Moore Hall, Ballyglass, or Cong, Mayo – lost
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. 210. “(Moore/LGI1912) A large late C18 house of three storeys over basement on a peninsula in Lough Carra; built 1795 by George Moore, who had made a fortune in Malaga and whose radical son, John, was appointed President of the Provisional Government of Connaught by Gen Humbert, commander of the invading French force 1798. Entrance front with two bays on either side of a central breakfront rather similar to that at Tyrone House, County Galway, with triple window framed by short fluted pilasters on console brackets above a Venetian window above the entrance doorway; which here is beneath a shallow single-storey Doric portico, whereby at Tyrone there is a porch of two storey Ionic columns. The top of the portico was treated as a balcony, with an ironwork railing. Solid roof parapet; massive die in centre. The house and its surroundings feature in the writings of George Moore, whose house it was. It is now a gaunt ruin, having been burnt 1923; various plans to rebuilt it on a smaller scale for George Moore’s brother, Senator Col. Maurice Moore, came to nothing. When George Moore died 1933, his ashes were buried on an island in the lough here; ferried across in a boat rowed by Oliver St. John Gogarty, who soon regretted having volunteered as an oarsman. “First off came my silk hat, the frock coat and…” Gogarty recalls. “I presume you will retain your braces,” said Moore’s sister, who sat in the stern of the boat, holding the urn.”
https://www.buildingsofireland.ie/buildings-search/building/31310009/moore-hall-muckloon-or-moorehall-co-mayo
Detached five-bay (three-bay deep) three-storey over part raised basement country house, built 1792-5; dated 1795, on a symmetrical plan centred on single-bay full-height breakfront with (single-storey) prostyle tetrastyle Doric portico to ground floor; six-bay full-height rear (north) elevation. Occupied, 1911. Vacant, 1921. Burnt, 1923. In ruins, 1925. Hipped roof now missing with paired lichen-covered limestone ashlar central chimney stacks on axis with ridge having cut-limestone stringcourses below capping supporting terracotta or yellow terracotta octagonal pots. Part creeper- or ivy-covered fine roughcast walls on lichen-covered tooled cut-limestone chamfered cushion course on fine roughcast base with drag edged rusticated cut-limestone quoins to corners including drag edged rusticated cut-limestone quoins to corners (breakfront) supporting dragged cut-limestone “Cyma Recta” or “Cyma Reversa” cornice on blind frieze below parapet centred on inscribed dragged limestone ashlar “die” date stone (“1795”). Round-headed central door opening in tripartite arrangement behind (single-storey) prostyle tetrastyle Doric portico approached by flight of eleven benchmark-inscribed cut-limestone steps with dragged limestone ashlar columns having responsive pilasters supporting “Cavetto”-detailed cornice on roundel-detailed frieze below wrought iron parapet. “Venetian Window” (first floor) with drag edged dragged cut-limestone sills, and cut-limestone surround with pilasters supporting “Cyma Recta” or “Cyma Reversa” cornice centred on archivolt. Square-headed window opening in tripartite arrangement (top floor) with drag edged dragged cut-limestone sills, and cut-limestone surround with stop fluted pilasters on fluted consoles supporting “Cavetto” cornice. Square-headed window openings with drag edged dragged cut-limestone sills, and concealed cut-limestone voussoirs with no fittings surviving. Interior in ruins including (basement): groin vaulted cellars; (ground floor): bow-ended central entrance hall with central door openings in segmental-headed recesses retaining decorative plasterwork “fan vaulted” overpanels, and rosette-detailed dentilated plasterwork cornice to ceiling. Set in wooded grounds.
