Castletown ‘Cox’ Kilkenny
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. 76. “(Cox, sub Villiers-Stuart/LGI1912; Wyndham-quin, Dunraven, E/PB; Blacque/LGI1958 and sub Waterford/M/PB) One of the most beautiful houses in Ireland, the masterpiece of Davis Duckart (Daviso de Arcort), the architect-engineer of Franco-Italian descent who came here in mid-C18, having been in the Sardinian service. Built 17567-71 for Michael Cox, Archbishop of Cashel, whose father, Sir Richard Cox, Lord Chancellor of Ireland, had obtained a lease of the estate from the Duke of Ormonde. Centre block of three storeys over basement and seven bays, flanked, in the Palladian manner, by stable and kitchen wings, which prolong two fronts of the house and then run outwards at right angles to form a partially enclosed forecourt. The centre block has a more or less similar facade on each of its two fronts, which is a variant of William Wynde’s Buckingham House in London: a centrepiece of four fluted Corinthian pilasters rising through the two lower storeys, and a Corithinan entablature running all round the building below the top storey, which is treated as an attic. The roof parapet is balustrated. The house is built of dressed sandstone and unpolished Kilkenny marble; the main block being of very finely cut stone, contrasting with the rougher stonework of the wings, which have ashlar dressings. The wings on either side of the garden front are arcaded, and terminate in pavilions with octagonal domes and cupolas.
Bence-Jones continues: “Magnificent rococo plasterwork in the principal rooms by the Waterford stuccodore, Patrick Osborne; the hall, staircase hall and dining room having decorative plaster panels on their walls, as well as plasterwork ceilings. The hall has a screen of monolithic fluted Corithian columns of the same unpolished Kilkenny marble as that used in the exterior of the house; and a chimneypiece with terms. Castletown passed by inheritance to a branch of the Villiers-Stuart family; it was sold 1909 to Col. W.H. Wyndham-Quin, who laid out an elaborate knot garden at one side of the house and introduced various pieces of statuary. Ca 1928, having succeeded as 5th Earl of Dunraven 1926, he sold it to Major-Gen E.R. Blaque (son in law of Adm Lord Beresford), whose son, Mr Charles Blaque, re-sold it 1976. Subsequently bought and beautifully restored by the late Brian de Breffny. The delightful little Georgian church with a steeple, at the corner of teh demesne, is being restored as an ecumenical chapel.”
Paddy Rossmore. Photographs. Edited by Robert O’Byrne. The Lilliput Press, Dublin 7, 2019.
“Inside, as this photograph shows, the house features ravishing rococo plasterwork by Waterford stuccodore Patrick Osborne.”
featured in Irish Houses and Gardens. From the Archives of Country Life. Sean O’Reilly. Aurum Press Ltd, London, 1998.
p. 47. “The appearance of Castletown Cox in Country Life in 1918 ushered in the extended if erratic era of the magazine’s interest in Irish Georgian architecture. The author is not credited, but the clear style and critical values suggest it is Weaver, and the article is acknowledged as such in his subsequent history of Heywood. Castletown Cox’s importance was affirmed by its being the first Irish house to receive the compliment of two articles on its first appearance. It was visited by Country Life again in the 1960s when the Knight of Glin presented his study of its architect, Davis Duckart. Situated in the mild southern district of Co Kilkenny, it has always vied with its Kildare counterpart, Castletown, in both name and history.
[photo: The doorway to the saloon in the entrance hall, with the bust of Archbishop Cox over it, is polite Irish Palladianism at its most mature.]
p. 49. “Castletown Cox never surpassed its older namesake in scale, quality, association or variety, yet it has regularly won a special place in the hearts of lovers of Irish architecture. Never suffering the vagaries of neglect, rescue and restoration that dogged the Kildare Castletown, or the radical changes in taste that altered the interior of the older house, Castletown Cox has managed to retain a unique veneer of pristine newness and historical authenticity.
The plan of the house itself is suggestive of these associations. The layout, with a central corridor intersecting the columnar entrance hall, from where it gives access to the rooms extending along its fronts, continues a tradition familiar from the Kildare Castletown. Yet the smaller scale, with only three rooms across its garden front, suggests that such an arrangement, in which so much space is lost to a largely redundant corridor, is more a gratuitous emulation of that earlier house than a functional necessity.
