www.hiltonpark.ie

Tourist Accommodation Facility – since it is listed under Revenue Section 482 as a Tourist Accommodation Facility, Hilton Park House does not have to open to the public. However, it has some open house days for tours.

Open for accommodation: April- Sept
House and garden tours available in 2024: Jan 8-12, 15-19, Feb 1-2, 5-9, 27-29, May 1-3, 5-10, 12-17, 19-24, 26-31, June 2, 7-9, Aug 17-25, weekdays, 9am-1pm, Sunday, 1pm-5pm
Fee: adult €10, OAP/student €8, child €5

In his The Buildings of Ireland: South Ulster: Armagh, Cavan and Monaghan, Kevin V. Mulligan tells us that Hilton Park house in a Late Victorian structure that conceals a more ancient house at its core. [1] The Madden family who built the current incarnation still occupy the estate.

Before the Maddens, the area was held by the MacMahons of Roosky, County Monaghan. They sold the property in 1624 to Sir William Temple, Provost of Trinity College Dublin. [see 1] The Trinity website tells us that he was elected Provost in 1609. He descended from an old Warwickshire family, and had previously held a fellowship at King’s College, Cambridge. Eminent as a scholar and logician, he was also experienced in public affairs, having been secretary to Sir Philip Sidney (who died in his arms at Arnheim) and then to the second Earl of Essex. He was the first layman to hold the position of Provost of Trinity. He defined the duties of various College Officers, including the Bursar and the Deans, on the Cambridge model. Temple confined participation in the government of College to the seven most senior fellows. He was responsible for introducing the distinction between Senior and Junior Fellows, which is still a significant feature of Trinity’s constitution. Temple was the first Provost to die in office, on 15th January 1627, at the age of 72. He was an ancestor of Viscount Palmerston, and of the Temples of Temple Bar in Dublin.

The property next passed to Robert Forth, and he and his descendants expanded the estate. I think this must be Robert Forth (c.1600-c.1663), who was a supporter of the Duke of Ormonde. He had served as MP for Kilbeggan in the Irish Parliament but retired to his property in Cavan and Monaghan in the Cromwellian period. After the Restoration of Charles II, he served as MP for County Meath.

A survey made for James Forth in 1713 indicated that a large house had been built in Kilshanlis, as the area was then called, in the preceding decades. It is shown as a seven bay two storey gable ended block with red brick stacks. The National Inventory tells us that the house was built originally in around 1650.

The Maddens were established at Hilton by Reverend Dr. Samuel Madden, who acquired the property in 1734 for one of his sons. [2] Samuel Madden had inherited an estate at Manor Waterhouse, Co. Fermanagh, while still an undergraduate. Manor Waterhouse, which no longer stands, came into the Madden family from Reverend Samuel Madden’s grandmother, Elizabeth Waterhouse, who married John Madden of Maddenstown, County Kildare. Her brother had died in 1641 and members of her family may have been killed in the uprising of 1641. She was the co-heiress of her father Charles.

Around the same time that he purchased what is now Hilton Park, Samuel Madden bought an estate at Spring Grove (or Rosslea Manor) County Monaghan (the house is also no longer in existence) for his youngest son, Edward, who married Charlotte Creighton, daughter of Abraham, 1st Baron Erne of Crom Castle, County Fermanagh.

Reverend Samuel Madden’s grandparents John and Elizabeth had a daughter Anne who married Josias Stewart, 4th Baron Castle Stuart of County Tyrone. Their son John (1649-1703), Reverend Samuel Madden’s father, lived at Manor Waterhouse and was a doctor. The Hilton Park website tells us that John was three times President of the Irish College of Physicians and clearly a most cultured man as he had a very valuable collection of early Irish and English historical manuscripts. He married Mary, daughter of Samuel Molyneux (d. 1693), sister of William (1656–98), the scientist and political writer, and of Thomas, 1st Baronet Molyneux, of Castle Dillon, Co. Armagh. After she died, he married Frances, daughter of Nicholas Bolton, of Brazeel, County Dublin.

John Madden and Mary (née Molyneux) had two sons who both joined the clergy. The younger son, John, was Vicar in St. Anne’s in Dublin and Dean of Kilmore in 1735. Samuel was the elder son.