Appraisal
The shell of a country house erected to a design attributed to John Roberts (1712-96) of Waterford (DIA) representing an important component of the late eighteenth-century domestic built heritage of County Mayo with the architectural value of the composition, one recalling the Roberts-designed Tyrone House (1779) in County Galway, confirmed by such attributes as the deliberate alignment maximising on panoramic vistas overlooking Lough Carra; the compact near-square plan form centred on a Classically-detailed tripartite breakfront carrying the Moore family motto (“FORTIS CADERE NON POTEST [A Brave Man May Fall But Cannot Yield]”); the definition of the principal floor as a slightly elevated “piano nobile”; the diminishing in scale of the openings on each floor producing a graduated visual impression; and the parapeted roofline. Although reduced to ruins during “The Troubles” (1919-23), an act of vandalism recounted in detail in “The Moores of Moore Hall” (1939), the elementary form and massing survive intact together with remnants of the original fabric, both to the exterior and to the interior including, remarkably, some decorative plasterwork enrichments highlighting the now-modest artistic potential of the composition. Furthermore, adjacent outbuildings (extant 1838); a polygonal walled garden (see 31310010); and the nearby “Grand Gate” (see 31310011), all continue to contribute positively to the group and setting values of an estate having historic connections with the Moore family including George Moore (1729-99); John Moore (1767-99), President of the Provisional Government of Connaught (fl. 1798); George Moore (1770-1840), author of “The History of the British Revolution of 1688-9” (1817); George Henry Moore MP (1810-70) of the short-lived Independent Irish Party (formed 1852; dissolved 1858); George Augustus Moore (1852-1933), author of “A Mummer’s Wife” (1885), “A Drama in Muslin” (1886) and “Esther Waters” (1894) and assistant founder of the Irish Literary Theatre (1899); and Senator Colonel Maurice George Moore (1854-1939), ‘Late First Battalion Connaught Rangers’ (cf. 31310012).
https://archiseek.com/2012/1785-moore-hall-co-mayo
1785 – Moore Hall, Co. Mayo
Architect: John Roberts
Also known as Moorehall, the house was constructed between 1792 and 1795. The Moores were originally an English Protestant family but some became Catholic when John Moore married the Catholic Jane Lynch Athy of Galway, and when their son, George, married Katherine de Kilikelly, an Irish-Spanish Catholic, in 1765. Several members of the Moore family went on to play major parts in the social, cultural and political history of Ireland from the end of the eighteenth century to the early twentieth century. The house was burned down in 1923 by anti-Treaty irregular forces during the Irish Civil War because then current owner Maurice Moore was viewed as pro-Treaty.
Listed in Vanishing Country Houses of Ireland by The Knight of Glin, David J. Griffin and Nicholas K. Robinson, published by The Irish Architectural Archive and The Irish Georgian Society, 1988.
p. 110. “A large three storey house built 1795 for George Moore. The house is similar to Tyrone House, County Galway. Burnt in 1923. Now a ruin which has been stabilised.”
Irish Castles and Historic Houses. ed. by Brendan O’Neill, intro. by James Stevens Curl. Caxton Editions, London. 2002:
The ruin of Moore Hall, the Georgian home of a celebrated Mayo family, is situated on a promontory overlooking Lough Carra. The best known members of the family are John (1763-99), who was appointed president of the Provisional Republic of Connacht during the French invasion of 1798, George Henry (1811-70), MP for Mayo and one of the leaders of the Tenants Right Movement, and George (1852-1933), a novelist.
Featured in Irish Country Houses, Portraits and Painters. David Hicks. The Collins Press, Cork, 2014.
p. 167. Maurice was the second son of George Henry Moore and both he and his elder brother [the writer George Moore] had a difficult relationship: times of great affection were followed by periods when they would blatantly ignore each other for months and sometimes years on end. Maurice, the younger brother, was seen as a safe pair of hands and if he had inherited Moore Hall it might still stand today. However, George was the elder son and under the laws of succession he became the rightful heir to the Moore Hall estate. George did have some affectino for his Mayo home but it was Maurice who had a deep-rooted respect for his father’s legacy and strove to keep the Moore estate intact. Arguments often stemmed from teh fact that Maurice was the landlord by proxy but it was George’s money taht paid the bills. George, as the elder brother, was entitled to have the final say over the management of Moore Hall; however, he also thought that this right extended to his brother and his family. When the tentacles of his requests began to intrude into Maurice’s personal life, disagreements naturally occurred. ..At the time that Moore Hall burnt down in 1923, itwas Maurice who was recalled with great affection.