In contrast to Castletown’s slow and often mysterious evolution, however, Castletown Cox remains a pure expression of its architect’s original intentions, and even its window openings have not been enlarged. Consequently, part of the success of Castletown Cox’s original design, and the reason for its survival, must lie in the ease with which the building could accommodate more modern lifestyles inside, with bright interiors of a homely scale, although appearing from the outside as a building parading all the grandeur of the early eighteenth century.
p. 49 “Castletown Cox was built in the early 1770s by Michael Cox, whose surname the house adopts as a suffix to distinguish it from the more famous Castletown. Cox, formerly the Bishop of Ossory, and Archbishop of Cashel from 1755, came from an active family of soldiers and settlers who had made their name and fortune in Ireland since the beginning of the previous century. A younger son, Cox turned towards the church for his advancement rather than to soldiering or the Bar. This was an area in which he proved himself eminently successful despite – or perhaps because of – his disdain for the politics, pamphleteering and polemics that tended to advance the careers of his fellow clerics. Indeed, his reknown was more for his lack of professional interests. One wit attached his own verse to a blank panel, intended for an encomium, on the memorial of the deceased Archbishop:
Vainest of mortals! Had’st thou sense or grace
Thou ne’er had’st left this ostentatious space
Nor given thy numerous foes such ample room
To tell posterity, upon thy tomb,
This well-known truth, by every tongue confest
That by this blank thy life is well expressed.
p. 51. Despite such a notorious lack of notoriety, by securing the archbishopric of Cashel, Cox gained a position perfectly suitable to his interests, lacking the onerous duties of more famous sees yet with the attraction of a liberal income. This was put to use in building the present house, reputedly assisted by a handsome bequest intended for the construction of a church but redirected towards the Archbishop’s own, more worldly interests.
The house-building itself appears to have spanned the years from about 1770-1774. The date of completion is confirmed by the rare survival of a bill, submitted by the Irish plasterworker for the house, Patrick Osborne. It details the cost of different items adorning the interior, form the four capitals in the hall and the fifty six festoons in the staircase to the 1,591 feet of bedroom cornices. The final payment was registered by Osborne’s signed receipt dated 1 Aug 1774 and countersigned by John Nowlan, clerk of works.
Though at Castletown Cox the decorator’s work is uncommonly well documented, the identity of the architect is not. Stylistic evidence provided in the Georgian Society Records, however, and supported by Weaver and later studies, suggests, with near certainty, that the design of the house derives from the hand of Italian architect Davis Duckart, perhaps more properly referred to as Daviso D’Arcort, then resident in Ireland for less than a decade. Like so many architects in Ireland in the eighteenth century, Duckart remains a figure only tentatively defined. The evidence of his will confirms Continental links, an association suggested by the curious detailing of his architecture. Despite the overall continuity of his work within the rather staid late Palladian styles of Ireland, it has a vigour indicative less of provincial idiosyncrasies than of a personal taste, even if one so outmoded as to be almost returning to fashion at the time.
The house is laid out on Duckart’s preferred Palladian tripartite arrangement, with straight arcaded links connecting the residential block to flanking pavilions. [p. 52] This gives the building a rather impressive swagger despite the homely scale, for it has only seven bays compared to the Kildare Castletown’s thirteen. The broad mass is enlivened by the curves of the pavilion domes and the quirky rustication of the basement. Throughout Duckart’s limited body of known and attributed work may be found a similar combination of traditional arrangement and personal detail, but only at Castletown Cox is it so prevalent. Perhaps most surprising is the degree to which Duckart developed his designs for Castletown Cox from traditional sources. As the Knight of Glin observed in his study of Duckart published in Country Life in 1967, the main elevations of the house were based on Buckingham House in London, fashionable in the early 1700s.
After enduring a seesaw of ownership that typified so many Irish estates in the nineteenth century, the house was purchased in 1909 by W.H. Wyndham-Quin, later to succeed to the Dunraven title as the 5th Earl, from Col H.J.R. Villiers-Stuart, who had inherited the property. The gardens were the Wyndham-Quins’ most important addition to the character of the Georgian house, for hey made very few alterations to the building. They produced box hedges and terraces in a rather formulaic sequence, arranged around a series of statues brought over from Clearwell Court, Gloucestershire, but with little of the subtlety of the compartmental gardens then being developed elsewhere in Ireland by Lutyens. The fashion was adopted here also by Norah Lindsay, the Irish-born garden designer, who was a cousin of Wyndham-Quin’s wife. It may be that this connection inspired the selection of the house by Weaver, though its full report in the Georgian Society Records would also have attracted his attention.
