Tag Archives: Summer House

Disrobed



Tucked away in an eastern corner of a garden behind the former bishop’s palace in Kilkenny is this charming little pavilion. Its construction is attributed to the writer and antiquarian Richard Pococke who lived in the main house 1756-65 while serving as Bishop of Ossory (although some sources attribute it to Charles Este, who held the same office 1735-40, and then went on to commission a new episcopal palace in Waterford). Inside the single room pavilion is a chimneypiece flanked by arched plaster recesses, the walls on either side panelled in wood. A door on the south side formerly opened into a Doric colonnade which in turn led to a door in the north transept of St Canice’s Cathedral, thereby allowing the prelate to move from one building to the other without stepping outdoors: in the early 19th century, architectural purists decried the colonnade as being out of keeping with the medieval site and it was removed. As for the pavilion, it has long been called the Robing Room, suggesting this was where the bishop donned the appropriate garments before taking a service in the cathedral. More likely it was simply intended to be a summerhouse and indeed this was how the building was described by a later Bishop of Ossory, William Newcome who in 17775 wrote that it was ‘of a very good size with a fireplace, fit for drinking tea or a glass of wine.’ The Robing Room underwent restoration some 20 years ago when the palace, vacated by the Church of Ireland, was being prepared for its current occupant, the Irish Heritage Council.  


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Summer in Winter


Seen from the bridge across Upper Lough Erne to Inisherk Island, this is the hexagonal summer house at Crom Castle, County Fermanagh. According to an 1830s Ordnance Survey map, it stands on the site of an older schoolhouse, but that in turn may have been adapted from an 18th century building, the two-storey hexagonal building designed by Sir Edward Lovett Pearce ‘For Mr Creighton to be built on a Sunk Island in Lough Hern’, of which an undated drawing survives. In its present incarnation, the summer house dates from the second half of the 19th century.

Offering Tonic Views


The thatched summer house in the grounds of Florence Court, County Fermanagh. This is at least the third such structure on the site, the earliest version being known from a photograph depicting the third Earl of Enniskillen and his family inside the original 19th century ‘Heather House.’ In a memoir published in 1972 the late Nancy, Countess of Enniskillen observed how, ‘On the highest level of The Pleasure Grounds, there used to stand a little “summer house.” Here on a warm sunny day ideally without wind and wrinkled only by the wings of birds and insects, on such a day at Florence Court, the Cole family would adjourn to drink their tea and enjoy the tonic view of the valley and the mountain.’ Inevitably the vulnerable materials used in its construction meant this building did not survive and in 1993 the National Trust commissioned a replica from two craftsmen: it lasted until August 2014 when completely destroyed by teenage arsonists. Since then another replacement has been erected here.


More on Florence Court in due course.