After Samuel’s ordination he obtained a living in the nearby parish of Galloon (which included Newtownbutler, the nearest place to the family estate), to which was added (in 1727) the adjacent parish of Drumully, which was in the gift of the Madden family. [3]

We came across Reverend Samuel Madden before, under his nickname, “Premium Madden,” when I wrote about Riverstown in County Cork and its Lafranchini brothers’ stuccowork. The owner of Riverstown, Reverend Jemmet Browne (1703-1782), married Alice Waterhouse, daughter of Reverend Thomas Waterhouse, so the Brownes and the Maddens were probably related by marriages.

Jemmett Browne’s interest in fine stucco work, as we saw in Riverstown, was probably influenced by fellow clerics Samuel Madden, Bishop George Berkeley and Bishop Robert Clayton. Samuel Madden recommended, in his Reflections and Resolutions Proper to the Gentlemen of Ireland, that stucco be substituted for wainscot. [4] Bishop Clayton owned what is now called Iveagh House on St. Stephen’s Green in Dublin (see my entry, https://irishhistorichouses.com/2022/09/23/open-house-culture-night-and-heritage-week-dublin-visits/ ). This observation about stucco makes Madden look like an overly refine aesthete but in fact he was a principled, practical and philanthropic man.

Samuel’s nickname “Premium” is explained in the Dictionary of Irish Biography:

“In 1730 he submitted to Trinity College Dublin a plan for the encouragement of learning, which involved the establishment of premiums or grants of no less that £230, which he proposed to raise by subscription and taxing undergraduates. Madden contributed generously himself, to the tune of £600, and his scheme, with some modifications, was adopted by the university.” [5]

The Dictionary of Irish Biography tells us that Madden is best remembered for his Reflections and resolutions proper for the gentlemen of Ireland, as to their conduct for the service of their country (1738). In his book he condemned absenteeism by landlords. He encouraged the founding of enterprises to manufacture hemp and flax and advocated setting up schools and professorships of agriculture. He made the sensible suggestion that raw materials should not be exported to England, but rather that ‘value should be added at home.’

Many of Madden’s ideas came to fruition through the activities of the Dublin Society (now the Royal Dublin Society or RDS), which he and his brother John helped to establish in 1731. The Society promoted a spirit of improvement among the gentry.

By the way I hope I am related to another founding member of the earlier version, the Dublin Philosophical Society. Mark Baggot, who died in 1718 and is buried in St. Audoen’s in Dublin, was the only Catholic in the society, which was founded in 1683 by, amongst others, Samuel Madden’s uncles William and Thomas Molyneux, and was intended to be the equivalent of the Royal Society in London. I have not found a connection yet with Mark Baggot but perhaps my family comes from a junior line I haven’t yet traced. The Hilton Park website tells us that it was through Madden’s friendship with the Earl of Chesterfield that the Dublin Society received its Royal Charter.

The Hilton Park website tells us that Samuel Madden was a collector of works of art and left Trinity twenty of his best paintings to hang in the Provost’s House. As we will learn, this was fortuitous as the house of his descendants, Hilton Park, had a fire in which many of Madden’s possessions were destroyed.

As well as his book about Gentlemen, Premium Madden published, in 1729, Themistocles, the lover of his country, a verse tragedy in five acts, which played with considerable success at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in London.

In 1733 he anonymously produced his Memoirs of the twentieth century, a satire, in which the fictitious author, a Jacobite, was promised that his descendants would flourish under the Hanoverians, and that one would become prime minister at the end of the twentieth century. Originally intended for publication in six volumes, only one of which ever appeared, it was dedicated to Frederick, Prince of Wales, estranged son of George II, to whom Madden may have served as tutor and with whom he carried on a correspondence. A thousand copies were produced but nine hundred were soon afterwards delivered to the author and probably destroyed. Its content may have been a little too Jacobite or too critical of the church.

