Drum Manor, Co Tyrone
see https://lordbelmontinnorthernireland.blogspot.com/2014/09/drum-manor.html
THE EARLS CASTLE STEWART WERE THE SECOND LARGEST LANDOWNERS IN COUNTY TYRONE, WITH 32,615 ACRES
DRUM MANOR, near Cookstown, County Tyrone, built in1829, was originally called Oaklands.
It was remodelled and extended in 1869 to the designs of the architect William Hastings, and renamed Drum Manor.
The house of 1829 was built for Major William StewartRichardson-Brady, DL, and comprised a triple-gabled east front, of which only the ground floor blind walling, rectangular bay windows and polygonal south-east bay remain.
The extensions of 1869 were built for Lord Stuart, and were described at the time as the “tower and main building” of which only the four-storey tower survives intact.
Of Hastings’ original main building the remaining north front, including the main entrance porch, the south front, and probably also the porch on the east side may be identified.
In addition, the south terrace balustrading and steps, and the screen wall and gateway of 1876, may be attributed to Hastings.
Hastings’ other works here included the two gate lodges, also of the 1870s.
The manor house was semi-derelict by 1970, with slated roofs, though the roofs were later removed, gables taken down, and the entire interior space, apart from the tower, cleared away to form an open garden within mainly ground floor perimeter walls.
It owes its origins to the marriage in 1868 of Henry James Stuart-Richardson, Viscount Stuart (later 5th Earl Castle Stewart) to Augusta Liviscount Richardson-Brady, heiress to the Oaklands estate.
Lord Stuart’s armorial bearings (top) adorn the manor house.
Augusta Richardson-Brady was Major Richardson-Brady’s daughter.
Her second marriage was to Lord Stuart in 1866.
She died in 1908 at Drum Manor, without male issue.
In 1865, her name was legally changed to Augusta Liviscount Richardson-Brady by Royal Licence; and, from 1867, her married name became Stuart-Richardson.
As a result of her marriage, she became the Countess Castle Stewart in 1874.
Immediately upon marriage, Lord Stuart set about reconstructing Oaklands into the Tudor-Revival edifice known as Drum Manor.
This battlemented sandstone structure once had a tall tower to the east, near the entrance front which was dominated by a huge entrance portal; surmounted by a large tracery window which contained Victorian armorial stained-glass.
Lord Stuart was also responsible for setting out the formal gardens and demesne which survive to this day.
TODAY, Drum Manor Forest Park is one of Cookstown’s largest tourist attractions, though only the ground floor outer walls of the manor house survive.
The Northern Ireland Forest Service acquired the estate from the Close family in 1964, and opened it as a forest park in 1970.
The tower and the ground floor walls of the early Victorian manor-house remain intact.
The balustrade terrace is worth visiting, as the pleasure-grounds and backdrop were specifically designed to provide an impressive vista from this single vantage point.
The pleasure grounds and ponds were developed during a major alteration of the house in the 1870s.
They contain a number of interesting tree species, and the layout of the plantings was carried out deliberately to create a special atmosphere.
Drum Manor Forest Park has many facilities available for educational visits including nature trails, guided tours, picnic areas, seasonal cafe, disabled access toilets and commercially managed forest.
The forest plots were established from 1965 onwards and include both native and exotic tree species.
The demesne (then known as Oaklands) was established in the 18th century.
The present house of 1829 exists as a shell.
This serves the purpose of retaining the main building within the landscape but it is unfortunate that it no longer exists as usable.
In an attempt to avoid incurring rates liability, the Forest Service demolished the mansion.
The manor house was partially demolished in 1975 and a ‘Japanese’ garden was created within the ruins.
A tower, from which there are fine views and additions of 1896, is notable.
There are many excellent ornamental attributes within the site and good planting.
There are mature stands of beech, including a beech shelter belt on the southern perimeter, with a walk inside and a now disused beech avenue leading from a former entrance on the northern side.
The terracing on the south (garden) front of the manor-house survives, complete with a little stone summer house.
This leads to lawns, with trees and shrubs and on to a series of large artificial ponds or lakes, the western of which is silted up.
There are pleasant walks round the lake via bridges.
The walled garden is divided into two parts, formerly laid out in box edges beds in a geometric pattern.
These were grubbed out in favour of a 1970s layout and planting, which is maintained.
Part of the walled garden is designated as a butterfly garden.
The Gardener’s House lies between the walled gardens and is in good repair.
The stable yard, farm yard and haggard are now car parks.
There are two listed lodges of ca 1870, of which the Cookstown Gate has an impressive entrance archway.
Changes in road alignment have altered the shape of the demesne, which is now 227 acres.
It was taken over for forestry in 1964 and designated a Forest Park in 1970; the site is a well maintained public amenity with good facilities.
