Oak Park, or Collis-Sandes House Tralee, Co Kerry
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. 228. “(Bateman/LGI1912; Sandes and Collis-Sandes/LGI1912) A high Victorian Ruskinian-Gothic house of polychrome brick; built 1857-60 by M.F. Sandes, a younger son of the Sandes family of Sallow Glen, presumably with money which he had made as a layer in India. Designed by William Atkins, of Cork; whose initials are over the door. Large trefoil arched porch, on square piers; windows combining trefoil and ogee arches. Similar arches in the hall, on Gothic columns with polished marble shafts, screening the staircase, which is of wood, its balustrade decorated with brass flowers. The stables of the old Bateman house stand by the drive up to the later house. Oak Park is now the headquarters of the County Committee of Agriculture.”
Detached irregular-plan three-bay two-storey over raised platform Venetian Gothic Revival style house, built 1857-1860, with two-bay recessed bay having limestone ashlar box bay window to left, single-bay single-storey gabled projecting porte cochere to centre with trefoil-headed openings and single-bay two-storey advanced end bay to right with projecting canted bay window. Designed by William Atkins for Maurice Fitzgerald Sandes. Three-bay side elevations having single-bay full-height breakfront to south-east elevation with limestone ashlar flanking box bay windows. Seven-bay two-storey lateral wing to north-west elevation on a cruciform-plan with two-bay two-storey projecting bays to north-east and south-west elevations. Extended to south-east, c. 1925, comprising five-bay double-height red brick single-cell chapel return with lancet arch openings and single-bay full-height limestone ashlar polygonal apse. In use as convent, 1939. Now in use as school. Pitched and hipped intersecting slate roofs with clay ridge tiles, grouped brick chimneystack with limestone bands, and having cast-iron gutters, hoppers and square downpipes. Red brick English garden bond walls with limestone coved plinth, string courses, corner pilasters, projecting limestone cornice on brackets, and having inset crests and roundels. Ogee arch openings with alternating brick and limestone voussoirs. Cusped reveals to facades. Ashlar bay windows at ground floor. Trefoil-headed paired windows and timber one-over-one pane sliding sash windows with profiled limestone sills. Retaining interior features. Stable complex, built c. 1860, to north-west about a courtyard. Comprising detached five-bay two-storey limestone-built house retaining original aspect with door opening to centre having lancet arch relieving arch and segmental-headed openings to first floor. Attached five-bay single-storey limestone-built wing at right angles to south-west. Detached seven-bay single-storey limestone-built range retaining original aspect with segmental-headed door openings having lancet arch relieving arches and corrugated-iron roof. Gateway to stable courtyard comprising pair of red brick piers with iron gates. Terrace to garden front with brick and limestone walls and decorative urns and limestone steps. Garden converted to golf course.
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Maurice Sandes was in possession of this property at the time of Griffith’s Valuation, when it was valued at £60. It is labelled as Oakpark on the 1st edition Ordnance Survey Map. In 1837 Lewis recorded Oakpark as the seat of John Bateman. Bary writes that, Killeen, the original house at this site, was a late seventeenth century house. It was followed by Oakpark, built by John Bateman in the 1820s. This is the house mentioned by Wilson in 1786 as the seat of Rowland Bateman. Maurice Sandes purchased the estate in the late 1840s and built the later Oakpark House c.1857. In 1906 this house was owned by Falkiner Sandes and valued at £112. The house was sold in 1922 and is now used as offices.
Irish Historic Houses 