p. 168. George was active in the Irish Literary Renaissance of the early 1900s after becoming a successful author, despite an early ambition to become an artist. While in Paris pursuing his artistic ambitions, he wrote about the impressionist painters and befriended many of them, such as Edouard Manet and Edgar Desgas. Moore, deciding he had no talent as a painter, moved to London in the 1880s where he began his literary career adn produced some of his best-known works, including Esther Waters. He became an accomlished author, credited with creating the genre of fictional autobiography and also published a number of works of poetry. During his tiem in Dublin in he early 1900s he befriended many in the Irish artistic and literary world, such as George Russell (A.E.), Nathaniel Hone, Walter Osborne, W.B. Yeats, Douglas Hyde and Lady Gregory. As a result of these associations he was involved in the setting up of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin before returning to live in London for the rest of his life.
The story of the Moore family and their great house in Mayo begins in the 18th century with an ancestor, George Moore, who decamped from Mayo to Alicante in Spain to make his fortune in the wine trade, a task in which he had succeeded by the mid 1700s. When he had amassed a substantial fortune, he returned to Ireland and began to buy up land in his native county. The Moore family originated from Ashbrook House near Straide in County Mayo and when George’s brother died he inherited the house and lands. He was considering renovating and improving Ashbrook but, on a tour of the country to look for suitable land in which to invest, he came across Muckloon Hil, overlooking Lough Carra. He purchased the property and lands, which amounted to 800 acres, from the MacDonald family. George began to clear some of the woods on th hill and in 1792 a large, square Georgian mansion began to rise on the hill. The inclusion of a first-floor balcony may have been inspired by the time that George had spent in Spain but he had no accounted for the wind and rain in Mayo, which allowed him to spend little time on it. Teh house and estate eventually passed to George’s grandson, George Henry Moore. He married Mary Blake, the daughter fo Maurice Blake of Ballinafad House (and named their second son after his maternal grandfather). George and Mary’s union produced five children: George in 1852, Maurice 1854, Augustus 1856, Nina in 1858 and Julian in 1857. At this time George Henry and his family lived at 39 Alfred House in London which he had leased while a Member of Parliament. George Henry made a hasty return to Moore Hall in April 1870 where disputes were raging with tenants over rent reductions. There in his ancestral home he died and was buried in the nearby family burial ground of Kiltoom. This event brought the estate into [p. 170] his eldest son, novelist George Moore; however, the circumstances surrounding their father’s death would lead to a dispute between himself and his younger brother Maurice in later years.
p. 170. The house was supposedly designed by Waterford architect John Roberts, a Protestant, who also designed Tyrone House in Clarinbridge in County Galway. Roberts is notable for designing Waterford’s Catholic and Church of Ireland cathedrals as well as a number of other significant buildings in Waterford.
p. 173. In 1901 George Moore, after spending 21 years in England, returned to Ireland, setting up home in Dublin. He had been inspired by his cousin Edward Martyn who told him that artistically great things were happening in Ireland. Moore Hall was entrusted to his brother’s capable wife as Maurice was still stationed abroad with the army. This generosity by George came with a number of strings attached: he felt entitled to meddle in his brother’s family’s life. This need to try and control his brother and nephews was probably due to the lack of a family of his own. George reworked his will to include or exclude his nephews depending on how well they were progressing in their study of the Irish language. George wanted his nephews to be Irishmen of the highest calibre and in 1901, suggested to his brother that he pay for a “a nurse straight from Arran,” believing that an Aran islander was necessary to teach teh next generation of the Moore family to speak Irish properly. The ladies transported from Aran did not fit easily into Maurice’s household. Teh quality of their teaching and their standards fo cleanliness left Maurice’s wife in despair.