First published in March, 2011. I am grateful to the Countess Castle Stewart for information.
http://www.nihgt.org/resources/pdf/Register_of_Parks_Gardens_Demesnes-NOV20.pdf
DRUM MANOR (OAKLANDS), County Tyrone (AP MID ULSTER 10) T/016
REGISTERED GRADE A
Compact and well designed multiphase demesne (635 acres/257 acres) with ruined mansion
(Listed HB 09/04/006), in the townland of Oaklands, 2.9 miles (4.7km) west of Cookstown and 9.9
miles (15.9km) north-west of Dungannon. The demesne is bounded on its three sides by public
roads and as an indication of its former splendour, 2.3 miles (3.7km) of the Drum-road from
Cookstown was re-aligned in the 18th-century directly onto the east (formerly the front) facade of
the house. Initially, named Manor Richardson after the property, part of the Plantation estate of
‘Creighballes’, was sold in 1617 to Alexander Richardson (1585-1630), of Smeaton, East Lothian,
eldest son of Sir James Richardson of Smeaton (1558-1625) and descendant of Burgesses of
Register of Parks, Gardens and Demesnes of Special Historic Interest (NI) – November 2020
Jedburgh (Roxborough). In 1619 he is recorded as having there ‘a bawne of clay and stone, being
rough-cast and lime, 90 feet square, with four flankers, and a timber house in it, in which he, with
his family, is now dwelling’. He died in Augher and was succeeded by his son The Rev. Sir William
Richardson (1615-1673), whose eldest son, Archibald, inherited the Augher (Spur Royal) estate
from his mother Mary Erskine. (1620-80), while the younger son, Alexander (1635-86) succeeded
to Manor Richardson. His eldest son, William Richardson (c.1660-1741) inherited both Drum (as it
Manor Richardson was now invariably called) and Derrygally in 1686, the latter from his mother,
Margaret Goodlatte (1645-1710). William died in 1741 and was succeeded by his son David
(d.c1797) who married Margaret Wallace. It is evident that the original plantation house had been
expanded and upgraded by this period, but its is not clear whether it was William or his son who
transformed the demesne. However, it was David who rebuilt the house, information about which
is provided by a crude but detailed plan captioned ‘account of what money lay’d out in building a
house in Drum in ye year 1744’. This shows the ground floor layout of a double-fronted –
probably symmetrical- dwelling with a central hall, with a ‘big parler’ to the left and a ‘lodgeing
roome’ and closet behind this. To the other side of the hall there was a ‘little parler’ with a closet
off and a kitchen to the rear of these rooms. This house is labelled as ‘Drum’ on Taylors and
Skinner’s road map of 1777-78, and it is mentioned as ‘the seat of Mr. Richardson’ in Wilson’s
Post-chaise companion of 1786. At some stage between 1720 and 1750 the road from Cookstown
to Omagh was re-aligned, with 2.93 miles (4.7km) aligned as a straight-road directly on the front
facade of the house. Originally this road would have passed through the beside, or close to the
house and bawn and through the demesne, but now was diverted, so that at a distance of 350m
from the house, the road turned left to Omagh around the demesne boundary and another road
to the right leading to Kildress to the north. The 1830s OS map shows that one mile of this straight
road was tree lined like an avenue and no doubt originally there was a straight tree-lined avenue
from the road and front gate to the house itself. Relics of features on the OS 1830s map indicate
that the geometric early 18th-century landscape probably had a tree-lined avenue/vista aligned
on the south facade and parallel to this on the west side, were two walled gardens (combined 2.2
acres/0.9ha), both of which survived until the remodelling of the park in 1870. At the bottom of
the lower walled garden was a small canal or rectangular pond. East of the walled garden was a
rather unusual water feature, of two concentric circles, and it’s likely the lakes, so much a feature
of the late 18th-century landscape were formal straight sided canals originally. With David
Richardson’s death around 1797. the property was inherited by his son, William Richardson
(d.1823), who married Isabella Brady, co-heiress to the Clonervy demesne and estate, north-east
of Cavan. It is likely that they were responsible for re-landscaping the demesne as a fashionable
landscape park, which was clearly designed by a professional landscape gardener, who, as so
often in Ireland, remains unknown. The new layout involved removing formal straight tree-lined
avenues and putting down a sinuous front drive that divided as it entered the grounds, the left
going to the house, the right to the outbuildings. The park was enclosed on its perimeter along
the roads by tree belts; those belts on the north and east were narrow, though on the south and
west side much more substantial. Two lakes were created south-west and south-east of the
house, the latter within sight of the mansion and flanking the old walled garden, which itself was
typically now surrounded by woodlands, hiding it from view and provide shelter to the produce
being grown. The stable yard behind the house was also hidden by woodland and around the
demesne were substantial woodland clumps with large number of isolated parkland trees, so
indicative of Picturesque landscapes of the era. In 1823 Major William Stewart Richardson
(d.1866), succeeded his father, later assumed the additional name of Brady on succeeding to his
mother’s third of Clonervy in 1841. It was probably partly due to the prospect of the added
income from the Cavan lands that prompted Major Richardson Brady to rebuild Drum itself in
1829, renaming the new house ‘Oaklands’. The new building incorporated parts of the 1744
dwelling as was clear from the agreement of July 1829 with the architect Patrick O’Farrell
(Blackwatertown, Co. Armagh) for ‘a new front to Drum house and making alterations therein’.
