house with his wife Joanna and three children. The latest generation has added its own mark while preserving the property’s character and cherishing its history. In particular Burtown’s gardens, which are now open to the public, continue to be expanded and developed. Across three hundred years and four different but inter-related families Burtown has acquired a patina only possible provided there is sufficient time and care. As had that visitor to the area in 1748, today it is still possible to be charmed here when ‘through lofty trees, we beheld a variety of pleasant dwellings.’ Few such houses as Burtown remain in Ireland and it is therefore fortunate that the current owners bring such enthusiasm and commitment to the task of preserving the place into the future.

For more information about Burtown and its gardens, see: http://www.burtownhouse.ie

It’s All in the Detail

Aug10

One of four large urns placed in niches on the first-floor inner landing at Castle Coole, County Fermanagh; two of them (including that shown here) double as stoves, Irish winters being pretty chilly. Although this does not feature, certain architectural details of Castle Coole and a number of other houses in this country are discussed in a recent essay by Calder Loth, Senior Architectural Historian for the Virginia Department of Historic Resources and Member of the Institute of Classical Classical Architecture & Art‘s Advisory Council. Calder was one of the group of ICAA members who toured Ireland last May and who I had the pleasure of meeting on several occasions. You can find his very informative and beautifully-illustrated piece at: http://blog.classicist.org/?p=6620

Knock Knock

Aug5

The popularity of the gothic style for domestic buildings in early 19th century Ireland owed something to a desire among landed families to suggest longer residence here than was often actually the case. The Levinges, for example, only came to this country in the aftermath of the Williamite Wars when the Derbyshire-born lawyer William Levinge was appointed Irish Solicitor-General and Speaker of the House of Commons; he later became Attorney-General and Lord Chief Justice. As a reward for his services, in 1704 he received a baronetcy and duly became Sir Richard Levinge of High Park in the County of Westmeath.
Today the property is known as Knockdrin, built close to a late mediaeval castle once belonging to the Tuite family; it was their lands that Sir Richard acquired and on which he built a new house. However by the early 19th century this had fallen into disrepair and so the sixth baronet, also called Sir Richard Levinge, embarked on a rebuilding programme that would give him a splendid gothic castle and all the links with an ancient past this implied.

It is not known for certain who was responsible for the design of Knockdrin Castle. Sir Richard Morrison produced a design for the entrance front but while elements of this were incorporated into the eventual building it cannot be attributed to him. Instead Knockdrin is assigned to James Shiel, believed to have trained in the office of Francis Johnston an architect who created some of the finest gothic revival castles in Ireland, not least Charleville, County Offaly. Like Charleville, Knockdrin’s late-mediaeval trappings are lightly worn: this is essentially a Georgian country house in fancy dress. The entrance front presents a degree of asymmetry, primarily thanks to a long castellated curtain wall leading to a two-storey gatehouse providing access to the service courtyard. But the battlemented main block, of rubble limestone with dressed window surrounds and featuring a wide fanlit doorway flanked by square towers, has only superficial quirks, such as a slim turret on the south corner. And notice how standard rectangular sash windows are used on the upper storeys.

A similarly familiar sense of order can be found inside where once more the usual forms are followed, albeit decked out in gothic flummery. As in so many Irish houses the rear of the entrance hall has a screen but in this instance it is composed of three pointed arches supported on slender cluster-shafted columns. Doors to either side open onto the library and dining room (the latter now regrettably divided in two). But another door provides access to Knockdrin’s most striking feature: a top-lit staircase with the stairs (like the doors throughout the building) made of carved oak. The elaborate first floor is decorated with a gallery of fluted shafts and sequence of ogee-headed niches around the walls. Abundant light provided by a central glazed dome helps to create a fluid, elegant space possessing none of the heaviness customarily associated with the Gothic Revival movement. On the other hand, despite high ceilings emblazoned with plasterwork of Tudor roses and the like, the enfilade of ground floor reception rooms – ballroom, drawing room, library – is less distinguished, although a line of full-length, south-facing windows means that like the staircase hall they are exceptionally bright.