By the time Castletown Cox was featured in the pages of Country Life, most of the original furnishings had been dispersed. Weaver considered the bust of Cox over the door to the saloon might be by Scheemaker, as he had been respsonsible for the tomb of this archbishop’s second wife. He was complimentary about the modern refurnishing by the new owners, describing it as “fitting” and showing “just taste” but he was no less exacting than his photographer in the removal of furniture detrimental to the rigours of the architecture, a point emphasized by comparison with the photographs of the Georgian Society Records which document the more homely character of the rooms in 1913.
[The geometric pattern of the saloon ceiling was probably inspired by Irish developments in the Adam style. This design was adapted for another house associated with the same designers, Temple Hill, Blackrock, Co Dublin.
More lively rococo details appear in the enfilade from the drawing room, through the saloon, to the dining room.]
p. 55 Country Life’s photographs of Castletown Cox, taken by Henson on a visit in 1917, record the house some eight years after its purchase by the Wyndham-Quins. His presentation of the rooms captures well the variety of Osborne’s decorative effects. Stony formality reigns in the hall and staircase hall, with heavy festoons framed by equally heavy moulded panels occasionally tweaked into life by scrolled heads.
Such civility is offset, but never dimmed, by the lively Irish rococo plasterwork of the ceilings. In the rooms at the garden front a lighter air is manifest, and a more progressive style begins to appear. In the original arrangement, as suggested by Osborne’s surviving bill, the central saloon would probably have been papered – Weaver considered the possibility of a Chinese-style paper found in other interiors of the date – framing the lively and light bracketed cornice and geometrically ordered ceiling. Such plasterwork is much more in the style of Adam, a fashion then promulgated in Ireland by Michael Stapleton. It is a striking contrast with the other ceilings and suggests that Osborne was either learning the newer style or moving between the old and new as required by his patron. Certainly this lighter mood provided an effect quite different from that of the other two halls, and one that persists in the flanking dining room and drawing rooms.
The house was sold by the family in about 1928, two years after Wyndham-Quin had succeeded to the Dunraven title and moved to his family seat, Adare Manor in Co Limerick. It was purchased by Major General E.R. Blacque, and sold by his son in 1976 when, with an uncertain future in an unfashionable climate, its survival was secured by the late Brian de Breffny. Given the growing awareness of the importance of the house – it is currently undergoing restoration – together with its manageable scale, its future should never again be in doubt.”
[The flanking ranges to the garden have robust arcades. Duckart eschews architectural detail in favour of a broad banding of linked circles – a favourite motif throughout his career. The garden terraces include box hedges and parterres, and were developed by the new owners to add ‘incident’ to the setting of the house soon after its purchase in about 1909.]
https://www.buildingsofireland.ie/buildings-search/building/12403807/castletown-house-castletown-cox-house-castletown-co-kilkenny
Detached seven-bay three-storey over raised basement Classical-style country house, built 1767-71, on a symmetrical Palladian plan with three-bay full-height breakfront, three-bay three-storey side elevations, seven-bay three-storey over raised basement Garden (south-west) Front having three-bay full-height breakfront, five-bay two-storey lateral wings having single-bay full-height advanced end bays (five-bay double-height Garden (south-west) Front elevations), and single-bay two-storey higher pavilions on square plans leading to five-bay two-storey perpendicular outbuilding wings returning as three-bay double-height ranges. Hipped slate roofs (on a quadrangular plan to central block behind parapet) with rolled lead ridges, sandstone ashlar chimney stacks having cut-limestone stringcourses, and cast-iron rainwater goods on cut-sandstone eaves (concealed to central block). Octagonal slate domes to pavilions with rolled lead ridges, and open timber vents to apexes on octagonal plans (with elliptical-headed openings having balustraded parapet, moulded surrounds having keystones, frieze supporting dentilated cornice, and octagonal ogee-domed capping having ball finial supporting iron weathervane). Sandstone ashlar walls to Entrance (north-east) Front with cut-limestone dressings including quoins to corners, tripartite frontispiece to breakfront (comprising half-fluted double-height Composite pilasters supporting entablature, frieze, and dentilated cornice), carved entablature supporting frieze, dentilated cornice supporting top floor (treated as attic storey), carved cornice supporting balustraded parapet, limestone ashlar walls to remainder having rustication to basement to side elevations, quoined piers to ends to