Register of Parks, Gardens and Demesnes of Special Historic Interest (NI) – November 2020
The new mansion was in a Tudor-Gothic style, largely rectangular of two-stories with ashlar walls
incorporating various bays complete with castellations, buttresses and pinnacles, whilst the roof
had a relatively shallow-pitch and was largely hidden behind a parapet with embellishments
similar to the bays. The east-facing front was double-gabled with a central gabled porch flanked
by the square single-storey bays, the walls of which are all still extant. In 1866 the Major’s
daughter and sole heiress, Augusta (d.1908) inherited the demesne; that same year she married
Viscount Stuart, later the 5th Earl of Castle Stewart (d.1914), of nearby Stewart Hall. The carried
out a major enlargement and remodelling of the house in 1869 to designs of the architect William
Hastings, assisted by Timothy Hevey. The interior was re-ordered, with the entrance moved from
the east to the north. Unfortunately, this house was demolished in 1975 and only the ground
floor level walls and a four-stage square tower to the north-western corner remain. Also
remaining are remnants of an impressive terrace that was added to the south front of the house
with bastion-like projections and stone balustrade , forming one end of a long magnificent
broadwalk 319m (1,046ft) long. with a summer house at the west end. The broadwalk was part of
a major re-landscaping of the grounds around the house; as with the Regency Landscape park,
this new work was clearly also done by a professional garden designer, possibly Ninian Niven or
someone of his status. The old 18th century walled gardens were removed from the south-west
side of the house, thus allowing the broadwalk to be made and opening up views down to the
lakes which themselves were remodelled into a west lake (3.18 acres/1.29ha); a middle lake (1.68
acres/0.68ha) and an east lake (3.02 acres/1.22ha), two of which still survive. North-east of the
house another pair of lakes were made (combined 4.82 acres/1.95ha), but these have long ceased
to survive. On the west of the demesne the old Kildress-Drumshambo-road, which formed the old
west boundary of the demesne was closed (in the 1850s) and the demesne expanded in the 1860s
to include an additional 90 acres (36.7ha) of parkland through which ran a new sinuous carriage
drive, entering the demesne from the north-west corner on the Drum Road; this drive was lined
with beech trees and survives today as the ‘Kildress Path’. Where this avenue met the road there
is a gate lodge and screen surviving (Listed HB 09/04/006). This is a Tudor-Gothic style one and a
half storey dwelling, designed by Hastings around 1870. Due to the realignment of the road in
1964, the rere lodge is located some distance south of the roadside. The gate screen, which has
been re-located closer to the present road, has square cut-stone pillars, and original (1870) iron
gates and (to one side) curving spearhead railings. The main gate lodge, east of the house, is in
the same Tudor-Gothic style (Listed HB 09/04/008) also designed and built by Hastings in 1870,
being a one and a half storey dwelling with gable-ends with kneelers and a gabled projecting
porch with buttresses. There is here a grand cut-limestone Tudor Gothic gate screen, complete
with pointed arch entrance, castellations, buttresses, octagonal miniature turret and arrow loops.