Knockdrin remained in the possession of the Levinge family until the last century. Within weeks of the outbreak of the First World War the tenth baronet, another Sir Richard Levinge, was dead after being hit in the neck by a bullet as he walked along a trench at Ypres. His widow and only son moved to England and the house was let to various tenants; at one point it served as a school and in the early 1940s was occupied by members of the Irish army who inevitably inflicted a certain amount of damage on the building. Finally in 1943, the greater part of the estate having already been broken up by the Land Commission, the castle and surrounding land was sold by the Levinges, thereby ending a link of almost 250 years. The present owners bought the place in 1961 and have cared for it ever since. One should not try to make exaggerated claims for Knockdrin. It is certainly not a house of the first importance, but can be considered noteworthy as an example of the transition from classicism to gothic, when the latter was still a style and not yet an ideology and the former’s principles survive beneath a veneer of ornamentation. Below is a portrait of Sir Richard, the sixth baronet who commissioned the house. The picture was painted by the minor English artist Thomas Shew in 1828 and includes a view of Knockdrin, presumably imaginary since Shew never came to Ireland.

Roman Evenings

Jul31

A princely villa in the former Papal States? No, this is a view taken below the terrace of Ballynatray, County Waterford. Situated on the banks of the Blackwater river, the house dates from the closing years of the 18th century but was subsequently refaced in stucco, hence its radiant exterior thanks to a wash of colour responding to evening sunlight.
*In case you have not already done so, today is the last chance to nominate me for an Irish Blog Award (see Number One, July 25th).

That’s Coole

Jul27

Two details of the plasterwork in the dining room at Castle Coole, County Fermanagh. Constructed between 1789 and 1796 for Armar Lowry-Corry, first Earl of Belmore the house is considered to be architect James Wyatt’s Neoclassical masterpiece. For the decoration he used his usual team of London craftsmen including stuccadore James Rose who sent five of his regular plasterers to do the job. John Martin Robinson in his recently published monograph on Wyatt quotes a contemporary report that the workers were unhappy in Fermanagh, finding it ‘an unhealthy place, that most of them are ill and there is not lodging for them but in damp rooms.’ None of this discontent is reflected in the graceful plasterwork, with each room given a distinctive frieze pattern.

P.S. Apologies to anyone who was trying to nominate me for the Irish Blog Awards (see Number One from last Thursday, July 25th) and had problems because I gave the wrong email address: this has now been corrected , so please forgive my incompetence and try again. And thanks to all who have already nominated me.

Tunnel Vision

Jul10

Built 1883-89 Newtownbarry, County Wexford is one of the last country houses designed by Belfast architect Sir Charles Lanyon, assisted by his pupil W.H. Lynn and his son John. Somewhat austere in style, the building’s character constrasts with that of the lush surrounding grounds. These are probably of earlier date and include a two-acre sunken garden which terminates at one end in this densely foliated rustic tunnel.

Shanid a Boo

Jul8

For some seven hundred years the romantically-titled Knights of Glin lived in the same area of County Limerick overlooking the Shannon estuary. The family traced its descent from Maurice fitz Gerald, son of Gerald fitzWalter of Windsor and his wife the Welsh Princess Nesta. In 1169 Maurice participated with Richard de Clare, Earl of Pembroke (otherwise known as Strongbow) in the Norman invasion of Ireland and thereafter remained in the country. His grandson, John fitz Thomas, a forebear of the mighty Earls of Desmond, greatly expanded the family territory, especially in the regions of Kerry and West Cork before being killed with his legitimate son Maurice at the Battle of Callann in 1261. It is now widely accepted that John fitz Thomas had a number of illegitimate offspring, one of whom was John fitz John, founder of the Glin line. (Apologies for this multiplicity of names beginning with fitz…) His was one of three lines of Knights who appear around this time – the Knights of Glin (or Black Knight) and of Kerry (or Green Knight), and the White Knight – the two other titles originating with his siblings or their descendants. We cannot be absolutely certain such was the case: much of this story rests on the chronicle of Nesta’s grandson, the historian known as Giraldus Cambrensis who to quote a later historian was the author of absurd eulogiums lauding the Geraldines.
As for the title Knight of Glin, it has been proposed this was bestowed on John fitz John by his kinsman John fitz Thomas who in 1316 was ennobled as first Earl of Kildare (and was accordingly ancestor of the Dukes of Leinster). Thereafter the Knighthood of Glin was inherited by prescriptive right. It was not, however, recognised in the British peerage: an attempt in 1814 to have all three Knights’ titles officially recognised was unsuccessful and there is no mention of the Knights of Glin in the likes of Debretts.  