Coincidentally, an ancestor of Samuel Madden, Thomas Madden (c. 1575-1640) moved from England to Ireland and settled in Baggotrath Castle in Dublin, which occupied the ground now covered by Upper Baggot Street. The area of Baggotrath in Dublin was probably the home of the first Baggots who came to Ireland, including Robert Bagod or Bagot, who was Chief Justice in Ireland and a “justice itinerant” in 1274 (he had to travel down to Limerick and established a seat there, Baggotstown Castle). Turtle Bunbury tells us that Baggotrath Castle was once amongst the most splendid addresses in Dublin, and that other occupants of the castle included Sir Anthony St. Leger, sometime Master of the Rolls, and Sir John King, ancestor of the Earls of Kingston of King House in County Roscommon, another Section 482 property (see my entry). Thomas Madden was Comptroller of the Household to Thomas Wentworth, subsequently Earl of Strafford, when Wentworth served as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (1632 – 1639). The castle at Baggotrath was destroyed in 1649 by Parliamentarian troops.

“Premium” Madden married Jane Magill (d. 1765) of Kirkstown, Co. Armagh, with whom he had five sons and five daughters. He died 31 December 1765 at Manor Waterhouse and was succeeded by his second son, also Samuel Molyneux Madden.

In their book published in 2008 called Great Irish Houses, Desmond Guinness and Desmond Fitzgerald tell us that when Samuel Madden purchased the estate that later was called Hilton Park: “At that time the estate extended to some 4,000 acres and was purchased on a mortgage of about 80% from Trinity College, an unusual transaction at the time. An earlier house was almost certainly there at the time of purchase, but possibly not on the current site. All historical notes say the current house was built in 1734, but the purists argue it was more likely 1780.” [6]

The house there at the time of purchase would have been the one built for the Forth family. Samuel Madden gave the property of Hilton Park, which he called Maddentown, to his third son, John (1713-1791), in 1752, upon his marriage to Anne, daughter of Robert Cope MP, of Loughgall, County Armagh. John Madden was High Sheriff of County Monaghan.

The Hilton Park website tells us that as both of the elder sons of Samuel Madden failed to bring children to majority, the Manor Waterhouse estate was inherited by John Madden of Hilton, but it appears to have been largely uninhabited after Premium Madden died in 1765. The old Manor Waterhouse castle had been sacked in the Jacobite wars and the new one may not have been well-built.

Robert O’Byrne tells us that John planted the oak wood on the estate which is called Cope’s Wood. [7]

Around 1780 the name of Maddenstown or Maddenton was changed to Hilltown or Hilton, and records in the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) tell us that the name is “from no other reason that is now remembered than for the sake of euphony, and fairly applicable from its situation commanding a beautiful and undulating prospect.”

John died in 1791, and the property passed to his son Lt.-Col. Samuel Madden (1756-1814). Colonel Madden laid out much of the park and planted many of the older trees.

Colonel Samuel Madden ran a “gambling school” at Hilton Park around 1780. (see [6]). Due to losses in gambling, in around 1796 he had to sell his wife Katherine Ryder’s inheritance, half of the Snarestone Estate in Leicestershire. Coincidentally, Katherine’s sister Anne inherited the other half of the Snarestone estate in 1796 and she married another inhabitant of County Monaghan, Charles Powell Leslie (1769-1831) of Castle Leslie.

Originally, the house was of two storeys with twelve bays over a basement. A major fire occurred in 1803; in Great Irish Houses, Desmond Guinness and Desmond Fitzgerald tell us that family papers record that while the family was away a servant put down a bucket of glowing coals from a cleaned out grate and the fire broke out. The house is said to have burned for two days before it was extinguished and the main and upper floors were completely gutted. Many works of art and furniture perished, as did most of Reverend Samuel Madden’s archive. The likelihood is that the middle section of the 1770 house was not rebuilt and the staff quarters where the servants lived escaped the worst of the fire.

Archiseek describes the rebuilt house and attributes the 1804 rebuilding to Francis Johnston; this could be referring to a suggestion by Jeremy Williams in A Companion Guide to Architecture in Ireland, 1837-1921 (Dublin, 1994). However, the rebuilding is now attributed to James Jones of Dundalk. Furthermore, the rebuilding only seems to have taken place from 1815-1830. Progress on the build was slow due to lack of funds, and initially parts were thatched over just to protect the walls [see 1].

