Bermingham House, Tuam, Co Galway  

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.

p. 41. “(Louth, E/DEP; Cusack-Smith, Bt/PB). A plain, square two storey C18 house. Three bay entrance front with round-headed doorway, the windows being set very far apart. Late C18 interior plasterwork; shouldered doorcases; pedimented door between entrance hall and staircase hall; staircase of wood with slender turned balusters. Originally the seat of the Bermingham family, Lords Athenry; 22^nd Lord Athenry was made Earl of Louth 1759; he features in an unfortunate episode in Dorothea Herbert’s Retrospections (see Ardfry). When he died, the Earldom of Louth became extinct and the Barony of Athenry dormant. In C19, Bermingham became the seat of the Dennises and was the home of John Dennis, founder of the Galway Hounds (afterwards known as the “Blazers”) and one of the most famous hunting men of his day His great-great-grand-niece, Lady Cusack-Smith, the present owner of Bermingham, is herself a legendary horsewoman and MFH.” 

entry in MacDonnell, Randal. The Lost Houses of Ireland. A chronicle of great houses and the families who lived in them. Weidenfeld and Nicolson. London, 2002. 

“The land was originally the seat of the De Berminghams (the Lords Athenry), the first of whom had been the Lord of Birmingham in Warwickshire and had arrived in Ireland by 1173. His son was one of the ten Norman-Irish and 22 Gaelic-Irish leaders, who in 1243 received estates from Henry III as a reward for their loyalty; his grandson, Meiler de Bermingham, founded the Abbey of Athenry.” 

“Richard de Bermingham (‘Richard of the battles’), the head of the family in 1316, won the Battle of Athenry, which saw the defeat of Edward Bruce and the death of Feidlim OConchobhair, King of Connacht. The Annals of Clonmacnoise record that Feidlim had initially joined with Richard de Burgo, Earl of Ulster, but that Bruce had persuaded him to leave the “Red Earl” and to change sides. It would prove to be a fatal decision (and not just for King Feidhlim), since this victory was the turning point in the ‘Norman’ subjugation of the native Irish, a process that was completed in 1318 when another Bermingham, John, crushed the Irish at the Battle of Dundalk. For this victory, in which Edward Bruce was killed, John Bermingham was created Earl of Louth. The English of Oriel murdered him a few years afterwards and his peerage became extinct. (It was to be re-created for his collateral heirs in the 18^th century).  

“In the 15C, the Lords Athenry appear to have gone native, as did so many of the Norman invaders, and they became ‘more Irish than the Irish themselves’. They took on Irish names – altering their surname to MacFeorais (from FitzPiers) after the progenitor of the family in Ireland – and they seem to have adopted something like the position of a gaelic lord. The 6^th Baron was Thomas Og, whose succession to the title was disputed by his uncle, Richard, on the perfectly sound Gaelic principle that the family’s followers had elected him to the rank. Unfortunately for Thomas’s aspirations, the Crown refused to accept this novel method of succession to an Irish peerage. (In the end, Richard’s descendents would inherit the title – in the more conventional way.) 

“The 7^th Baron was one of those who travelled to Greenwich in order to pay homage to Henry VII in 1489. At this time he was ranked third among the Barons of Ireland (the Lords Kingsale and Gormanstown came fourth and fifth in the pecking order). Sir Henry Sidney, the Lord Deputy of Ireland, described the 9^th Lord, in 1572, as being ‘as poore a Baron as lyveth and yet agreed on to be the auntientest Baron of this lande.’ 

“The 12^th Lord became a Dominican friar. He attempted to, and apparently did, give away his peerage in a deed dated 1645. This was an unusual but not unique occurrence in the Irish peerage. The 5^th Viscount Buttevant had been passed over in both his peerage and his estates because, although of sound mind, he was deaf and dumb. 

Incidentally, the viscountcies of Buttevant and Fermoy were never created as viscountcies by the Crown but simply assumed by their respective families. The editor of The Complete Peerage remarked that this was an ‘audacious and successful assumption of a higher title, which could hardly have occurred anywhere but in Ireland.’ 