Garden (south-west) Front, and tripartite frontispiece to breakfront (comprising half-fluted double-height Composite pilasters supporting entablature, frieze, and dentilated cornice). Unpainted (dyed) lime rendered walls to wings with sandstone dressings including quoined piers to corners, band to eaves, sandstone ashlar walls to pavilions with cut-limestone dressings including quoined piers to corners, frieze supporting cornice, blocking course to first floor (treated as attic storey) supporting panelled pilasters, and frieze supporting cornice. Square-headed window openings (lunette window openings to basement to Entrance (north-east) Front; Venetian window openings to ground floor side elevations; round-headed window openings to basement to Garden (south-west) Front) with cut-limestone sills (profiled sills to first floor), carved limestone shouldered surrounds (supporting friezes to ground floor having entablatures with blocking course over), nine-over-six (ground floor), six-over-six (first floor), and three-over-three (top floor) timber sash windows (fixed-pane timber fittings to lunette window openings). Group (three-part arrangement) round-headed openings to ground floor Entrance (north-east) Front approached by platform with flight of fifteen cut-stone steps having iron railings, carved cut-limestone pilaster surrounds supporting archivolts having keystones, timber panelled double doors having fanlight, and nine-over-six timber sash windows to flanking openings having fanlights. Round-headed door opening to breakfront to Garden (south-west) Front approached by flights of cut-limestone steps forming perron on cut-limestone pillars having iron railings, carved cut-limestone pilaster surround supporting archivolt having keystone, and twelve-over-eight timber sash window forming French door having fanlight. Square-headed window openings to wings with round-headed window openings to end bays, round-headed window openings to return ranges, cut-sandstone sills, cut-sandstone Gibbsian surrounds having double keystones, six-over-six (ground floor) and three-over-three (first floor) timber sash windows having six-over-six timber sash windows to round-headed openings incorporating fanlights. Square-headed door openings with cut-sandstone Gibbsian surrounds having double keystones, and timber panelled doors. Elliptical-headed carriageways (some paired) with cut-sandstone surrounds having double keystones, and timber panelled double doors. Series of five (full-height) round-headed openings to Garden (south-west) Front forming arcade with cut-limestone pilaster surrounds supporting entablature, frieze, dentilated cornice to spring of arches, carved archivolts rising into roundel keystones, panelled soffits, and no fittings. Round-headed window openings to ground floor to pavilions with oculus window openings over having carved cut-limestone sill course, cut-limestone surrounds with stringcourse to spring of arches, double keystones, six-over-six timber sash windows, and carved limestone surrounds to oculus openings having timber fittings. Set back from road in own grounds with landscaped grounds to site including terrace to south-west leading to lake approached by flight of six cut-limestone steps.
Appraisal
An impressively-scaled country house built for Michael Cox (b. pre-1729), Archbishop of Cashel to designs prepared by Davis Ducart (Daviso de Arcort or Daviso d’Arcort) (fl. 1767-71) after Buckingham House (1703), London, by William Winde (c.1645-1722). Widely regarded as second only to Castletown House (begun 1722), County Kildare, the house in many ways almost surpasses the more renowned earlier namesake as the prime exemplar of the Palladian tradition in Ireland. Formally composed on a symmetrical plan accommodating residential and service ranges in a wholly integrated composition the architectural design value of the house is identified by elegant attributes including the identical frontispieces to each frontage, the distinctive pavilions, and so on. Exhibiting expert stone masonry throughout the carved dressings in locally-sourced Kilkenny limestone and sandstone further enhance the aesthetic appeal of the house. Having been carefully restored following a period of uncertainty regarding the future of the site in the late twentieth century the historic fabric survives largely intact both to the exterior and to the interior where decorative plasterwork dressings executed by Patrick Osborne (n. d.) are amongst the many features identifying the artistic design significance of the site. Forming the centrepiece of a large-scale country estate (including 12403808 – 13, 16 – 8/KK-38-08 – 13, 16 – 8) the house remains of additional importance in the locality for the connections with the Cox, the Villiers Stuart, the Wyndham-Quin, the Blacque, and the de Breffny families.
in Irish Castles and Historic Houses by Brendan O’Neill
http://www.buildingsofireland.ie/PlacesToSee/Kildare/
Built in 1767 for Michael Cox, Archbishop of Cashel. Designed by a Sardinian architect, Davis Ducart, the garden front with its giant fluted Corinthian pilasters and beautiful arcades, is spectacular.
