Ballyscullion, Bellaghy, County Derry – demolished; Ballyscullion Park

Bence-Jones, Mark. 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. 

p. 28. “(Hervey, Bristol, M/PB; Bruce, Bt, of Downhill/PB; Mulholland, Bt/PB) One of three eccentric palaces of Frederick Hervey, 4^th Earl of Bristol and Bishop of Derry, the other two being Downhill Castle, also in County Derry, and Ickworth in Suffolk. Built near the shore of Lough Beg, the small lough at the north-west corner of Lough Neagh; begun 1787, the architect being Michael Shanahan, a Corkman who was the Earl-Bishop’s architect, adviser and confidant. Like Ickworth, it was in the form of a central domed rotunda joined by curved sweeps to rectangular pavilions or wings; the Earl-Bishop having got the idea from the circular house on Belle Isle in Lake Windermere. On the entrance side of the rotunda was a pedimented portico of four giant Corinthian columns. In the centre of the house as a double corkscrew staircase, like that at the Chateau of Chambord; a grand stair going round a smaller one for the servants, so constructed that peole on one could not see those on the other. There was a large library of segmental shape, like some of the rooms at Ickworth. The Earl-Bishop lost interest in the house, which came to be known as Bishop’s Folly, and was still uncompleted at the time of his death 1803; though it was inhabited and partly furnished. Together with Downhilll, it was left to the Earl-Bishop’s kinsman, Rev Henry Hervey Aston Bruce, who was immediately afterwards created a Bt. Not wishing to have to maintain two great palaces in the same county, and preferring Downhill, the 1^st Bt demolished Ballyscullion a few years after inheriting it. Part of the façade, including the portico, was re-erected as the front of St. George’s Church, Belfast; while some pink marble columns from the interior, as well as some chimneypieces, are now at Portglenone House, Co Antrim. Other chimneypieces are at Bellarena, Co Derry. Some of the stone was later used in the building of a new and more modest house at Ballyscullion, to the design of Charles Lanyon, for Adm Sir Henry Bruce, 2^nd son of Sir Henry Mulholland, 1^st Bt, Speaker of the Northern Ireland parliament.” 

http://lordbelmontinnorthernireland.blogspot.com/2014/12/ballyscullion-park.html