[Note: Wikipedia, ref: Robert Beatson, “A Political Index to the Histories of Great Britain & Ireland”, Third edition, London 1806, Volume III, pg 141. 

In 1385 King Richard II of England raised John Barry to the viscountcy as Viscount of Buttevant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Barry_family] 

“The 14^th Baron conformed to the Established Church and took his seat in the House of Lords in 1713. Bermingham House was probably built by his son in the 1730s. The 15^th Baron was created Earl of Louth and died in 1799, when his earldom became extinct and the barony fell into abeyance. It was claimed the following year by a remote cousin and, in 1836, the Attorney General confirmed to William IV that the nephew of the claimant from 1800 had indeed made out his claim to the peerage. However, nothing seems to have been done and the known legitimate line of the family died out shortly afterwards. (There are, however, illegitimate descendents alive of the gentleman who claimed the title in 1800). Had the Athenry peerage survived, its holder would supercede Lord Kingsdale in his position as Pemier Baron of Ireland.” 

“At the beginning of the 19^th century, the Dennis family (one of whom, John Dennis of Carraroe, who was born in Fiddane, Co Galway, was a noted hunter…) bought Bermingham House… 

The Bermingham estate passed to the descendents of his [the forementioned John Dennis] sister, who had married John O’Rorke of Menlough. Her grandson, Charles Trench O’Rorke, married a lady who was half French, and their daughter, Mollie O’Rorke, was one of the most colourful characters that the Irish gentry ever produced….” 

“Mollie married Sir Dermot Cusack-Smith in 1946. …. The Smiths, Sir Dermot’s family, claimed to be descended from a mayor of Dublin in the 12^th century. They actually descended from a Joseph Smith, of unknown parentage, from County Carlow, whose great-grandson, the Right Hon. Michael Smith, was made a baron of the Exchequer in 1793. He was created a baronet in 1799 and at the Act of Union was made Master of the Rools and a Privy Councillor for Ireland. He married Mary-Anne, the daughter of James Cusac of Dublin (which was the spelling of the surname that was used in 1799 when he was granted supporters to his cat of arms). 

Michael’s son added his mother’s surname to his own and quartered her Arms with his. When his father received the baronetcy, he also rquested (and received) a grant of supporters – in the form of a merman and a trident and a mermaid with a mirror. The 2^nd Baronet also rose to become a baron of the Exchequer. Caroline, daughter of Sir William, the 3^rd Baronet, married James Middleton Berry of Ballynegall (Sir William was the judge who attempted unsuccessfully in the courts to end the career of Irish political leader Daniel O’Connell.) It was the failure of Caroline’s union to produce children that led the Smyths to inherit that property. 

“The heir was a curious gentleman. Sir William Cusack-Smith (the family had changed the spelling) lived for 97 years from 1822 until 1919.  From his entry in Burke’s Peerage it appears that during his long life he actually did nothing at all of any note. His uncle, on the other hand, was the Member of Parliament for Rippon in Yorkshire between 1843 and 1846 and eventually became Master of the Rolls in Ireland and it was his grandson who in 1919 became the 5^th Baronet. He received the KCMG for his services to the Crown which included stints as Consul to Samoa and Chile between 1890 and 1905. His son was Sir Dermot Cusack-Smith (the 6rh Baronet) who married, as his second wife, Mollie O’Rorke of Bermingham House. ….During her time as mistress of the house, Mollie did her best to make the Bermingham estate self-sufficient, even going so faras to take in paying guests. … 

… Celebrities rushed to hunt with Mollie and film director John Huston, who lived at nearby St. Clerans, was joint Master of the Hunt in the late 1960s. Mollie commented that he was ‘more a figurehead than anything else.’” 

It was she who had the house painted “hunting pink.” “There, in the middle of a demesne with its original 1500 acres somewhat depleted, Mollie’s daughter Oonagh Mary, now lives with her family.”