On his death in 1814, Col. Samuel Madden left debts of £52,000. Robert O’Byrne tells us that the estate itself was only preserved thanks to the prudence of the Colonel’s father-in-law, the Reverend Charles Dudley Ryder, who kept the greater part of his own fortune to pass on to his grandson. The Madden family lived over the stables from the time of the fire until around 1830, when the house was partly rebuilt. (see [6]) The property was inherited by Col. Samuel Madden’s son Col. John Madden (1782-1844). He married, in 1835, Sydney Anne, daughter of Admiral William Wolseley, of Rostrevor.

Robert O’Byrne tells us:

“Rebuilding may have begun around 1815 when Ryder died, or not until the early 1830s, with the focus being on the rooms at the south side of the house which looked down to the lake: the dining room and a bedroom immediately above retain their decoration from this period. The finished house, the design of which is assigned to James Jones of Dundalk and the appearance of which can still be seen in old family photographs, had a long eastern facade of two storeys over basement and eleven bays. The centre five of these projected slightly, a flight of stone steps leading to the rather meanly proportioned entrance door. All this work and more (a new nursery wing to the north) was undertaken by Colonel John Madden of the Monaghan Militia who was able to benefit from his wise maternal grandfather’s inheritance and was as industrious as some of his forebears: he became a noted breeder of Shorthorn cattle and hackney horses, and built the Ride, a colonnade for exercising horses on wet days under his study window. A keen sailor and member of the Royal Yacht Squadron, he won a race around Ireland and sailed to the Mediterranean, bringing back from Naples a chimney piece now found in the drawing room. He also built a villa at Sandycove, Dublin and it was there he died in 1844. ” (see [7])

“The Ride” now makes a beautiful room for weddings.

The next generation carried out more renovations to the house. John and Sydney Anne’s son John (1836-1902) inherited when he was just six years old. He became a ward of court until he came of age at 21 years old, and to celebrate he built a bell-tower in around 1857 which he designed himself. Two years before this, at the age of just 19 he displayed his enterprising nature by sinking a well 135 feet into the ground, from which the family still get their water.

The National Inventory describes the bell-tower: It is a square bell-tower of four stages, with a narrow crenellated belfry at the top, and more crenellations on the parapet of the tower. The walls are of rubble stone, with dressed quoins and string courses between stages. It has round headed openings at each stage on each side with stone surrounds and an oculus on the south elevation of the third stage, which may have contained a clock, which has a thin stone hood-moulding. There is a round carriage arch with dressed stone surround, and a metal door on the north elevation – this was open so we did not see the hand-shaped cast-iron knockers.

The Hilton Park website describes John and his brothers:

“At twenty-four he travelled for months on horseback through the eastern states of America up to the Great Lakes; this only a year before the Civil War. Back home he joined Isaac Butt’s Home Rule Party, but failed to get elected in the three elections he fought. Disappointed, and particularly so when he saw Parnell take over the Home Rulers, he reverted to Toryism. The rest of his life he devoted to travel and improving – first the park, then the gardens and pleasure grounds and finally the house, and all the time writing. He kept a diary from 1868 onwards and published his magnum opus, The Wilderness and its Tenants in three volumes in 1897; this meticulous work is an inventory of the natural world prior to the industrial revolution. Having read widely of the early travellers and hunters, he found during his own travels in the latter half of the 19th Century that much had been altered since the start of the century: the great herds of buffalo had been reduced, and the Sahara had moved; he wanted to set a yardstick by which future depredations could be assessed. The public were not sufficiently concerned to buy his book and his warnings went unheeded.” He had great foresight, and we could learn lessons from him today.

The website continues: “Of particular interest to the family is his journal, which records details of the estates in Monaghan, Fermanagh and Leitrim during and before his time. Another record of immense intrinsic value is the photographic record of his younger brother, Charles Dudley Ryder, who obtained a camera in 1858 when only 19 and his albums, up until his death in 1874 at Cork Barracks of typhoid fever, show the park, house and gardens as they were before being improved. Charles and his brother, William Wolseley, both served in the 8th King’s Liverpool Regiment and both died within 5 weeks of each other, William in Brighton. William was very involved in the loyal orders and built the Protestant Hall in Scotshouse. There is some mystery about him because, from his brother John’s diary, it is clear that he was convicted of causing grievous bodily harm and he served two years in Strangeways Gaol, Manchester. One can only surmise that some loyalist fracas led to his conviction, but it should also be remembered that a letter of his instructing Protestants not to interfere with Fenian processions had much to do with defusing local tensions.“

The diary and photo albums sound fascinating!

