Famously Abandoned II


Following last Wednesday’s post on the sad state of Woodlawn, County Galway (see Famously Abandoned « The Irish Aesthete) here are a couple of very early photographs of the place. Dating from the mid-1840s, they show the house prior to its transformation into the building which can be seen (albeit in very poor condition) today. This took place in 1859, seven years after the second baron had married, as his second spouse, the wealthy Elizabeth Oliver Gascoigne of Castle Oliver, County Limerick. It can be seen that the house’s facade formerly had full-height bows on either side of a recessed entrance with Venetian window on the first floor, and that there were single-storey wings on either side ending in what look to have been pavilions with three great arched windows beneath pediments. All of this would soon afterwards be encased in an elaborate – and no doubt expensive – Italianate aspect.

The Gamekeeper’s Return

Thro’ the long morning have I toil’d
O’er heath and lonely wood,
And cross the dark untrodden glen
The fearful game pursu’d:
But deeper now the gathering clouds
Collect along the sky,
And faint and weary warn my steps
Their homeward course to hie.

And now the driving mist withdraws
Her grey and vapoury veil:
I mark again the sacred tower
I pass’d in yonder dale.
A little while, and I shall gain
Yon hill’s laborious height;
And then perhaps my humble cot
Will chear my grateful sight.





Ah now I see the smoke ascend
From forth the glimmering thatch;
Now my heart beats at every step,
And now I lift the latch;
Now starting from my blazing hearth
My little children bound,
And loud with shrill and clamorous joy
Their happy sire surround.

How sweet when Night first wraps the world
Beneath her sable vest,
To sit beside the crackling fire
With weary limbs at rest;
And think on all the labours past,
That Morn’s bright hours employ’d,
While all, that toil and danger seem’d,
Is now at home enjoy’d.





The wild and fearful distant scene,
Lone covert, whistling storm,
Seem now in Memory’s mellowing eye
To wear a softer form;
And while my wand’rings I describe,
As froths the nut-brown ale,
My dame and little list’ning tribe
With wonder hear the tale.

Then soft enchanting slumbers calm,
My heavy eyelids close,
And on my humble bed I sink
To most profound repose;
Save, that by fits, the scenes of day,
Come glancing on my sight,
And, touch’d by Fancy’s magic wand,
Seem visions of delight.

The Gamekeeper’s Return at Night by Sir Samuel Egerton Brydges (1821).
Photographs of the former Gamekeeper’s Lodge at Woodlawn, County Galway. 

Doing the Locomotion


The railway station at Woodlawn, County Galway. TheTudor-esque buildings here are believed to date from 1851, their design is attributed to George Willoughby Hemans, not an architect but a Welsh-born engineer employed by the Midland Great Western Railway. The station stood on land provided by the second Lord Ashtown, through whose Woodlawn estate it passed. This likely explains why there is a stop in what has always been a relatively underpopulated part of the country. Trains still halt here on occasion and a small waiting room is in use but most of these handsome, sturdy limestone buildings are unused and have sadly fallen into disrepair.



More on Woodlawn in due course.