Wardstown, County Donegal, entrance front photograph: Alistair Rowan, 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.
Bence-Jones, Mark. 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. 282. “A three storey Georgian house with curved end bows and also a curved bow in the centre of its front. Blocking round doorway; camber-headed windows. Now a ruin.”
In Blake, Tarquin. Abandoned Mansions of Ireland II: More Portraits of Forgotten Stately Homes. Collins Press, Cork, 2012.
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. 55. A three storey house built in 1740 somewhat in the style of Sir John Vanbrugh’s smaller houses. Pair of staircases at the rere of the corner towers seem to be slightly later addition. Now a ruin.”
Bence-Jones, Mark. 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. 158. “A two storey 7 bay Georgian house with breakfront centre and a pedimented doorway.”
Castle Forward, Newtowncunningham, Co Donegal – ruin
Bence-Jones, Mark. 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. 68. “(Forward-Howard, Wicklow, E/PB) A long low two storey Georgian house of nine bays; the windows of four outer bays on either side being grouped in pairs. Shallow pilastered porch… Originally the seat of the Forward family, whose heiress was the wife of the 1st Viscount Wicklow and was herself created Countess of Wicklow in 1793.”
Bence-Jones, Mark. 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. 45. “A square two storey house of the 1730s, with a dormered attic in its slightly sprocketed roof. Five bay front, pedimented surround to central window in lower storey; tall stacks at sides. In 1814 the residence of Rev. Thomas Pemberton.”
Ballinacarriga (or Ballynacarriga), Kilworth, Co Cork
Ballinacarrig Castle, County Cork, photograph by Robert French, Lawrence Photograph Collection, National Library of Ireland.
Bence-Jones, Mark. 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. 20 “(Corban-Lucas, sub Lucas/IFR) A three storey 5 bay C18 house, originally a seat of the Pyne family, bought ca the 1850s by Laurence Corban, who lived nearby at Maryville, as a wedding present for his daughter when she married John Lucas; the son of the marriage, A.J. Corban-Lucas, refaced the house ca 1880 and added single-storey 2 bay wings, as well as an enclosed porch entered at the side and with a round-headed front-facing window glazed in Romanesque style. The porch was replaced by simpler porch by A.J.L. Corban-Lucas 1936, when the centre of the house had to be reconstructed owing to a severe attack of dry-rot. 2 drawing rooms opening into each other with double doors to form a ballroom, one of the two rooms being in one of the wings. Both rooms have C19 plasterwork cornices; the room in the wing has a more elaborate one, and also a more ornate chimneypiece: Victorian, and of white marble.”
Detached five-bay three-storey country house, built c. 1730, with two-bay flanking two-bay single-storey wings, built c. 1860. Porch to front, lean-to to rear of east wing and single-bay two-storey extension and four-bay two-storey return to rear of house, with flat-roofed one-bay two-storey addition to re-entrant angle of house and return, with cast-iron water tank to roof. Now in use as private house. Hipped slate roof with rendered chimneystacks. Flat roof and moulded render cornice to porch and hipped ends to wings. Hipped slate roof and rendered chimneystack to return. Rendered walls with render quoins and plinth courses. Square-headed window openings with one-over-one pane timber sliding sash windows, having limestone sills to ground and second floors and moulded render surrounds and continuous render sill course to first floor. One double window to east elevation of return. Round-headed window openings to rear and to east elevation of return, having one-over-one pane timber sliding sash windows, rear elevation being margined. Square-headed tripartite one-over-one pane timber sliding sash window to porch, with render sill. Square-headed timber panelled doors to porch, with raised render surrounds and limestone steps. Seven-bay two-storey outbuilding to north having half-hipped slate roof, rubble limestone walls and square-headed openings, windows having render sills. Detached nine-bay two-storey outbuilding to west having pitched slate roof, roughly dressed limestone walls, square-headed window openings with render sills, and elliptical-arched vehicular entrances with dressed limestone voussoirs. Square-profile, dressed limestone piers with double-leaf cast-iron gates leading to rear. Square-profile rusticated limestone piers to east, with carved caps and plinth, having double-leaf cast-iron gates, set to boundary limestone plinth walls with spear-headed cast-iron railings.
Appraisal
This country house, built by Cornelius Pyne, has a classically-inspired façade and retains a sombre elegance through the restrained use of ornamentation. The retention of the varied timber sash windows enhances this house and the site retains substantial outbuildings built with fine quality materials. The unusual rusticated limestone piers with cast-iron gates form an imposing entrance to the house.
Ballinacarrig Castle, County Cork, photograph by Robert French, Lawrence Photograph Collection, National Library of Ireland.
A mid 18th century house, home of the Pyne family for over a century until they sold it in the Encumbered Estates’ Court in 1852. Before the sale John G. Pyne was resident, holding the property in perpetuity. The buildings were valued at £18.10 shillings. Bought by Laurence Corban it passed from the Pynes to the Corban Lucas family, members of whom were still resident at the beginning of the 21st century.
The Buildings of Ireland. Cork City and County. Frank Keohane. Yale University Press: New Haven and London. 2020.
p. 223.
P. 13. The Tower House was the ubiquitous late medieval dwelling, found throughout the county. They were built through the C15 and C16 and into the early C17. (inland clans, including the Hurleys, McSweeneys and some McCarthys, began to build such towers such as Ballinvard (Rossmore), Togher and Ballinoroher (Clonakilty) at a comparatively late date, perhaps as a reaction to the disturbances arising during the Desmond Rebellion.). These houses typically take the form of a tall rectangular stone tower, turrets being comparatively rare in Cork, with the exception of some towers in the SW of the county, such as Kilcoe and Dunmanus. They vary greatly in size, from Monteen (Kilmalooda) at 6m x 5.6m, to Castle Richard (Killeagh) at a more typical 11.4m x 9.9m, up to Kilcrea at 15m x 11m, and Blarney at 19m x 11. [p. 14] Cork towers usually have four or five storeys, making them taller than those in Leinster and Ulster. The provision of two vautls, over the second and fourth storeys, is typical, though rare in sw Cork. Vaults can be semicircular, pointed or bluntly pointed, and were formed over wicker mats laid on timber centering, in contrast to C13.14 vaults, which were plank-centred.
The entrance is generally at ground level, unlike the raised doors used in hall houses and keeps. The wooden doors open inwards and would have been secured by a drawbar. Most of the doorways are rebated, for an outward-opening iron gate or yet, which would have been secured from the inside using iron chains. The doorway was commonly given protective cover by a box machicolation on the parapet above. Later door surrounds often incorporate a gunloop, set roughly at stomach level for maximum impact. Inside, the small lobby was covered by a murder hole in its ceiling, or by gunloops from adjoining rooms. The typical stair is a stone spiral rising in one corner of the tower. More complex arrangements are encountered in some larger towers, where straight flights rise for part of the way before giving way to spiral stairs. The quality of workmanship to these helical stairs varies; some are rather crude, but the cut stonework at Kilcrea and Castle Richard is notably refined. The spaciousness and gentle ascent of the stair at Togher, with its central drum, is unparalleled in Cork.
