Tempo Manor, County Fermanagh

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. 271. “(Maguire/VF; Emerson-Tennent, Bt/PB1876; Langham, Bt/PB) An old castle of the Maguires, sold early C19 by Constantine Maguire, whose younger brother, Captain Bryan Maguire, a celebrated duellist and eccentric, succeeded him as chief of his race and died destitute in Dublin 1835, leaving an only surviving son, the last of the line, who went to sea and was never heard of again. Tempo was acquired by William Tennent, a Belfast banker, whose daughter and heiress was the wife of Sir James Emerson-Tennent, MP, a distinguished politician, colonial administrator and writer. A new house, incorporating part of the old castle, was built 1863; it has been attributed by Mr Dixon and Dr Rowan to Thomas Turner, of Belfast. It is in a rather unusual Victorian-Jacobean style, with a strong resemblance to Kintullagh Castle, Co Atnrim and Killashee, Co Kildare. Curvilinear gables; rectangular and round-headed plate glass windows, some of them having entablatures crowned with strapwork. Of two storeys, the upper storey being in fact an attic in the high-pitched roof. At one end is a turret with a belfry and spire. Tempo subsequently passed by marriage to the Langham family. The park here is said to be the scene of Maria Edgeworth’s novel, Castle Rackrent.”

http://lordbelmontinnorthernireland.blogspot.com/2016/04/tempo-manor.html

www.nihgt.org/resources/pdf/Register_of_Parks_Gardens_Demesnes-NOV20.pdf

TEMPO MANOR, County Fermanagh (AP FERMANAGH AND OMAGH 07) F/043 
REGISTERED GRADE A* 
Partly walled 18th-century landscape park (230 acres/93ha) with 17th century origins, adjacent to 
the north-east side of Tempo Village, lying 7.5 miles (12km) north-east of Enniskillen. The park, 
acknowledged to be the setting of Maria Edgeworth’s novel, Castle Rackrent, occupies undulating 
ground with notable stands of mature trees in the shelter belts and woodland, the later fringing a 
long curvaceous lake, Demesne Lough (7.9 acres/3.2ha), historically two lakes co-joined, and the 
Tempo River, which flows though the demesne, north-east to south-west through a deep wooded 
valley, joined to the north by a tributary, via a waterfall in a rocky glen. A winding avenue through 
open grass and woodland leads past Demesne Lough to the present house of 1861-67 (Listed HB 
12/06/001), which stands on a height in the park and occupies the site of the original Maguire 
house. The demesne of Tempo stands apart from most others in that its owners, a branch of the 
Maguires, were one of the few native families to hold onto much of their estate through the 
difficult 17th-century and most of the 18th century as well. The Manor of Tempo (Insolaghagesse 
or Tempodessel) had been granted to Brian Maguire in 1610, who ‘saw the futility of being a 
rebel’ and lived in the ‘English manner’, managing to retain his entire estate intact though the 
1641 Rebellion until he died in April 1655. Pynnar in 1611 reported he had built a ‘great copelled 
house’ at Tempo and had another ‘castle’ at Tullyweel. Although his grandson, Cuchonnacht Mór, 
emerged as a leading supporter of James II, the family retained their Tempo estate and his son, 
Brian, who died in 1712, became a protestant, thus further securing its future. It subsequently 
passed to his sons, Robert and later Philip (d.1789), whose son Hugh ‘the extravagant’ died in 
1799, after which the estate, heavily in debt, was sold by his son Capt. Cohonny (Constantine) 
Maguire (1777-1834) to a Londonderry merchant called Samuel Lyle (d.1822), who only came 
down to collect the rent, but never lived there. The old Maguire house, still present in 1834 and 
1859 when the OS maps were published, had an irregular south-west facing front composed of 
three units: a gable-ended 2½-storey block on the north-west, probably the original 17th century 
house facing north-west with a two-bay hipped roof range to its rere joined to the house by a 
single bay, single-storey block, the latter containing a hall and front door. The very extensive 
planting in the demesne was probably put down by Philip Maguire in the 1770s and 1780s as the 
timber (oak, ash and fir) was mature by the 1830s. Lyle sold it in 1814 to the distinguished 
Belfast banker William Tennent (1759-1832), who like Lyle, did not use the property much, if at 
all, before he died from cholera in 1832, though there is an undated sketch for a proposal to 
remodel the centre of the old Maguire house, which may date to his time. His estate passed to 
his only surviving daughter, Letitia (1806-83), and her husband, James Emerson (1805-69), who she married in 1831 and he assumed the name Tennent. Knighted for his government and colonial 
services, Sir James was something of a philomath, a writer, collector, naturalist, a successful 
colonial administrator, politician and a former member of the pan-Hellenic movement who 
assisted the Greek fight for independence. In the 1850s Sir James and his wife, who was a good 
botanical artist, decided to retire to Tempo and accordingly having completed his Natural History 
of Ceylon in 1860, he commissioned the Belfast architect Charles Lanyon, senior partner of Messrs 