Until the late 17th century, successive Knights of Glin were perforce warriors: it was always a struggle to hold onto their lands the extent of which rose and fell as one generation followed another. Granted Shanid in West Limerick in 1197, the family adopted the motto ‘Shanid A Boo’ which means ‘Shanid for ever’ and this was always their war cry. However, once peace settled on Ireland in the 18th century, so too did the Knights not least by seeking to create a permanent residence to replace various castles which had suffered damage during the upheavals of the previous 200 years. The oldest part of the present Glin Castle was a long thatched house built in the 17th century; this was probably turned into a T after an eastern extension was added in the area now occupied by the secondary staircase, smoking room and dining room.
It was Colonel John Bateman FitzGerald, 23rd Knight of Glin who in the 1780s decided it was time to build something more splendid for himself and his descendants, and therefore commissioned the large three-storey block which on the ground floor contains the entrance and staircase halls as well as drawing room and library. In 1789 Col. John married a beautiful English heiress, Margaretta Maria Fraunceis and no doubt it was her money which helped to pay for the building.

Colonel John’s portrait can still be seen over the entrance hall chimneypiece at Glin. Depicting him in the uniform of the Royal Glin Artillery, it was commissioned from Joseph Wilson in 1782 when the subject was attending the Dungannon Convention of Volunteers, a reflection of the uncertainty of the era when the threat of French invasion inspired many members of the gentry and nobility to raise their own militias. Below the picture is the presentation sword made by Read of Dublin in 1800 and presented to Col. John for keeping the peace in West Limerick during the 1798 Rebellion.
Elsewhere in the same hall hang other portraits of earlier Knights, not least Richard FitzGerald, the 22nd Knight painted by Herman van der Mijn. A famous duellist, he is here seen receiving a challenge to a duel proffered by his servant. The mid-18th century Irish baroque mahogany table beneath carries the arms of the FitzMaurice family of Kerry and has always stood in the house. This is a rare survival from Col. John’s era since after his death in 1803 the family’s indebtedness meant almost everything had to be sold out of the house except old portraits and some silver.

We do not know who designed the present house or the names of the craftsmen responsible for its decoration, not least that in the entrance hall which contains highly elaborate plasterwork. During the closing decades of the 18th century there were a number of skilled architects working in this part of the country, including the Italian-born Davis Ducart who built Limerick city’s splendid Custom House (now the Hunt Museum). He or someone influenced by him may have had a hand in the design of Glin. The exterior is fairly plain (and its toy battlements were only added in the 1820s) which makes the interior richness all the more appealing.
This is especially true of the entrance hall, where the neo-classical plasterwork is of a very high standard and may have been produced by either Michael Stapleton or Charles Thorpe, both stuccadores based in Dublin. The cornice blends antique motifs such as sphinxes and Roman foliage with more indigenous forms, not least the shamrock! The central part of the ceiling is given over to a trompe l’oeil scalloped dome containing a series of Etruscan figurative medallions connected by be-ribboned garlands. Although Desmond FitzGerald, 29th and last Knight of Glin who died in September 2011 (see Knight and Day, October 1st last) carried out extensive restoration work elsewhere in the house he never wanted this ceiling cleaned, believing its patina reflected the character of his forbears. In this way Glin Castle maintains a sense of history and a visible link with the family’s ancient past.

I shall be publishing a small tribute to the Knight of Glin this autumn; more on the subject closer to the time.

You Ain’t Nothin’ But a Hound Dog

Jul3

A couple of details of the plasterwork on the main staircase at Russborough, County Wicklow. The walls here are smothered with flamboyant but finely finished decoration – thought to be the work of Irish stuccodores – celebrating the delights of the hunt, hence the profusion of hounds’ heads together with trophies of the chase. Russborough will be hosting a Hints of History festival this coming weekend. For more information, see http://www.russboroughhouse.ie/images/downloads/hintsofhistory.pdf

A Room with a View

Jun29

In this instance the view is on the ceiling and best viewed while lying on the floor. In the drawing room at Beaulieu, County Louth, the compartmental plasterwork ceiling climaxes in an oval central panel filled with painted canvas. Attributed to 18th century Dutch artist Willem van der Hagen, the trompe-l’œil scene extends upwards through a classical arcade and into the open air whence Icarus can be seen taking a tumble after flying too close to the sun. Hovering putti seem remarkably indifferent to the poor fellow’s fate.

The Irish Aesthete

This is not an Oxymoron

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