The gateway itself has a drip moulding with carved stops, and over this is the carved armorial of
then owners Lord and Lady Castle Stewart. Extending either side of the screen is a cut-stone wall,
that to the south having had a vehicle gateway inserted into it in relatively recent years, to allow
access to a private dwelling, this part of the demesne being not included in the present Forest
Service holdings. What were the yards to the rere of the house have now been demolished and
serve as a car park; however, at some distance west, at the end of the Broadwalk, is the walled
garden, as built in 1869-79. This takes the for of a rectangle, divided into two equal sized squares,
the west ((0.99 acres/0.4ha) and east (1.01 acres/0.4ha) with rubble-stone walls, partly lined with
brick inside. The west garden had a small glass house in the north-west corner until around 1977
and a conservatory against the north wall until just before then. In the 1970s Crosbie Cochrane
laid it out the garden with meandering paths and shrubs with expansive lawn, which is what it
survives as today. The east garden was laid out with boxwood in a geometrical pattern and now
has meandering paths in lawn with shrubs. To the north-western corner of the eastern walled
garden there is a neat two-storey gardener’s house of c.1869, with gable ends, symmetrical three-
bay frontage, limestone rubble walls, slate roof, a lean-to to the north and (later) lean-to
extension to the rear. This dwelling backs on to the neighbouring walled garden, whose walls are
Register of Parks, Gardens and Demesnes of Special Historic Interest (NI) – November 2020
brick-lined to this side. The garden layout around the house necessitated a network of paths,
notably to the south, where the main pleasure grounds were located, but also to the north where
a new avenue was laid to approach the new front of the house; close to the north-west of the
ruins of the house survives a bridge which carried the new avenue over a minor ravine.; this has
parapet walls of coursed sandstone with short square piers, over a skew-archway of brick
vaulting, with a notched brickwork drip moulding. There are two smaller stone bridges along the
paths near the lakes to the south of the house. The 1870 pleasure grounds were filled with new
trees and shrubs and there remains today a good collection of mature native and exotic tree and
shrub species. This includes some magnificent cedars south-east of the house and four champion
trees, two of which are Irish Girth Champions, namely a Chamaecyparis obtusa ‘Crippsii’ (Hinoki
cypress), one lining a walk, and a Tsuga heterophylla (Western hemlock), which has a girth of
5.96m. This lies north-east of the house and there are other old hemlocks south of the house
between the two easternmost loughs. The two other champion trees are An Acer platanoides
(Norway maple) and a Quercus × turneri (Turner’s oak). A Cupressus macrocarpa (Monterey
cypress) and a Pseudotsuga menziesii (Douglas fir) are also listed on the Tree Register of Ireland.
Lord and Lady Castle Stewart, who enlarged the house in 1869 and created the gardens, had two
daughters, but no son. As a result, when Lord Castle Stewart died in 1914, he was succeeded in
his titles and paternal estates by a cousin and in the Richardson-Brady estate by one of his
daughters, Lady Muriel (d.1928), who had married Archibald Maxwell Close of Drumbanagher, Co.
Armagh in 1891. Drum Manor remained with the Close family until 1964, when the house and
demesne were sold to the Northern Ireland Ministry of Agriculture, who opened it as a forest park
in 1970. The house was not re-used and in 1975 the interior was dismantled by the Forest
Service, and the roof and upper portions of the walls taken down. The remainder was conserved
as a shell with a garden created within the ruins. The realignment southwards of what is now
Drum Road (A505) in 1964 saw the cutting off of part of the northern end of the former demesne,
and since 1970 a portion of land to the north-eastern corner has been in private hands, and
several houses have been built upon it. The Forest Service have maintained the pleasure ground
to the south of the house, but the open parkland meadows of the demesne were from 1965
infilled with rectangular plots of ‘native’ and exotic forestry planting with each rectangle
containing the same tree species; they include stands of Araucana araucana (Monkey puzzle) and
Thuja plicata (Western redwood cedar). The property was designated a Forest Park in 1970, the
site remains a well maintained public amenity, with good facilities, administered by DAERA (Forest
Service). SMR: TYR 29:20 standing stone and 21 enclosure.
https://theirishaesthete.com/2021/10/11/drum-manor/
A Hollow Drum
When writing about Ireland’s ruined country houses, the reason given for their destruction can sometimes be official indifference but rarely official action. However, the fate of Drum Manor, County Tyrone demonstrates that sometimes the latter happens. The origins of the property lie with Alexander Richardson, member of a family of Edinburgh burgesses who in 1617 bought the land on which it stands and constructed a house called Manor Richardson. His descendants remained there for the next two centuries and then in 1829 Drum Manor underwent a complete transformation.
In 1829 Major William Stewart Richardson-Brady remodelled Drum Manor to the designs of an unknown architect, and given the new name of Oaklands. The house became a two-storey, three-bay villa dressed up with Tudor-Revival dressings, such as crenellations along the roofline, along with buttresses on the facade, a gabled single-storey entrance porch flanked by projecting bays with mullioned windows. The major’s only child, Augusta Le Vicomte, first married another Major, Hugh Massy, but following his death less than two years later, she married Henry James Stuart-Richardson, future fifth Earl Castle Stewart of Stuart Castle, elsewhere in County Tyrone (also since lost).
In 1869 Augusta and Henry James Stuart-Richardson aggrandised Oaklands, which now became Drum Manor, at the cost of some £10,000. The architect in this instance was William Hastings of Belfast, most of whose commissions were in neighbouring County Antrim. He was responsible for giving the house its most dominant features, not least a four-storey square tower with castellated and machiolated parapet. Inside, the building’s principal reception rooms radiated off a double-height central hall with a gallery running around the first floor. Elaborate works were also undertaken in the surrounding demesne, much of which survives in better condition than the main building. This survived until 1964 when the estate was acquired by the Northern Ireland Forestry Service; just over a decade later, that organisation demolished much of Drum Manor, seemingly in order to avoid incurring further rates liability. Today, just the shell survives.
Irish Historic Houses 