All the ground-floor rooms, and the staircase, have rich Rococo plaster decoration by Patrick Osbourne of Waterford. The Corinthian columns in the front hall are monoliths, each carved out of a single piece of limestone. The attractive formal box gardens were laid out in 1909. The design is one of overall perfection, and it is regarded as the finest small Palladian houses in the country.
Great Houses of Ireland by Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd and Christopher Simon Sykes. Laurence King Publishing, 1999.
p. 175. “George Magan is a merchant banker descended from a long-established Irish landed family chronicles in Burke’s Irish Family Records. The ancient Irish name of their original seat in Co Westmeath, Umma-More, was the title chosen by George’s father, Brigadier William Magan, for a remarkably perceptive book of reflections on the history of Ireland. The Brigadier has also written an evocative memoir of his Irish boyhood in the foxhunting country of the South Westmeath; he went on to become its Master.
p. 174. Following his own father’s death, Brigadier Magan reluctantly decided in 1967 to sell Killyon Manor, Co Meath, together with its demesne – all that remained of the formerly substantial family estates. This undoubtedly spurred George Magan’s determination one day to re-establish the family in a fine Irish country house. Finally, in 1991, the opportunity to acquire one of the most architecturally important Palladian palaces in Ireland, the masterpiece of Davis Duckart, proved too good to miss.
Having bought the house, he fortuitously was able to buy back the heart of the demesne running to some 500 acres. The perfectionist Magan decided to take his time over the wholesale restoration in order to get it absolutely right. At the time of writing, eight years after the purchase, there is still more to be done to complete the restoration of the interior of the house – though the external renovation work, including the demesne, is virtually complete.
To help him undertake this marathon labour of love, George Magan assembled a team of all the talents: a project manager, architects, surveyors, historic buildings consultants, artisans, craftsmen, structural engineers and an industrious group of local contractors and builders. He was also fortunate in securing a first-class estate management and gardens team. For the creaaation of the new formal gardens, Magan turned to the Marchioness of Salisbury, whose grandparents Col. W.H. and Lady Eva Wyndham-Quin, made their home at Castletown earlier in the century before the Colonel succeeded a cousin in the Earldom of Dunraven and the Tudor-Revival Adare Manor. And in the demesne a landscaping scheme involving the planting of over 80,000 trees has more than compensated for the removal of the trees previously planted too close to the house, where they had latterly obscured its architecture.
The Magans were determined to ‘open up’ Castletown’s wonderful setting against the backdrop of the Co Kilkenny mountains and to show off Davis Duckart’s supreme composition of house, arcades and cupolas to the full. The park was accordingly remodelled, the lake dredged, a ha-ha wall built, the gardens levelled and the parterres (originally laid out by Lady Salisbury’s grandfather) moved. A new walled garden is currently being planned and Maxine Magan, George’s mother and a keen garden enthusiast, is actively involved in its creation.
Geroge Magan, an engagingly modest and straightforward proprietor, points out that the theme of all this restoration work at Castletown is ‘repair not Renewal.’ [p. 176] Yet no effort has been spared on the exterior and the interior of the house, the arcaded wings and pavilions. The weathered stonework has been thoroughly rejuvenated; the roofs and the windows renovated; the power systems comprehensively replaced (so that the state-of-the-art boiler room in the basement resembles the control room of an ocean-going liner); and the great joy of the interior, the Rococo plasterwork by the Waterford stuccodore Patrick Osborne, brought back to its pristine glory.
What strikes one about the Castletown restoration is the astonishing attention to detail, the accentuation of accuracy, the uncompromising standards of quality. It is particularly instructive to note the high level of expertise that still exists in Ireland when the opportunity to undertake top-flight work is made available. The old myth that ‘you can never get the right quality of craftsmanship these days’ has proved to be nonsense. In fact, the good craftsmen today are better than ever.
On our visit, for instance, we saw lime render for the plasterwork repairs being made in the traditional method, complete with goats hair. And up on the top floor, craftsmen were to be found cheerfully reconstructing walls in the proper, intricate way of combining lath and plaster that was used centuries ago.