Each floor generally had a single principal chamber, with perhaps a smaller chamber adjoining the staircase as well as mural chambers containing garderobes or store rooms. The chamber on the top floor has often been styled the great hall, a term now disputed; instead, these rooms should perhaps be regarded as presence chambers reserved for family and guests, with a separate “hall” provided within an adjoining walled or enclosed bawn. Some principal chambers, such as those at Kilcrea, Ballinacarriga and Cloghleigh (Kilworth), have ornate rere-arches to the windows, arcades to the end walls, and finely carved corbel courses. However, windows are on the whole generally little more than narrow lancets, those on the upper floor perhaps twin-light, set in lintelled or roughly arched embrasures.
Bartizans of square or circular plan are commonly provided at diagonally opposing corners, so that they cover all four sides of the tower. They generally rest on a single tier of corbels with machicolation drops between, from while missiles or guns could be deployed. The corbels are often crudely formed, the cut-stone pyramidal corbels at Blarney a noteable exception. Occasionally bartizans are placed midway up the tower, in which case they have stone roofs, and access from the second floor.
Given the size, geographical range and ethnic differences of Cork, it is understandable that there are regional variations in tower-house construction. In north Cork is a series of notably elegant towers with rounded corners, including Cloghleigh and Cregg (Fermoy). In the SW, the use of raised entrances to the [p. 15] living quarters and a ground-level door to a separate store is common among O’Mahoney and O’Driscoll castles. An unusual feature of a number of O’Donovan castles, at Raheen (Union Hall), Glandore and Castlehaven (Castletownshend, demolished), is the provision of an inclined gable-shaped gunloop in each wall of the tower which permitted a single defender to train a musket along the full length of the wall from a second floor chamber.
Towers built during the late C16 and early C17, such as Ballintoher (Clonakilty) and Togher, differ from their predecessors in a number of ways which look forward to the fortified houses that succeeded them. They lack vaults, and instead have timber floors throughout. The omission of vaults meant that fires could no longer be set on a hearth in the middle of a room, and consequently the houses had integral fires from the outset. The absence of vaults also allowed the walls to be thinner; a Ballynamona (Shanballymore) they are 1.3m thick, in comparison to 2.3 m at Castle Cooke (Kilworth). Larger windows became the norm, while garderobe chutes were abandoned in favour of the use of closet stools or commodes. Gunloops were now an integral feature, while bartizans continued to be provided they wre often for martial display rather than use.
For much of the medieval period, urban houses were generally of timber framed construction clad in wattle and daub, and thatched. Stone constructions in towns expressed wealth and status, often in the form of a three-or four- storey tower house. Examples survive at Youghal, Kinsale and Buttevant; others are known to have existed at Cork, Mallow, Carrigtwohill, Innishannon and Cloyne.”
p. 223. Sheila-na-gig above the door. … The first-floor carvings depict a figure and a number of rosettes, supposedly representing a mother and her children. The third-floor “hall” – sometimes referred to as a chapel – has thwin arches supporting the gable at the dais end. The carvings here are particularly noteworthy, displaying the Instruments of the Passion, a Crucifixion scene and panels of stylized leaves. [rather appropriately, this room was used for Catholic worship during the Penal era]. A further window, dated 1585, records the initials of Randal Muirhily (Hurley) and Catherine O’Cullane. This probably commemorates renovations rather than initial construction.
Ballinacarriga Castle is a four-storey tower-house set high on a rock with the remains of the corner turret of a bawn close by. The entrance in the E wall leads to a vaulted lobby with a guardroom to the S and the main chamber straight ahead. A short flight of steps to the N leads to a spiral stairway in the NE corner. The eastern portion of the castle is occupied by 6 small chambers, one above the other. These may be entered from the main chambers at the first and second floors but otherwise they are accessible from the spiral stair. There are two wall bartizans entered from the second floor room which has a vaulted ceiling. The first floor has a fireplace and a decorated window. The spiral stairway rises to the top room and a straight mural stairway goes to roof level.
The top room has two windows decorated with scriptural subjects, including the Crucifixion and Instruments of the Passion. There are other decorative panels including the inscription 1585 R.M.C.C. (Randal Muirhily [Hurley] and his wife Catherine O Cullane).
Ballynacarriga Castle lies on a rocky outcrop in the townland of Ballynacarriga, in County Cork in Ireland.
It is not exactly known when Ballynacarriga Castle was built. There is a commemoration year carved somewhere in the castle which reads 1585. But it could also have been built a century before. The year 1585 might also have been the year its then owner Randall Hurley was married with Catherine O’Cullane. The castle was forfeited by the Hurleys in 1654, and it passed to the Crofts.
The top floor was later used as a chapel up until the early 19th century.
Ballynacarriga Castle is a rectangular 4-storey tower house. There is a sheela-na-gig 10 meters high up on the east wall and a small ruined round tower which was part of the bawn.
A nice castle. When I visited, the tower was closed but I think it can be visited at other times. The site is freely accessible.
Lismore, County Cavan, entrance front c. 1880. 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.
Bence-Jones, Mark. 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. 186. “(Nesbitt, sub Burrowes/LGI1912; Burrowes;IFR; Lucas-Clements/IFR) A house of probably ca. 1730 and very likely by Sir Edward Lovett Pearce. The main block was of two storeys over a high basement, with a pediment breakfront centre and a widely spaced Venetian window in both storeys. There were two bays either side of the centre. Overlapping “tower” wings of one storey over basement and one bay. Detached two storey six bay office wings, joined to house by screen walls. These wings have gable-ends with curvilinear gables facing the sides of the house; the outermost bay of each, in the front elevation is also gabled; the gables here are probably originally curvilinear also, though they are now straight. Round headed windows in lower storey and basement of house and in lower storey of office wings.The house had a solid roof parapet with urns and oculi in the upper storey of the office wings. Originally the seat of the Nesbitts, passed to the Burrowes through the marriage of Mary Nesbitt [Mary Anne, born 1826, daughter of John Nesbitt and Elizabeth Tatam] to James Burrowes [1820-1860, of Stradone House, County Cavan] in 1854; Lismore passed to the Lucas-Clements family through the marriage of Miss Rosamund Burrowes to the late Major Shuckburgh Lucas-Clements in 1922.
“Having stood empty for many years, the house fell into ruin and was demolished ca 1952, with the exception of the “tower” wings. The office wings are now used as farm buildings, and the family now live in the former agent’s house, an early house with a Victorian wing and other additions.”
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. 39. A house dating from c. 1730 and attributed to Edward Lovett Pearce. This house was very much in the style of Sir John Vanburgh, his cousin. the house became a ruin in this century and the central block except for one tower was demolished c. 1952. The flanking pavillions still remain.“
Of the original Lismore House, attributed to Edward Lovett Pearce (1699-1733), only the two wings and tower survive. The house was restored by Richard and Sonya Beer. [1]
It was probably built for Thomas Nesbitt, (c1672-1750), of Grangemore, County Westmeath, High Sheriff of County Cavan, 1720, MP for Cavan Borough, 1715-50 [2].