John Madden married Caroline Clements, daughter of Rev. Hon. Francis Nathanial Clements (son of Nathanial, 2nd Earl of Leitrim). John also inherited Manor Waterhouse. He was High Sheriff of County Fermanagh, 1859, and County Monaghan, 1863. [8]. However, he was “relieved of his duties” due to letters he had written to the Secretary of State which expressed opinions considered to be outrageous. (see [7]) The website clarifies this and they don’t seem to be outrageous to me! The website tells us: “On being appointed Deputy Lieutenant for Leitrim, he refused the honour saying that he was no longer prepared to serve an administration that had presided over a complete breakdown in law and order. He was summarily stripped of all his honours and appointments ‘for this studied insult to the Queen’. He at least had the satisfaction that all the magistrates in Ireland signed a petition in favour of his reinstatement.“

He carried out more improvements to the house in the 1870s. He hired William Hague, a young local architect, who had previously mostly worked on Catholic churches (Robert O’Byrne tells us that he designed or altered between forty and fifty Catholic churches across the country). [9] At first John had consulted Charles Lanyon, but in his Buildings of Ireland, Kevin V. Mulligan suggests that John’s radical plans may have been better suited to a young and ambitious architect than to a more staid figure like Lanyon. Furthermore, John had trained as an engineer in London and Paris and it suited him to be involved directly in the work. [see 1]

The ground around the basement was dug out and the basement made into the ground floor of the house. Mark Bence-Jones tells us in his Guide to Irish Country Houses (1988) that a similar treatment with the basement being dug out was done in Montalto, County Down. [10] Madden claimed that it was his idea to dig out the basement. It took three years, as it involved cutting into hard clay and rebuilding most of the front wall of the central block, and the entire structure was underpinned.

William Hague created a house in the style of an Italian palazzo.

The exterior was faced in cut Dungannon sandstone, and the porte-cochére was built. The window pediments were added and the old parapet removed and a deep parapet decorated by what Mulligan calls a “volley of blind discs” across the front.

The renovations made the house more secure against unwanted visitors. Bar were installed on all ground floor windows and all three entrances to the farmyard had large iron gates installed. Heavy steel shutters were added to the bedroom windows and the front door was reinforced with four inches of steel.

The Historic Houses of Ireland adds:

“There was a good deal of agrarian unrest in 19th century Ireland so the present owner’s great-great-grandfather looked to his defences… These new arrangements gave the main rooms an uninterrupted field of fire and the house could probably have withstood a small siege.” [11]

The porte-cochére has a triangular pediment with the coat of arms of the Madden family and ionic columns, and is two storeys high, topped with a balustrade and four stone urns. The columns in the centre are in pairs. The columns are mirrored by four ionic pilasters on the front of the house. The principal reception rooms were given decorative ceilings at this time. There are triangular pediments over the windows of the first storey.

The cast iron entrance gates were added in 1868. They have fleur de lys finials, and are flanked by square-plan panelled cast-iron piers on plinths, surmounted by crown and falcon ornaments. There are matching cast-iron pedestrian gates to each side, flanked by matching outer piers with mace-head ornaments. The National Inventory tells us that the falcon traditionally represents leadership and wisdom. 

Since the basement became the ground floor, the entrance hall and rooms next to it have a lower ceiling than one would expect from such an impressive house. The entrance hall has lovely encaustic tiles, and a barrel vaulted ceiling. Encaustic means “to heat or burn in,” from an ancient Greek word, and encaustic materials are produced through a process which involves heating to seal in the dyes and clays. Traditional encaustic tiles are made using clay and powdered glazes, and are fired in a coal or wood-fired kiln. Mulligan tells us that Hague suggested an elaborate painted heraldic ceiling with gilding, but this was not executed. [see 1]

The pantry and housekeeper’s rooms in the former basement were converted into a study and smoking room. A new oak staircase was added between the ground and first floor, with a gallery, carved by a local carpenter, John Armstrong from Parkanaur Manor, near Dungannon, County Tyrone. This meets the original Georgian staircase on the first floor. The first floor became a “piano nobile” containing the main formal rooms, as it had originally been the ground floor. Great Irish Houses tells us that a ballroom and boudoir were introduced.