Going back in time, the Castletown estate, near Carrick-on-Suir, was part of the vast landholding of the ‘Old English’ or Anglo-Norman family of Butler (Earls of Ormonde from 1328), who from their castle of Kilkenny used to rule over what was more like a kingdom than an estate. Indeed they actually held palatine rights over the neighbouring county of Tipperary, the border of which is close to the Castletown demesne. The Cavalier 12th Earl of Ormonde was created a Duke, and is known to history as ‘the Great Duke of Ormonde’ on account of his wisdom and integrity as King Charles II’s Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. His grandson the Jacobite 2nd Duke (described in Macky’s Characters as ‘One of the most generous, princely, brave men that ever was, but good-natured to a fault.’ ) at first leased and then sold the Castletown estate to the lawyer Sir Richard Cox of Dunmanway, Co Cork, who was appointed Lord Chancellor of Ireland in 1703 and created a Baronet three years later.
Although Sir Richard was the father of the present house’s builder, Michael Cox, Archbishop of Cashel, the succession was not as simple as that, for Sir Richard seems to have either sold or sublet Castletown to Edward Cooke of Cookestown, who died in 1751. It then passed to Michael Cox (Sir Richard’s fifth and youngest son), who happened to be the widower of Cooke’s sister Anne.
The Archbishop seems to have had the traditional sporting instincts of the irish clergy, as he laid out a racecourse on the demesne. He was also a legendary trencherman. Dorothea Herbert, who lived not far from Castletown, has left us a memorable picture of Cox’s character:
It happened that there was a fine Turkey for dinner…The Archbishop himself was an odd character – He was very close and often blew out the Wax lights before half of his company dispersed… He was excessively fond of cards but so cross at them that few would venture to be his partner.”
‘Close’ he may have been, but he commissioned Davis Duckart to build a house of distinction…
p. 177. The wings at Castletown also have arcades, though with the delightful bonus of culminating in pretty pavilions topped off with octagonal cupolas (the ‘fish-scale’ slates have been carefully restored). The central block of the house is built of dressed sandstone and unpolished Kilkenny marble, with the stonework very finely cut to give an exquisitely crisp effect. The Corinthian motif of the two principal facades is continued inside the Hlal, which has a screen of monolithic fluted Corinthian columns of lightly polished Kilkenny marble (which is such a luxurious feature of Castletown), and also a stone chimneypiece with terms. The Hall, Dinign Room and Staircase Hall have richly decorated plaster panels on their walls as well as plasterwork ceilings. The total cost of the magnificent plasterwork is given in a detailed bill, still extent, as £696 10s 5d.
p. 179. The Archbishop adorned the garden front with his coat of arms impaling those of his second wife, another Anne, who had died in childbirth in 1746. The second Anne was the daughter of James O’Brien, MP for Youghal, and a grand-daughter of the 3rd Earl of Inchiquin. Fortunately, her baby son survived and Castletown, largely unchanged, remained in the Cox family until the middle of the next century, when it passed to Lieut. Col William Villiers-Stuart, a younger son of the family seated at Dromana, Co Waterford, whom married Katherine, the heiress of Michael Cox of Castletown.
It was their son, another Colonel, who sold the place to the Wyndham-Quins in 1909. Next, in the late 1920s, after they Wyndham-Quins had furnished the gardens with statuary, followed Major-General Edmund Blaque and his wife, Kathleen, daughter of the colourful Admiral Lord Beresford (‘Charlie B. from Curraghmore). Charlie B’s famous foxhunting tattoo would doubtless have earned the admiration of the Archbishop and indeed of Blaques’ son and successor Charles, Master of the Kilmaganny Harriers. Charles Blaque sold Castletown in 1976 and, after some uncertainty about its future, it was acquired three years later by Ulli de Breffney, whose husband the late Brian de Breffney, was a well-known writer on Irish architecture, genealogy and culture.
At the end of a chequered century at Castletown it is gratifying to report that the future of this exceptionally elegant house, now being so immaculately restored by George and Wendy Magan, looks reassuringly secure. The work in progress illustrated here encourages one to think that we may be witnessing a new Golden Age for the Irish country house.”
https://lordbelmontinnorthernireland.blogspot.com/2018/04/castletown-cox.html
THE VILLIERS-STUARTS OWNED 2,790 ACRES OF LAND IN COUNTY KILKENNYLORD HENRY STUART (1777-1809), fifth son of John, 4th Earl and 1st Marquess of Bute, married, in 1802, the Lady Gertrude Amelia Mason-Villiers, only daughter and heir of George, 2nd and last Earl Grandison, and had issue,
HENRY, cr BARON STUART DE DECIES;
WILLIAM, of whom presently;
Charles;
Gertrude Amelia.