Photograph from National Inventory of Architectural Heritage.The Inventory tells us it is: “Symmetrical pair of detached six-bay two-storey flanking wings to former Lismore House, built c.1730, having advanced outermost end bays to each block, single-bay two-stage flanking tower formerly attached to south corner of house having single-bay extension to north…Rubble stone walls having red brick quoins, eaves course, and string course. Red brick surrounds to oculi at first floor over round-headed ground-floor windows and central segmental-headed door.“Photograph from National Inventory of Architectural Heritage: “Blind lunette and oculus to gables facing former house.”Photograph from National Inventory of Architectural Heritage: “Tower having mansard slate roof, rubble stone walls with cut-stone platbands, cut-stone surrounds to window openings, round-headed openings with raised keystone and impost blocks to former ground floor, and segmental-headed openings to former basement level.”
Ancestry: See Cosby Nesbitt (1718-1786) and descendants.
Lismore Lodge is a very attractive early c1800 period house and gate lodge. The main house with six bays and two storey extends to 9,680 sq ft and is bound by a large stone wall. The property is believed to be a Stewarts house which was once part of The Lismore estate.
THE NESBITTS WERE MAJOR LANDOWNERS IN COUNTY CAVAN, WITH 9,735 ACRES
ANDREW NESBITT, of Brenter (presumed to be son of Thomas Nesbitt, of Newbottle, and grandson of George Nesbitt, who died in 1590), assignee from the Earl of Annandale, of the estates of Brenter and Malmusock, County Donegal, was father of
ANDREW NESBITT, who served in the army of CHARLES I in Ireland; whose eldest son,
THOMAS NESBITT (c1672-1750), of Grangemore, County Westmeath, High Sheriff of County Cavan, 1720, MP for Cavan Borough, 1715-50, married twice, and was father of
COSBY NESBITT (1718-91), of Lismore, MP for Cavan Borough, 1750-68, High Sheriff of County Cavan, 1764, who succeeded to the Cavan estates on the death of his father.
His eldest son,
COLONEL THOMAS NESBITT (c1744-1820), of Lismore, MP for Cavan Borough, 1768-1800, High Sheriff of County Cavan, 1769, married and was father of
COSBY NESBITT JP DL, High Sheriff of County Cavan, 1798, Major, Cavan Militia, whose second son,
ALEXANDER NESBITT DL (1817-86), of Lismore House, County Cavan, and Old Lands, Sussex, High Sheriff of County Cavan, 1862, died without issue and was succeeded by his sister,
MARY ANNE BURROWES, who espoused, in 1854, James Edward Burrowes, and had issue, an only child,
THOMAS COSBY BURROWES JP DL (1856-1925), of Lismore, County Cavan, High Sheriff of County Cavan, 1888, married, in 1885, Anna Frances Maxwell, sister of 10th Baron Farnham, and had issue,
Eleanor Mary (1886-1962); Rosamund Charlotte, b 1891.
Rosamund Charlotte Cosby Burrowes, of Lismore, married, in 1922, Major Shuckburgh Upton Lucas-Clements in 1922, and had issue,
Elizabeth Anne, b 1922; Thomas, b 1925; John, b 1930; Robert Henry, b 1930.
LISMORE HOUSE, near Crossdoney, County Cavan, was built ca 1730.
The main block was of two storeys over a high basement, with a pediment breakfront centre and a widely spaced Venetian window in both storeys.
There were two bays either side of the centre, overlapping tower wings of one storey each.
The house had a solid roof parapet with urns and oculi in the upper storey of the office wings.
Lismore passed to the Lucas-Clements family through the marriage of Miss R Burrowes to Major Shuckburgh Lucas-Clements in 1922.
Having stood empty for many years, the house fell into ruin and was demolished ca 1952, with the exception of a tower wing.
The estate is three miles from the Farnham estate and hotel.
The office wings were used as farm buildings and appear to have been converted to modern living accomodation.
You know the expression, ’All to one side like Crossdoney’? Well the reason that the modest little village is all to one side is largely due to a house built it in the late 1700s by the Nesbitt family. An old stone wall, the like of which the landed gentry would erect to keep poachers and commoners at bay hides the enormous Georgian home from motorists stopped at the village’s T-junction, deciding whether to head for Ballinagh or Killeshandra. From the 1980s that stone grey edifice hid the true extent to which the proud old home had fallen into dereliction. Likewise, for the last four years it has also hidden its incredible revival under the ownership of Richard and Sonya Beer since 2014. The transformation over the last four years is worthy of TV shows Grand Designs or The Great House Revival. It’s stunning.
Over the course of two years they had viewed maybe 30 to 40 different houses around Ireland. They had even searched abroad. “We had notions at one stage of maybe moving to France, we actually went and had a look at a few places, but we decided very quickly it wasn’t for us – you have three kids living in Dublin, what’s the point of moving to France?” A professional photographer for auctioneering agents, Richard happened upon Lismore Lodge on the way to a job in Killeshandra, back in 2013. He stopped outside the wall to take a swift peek, and as there was no ’for sale’ sign, he didn’t pay it much heed. The listed building had fallen into ruin since Dr Hannah – a surgeon in the hospital – had lived in it in the 1980s. Two owners, but no homemakers had followed. “We had been looking for two years probably for ’a project’ – I mean a project that needed maybe a couple of bathrooms and a new kitchen or something,” recalls Richard with a laugh. With that first glance he decided the derelict property was “too far gone”. It was only when he saw the property online and he and his wife Sonya travelled up from their County Clare home to see it first-hand that Richard realised he’d been here before. This time he was smitten. “I had a vision of what it would look like when it was done – and that was always the goal,” says Richard. “But you didn’t share it,” quips Sonya, who has clearly invested just as much of herself in the project. Did it not seem like it would be just too much work? “Well it was too much, but the thing that sold it to us was the site, and the mature trees and all. You couldn’t buy anything like this in Germany.” It’s understandable that Sonya was dubious considering the state the property was in. They got an architect to give it a once over from a structural point of view, but having photographed homes all his working life, and with two renovation jobs under his belt with their Victorian period home in Dublin and cottage in County Clare, Richard was determined to proceed. The Beers eventually bought the house for €140,000, which sounds like a steel for the stately property it is now – it seems foolhardy when you consider the state of the property back when the sale went through in late summer 2014. At least it came with 14 acres. To finance the purchase and renovation works they sold up their Dublin property, but sadly at the bottom of the market. “We got a fraction of what we thought we’d get,” laments Richard. Lying derelict for 30 years or more, scavengers had taken what they could – copper cylinder from upstairs, lead from windows. One of the fireplaces was found amongst overgrown grass having been dumped in the garden. “There wasn’t one sheet of glass left in the whole house. And what happened was the rain was coming in [through leaks/holes in the roof] and it had nowhere to evaporate because all the windows and doors were sealed, so it was like an incubator for wet rot, dry rot, fungus and whatever you want.” Did you not think Lismore was too far gone? “The walls were two foot thick and were straight, so I mean a two foot wall is not going to go anywhere,” said Richard. “Well we thought that,” offers Sonya, as we peer into a room which is now beautiful and airy with a view of the garden’s mature trees and the village beyond. They had intended inserting a steel support in an upstairs bedroom wall which had a major crack running across it. However it collapsed as a builder tested the reliability of a supporting beam, with 50-60 tonnes of stone coming crashing down. Photos of the scene are truly eye-popping. “That wall could easily have killed somebody,” he accurately recalls.