In 1903 George publicly renounced teh Catholic faith and yet again decided to reorganise his brother’s family accordingly, desiring that one of his nephews be brought up in the Protestant faith. In July 1905 he tried to persuade Maurice to let him sell the lands of their estate under the terms of the 1903 Wyndham Act. Maruice was successful in convincing his brother not to sell but the issue fo selling the estate woudl ot go away….Money had begun to cause trouble between the brothers since Maurice’s retirement from the army. Maurice was now living on a full-time basis at Moore Hall and he began to try to put the house and estate back in order.
[lots of sad arguments between brothers – George wanted his nephews to be raised Protestant, and Maurice disagreed, and George bankrolled repairs and improvements. Finally George asked Maurice to move out and he did. Maurice would still use the house occasionally, via the steward, James Reilly, unbeknownst to George. George published that their father killed himself, appalling Maurice. Maurice became a senator, and allowed those fighting the English to be billeted in the house during the War of Independence.]
p. 177. “By the winter of 1922 the house was not being lived in… In 1923 a group of local men arrived at teh door of the gate lodge and ordered James Reilly to hand over the keys to Moore Hall. They made their way up the hill to the house, awkwardly lugging bales of hay and drums of petroleum and paraffin. …It is a matter of some debate whether or not items were looted from teh house but six hours later the roof of the house crashed in, causing the burning interior to collapse down, leaving a mound of debris 14 feet deep on the ground floor.
p. 178. “George made no hesitation in laying the blame for the burning of the hosue to his brother… [he wrote in a letter to the Irish Times] “I tried to disassociate my home from politics and for that reason Colonel Moore has not visited Moore Hall for the last twenty years [he did not know Maurice had visited]. His acquiescence in his election to the Seanad and the speeches he has delivered in the Seanad are no doubt the cause of the burning.”
George would have received more money [in compensation] had he considered rebuilding Moore Hall, but, as he wrote to a friend, “Since the burning of my house, I don’t think I shall every be able to set foot in Ireland again.” He sold the remaining land to the Congested Districts Board in 1927 but Maurice could not let the family home an dlands go and entered into an arrangement which allowed him to purchase 300 acres of land and the ruin of the mansion for £1,300….
Maurice hoped that he might be able to restore the house by selling timber from the woods and the rent he would receive from the remaining lands…p. 179. However, the trees were unsuitable for felling so Moore Hall remained a ruin. Early in 1932, George Moore died. His substantion £75,000 fortuen would have been large enough for a restoration of Moore Hall had the bulk gone to a single heir; however, while his will contained many bequests, he left nothing to his brother Maurice or his nephew Rory. …
Maurice approached the Forestry Board with a proposal that it should take over the demesne but it declined. The estate was sold to John O’Haire, a timber merchant who cleared all the woods around the house. When O’Haire died, the Department of Forestry purchased Moore Hall and planted the front lawn and the rest of the site with conifers. Moore Hall became engulfed in a sea of evergreen and no longer enjoys views of the lake.”
http://lordbelmontinnorthernireland.blogspot.com/2021/11/moore-hall.html
THE MOORES OF MOORE HALL OWNED 12,371 ACRES OF LAND IN COUNTY MAYOThe family of MOORE claimed descent from THE RT HON SIR THOMAS MORE, statesman and Lord Chancellor to HENRY VIII.
THOMAS MORE, born at Chilston, near Madley, in Herefordshire, married Mary, daughter of John ApAdam, of Flint, and had a son,
GEORGE MOORE, who settled at Ballina, County Mayo, Vice-Admiral of Connaught during the reign of WILLIAM III.
He wedded Catherine, daughter of Robert Maxwell, of Castle Tealing, Scotland, by Edith his wife, daughter of Sir John Dunbar, and was father of
GEORGE MOORE, of Ashbrook, County Mayo, living in 1717, who married Sarah, daughter of the Rev John Price, of Foxford, County Mayo, by his wife, Edith Machen, of the city of Gloucester, and by her had two sons,
George, of Cloongee;
JOHN, of whom we treat.