The second son,
WILLIAM VILLIERS-STUART JP DL (1804-73), High Sheriff of County Kilkenny, 1848, MP for County Waterford, 1835-47, wedded, in 1833, Catherine (d 1879), only daughter of MICHAEL COX, of Castletown, County Kilkenny (by the Hon Mary Prittie his wife, daughter of Henry, 1st Baron Dunalley, and sister and heir of Sir Richard Cox, 8th Baronet, of Dunmanway, County Cork, and had issue,
HENRY JOHN RICHARD, his heir;
Dudley;
Gertrude Mary; Geraldine; Evelyn.
Mr Villiers-Stuart and his siblings assumed, in 1822, the additional surname and arms of VILLIERS.
He was succeeded by his eldest son,
HENRY JOHN RICHARD VILLIERS-STUART JP DL (1837-1914), of Castletown and Castlane, County Kilkenny, High Sheriff of County Kilkenny, 1887, who espoused, in 1870, Jane Rigby, eldest daughter of Benjamin Rigby Murray, of Parton Place, Kirkudbright, and had issue,
WILLIAM DESMOND (1872-1961), Brigadier, CBE, DSO;
Charles Herbert;
John Patrick;
Kathleen Jane; Gertrude Elsie; Marie Violet.
FAMILY OF COX
MICHAEL COX, the youngest son of a respectable Wiltshire family (amongst whose progenitors was the learned Dr Richard Cox, one of the compilers of the Liturgy, tutor to EDWARD VI, and in the reign of ELIZABETH I, Lord Bishop of Ely), seated at Kilworth, County Cork, some time within the first quarter of the 17th century, and left, with other children, at his decease,
RICHARD COX, a man of great bodily strength and courage, who became a captain in Major-General John Jephson’sregiment of dragoons, and fought successively under the royal banner of CHARLES I, and the republican one of Cromwell.
He married Catherine, daughter of Walter Bird, of Clonakilty, and died in 1651 (in consequence of a treacherous wound received from a brother officer of his own regiment, a Captain Narton) when his orphan son,
RICHARD COX (1650-1733), then not quite three years of age, was taken under the care of his maternal grandfather, Walter Bird; but that relation dying a few years later, he was placed by his uncle, John Bird, at an ordinary Latin school in the town of Clonakilty, where he soon evinced a strong disposition to learning.
In 1671, he entered himself at Lincoln’s Inn, and was, in regular time, called to the bar.
Upon his return to Ireland, Mr Cox married; but in consequence of some disappointment regarding the fate of his wife, retired, in a fit of despondency, very uncharacteristic of his active mind, to a farm near Clonakilty, and there remained in obscurity for almost seven years.
The patronage of Sir Robert Southwell at length, however, recalled him into active life; and in 1680 he was Recorder of Kinsale, County Cork, when he settled at Cork and practiced as a barrister with considerable success.
In 1687, he withdrew, in consequence of the religious dissensions prevalent at that period in his native country, to Bristol, and there, at his leisure hours, compiled a “History of Ireland.”
At the period of the Revolution he returned to Ireland, as secretary to Sir Robert Southwell, who accompanied William, Prince of Orange, in the capacity of principal secretary of state.
Upon his royal master’s march to Dublin, after the battle of the Boyne, that prince published his manifesto, called “The King’s Declaration at Finglass,” which emanated from the pen of Mr Cox, and which so pleased His Majesty that he was heard to say that “Mr Cox has exactly hit my own mind.”
After the surrender of Waterford, Mr Cox was made Recorder of that city, and thence, in 1690, removed to the second seat upon the bench of the Court of Common Pleas.
In 1692, he received the honour of knighthood; in 1701, Chief Justice of the Irish Common Pleas; and in 1703 was appointed LORD CHANCELLOR OF IRELAND.
In the absence of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, he was twice nominated one of the Lords-Justices; and created a baronet in 1706, designated of Dunmanway, County Cork.