Nuclear explosion
Separately a relatively modern brick chimney breast in the same room later collapsed and smashed through a section of a newly refurbished floor downstairs. “It was like a nuclear explosion when that thing came down,” remarked Richard. They swiftly realised that the work couldn’t be done within budget by a contractor. “The place was atrocious,” summarises Richard. It got worse. “You could squeeze the water out of some of them with your bare hands,” he says of the timber supporting the roof,” says Richard. He adds: “The roof was still on it when we got here and then about two weeks after we arrived there was an unmerciful bang at one stage.” They discovered the roof in the downstairs dining room. They had hoped they could salvage more of the roof, but they finally retained approximately 15%. Original floors of only two rooms upstairs remain. Lismore Lodge was literally caving in around them. “We couldn’t go into the building upstairs for the first nine months or something like that – there was a carpet upstairs and that was holding everything up basically,” he says with a laugh, that suggests he’s only slightly exaggerating. “It was just ridiculous, and all the plaster was off the walls.” Such perilous support structures where common place: a central heating pipe alone was holding up a collapsed support beam for the floor above the kitchen. “Until you clear everything, you don’t know what’s underneath,” adds Sonya. In the ’Morning Room’, the plaster was still up on the walls, it still had fantastic cornice going around. We came in one day and the whole thing had slid down onto the floor – in one piece!” It quickly emerged that they would be unable to afford a contractor to carry out all of the necessary works within their budget, which they prefer to keep to themselves. Richard took on the role of project leader and employed what tradesmen their endless to-do list demanded first. The couple eagerly took a hands-on role in the work they could manage themselves. While the crash undermined the value they got for their previous home, it helped in that under-employed builders were available. “I wouldn’t want to start it now because you could be waiting months for some people – we were lucky with the plumber, the electrician – the fella who did the roof – they were all really good, and they didn’t mind that I mucked in as well,” says Richard. Whilst he who modestly thinks of himself as “an amateur”, he came up with the solution to supporting upstairs floors when you already have standing walls. They cemented in re-bars where the old joists were, and welded angle iron on top of that to provide a ledge and laid the new floor on the ledge rather than trying to bore huge holes into stone walls. “They were all very doubtful about that, but touch wood, that all worked out really well, because the floors are absolutely level upstairs. “It’s the only thing that’s straight,” add Sonya.
Challenge
Life on a building site was especially difficult in the first winter. “It was a bit of a challenge,” says Sonya, who admits to having been “fed up” at times. “The first nine months we were living in a caravan. It was very cold that winter.” They were constantly removing plaster, which is a particularly messy job, and could only wash up in a basin. “We used to drive to Dublin to one of our kids and have a shower in their house,” recalls Richard. They first concentrated on renovating a secondary home on the property, a little ‘Peacock House’, so called because Dr Hannah kept the flamboyant birds there. That gave them a “very cosy” base from which to attack the main home. Eventually the rebuild started to come together. “About a year ago, once we were fairly sure that we would be able to finish the house and not fall flat on our faces, we started to call the whole enterprise the Lazarus Project – back from the dead,” quips Richard. Walking around the Lismore on one of the most glorious days of the year confirms that all the Beers’ efforts in resuscitating this great house were rewarded. Entering each of the nine bedrooms, you have expect to hear the crescendo of the big reveal music you hear on TV renovation shows. The dining room, where they celebrated their first Christmas dinner having moved in last December, is truly amazing. The rustic kitchen is the Celt’s favourite. Stoves and ovens of varying sizes dominates an entire red brick wall of the kitchen. The internal walls of no less than seven flue had all collapsed, and had to be rebuilt by craftsmen. Richard shows the Celt a beehive bread oven behind an industrial metal door, before his excitement overtakes him as he brings us to the other end of the kitchen. “There’s a three quarter inch steel plate there so you can actually cook on that if you want to,” he enthuses. “Not that we’re going to,” adds Sonya. As the couple have blown their savings on restoring the home, some of the rooms are sparsely decorated, so there’s not quite the opulence you might expect of rooms of such proportions. They are no less stylish for their modesty of furnishings. Richard estimates that they are 97% finished the restoration, with painting and priming certain areas, and carrying out work in the woodland gardens, amongst the few jobs on the dwindling to-do list. Asked if he has any advice for someone thinking of taking on a renovation project, without hesitation, Richard replies: “Do it – its definitely worthwhile. If you can see – that you can come out the other end without either killing yourself or financially destroying yourself altogether, then I would certainly say do it because you get great satisfaction when you see it finished.”
Bellamont Forest, Cootehill, Co Cavan – maybe gardens open
Bence-Jones, Mark. 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. 37. “(Coote, Bellamont, E/DEP; O’Gowan/IFR) One of the most perfect examples in the British Isles of a Palladian villa; built ca 1730 for Thomas Coote, Lord Justice of the King’s Bench in Ireland, to the design of his nephew, Sir Edward Lovett Pearce; inspired in particular by Palladio’s Rotunda at Vincenze and his Villa Pisani at Montagnana. Of red brick, with ashlar facings; two storeys over a rusticated basement, with a mezzanine fitted in at the sides. The upper storey treated as an attic, above the cornice. Five bay front with pedimented Doric portico; side elevations with central Venetian windows, the centre light of each being blind; one of them having entablatures and recessed columns, the other more simply treated. The hall has a high coved ceiling with a modillion cornice and a moulding in the keyhole pattern; the walls are decorated with rondels containing busts, some of which are said to represent members of the Coote family. The saloon has a richly ornamented coffered ceiling and a pedimented doorcase. The dining room has a deeply coved coffered ceiling (described by Dr. Craig as ‘eminently characteristic of Pearce’); and a screen of engaged fluted Ionic columns at one end. The bedrooms are arranged around a central upper hall, lit by an oval lantern enriched by plasterwork. The coved and coffered ceiling of the library dates from 1775, and was put in by Thomas Coote’s grandson, Charles, who succeeded his cousin as 5th Lord Colooney 1766 and was made Earl of Bellamont of 2nd creation 1767. In honour of this, he changed the name of the house, which had formerly been Coote Hill, to Bellamont Forest. Lord Bellamont was a somewhat absurd figure, ultra-sophisticated and ardently Francophile – he insisted on making his maiden speech in the Irish House of Lords in French – pompous and an inveterate womaniser. He left several illegitimate sons, to one of whom he bequested Bellamont, his only legitimate son having predeceased him. In 1874, Bellamont was sold to the Dorman-Smith (now O’Gowan) family, of which the politician Sir Reginald Dorman-Smith, Governor of Burma at the time of the Japanese invasion, was a younger son. Bought recently by Mr. John Coote.”
Built between 1725 and 1730 for Thomas Coote, once Lord Justice of Ireland, and designed by Coote’s gifted nephew, architect Sir Edward Lovett Pearce. Bellamont Forest is one of Ireland’s finest 18th-century palladian villas. The house is four bays square, built over two storeys, with a basement. The house is built of red brick with ashlar facings, and has a Doric limestone portico, with pediments over the windows.