Lanyon, Lynn and Lanyon to replace the old house. Together with assistant Thomas Turner, 
Lanyon produced plans for a compact 2½-storey Jacobean-style house facing north-west with 
high-pitched roof, dormers, curvilinear gables, rectangular and round-headed plate glass 
windows. Work began in 1861 and in 1867 a billiard room wing were added with campanile with 
inverted squinches rising to a convex spire, the latter looking like a belvedere from the lake. 
However, the coach house to the north (Listed HB 12/06/004) was largely retained and dates back 
to the Maguire ownership of the property. Whilst building the house, over hundred men were 
engaged in the demesne, cleaning the lakes and waterways, adding to the planting and re- 
planting. When Henry Coulter visited in 1861 he found the demesne to be of great ‘beauty being 
richly planted with extremely fine old trees’, but that they had fallen into ‘a wild and neglected 
state. The fine old timber had been allowed to suffer considerably from decay, the ground was 
overgrown with weeds, and sadly in want of drainage’, so much so the place was ‘little better than 
a wilderness’. In addition a new carriage drive was put down, while around the house on the 
south-west and south-east sides, the falling ground was carefully terraced as it fell down to the 
lake, bisected with paths and stone steps with expansive lawns beyond. The result of this 
landscaping was a remarkably close inter-relationship between planting, lake and building, a unity 
that was further developed in the Edwardian era. The kitchen garden in the Maguire era was a 
long narrow area, probably delimited by clipped hedges, lying to the north of the Demesne Lough. 
This was abandoned in the 1830s and a walled garden (1.7 acres/0.68ha) was made in the early 
1860s in the north-east section of the old garden. In 1869 it was described as being ‘stocked with 
small fruit, vegetable and choice fruit trees of all kinds. There is a greenhouse with vines and 
peach tree’ – the latter house being a free-standing structure within the garden. Near the house 
there was a flower garden and a great deal of evergreen planting in the grounds which were laid 
out in the ‘Gardenesque’ manner as dictated by J.C. Loudon – a planting style in which individual 
exotic plants were allowed to develop their own natural character as fully as possible. On James’s 
death, aged sixty-five, the property was inherited by his only son, Sir William Emerson-Tennent 
(1835-76), who unfortunately died of an illness in November 1876, leaving a widow, Sara 
Armstrong (1847-1940) and two young daughters, Ethel Sarah (1871-1951) and Edith Letitia (Eda) 
(1873-1953). Tempo Manor continued to be occupied by Sara, even after she married Henry 
Cavendish Butler (1811-91) of Innisrath, but in May 1893 Ethel, the eldest daughter, married (later 
Sir) Herbert Hay Langham (1870-1951) of Cottesbrooke Park, Northampton, 13th Bt. They moved 
into Tempo Manor and within a few years Langham had built a large collection of ornamental fowl 
at Tempo, including building a wire aviary near the lake; later he developed a passion for 
collecting butterflies, became a keen amateur photographer and was a contributor to the Irish 
Naturalist. After he inherited in England the ‘wreckage of the Langham Estate’ in 1909 he decided 
to sell the ancient family seat of Cottesbrooke in Northamptonshire. With the additional money 
from the sold Langham estates, Lady Ethel and her husband started to develop new gardens 
around Tempo Manor from 1913. This included a rose garden, developing an existing pinetum, 
but most notably developing the planting around the lake in an informal ‘Robinsonian’ style with 
flowering shrubs, notably rhododendrons, enhanced by the evergreen trees behind. A walk 
around the lough, included an high embanked rockery, largely created in the 1920s with stones 
brought by horse and cart from the mountain nearby, one of the best examples of its kind in 
Ireland, now no longer maintained. The grounds include some very large surviving trees 
Sequoiadendron giganteum, Wellingtonia, Grant Sequoia (6.71 x 38m) and a Picea sitchensis (Sitka 
spruce), 5.81 x 39m remarkable buttressing up to 1.40m. Another Picea sitchensis (5.2 x 54m) is 

Register of Parks, Gardens and Demesnes of Special Historic Interest (NI) – November 2020 
recorded as the second tallest of its kind in Ireland and sixth tallest tree in Ireland. The gardens 
were further developed by Sir John Langham, 14th Bt (1894-1972), a botanical illustrator of note, 
and his wife and cousin, Lady Rosamund Rashleigh Langham, MBE (1903-1992), well known as a 
poet, supporter of the Girl Guides, horticulturalist and gardener, opening Tempo Gardens to the 
public every May to raise money for charities. The property was subsequently inherited by Sir 
James Michael Langham, 15th Bt (1932-2002). The family still live at Tempo Manor, but sadly the 
contents were sold in September 2004. The two gate lodges are of the same era as the Lanyon 
house. SMR: FERM 212:95 crannog? Also 193:31 – stone head, 192:54 & 55 – crannogs, 212:20 – 
rath. Private.