The stair hall is lit by two large round-headed windows filled with stained glass, with the family crest and motto, “He who conquers himself conquers all.” The walls of the lower portion of the hall were panelled with oak in 1935.

The interior of Hilton Park is described in Great Irish Houses (IMAGE Publications, 2008):

“The cosy upstairs sitting room, where guests generally meet before dinner, was originally part of a much larger drawing room accessed by an archway. The passage has been closed since the 1920s, thus creating two drawing rooms with separate entrances…The great great grandfather of the present owner brought the fireplace back from Naples in the hold of his yacht. The central chandelier is English and dates from the 1880s.“

“The other half of the drawing room, termed the long drawing room, now serves as a passage corridor to the boudoir. The family possessions perished in the fire and this room has been hung with recent family portraits rather than the original silk hangings.

Back in the drawing room, fans on the architraves would suggest that this room was not altered in the later renovations …while the dramatic fireplace showing Achilles carrying the corpse of Hector around the walls of Troy came from Lenihans in Dublin.

The room was last decorated in 1905 and the faded duck egg colouring of the wallpaper is typical of this period...The remarkable stained glass windows in the hall were supplied from Munich, via Meyer and Company.“

The ceilings are compartmented and impressive with heavy decorated cornice.

Mulligan tells us that only the central core was renovated in Hague’s time, and the north and south ends were left as they were: the dining room, stairs and nursery rooms. The dining room has shallow vaulting, Mulligan describes, “springing from foliate corbels in the corners with flat ribs inset with a cable moulding.” [see 1].

The principal drawing room was formed out of the previous billiard room and entrance hall at the centre of the old house. It has a flat panelled ceiling with enriched borders. It has parquetry borders by C.H. Davies of London and heavy oak cornices over the windows.

The boudoir was given a new ceiling, a bold geometric design formed with heavy foliate bands, and the adjoining bedrooms have more refine late eighteenth century cornices, Mulligan tells us in his Buildings of Ireland. Most of the redecoration of the interiors was by James Gibson & Son of Dublin.

p. 198 Great Irish Houses (IMAGE Publications, 2008): “The dining room, termed a “Nelson room” and almost certainly rebuilt in William IV’s time [1830-1837, so was unaltered in the later 1870 renovations], is arguably the best room in the house with its Nelson rope-twist plasterwork decoration… The original 1830s pelmet and curtains remain, as does the blue wallpaper in the bedroom directly above.“

Robert O’Byrne tells us that the rope motif was said to be in honour of Horatio Nelson. Colonel John Madden’s father-in-law Admiral William Wolseley was friendly with Nelson and had sailed with him.

The parterre and the pleasure grounds, and the new avenue approach were laid out by Scots gardener and landscape architect Ninian Niven in 1870, curator of the Botanic Gardens, who also worked on the Iveagh Gardens in Dublin (see my entry on Office of Public Works properties).

John and Caroline’s son John Clements (Jack) Waterhouse Madden (1870-1935) succeeded to the property, and was High Sheriff of County Monaghan in 1906, and County Fermanagh in 1909. In 1908 he married Agnes Mary, third daughter of Sir William Henry Tate Bt, of Highfield, Woolton, Lancashire. We came across another son, Gerald Hugh Charles Madden, who served in the Irish Guards and died in active service, mentioned on a memorial in the garden.

Hilton Park’s website description of Jack gives a good picture of the difficulty that landowners had at the time of the transition of Ireland from being part of the United Kingdom to independence. Jack had held the usual posts that went with his status, such as Justice of the Peace, High Sheriff and Deputy Lieutenant. However, when the border was drawn up to separate Northern Ireland from the Republic, Hilton Park was on the southern side of the border. Having fully participated in administrative positions, and being a Standing Committee Member of the Ulster Unionist Council and a Deputy Grand Master of Ireland in the Orange Society, Jack felt betrayed by Northern Unionists. He would have preferred Hilton Park to be on the northern side of the border.

He wrote to the Boundary Commission but the border was not changed. After Independence he went on to serve as a Monaghan County Councillor. Despite this, he had trouble with the new government officials, as illustrated by a telling story told on the website:

“On one occasion he crossed swords with General Eoin O’Duffy of Blueshirt fame. Jack had been to Belfast by train on GNR business and on his return to Clones station found his car gone. He was told it had been commandeered in the name of the State by General O’Duffy and was thus forced to walk the 4 miles home in pouring rain.