Detached Palladian-style square-plan four-bay two-storey over basement country house, built c.1730, with central Doric entrance portico raised above flight of steps, three-storey over basement side elevations, three recessed central bays to rear elevation. Hipped slate roof behind parapet wall with central valley, and cast-iron rainwater goods, some with decorative detailing. Two pairs of symmetrically arranged red brick chimneystacks with connecting arches. Profiled carved stone cornice to parapet coping. Red brick Flemish bond walls with moulded limestone stringcourse below upper floor continuing around sides of the building treating upper level as attic storey, stone quoins to ground floor only. Carved limestone plinth with torus moulding above finely-cut V-jointed rustication to top half of basement having random coursed stone finish below ground level. Prostylar tetrasytle pedimented Roman Doric portico to centre entrance level with enriched entablature having metopes with musical instruments, standing on ashlar stone plinth approached by steps with ashlar side walls having cornice and plinth. Door opening within portico in carved sandstone lugged architrave surround with carved swag to door head, projecting cornice, and carved stone round-headed arched detail above. Panelled timber double-leaf door with fixed overpanel. Three-over-three timber sash windows in architrave surrounds to first floor. Six-over-six sash windows to ground floor having pedimented surrounds in outer bays with carved stone architrave surrounds and decorative floral motifs to upper angles, ashlar stone apron and carved brackets supporting moulded sills. Windows to inner bays within portico having lugged architraves and moulded sills on carved brackets without pediment or apron. Segmental-headed windows to basement level having two-over-two timber sash windows. Windows having stone cills without architraves to upper floor, side elevations. Three-over-three mezzanine windows to side elevations, to north side all as functioning openings, to south only west bays functional. Central windows at ground floor to south side paired as Venetian window with central blind arch having entablature and central arch on Doric columns, simpler version to north side with plain stone surrounds. Central ground floor window to rear elevation having lugged and kneed architrave with hood on scrolled console brackets and ashlar apron, advanced outer bays having ground floor Venetian windows with blind side lights and ashlar entablature and archivolt . Small side lights to corresponding basement windows below. Tunnel connecting to outbuildings to north-east.
Bellamont House is an iconic building of national importance set in a dramatic demesne landscape. It is considered the best and earliest example of a Palladian villa in Ireland. The house was designed the Coote family by their cousin, Sir Edward Lovett Pearce (d.1733), who was the leading exponent of Palladian architecture in Ireland. Having trained under the English Baroque architect Sir John Vanburgh (1664-1726) Pearce’s short but successful career included the former Parliament House on College Green, Dublin and many town and country houses including Summerhill House in Co. Meath and two houses on Henrietta Street in Dublin. Bellamont Forest is his most important house design to have been built and the association with this very important architect makes it one of the most significant country houses in this country. Pearce used architectural motifs derived from Palladio’s Italian villa designs, including the Venetian window arrangements with continuous sills, pedimented window surrounds, and Doric portico. The portico had originally been proposed in antis as an open loggia within the plan at the expense of the entrance hall. Instead, placed prostyle it aims to affirms a kind of moral dignity about the architecture and its patron. More prosaically, additional space was gained for the entrance hall, and the external portico was better suited to the Irish climate than an open loggia. The plan has all the compactness of a Palladian villa. The simple treatment of the main stairs may seem surprising, tightly compressed as it is in a narrow space off the hall with none of the gravitas of theatre that has come to be associated with the country house staircase. However the modesty of the main stair does not anticipate the impressive columnar bedroom lobby, the encircling effect of its Tuscan order and oval lantern, an oblique reference perhaps to the centralised plan of Palladio’s Villa Rotonda. It was a theme to be revived later at Russborough and Bellinter by Richard Castle. Bellamont is one of the few houses in Ireland with a mezzanine storey as expressed in the north and south elevations. The interior displays elements of artistic importance, in particular the finely tooled decorative plasterwork, but also in the carvings of the marble and stone fireplaces in the principal rooms and marble busts of the Coote family. Though a modestly sized country house, Bellamont uses symmetrical design and use of red brick to promote a sense of solidity for a house perched on an exposed elevated site enjoying spectacular views of the surrounding lakes and Dromore River. The farm and stable yards located to the north-west of the main house would once have been necessary to support the running of a large country house and together with the entrance gates and gate lodges form an important group of demesne related structures.
Archaeological research would appear to indicate that Richard Coote had a fortified house at Collooney sometimes referred to as Bellamont House or Collooney Castle. A later structure in the town, also known as Bellamont House, is not associated with the Coote family. A possible site for Collooney Castle has been identified by Timoney drawing on earlier sources such as Terence O’Rorke
featured in Great Irish Houses. Forewards by Desmond FitgGerald, Desmond Guinness. IMAGE Publications, 2008.
p. 94. “ The owner, John Coote, bought Bellamont in 1987, thus restoring the estate to the Coote family after it had been gambled away by an ancestor, Captain Richard Coote, and sold to the Smith family in the 19th century. John Coote grew up in Australia, after the Coote family emigrated in 1906, and became involved in sheep farming. The first he knew of Bellamont Forest was from an article in Country Life in 1962. Later, he learned more from his aunt and uncle, Muriel and John Coote, who had visited Bellamont’s then owner, Eric Dorman-Smith, a general in the British army. Four generations of Smiths had lived at Bellamont when Coote, an interior designer, paid a visit and found the property was for sale. He could not resist and bought the house and estate.
“The estate was very run down at the time,” Coote recalls. “The house was structurally sound, but it was in a sorry state. For the last two decades I have restored the house and parklands. The drive has been re-routed so that when you arrive – and this is the beauty of Pearce – the house doesn’t look like a huge villa. When you view it from the back, however, it’s a totally different house and it looks quite large indeed.”
The approach has been to return the estate, where possible, to its 1729 appearance. A painting currently hanging at Leixlip Castle shows the estate as it was at the this time, and Coote has used it as his guide. The façade of the house has been left largely untouched, with the main work done to the windows, some of which have been repaired and glass paneling restored.
Entering the house through the portico, you notice musical instruments are a feature of the exterior engravings. Inside the entrance hall scrapes have been taken and the original colouring has been returned with the assistance of Dr Ian Bristow, a UK painting expert. A very fine Irish table, a copy from a drawing by Pearce, is a hugely impressive feature of this room. The busts have always been present and were bought most likely on the Grand Tour. The flooring is Portland stone and layers of floor polish have been removed to return it to its natural state. Peat buckets and lanterns are all from Coote and Co [p. 97] while the Earl of Bellamont may have introduced the fireplace.
The saloon has a fine example of an early baroque ceiling and a new chandelier has been installed based on the Pearce chandelier in the House of Lords. Portraits of the Earl of Bellamont and the Countess of Bellamont by Reynolds have been copied and hung on the wall. The original of the Earl of Bellamont is hanging in the National Gallery in Dublin, while the portrait of the Countess of Bellamont is owned by the Duchess of Abercorn’s family.
Double doors lead into the dining room with its wall colouring taken from the colouring of the frieze in the fireplace. Gib and dummy doors maintain Pearce’s symmetry while contemporary artworks hang on the walls….
The family sitting room contains a fireplace with shield motif and acanthus leaf. The chair linen was woven according to an 18th century sample found on the estate. Originally, this room was a series of rooms, but after a fire in the 1760s the Earl of Bellamont had a new ceiling installed and made this a companion room to the dining room. At some point, the dining room would probably have served as the state bedroom.
Like all Palladian houses, the staircase at Bellamont is to the side. The small library, which is first left off the entrance hall, is used a great deal as it attracts winter sunshine. As with many of the smaller rooms, the original Pearce fireplace remains. The fringes for the curtains were handmade in London using 18th century looms, while the bookcases were made in Australia.