The younger son,
JOHN MOORE, of Ashbrook, County Mayo, born ca 1700, espoused Jane, daughter of Edmund Athy, and had issue,
Robert, dsp 1783;
GEORGE, of whom presently;
Edmund, of Moorbrook;
Sarah; Jane.
His second son,
GEORGE MOORE (1729-99), of Moore Hall, Ashbrook, and Alicante, Spain, married, ca 1765, Catherine, daughter of Dominick de Killikelly, of Lydacan Castle, County Galway, and had issue,
John, 1763-99;
GEORGE, of whom hereafter;
Thomas;
Peter.
The second son,
GEORGE MOORE (1770-1840), of Moore Hall, wedded, in 1807, Louisa, daughter of the Hon John Browne, sixth son of John, 1st Earl of Altamont, and had issue,
GEORGE HENRY, his heir;
John;
Arthur Augustus.
The eldest son,
GEORGE HENRY MOORE JP DL (1810-70), MP for County Mayo, 1847-57, 1868-70, High Sheriff of County Mayo, 1867, espoused, in 1851, Mary, eldest daughter of Maurice Blake, of Ballinafad, County Mayo, and had issue,
GEORGE AUGUSTUS, his heir;
Maurice George, CB, Colonel, Connaught Rangers;
Augustus George Martin;
Henry Julian;
Nina Mary Louisa.
He was succeeded by his eldest son,
GEORGE AUGUSTUS MOORE (1852-1933), of Moore Hall and Ebury Street, London, High Sheriff of County Mayo, 1905, who died unmarried.
THE MOORES had originally been an English Protestant settler family.
The father of George Moore (1729-99), John Moore, converted to catholicism when he married Jane Lynch Athy from one of the principal Catholic families in County Galway.
Using her connections among the “Wild Geese,” Irish Jacobite exiles in Spain, Jane supported her son in getting established in the wine import business in Alicante, Spain.
He subsequently changed his religion, and married, in I765, Katherine de Kilikelly, an Irish Catholic raised in Spain.
George made his fortune and returned to erect Moore Hall in 1792, above the shore of Lough Carra.
“He thus solidified the shift of the family from being New English settlers of Protestant faith to their nineteenth-century identity as Irish Catholic landlords who had never been humbled by the “Penal Laws” — that set of regulations aimed at limiting the property and power of Irish Catholics, and put in force after William of Orange routed James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1688.”
“The change in the confessional identity of the Moore family, like the circumstances of G H Moore’s death, is important to the story of George Moore. These matters would one day be the occasion of a quarrel about family history that broke up the surviving Moore brothers, saw Moore Hall become vacant, and scattered the last generation of Moores abroad.”
“Of the four sons of George Moore of Alicante, the eldest was John Moore (1763-99), a scapegrace trained in Paris and London for the law, and for a few days in 1798 the first President of the Republic of Connaught.”
“Aided by French invaders at Killala, John Moore participated in the surprise victory of General Humbert over a British garrison at Castlebar on 27 August 1798, assumed nominal leadership of the rebels, then got captured after the rout of the small Irish forces.”
“President Moore died while under house arrest in a Waterford tavern. The second son of Moore of Alicante was a mild-tempered man, also named George Moore. A gentleman scholar rarely out of his library, he wrote histories of the English and French revolution, something in the manner of Gibbon.”
“Moore the historian had three sons by Louisa Browne, the first being George Henry Moore, the only one of the three not to die by a fall from a horse.”
MOORE HALL, near Ballyglass, County Mayo, is a Georgian mansion built between 1792-6 by George Moore.
It comprises three storeys over a basement, with an entrance front of two bays on either side of a centre breakfront; including a triple window, and fluted pilasters on console brackets.
There is a Venetian window above the entrance doorway, beneath a single-storey Doric portico.