Upon the termination of the Duke of Ormonde’s government, however, in 1707, Sir Richard Cox was removed from the chancellorship, but he subsequently accepted the office of Lord Chief Justice of the Queen’s Bench, from which he was removed, with the other judges, upon the accession of GEORGE I, and his conduct was subsequently censured by a vote of the House of Commons.
Sir Richard married, in 1673, Mary, daughter of John Bourne, and had issue,
Richard (1677-1725), father of RICHARD, 2nd Baronet;
Walter;
John;
William;
MICHAEL, of whom hereafter.
The youngest son,
THE MOST REV DR MICHAEL COX (1689-1779), Lord Archbishop of Cashel and Primate of Munster, Chaplain to James, 2nd Duke of Ormonde, when Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, who espoused, in 1712, Anne, daughter of the Hon James O’Brien MP, and granddaughter of William, 3rd Earl of Inchiquin, by whom he left at his decease, in 1779, an only son,
RICHARD COX (1745-), of Castletown, County Kilkenny, who married, in 1776, Mary, daughter of Francis Burton, brother of Sir Charles Burton, 1st Baronet, and had (with two daughters), five sons,
MICHAEL, of whom hereafter;
Francis (Sir), 9th Baronet;
Richard (Rev), Rector of Caherconlish;
William;
Benjamin.
The eldest son,
MICHAEL COX (1768-), of Castletown, High Sheriff of County Kilkenny, 1819, wedded Mary, daughter of Henry, 1st Baron Dunalley, and had issue,
Richard (Sir), 8th Baronet, of Castletown, dsp 1846;
Henry, died unmarried;
CATHERINE, of whom we treat.
The only daughter,
CATHERINE COX (c1808-1879), of Castletown, heir to her brother, wedded, in 1833, LIEUTENANT-COLONEL WILLIAM VILLIERS-STUART (see above).
CASTLETOWN, Piltown, County Kilkenny (popularly known as Castletown Cox to distinguish it from the celebrated Castletown in County Kildare), was the creation of the renowned architect, Davis Ducart, who was commissioned, in 1767, by the Most Rev Michael Cox, Lord Archbishop of Cashel (whose father, Sir Richard Cox, 1st Baronet, had leased the land from the Duke of Ormonde).
The Archbishop’s armorial bearings adorn the garden front.
His Grace acquired the property following his first marriage to Anne Cooke, who had inherited it from her brother.
The Archbishop’s second wife, Anne O’Brien, was granddaughter of the Earl of Inchiquin.
Castletown Cox has a principal centre block comprising three storeys over a basement, and seven bays.
At each side, in the Palladian style, there are stable and kitchen wings which lengthen two fronts of the mansion and then run outwards at right angles, thus forming a partly-enclosed forecourt.
The central block is said to be a variant of William Wynde’s Buckingham House in London.
The roof is balustraded.
Castletown Cox is made of dressed sandstone and unpolished Kilkenny marble.
The main block is very finely cut, and the wings have rougher stonework with ashlar dressings.
The wings on the garden front are arcaded and terminate in pavilions with cupolas and octagonal domes.
The garden front is adorned with large, fluted Corinthian pilasters and exceptionally beautiful arcades.
Castletown was sold by the family in 1909 to Colonel William Henry Wyndham-Quin, later 5th Earl of Dunraven and Mount-Earl.
The Colonel laid out the very attractive, formal knot-gardens.
There is exquisite rococo plasterwork in the main reception rooms by the celebrated Waterford stuccodore, Patrick Osborne.
The hall, staircase hall, and dining-room have decorative plaster panelling on their walls, and plasterwork ceilings.
The hall boasts a screen of monolithic, fluted Corinthian columns of unpolished Kilkenny marble, similar to that used on the exterior.
When Colonel Wyndham-Quin succeeded to the title in 1926, he sold Castletown to Major-General E R Blaque, son-in-law of Admiral Lord Beresford.
General Blaque’s son, Charles, sold the estate in 1976 to Nicholas Walsh, who never moved into the mansion.
The self-styled Baron Brian de Breffny and his wife purchased the house from Mr Walsh in 1979.
Castletown Cox estate was purchased by Mr George Morgan Magan (created a life peer in 2011, as BARON MAGAN OF CASTLETOWN) in 1999.
The property was purchased in 2020 by Mr Kelcy Warren.
First published in April, 2018. With gratitude to Richard Corrigan, without whom this article might not have been written.
Irish Historic Houses 