Upstairs, on the first floor landing, a new floor made of 150 year old Baltic pine salvaged from a nearby bridge has been laid. In addition to the dummy doors, all the bedrooms lead from the hall. The tables are copies of some fine examples at Powerscourt and family portraits adorn the walls.
John Coote’s latest phase of work at Bellamont is to renovate the outbuildings and to create additional bedroom suites, the headquarters of his successful furniture design company, Coote and Co, and a new concert hall. “These estates need to work,” he says.
John Coote has restored Bellamont Forest and ensured it has risen from the landscape of Cootehill to retake its place at the forefront of Palladian design.”
Irish Castles and Historic Houses. ed. by Brendan O’Neill, intro. by James Stevens Curl. Caxton Editions, London. 2002:
Bellamont Forest was designed by Sir Edward Lovett Pearce for the Cootes, Earls of Bellamont, around 1730. The family were descended from a brilliant soldier, Sir Thomas Coote, who was killed in 1642 ‘in a skirmish with the Irish.’ His four sons were given land in different parts of Ireland – Sligo, Laois, Monaghan and Cavan – giving rise to the legend that. you could walk across the country from one coast to the other without leaving Coote land.
Designed around 1730 by Sir Edward Lovett Pearce, the house is one of the finest examples of Palladian architecture in Ireland. Loosely based on Palladio’s Villa Pisani, the house stands four-square on rising ground. It is constructed in red brick with a Doric limestone portico and pediments over the windows to either side. The entrance hall is particularly striking, with the simplicity of its black and white paved floor and marble busts of Roman emperors.
The house is private, but the grounds are accessible from the town and offer some pleasant walks. The town gets its name from the marriage of Thomas Coote, a colonel in the Crown forces, to Frances Hill of Hillsborough.
Bellamont House completed in 1730 by Judge Thomas Coote and designed by the architect Edward Lovett Pearce. In 1800 it passed to an illegitimate son of Earl Charles Coote, who is reported to have fathered up to 18 children by five women. Charles, variously described as a tyrant, a madman, and a person of “disgusting pomposity”, was tried in 1764 for murdering a man during the ‘Oakboy’ rebellion which he helped to repress brutally. He got off and is immortalised in a camp portrait by Joshua Reynolds in the National Gallery. The estate was gambled away by descendant John Coote in 1874 and bought by the Dorman-Smiths, whose most famous member, Eric ‘Chink’ Dorman-Smith, served in the British army in both world wars before being sacked in 1942. He was a good friend of Ernest Hemingway, went home to Bellamont, changed his name to O’Gowan and turned republican, allowing the IRA to use the estate as a training ground, and advised its executive during the Border Campaign. He died in 1969. The most recent owner, John Coote was brought up on a sheep station in the Australian outback, his family having emigrated in the early 1900s. Coote died suddenly in 2012, and the house is now for sale (March 2015).
Here is Bellamont Forest, County Cavan which can lay claim to being the most beautiful house in Ireland. Certainly its situation is unparalleled, since the building sits on a rise at the end of a mile-long drive, the ground to either side dropping to lakes, the world beyond screened by dense woodland. Bellamont is an unexpected delight, hidden from view until one rounds the last turn of the drive and sees the house ahead. In purest Palladian style and looking like a villa in the Veneto, Bellamont is believed to have been designed c.1725-30 by the pre-eminent architect then working in Ireland, Sir Edward Lovett Pearce who was also responsible for the Houses of Parliament in Dublin (now the Bank of Ireland), and a number of since-lost country houses such as Desart Court, County Kilkenny and Summerhill, County Meath. Pearce was a cousin of Bellamont’s builder Thomas Coote, a Lord Justice of the King’s Bench. The Cootes had come to Ireland at the start of the 17th century and prospered so well that within 100 years their various descendants owned estates throughout the country. Ballyfin, County Laois which has recently undergone a superlative restoration was another Coote property.
The appeal of Bellamont lies in its exquisite simplicity, beginning with an exterior which is of mellow red brick with stone window dressings. Of two storeys over a raised rusticated basement, the front is dominated by a full-height limestone portico reached by a broad flight of steps. The imposing effect is achieved by the most effortless means and using the plainest materials, but there can be no doubt that Bellamont was always intended to impress. The Portland stone-flagged entrance hall, with its coved ceiling and pairs of flanking doors, sets the tone for what is follow. While there are small rooms immediately to right and left, the latter traditionally used as a cosy winter library, the main reception areas lie to the rear of the building, a sequence of drawing room, saloon and dining room which retain their 18th century decoration including the chimneypieces. The first of these is believed to have once been a series of rooms, but following a fire in 1760 acquired its present form including the elaborate recessed ceiling which was probably intended to complement that in the dining room on the other side of the saloon. The walls of this central room contain contain stucco panels once filled with family portraits, the best-known of which – painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds in 1773 and showing the Charles Coote, Earl of Bellamont resplendent in his robes as a Knight of Bath – now hangs in the National Gallery of Ireland.
The aforementioned Earldom of Bellamont was a second creation of the title for a member of the family. Evidently an ostentatious and pompous man – seemingly he insisted on making his maiden speech in the House of Lords in French, to the bemusement of his fellow peers – Lord Bellamont can at least be credited with having the good taste to enhance the house built by his grandfather. He married a daughter of the first Duke of Leinster and by her had four daughters and just one son who died in Toulouse at the age of 12, his body being brought back to Bellamont to lie for three days on the upper landing before burial in the family vault. As a result of there being no legitimate heir, the earldom again lapsed on Lord Bellamont’s death in 1800. However, despite being seriously wounded in the groin during a duel with Lord Townshend, he managed to have at least 16 offsring out of wedlock by four different women, and one of these sons, also called Charles Coote, inherited Bellamont Forest. Ultimately it was sold out of the family in the middle of the 19th century and bought by the Smiths (later Dorman-Smiths), one of whom Major-General Eric Dorman-Smith served in the British army during both the First and Second World Wars after which, having changed his surname to O’Gowan, he became involved with the IRA.
In 1987 Bellamont Forest was bought by John Coote, an Australian interior designer whose family had emigrated from Ireland at the start of the last century. John dearly loved the house and undertook to restore it to a pristine condition, keeping the decoration spare so that the beauty of the rooms’ architecture would be more apparent. There was never a great deal of furniture, just a few large pieces he had specifically made and which were inspired by Georgian workmanship. In revealing the building’s purity he not only demonstrated the splendid taste of Pearce but his own also, since it would have been tempting to intervene in the interiors. Those interiors served wonderfully for entertaining, which John did frequently. I have been to a great many terrific parties at Bellamont, and even hosted a few there, one of which – a birthday dinner for 30 – is thankfully uncommemorated by any photographs. But there are ample souvenirs and joyous memories of John’s own sundry social gatherings, such as the thé dansants he loved to throw, when a 16-piece orchestra would play in the saloon and Jack Leslie would demonstrate how to dance the Black Bottom. The last great party at Bellamont took place during the summer of 2009 to mark John’s 60th birthday and was spectacular even by his standards, with drinks in the lower gardens followed by dinner and dancing outdoors in the balmy air. The following year John was obliged to put Bellamont Forest up for sale, and thereafter he rarely visited the place. Tomorrow marks the first anniversary of his death, which happened unexpectedly while he was working in Indonesia. He is still sorely mourned by all of us who knew him in Ireland. Meanwhile Bellamont slumbers, awaiting a new owner who will kiss the place back to life; there is talk now of an auction in March. One prays that whoever next assumes responsibility for Bellamont will bring to the house the same flair and fun as did John Coote for so many years.