The house was burnt by the IRA in 1923, and is now a ruinous shell.
Colonel Maurice Moore, CB, had intended to rebuild the house, albeit on a smaller scale.
| Moore Hall (Image: Comhar – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11252115 |
Colonel Moore’s elder brother, George Augustus Moore, died in 1933, leaving an estate valued at £70,000 (about £5.1 million in 2021).
His ashes were buried on Castle Island in Lough Carra.
http://www.buildingsofireland.ie/PlacesToSee/Louth/
Moore Hall Moore Hall was built between 1792 and 1796 as the home of George Moore. The Moores were originally a Protestant family, although some members were subsequently converted to Catholicism. Some members of the family played a prominent part in the history of Ireland, particularly in Famine Relief in the 19th century. The house was burned down in 1923 during the Irish Civil War. The estate is now owned by the national forestry company Coilte and is a popular visitor site.
George Moore (1727–1799), who built Moore Hall, originally came from Straide near Castlebar. During the time of the Penal Laws, George went to Spain where he was admitted to the Royal Court. From the 1760s until about 1790, George made his fortune in the wine and brandy trade, running his business from Alicante. When the Penal Laws were relaxed at the end of the 18th century, he returned to County Mayo with a fortune of £200,000 and in 1783, bought over 12,000 acres (49 km2) of land at Muckloon, Ballycally and Killeen from Farragh Mc Donnell, and commissioned the building of the grand residence of Moore Hall.
George’s son, John Moore (1767–1799), was educated in France and became a lawyer. With the rebellion of 1798, he returned to Mayo. General Humbert appointed him President of the Connacht Republic in Castlebar. Thus, John Moore was the first President of an Irish republic, albeit for a very brief interval. He was captured by the English Lord Cornwallis, and although initially sentenced to death, his sentence was later commuted to deportation. He died in the Royal Oak tavern in Waterford on 6 December 1799. His body was exhumed from Ballygunnermore Cemetery in Waterford in 1962 and brought to Castlebar, where he was buried in the Mall with full military honours.
George Henry Moore(1810–1870), was educated in the Catholic faith in England and later at Cambridge University. His main interest was in horses and horse-racing. His brother,Arthur Augustus, was killed after a fall from the horse Mickey Free during the 1845 Aintree Grand National. At the height of the Great Irish Famine in 1846, he entered a horse called Coranna for the Chester Gold Cup and netted £17,000 from bets laid on the horse. During the Famine he imported thousands of tons of grain to feed his tenants, and gave each of his Mayo tenants a cow from his winnings. It is still remembered on the Moore estate that nobody was evicted from their home for non-payment of rent during hard times, and that nobody died there during the Famine. George Henry is buried in the family vault at Kiltoom on the Moore Hall estate.
George Augustus Moore (1852–1933), was a distinguished writer of the Irish Literary Revival period. Many famous writers of the time, including Lady Gregory, Maria Edgeworth, George Osborne, and W. B. Yeats were regular visitors to Moore Hall. George was an agnostic, and anti-Catholic.[4] His ashes are buried on Castle Island on Lough Carra in view of the big house on the hill.[3]
Maurice George Moore (1854–1939), Senator Colonel Maurice Moore was the statesman of the family. He served with the Connaught Rangers in the Boer War and became concerned with human rights in South Africa. He also worked to relieve Irish prisoners held in English jails, and for the retention of UCG. He was also involved with the co-operative movement in Ireland, founded by Horace Plunkett.
On February 1st next it will be 95 years since Moore Hall, County Mayo was needlessly burnt by a group of anti-treaty forces during the Civil War. Since then the building has stood empty and falling ever further into ruin. Moore Hall’s history was discussed here some time ago, (see When Moore is Less, June 30th 2014), and at the time it looked as though the house, dating from the 1790s, had little viable future. For many years the surrounding land has been under the control of Coillte, the state-sponsored forestry company, which displayed no interest in the historic property for which it was responsible. However, yesterday Mayo County Council announced it had purchased Moore Hall and 80 acres. The council proposes ‘to develop the estate as a nationally important nature reserve and tourism attraction’, its chief executive declaring this will ‘ensure that the natural, built and cultural heritage of Moorehall is protected yet developed and managed in a sustainable manner for current and future generations.’ Further details have yet to be provided, but one initiative Moore Hall’s new owners could immediately undertake is to clear away the trees that now grow almost up to the front door, thereby reopening the view to Lough Carra and explaining why the house was built on this site.