He wrote complaining at this high handed treatment and he asked the General to tell him if his government wished people such as he to leave the country. The reply was noncommital, non apologetic and cited national business.“

A son of Jack and Agnes Mary, another John William Ryder Madden (1913-1996), rose to the position of Major in the Irish Guards, and married Nita Mellor. The website tells us that serving in the military, he landed in Normandy in 1944 but was wounded some three weeks later at La Marvindiere, losing a leg, which forced his retirement with the rank of Major. He brought his family to live at Hilton in 1945 and took a refresher course in agriculture at Cirencester. Encouraged by a neighbour, Jack Gibson, he established a Hereford herd, which became famous all over Ireland. Owning a great deal more land than the average in Ireland at that time, he saw it as his duty to use every square yard and to employ as many as possible on the land, the website tells us. He became a great innovator, introducing silage making to the area and planting orchards and Christmas trees which he exported to Britain. He also grew Dutch bulbs: at one time in the 1950s there were five acres of daffodils, gladioli and tulips as well as onions. He also gained expertise as a forester.

The pleasure grounds surrounding the house have also been restored, much as a result of the talented eye of Lucy Madden, a well-known cookery writer and author of The Potato Year, who has created a herb garden and revived the kitchen garden.

John and Lucy, the eighth generation of Maddens to live on the estate, which encompasses 500 acres of forests, parklands and lakes, began to take in guests. Taking on the estate in 1986, they restored the house and its gardens. They have handed over to their son Freddie and his wife Joanna, who live at Hilton with their family.

The website tells us that:

“The Hilton that John Madden bequeathed is today substantially as he altered it, except that it is electrified, centrally heated, every bedroom has its ‘en suite’ bathroom and the ballroom has been divided to make two drawing rooms.

As a ‘piano nobile’ the main floor commands outstanding views over the park, parterre and lake. Hague’s fine watercoloured architectural drawings for these works can be seen on the way downstairs to the breakfast room.“

Fred, who showed us around the house, continues the hospitality, although he acknowledged that with health and safety requirements it is becoming more difficult.

The view from the dining room to the south before 1870 was of shrubbery and trees and the lake behind. The framing trees were planted from 1752 to 1780.

There is a cottage on the grounds available for accommodation. [12]

We visited in 2022 during Heritage Week, when Fred gave us a tour of the house. Before that, we had attended the Flat Lakes Festival and camped at Hilton Park, back in 2011!

[1] p. 352. Mulligan, Kevin V. The Buildings of Ireland: South Ulster: Armagh, Cavan and Monaghan. Founding Editors of The Buildings of Ireland series: Nikolaus Pevsner and Alistair Rowan (2005). Yales University Press, New Haven and London, 2013.

[2] p. 194. Great Irish Houses. Forewards by Desmond FitzGerald, Desmond Guinness. IMAGE Publications, 2008.

[3] https://www.dib.ie/index.php/biography/madden-samuel-molyneux-premium-madden-a5303

[4] Curran, C.P. Riverstown House Glanmire, County Cork and the Francini. A leaflet given to us by Denis Dooley of Riverstown.

[5] https://www.dib.ie/index.php/biography/madden-samuel-molyneux-premium-madden-a5303

[6] p. 194. Great Irish Houses. Forewards by Desmond FitzGerald, Desmond Guinness. IMAGE Publications, 2008.

[7] https://theirishaesthete.com/2016/02/08/hilton-hospitality/

[8] http://lordbelmontinnorthernireland.blogspot.com/search/label/County%20Monaghan%20Landowners

[9] https://www.archiseek.com/2009/1874-hilton-park-clones-co-monaghan/

[10] Mark Bence-Jones. A Guide to Irish Country Houses (originally published as Burke’s Guide to Country Houses volume 1 Ireland by Burke’s Peerage Ltd. 1978); Revised edition 1988, Constable and Company Ltd, London.

[11] http://www.ihh.ie/index.cfm/houses/house/name/Hilton%20Park

[12] https://www.hiltonpark.ie/cottage/

[13] https://www.irelandscontentpool.com/en