Since first writing of Bellamont Forest (La Belle au Bois Dormant, January 21st), I have heard from a number of readers concerned about a set of 18th century marble busts formerly in the house. Although none can be verified with absolute certainty, various tales exist concerning the origin of these busts. It is said, for example, that they represent different members of the Coote family responsible for building Bellamont. It has also been proposed that they were brought back from mainland Europe after a Grand Tour and installed in niches in the entrance hall and first-floor landing specifically created to accommodate them. What can be confirmed is that the busts were already in the house more than two centuries ago. Sir Charles Coote, an illegitimate son of the last Earl of Bellamont, produced a Statistical Survey of Cavan in 1802 in which he wrote of the house, ‘The entrance from the portico is a lofty hall, thirty feet by thirty, which is ornamented with statuary in regular niches…’ Likewise in 1835 Lieutenant P. Taylor’s statistical report on the parish of Drumgoon includes a description of Bellamont with the observation, ‘The portico enters into a lofty hall 30 feet square, tastefully ornamented with statuary…’ I am grateful to Kevin Mulligan for bringing these two references to my attention.
The earliest known visual evidence of the busts’ presence in the house comes from a photograph album presented by Richard Coote to his neighbour Lady Dartrey in September 1870. Now in the possession of the National Library of Ireland, it includes a view of the entrance hall (then serving as a billiard room), which with that institution’s permission I reproduce above; one can assume the picture was taken at some date prior to 1870 (and incidentally, how fascinating to see the hall decorated in such high-Victorian style). A photograph in Volume V of the Irish Georgian Society’s Records (see top of this piece) which was published in 1913 and shows the busts in their niches appears to be a section of the earlier picture. Thereafter it would seem the busts remained within the house through changes of ownership – until last year. Following the death of John Coote in January 2012, the busts were removed from Bellamont. After representations from the Irish Georgian Society, in September Cavan County Council issued notice to a number of parties requiring the busts’ return. To date this has not happened. I do not intend to become immersed in legal niceties, not least because the matter could yet go to litigation. On the other hand, the busts’ removal does raise a number of significant questions about what constitutes a permanent fixture within a historic building and what should be deemed a transitory decorative feature. In the case of the busts no violence was done to the house during their removal, for which nothing other than a step ladder was required. In other words, unlike say when a chimneypiece is taken out, the structure suffered no damage. The Government’s 2011 Architectural Heritage Protection Guidelines for Planning Authories proposes: ‘free-standing objects may be regarded as fixtures where they were placed in positions as part of an overall architectural design.’ It also states that ‘Works of art, such as paintings or pieces of sculpture, placed as objects in their own right within a building, are unlikely to be considered as fixtures unless it can be proved that they were placed in particular positions as part of an overall architectural design.’ It is worth noting first that these are only guidelines; the document’s opening page counsels that what follows ‘does not purport to be a legal interpretation of any of the Conventions, Acts, Regulations or procedures mentioned. The aim is to assist planners and others in understanding the guiding principles of conservation and restoration.’ In addition, the advice offered is that works of art can only be deemed fixtures provided there is proof ‘they were placed in particular positions as part of an overall architectural design.’ In the case of the Bellamont busts the lack of such conclusive documentary evidence is an obvious problem for anyone championing their return. We do not know the artist responsible, or the date of their creation. Were they commissioned or bought ‘off the shelf’? Can it be conclusively demonstrated the niches were designed to accommodate them? The next photograph shows the entrance hall in the mid-1980s not long before Bellamont Forest was bought by John Coote; over the intervening century every aspect of the room’s decoration has changed except for the busts.
I am unaware of any similar case to the Bellamont busts in this country at the moment or indeed in the past but it has to be said that recent precedents in Britain are not encouraging. In 1990, for example, Canova’s marble statue of The Three Graces, which had been commissioned by sixth Duke of Bedford in 1814 and installed in a purpose-built temple at Woburn, was removed after it had been judged not to constitute a part or fixture of the building. Only following four years of intense negotiation was the statue jointly bought by the Victoria & Albert Museum and the National Galleries of Scotland. More recently in 2007 Dumfries House and contents were offered for sale by the Marquess of Bute. Those contents included the only fully documented suites of furniture made by Thomas Chippendale. If anything could be deemed a fitting, albeit free-standing, it was surely these Chippendale pieces. Yet they would have been dispersed at auction (for which catalogues were printed by Christie’s) but for the intervention of the Prince of Wales who subsequently helped to establish a charitable trust preserving Dumfries and its furnishings. Alas in Ireland we have no such well-connected champions of the country’s architectural heritage, nor have we shown much concern for preserving the historic contents of our houses. For this reason, the issue of the Bellamont busts is important and could set a precedent. But it is essential that sentiment does not cloud any discussion relating to their removal. Over centuries an inordinate number of works of art have been taken from their original or long-term settings and placed elsewhere, as a visit to any state gallery or museum will demonstrate. To insist that proprietors of historic buildings may not dispose of certain items which have remained in the same location beyond a certain period of time is to trespass dangerously on the rights of private ownership. It could also hinder rather than help the cause of heritage preservation by inspiring antagonism among the very people we are trying to encourage and support. Having seen the busts in place over many years, my ardent wish is that they will be restored to the niches they occupied for so long. But I am also sufficiently aware of the complexities of the case to appreciate this might not happen.
Having been once to Bellamont (see La Belle au Bois Dormant, January 21st), it is impossible not to return. Here is the upper floor of the house’s main cantilevered staircase. The relative want of ornamentation – only plasterwork curlicues embellishing each sprung arch – forms a striking yet sublime contrast to the elaborate workmanship found on the floor below.
THE EARLS OF BELLAMONT OWNED 5,321 ACRES OF LAND IN COUNTY CAVAN
This is the parent stock whence the noble houses of COOTE, Earls of Mountrath, and COOTE, Lords Castlecoote, both now extinct, emanated.
This noble family derives its origin from
SIR JOHN COOTE, a native of France, who married Isabella, the daughter and heir of the Seigneur Du Bois, of that kingdom, and had issue,
SIR JOHN COOTE, Knight, who coming into England, settled in Devon, and married a daughter of Sir John Fortescue, of that county.
His lineal descendant,
JOHN COOTE, heir to his uncle, 28th Abbot of Bury St Edmund’s, wedded Margaret, daughter of Mr Drury, by whom he had four sons,
Richard; FRANCIS, of whom we treat; Christopher; Nicholas.
Mr Coote’s second son,
FRANCIS COOTE, of Eaton, in Norfolk, served ELIZABETH I; and by Anne, his wife, had issue,
SIR NICHOLAS COOTE, living in 1636, who had two sons,
CHARLES, his heir; William (Very Rev), Dean of Down, 1635.