Extracted from a letter written by George Henry Moore of Moore Hall, County Mayo to his mother Louisa (née Browne) on 6th May 1846:
‘My dearest Mother,
Corunna won the Chester Cup this day. We win the whole £17,000. This is in fact a little fortune. It will give me the means of being very useful to the poor this season. No tenant of mine shall want for plenty of everything this year, and though I shall expect work in return for hire, I shall take care that whatever work is done shall be for the exclusive benefit of the people themselves. I also wish to give a couple of hundred in mere charity to the poorest people about me or being on my estate, so as to make them more comfortable than they are; for instance, a cow to those who want one most, or something else to those who may have a cow, but want some other article of necessary comfort; indeed I will give £500 in this way. I am sure it will be well expended, and the horses will gallop all the faster with the blessing of the poor…’
Moore Hall dates from 1792 and is believed to have been designed by the Waterford architect John Roberts whose other house in this part of the island, Tyrone, County Galway is also now a gaunt ruin. The Moores were an English settler family originally members of the established church who converted to Roman Catholicism following the marriage of John Moore to Mary Lynch Athy of Galway. Their son George Moore, who likewise married an Irish Catholic, moved to Spain where through his mother’s connections with various Wild Geese families, he became successful and rich in the wine export business. In addition he manufactured iodine, a valuable commodity at the time, and shipped seaweed from Galway for its production, owning a fleet of vessels for this purpose.
Having made his fortune, George Moore then returned to Ireland and bought land to create an estate of some 12,500 acres. He commissioned a residence to be built on Muckloon Hill with wonderful views across Lough Carra below and the prospect of Ballinrobe’s spires in the far distance. Fronted in cut limestone, Moore Hall stands three storeys over sunken basement, the facade centred on a single-bay breakfront with tetrastyle Doric portico below the first floor Venetian window. A date stone indicates it was completed in 1795, three years before Ireland erupted in rebellion. Among those who took part was George Moore’s eldest son John who after being schooled at Douai had studied law in Paris and London had returned to Ireland where he joined the uprising. On August 31st 1798 the French general Jean Joseph Humbert issued a decree proclaiming John Moore President of the Government of the Province of Connacht. However within weeks the British authorities had crushed the rebellion and captured Moore who died the following year while en route to the east coast where he was due to be deported. George Moore, who had spent some £2,500 attempting to secure his heir’s release, had died just a month earlier.
Moore Hall now passed into the hands of its builder’s second son, also called George Moore. A more studious character than his brother, he is known as an historian who wrote accounts of the English Revolution of 1688 (published in 1817) and, on his death, left behind the manuscript of the history of the French Revolution. He married Louisa Browne, a niece of the first Marquess of Sligo, and the couple had three sons, one of whom died at the age of 17 after a fall from his horse. The same fate would befall the youngest child, Augustus Moore when at 28 he was taking part in a race at Liverpool. He and the eldest son, another George, had set up a racing stable at Moore Hall and become notorious for their fearless recklessness. But this George Moore had an intelligent and sensitive character – while still a teenager he was publishing poetry – and following the death of his brother and the advent of famine in Ireland in the mid-1840s he turned his attention to Moore Hall and the welfare of its tenants. The letter quoted above shows that after his horse Corunna won the Chester Cup in May 1846 he used the proceeds to make sure no one on his land suffered hardship or deprivation. In 1847, having already participated in calling for an all-party convention to work for the betterment of Ireland, he was first elected to Parliament where he proved to be a deft orator (his background as a youthful poet came in handy) and an ardent advocate of the country’s rights: he spoke in favour of the Fenians and was an early supporter of the Tenant League, established to secure fair rents and fixity of tenure in the aftermath of the famine. But his philanthropy was George Moore’s undoing. In the spring of 1870 his Ballintubber tenants withheld their rents, judging he would not dare retaliate. Since Parliament was sitting at the time, he returned from London to settle the matter and four days later died as a result of a stroke.
And so Moore Hall passed to the next, and final, generation, being inherited by another George Moore, one of the greatest prose stylists Ireland has produced, a decisive influence on James Joyce and many another Irish author since. Today his contribution to this country, as well as that of his forebears, is insufficiently appreciated, but during his long lifetime George Moore was recognised as a great writer, as well as a serial controversialist. If he is no longer as celebrated as was once the case, then Moore must accept at least some responsibility for this state of affairs since he was given to creating and maintaining feuds with those who by rights should have been his allies. In his wildly entertaining, if not always credible, three-volume memoir Hail and Farewell he explained, ‘It is difficult for me to believe any good of myself. Within the oftentimes bombastic and truculent appearance that I present to the world, trembles a heart shy as a wren in the hedgerow or a mouse along the wainscotting.’ If no match for his father as a horseman, he inherited the latter’s bravado and audaciousness, and as a result created far too many enemies all of whom relished an opportunity to denigrate him. W.B. Yeats called Moore ‘a man carved out of a turnip’, while Yeats’ father considered Moore ‘an elderly blackguard.’ Middleton Murry described him as ‘a yelping terrier’ and Susan Mitchell ‘an ugly old soul.’ Yet they all had to acknowledge his genius. ‘When it comes to writing,’ declared Ford Madox Ford, yet another opponent, ‘George Moore was a wolf – lean, silent, infinitely sweet and solitary.’ The monument erected to him on Castle Island on Lough Carra rightly proclaims:
‘George Moore
Born Moore Hall 1852 died 1933 London
He deserted his family and friends
For his Art
But because he was faithful to his Art
His family and Friends
Reclaimed his ashes for Ireland.’
In keeping with his character, George Moore always had an ambivalent relationship with Moore Hall. He wrote about it often, both in fiction and fact, but spent relatively little of his adult life in the place. For much of the time the estate was run by his younger brother Maurice with whom, like everyone else, he inevitably quarrelled. Unlike most Irish landowners of the era, however, he understood their time was drawing to a close, that the age of the big house was coming to an close and that the class into which he had been born would soon be no more. As he wrote to his brother in 1909, ‘The property won’t last out even my lifetime, that is to say if I live a long while and there will be nothing I’m afraid for your children…You always put on the philosophic air when I speak of the probable future and say “the future is hidden from us.” But the future of landlords isn’t in the least hidden from us.’
Nor was it, although the end was gratuitously harsh. On February 1st 1923 a local regiment of IRA men arrived at Moore Hall in the middle of the night, ordered the steward to hand over keys, moved bales of straw into the house, poured fuel over these and then set the place alight. It was a callous and philistine act which ignored the patriotic history of the Moores and lost the west of Ireland one of its finest Georgian residences. Many years later Benedict Kiely wrote in the Irish Times that he knew someone who had been present when Moore Hall was burnt and who could list various houses in the area containing looted furniture and other items. Envy and spite seem to have been the arsonists’ primary, if not sole, motivation.
Ever since the building has stood empty, the surrounding land today owned by Coillte, a state-sponsored forestry company. With all the sensitivity one might expect from such an organisation, it has planted trees all around the house so that the view down to Lough Carra – the reason Moore Hall was built on this spot – cannot even be glimpsed. There was much talk some few years ago of restoring the building but no more and the final traces of its interior decoration, not least the delicate neo-classical plasterwork, are about to be lost. So this is how Ireland honours her own: more in the breach than in the observance.
Irish Historic Houses 