Sir Nicholas’s elder son,
SIR CHARLES COOTE (1581-1642), Knight, of Castle Cuffe, in the Queen’s County, served in the wars against O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, at the head, as Captain of the 100th Foot Regiment, with which corps he was at the siege of Kinsale, and was appointed, by JAMES I (in consequence of the good and faithful services he had rendered to ELIZABETH I), provost-marshal of the province of Connaught for life.
In 1620, he was constituted vice-president of the same province; and created, in 1621, a baronet, denominated of Castle Cuffe, Queen’s County.
Sir Charles distinguished himself, subsequently, by many gallant exploits; but the most celebrated was the relief of Birr, in 1642.
Being dispatched, with Sir Thomas Lucas and six troops of horse, to relieve that garrison, and some other fortresses, it was necessary, in order to effect the objective, to pass the causeway broken by the rebels, who had thrown up a ditch at the end of it.
Sir Charles, leading thirty dismounted dragoons, beat the enemy, with the loss of their captain and twenty men; relieved the castles of Birr, Borris, and Knocknamase; and having continued almost forty hours on horseback, returned to the camp with the loss of only one man.
This is the surprising passage through Mountrath woods which justly caused the title of MOUNTRATH to be entailed upon his son.
Sir Charles married Dorothea, youngest daughter and co-heir of Hugh Cuffe, of Cuffe’s Wood, County Cork, and had issue,
Charles, his heir; Chidley, of Killester, Co Dublin; RICHARD, ancestor of the EARL OF BELLAMONT; Thomas, of Coote Hill; Letitia.
The younger son,
RICHARD (1620-83), for his hearty concurrence with his brother, SIR CHARLES, 2nd Baronet, in promoting the restoration of CHARLES II, was rewarded with the dignity of a peer of the realm.
Being the same day that his brother was created Earl of Mountrath, Richard Coote was created Baron Coote, of Coloony, in 1660.
In 1660, Lord Coote was appointed Major to the Duke of Albemarle’s regiment of horse; and the same year he was appointed one of the commissioners for executing His Majesty’s declaration for the settlement of Ireland.
His lordship was, in 1675, appointed one of the commissioners entrusted for the 49 Officers.
In 1676, this nobleman resided at Moore Park, County Meath; and at Piercetown, County Westmeath.
He married Mary, second daughter of George, Lord St George.
Following Lord Coote’s decease, in 1683, he was interred at Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin.
His second son,
RICHARD, 2nd Baron (1636-1701), Governor of County Leitrim, 1689, Treasurer to the Queen, 1689-93, MP for Droitwich, 1689-95, was, in 1688, one on the first to join the Prince of Orange.
In 1689, he was attainted in his absence by the Irish Parliament of JAMES II.
His lordship was created, in 1689, EARL OF BELLAMONT, along with a grant of 77,000 acres of forfeited lands.
His lordship was Governor of Massachusetts, 1695;,and Governor of New York, 1697-1701.
The King had sent Lord Bellamont to New York to put down the “freebooting“.
Unfortunately he was responsible for outfitting the veteran mariner William Kidd, who turned into ‘Captain Kidd’, who terrorised the merchants until his capture in 1698.
According to Cokayne ”he was a man of eminently fair character, upright, courageous and endependent. Though a decided Whig he had distinguished himself by bringing before the Parliament at Westminster some tyrannical acts done by Whigs at Dublin.”
His lordship wedded, in 1680, Catharine, daughter and heir of Bridges Nanfan, of Worcestershire, and had issue,
NANFAN, his successor; RICHARD, succeeded his brother.
His lordship was succeeded by his elder son,
NANFAN, 2nd Earl (1681-1708), who married Lucia Anna van Nassau (1684-1744), daughter of Henry de Nassau, Lord Overkirk, in 1705/6 at St Martin-in-the-Fields Church, London.
He died at Bath, Somerset, from palsy, without male issue, when the family honours devolved upon his brother,
RICHARD, 3rd Earl (1682-1766), who, in 1729, sold the family estate of Coloony, County Sligo, for nearly £17,000.
In 1737, he succeeded his mother to the estates of Birtsmorton, Worcestershire.
Macaulay described him as “of eminently fair character, upright, courageous and independent.”
On his death, the earldom expired.
The last Earl was succeeded in the barony of Coote by his first cousin once removed,
THE RT HON CHARLES, 5th Baron, KB, PC (1738-1800), son of Charles Coote, MP for County Cavan, son of the Hon Thomas Coote, a Justice of the Court of the King’s Bench of Ireland, younger son of the 1st Baron.
In 1767, the earldom of Bellamont was created again when Charles, Lord Coote, was created EARL OF BELLAMONT (3rd creation).
In 1774, Lord Bellamont was created a baronet, of Donnybrooke in the County of Dublin, with remainder to his illegitimate son, Charles.
Following his death in 1800, the titles became extinct as he left no surviving legitimate male issue, though he was succeeded in the baronetcy according to the special remainder by his illegitimate son Charles, 2nd Baronet.
BELLAMONT FOREST, near Cootehill, County Cavan, now sits amid approximately one thousand acres of parkland and lakes.
It is one of Ireland’s finest 18th-century Palladian villas.
The house is four bays square, built over two storeys, with a basement, built of red brick with ashlar facings, and has a Doric limestone portico, with pediments over the windows.
The main house has been re-roofed and the chimneys rebuilt; the current owner has also rewired the house.
A new heating system has been installed on the ground floor with concealed radiators and the entire house re-plumbed.
There are both excellent formal reception rooms and beautiful entertaining rooms, coupled with a comfortable family atmosphere.
It provides extensive bedroom accommodation for both family, guests and staff, and in addition boasts the former linen hall.
The gardens have also been developed and greatly enhanced and act as further entertaining space.
As I’m sure you may be aware I’ve already featured Bellamont Forest in Co Cavan on this page. Due to the generosity of Charles Dorman O Gowan ( and friend ) I’ve got some photos previously never seen publicly , (along with some other very old ones which I’ve recently come across – the 1870s ones ). Charlie’s great great grand father bought the estate in 1874 for £145,000 . The family sold it circa 1980. There have been 3 owners since . As per my previous posts on Bellamont , the renovation of the house continues unabated.
8/8/2016
Bellamont Forest, ,near Cootehill,originally the Cavan seat of the Coote family , whose other branches included Ballyfin . Subsequently the Smith ( O Gowan) family paid about £145,000 in 1874 for the estate and they had many interesting members over the years including ” The Brigadier “, Eric Dorman O Gowan – he changed his name from Smith after a wrangle with Winston Churchill and the British government of the time -they owned it for over 100 years . Then the Mills family for a few years , John Coote an Australian designer and now John Morehart. Designed by Sir Edward Lovett Pearce in the style of Villa Capra /Rotonda by Andrea Palladio ( the Villa Pisani at Montagnana is very similar)for his uncle Thomas Coote in the mid 1720s. It really is exquisite in the trueness of its form . Despite a huge fire about 12/15 years after completion which destroyed much of the house and roof , the “rebuild ” was extensive and it retains its true form . Many timbers/joists after recent refurbishment works displayed evidence of burning and scorching from that fire. It was circa 1775 one of the main reception rooms , the library,had its flat ceiling replaced by the splendid vaulted one that exists today .Evidence of 18th century wallpaper still exists in the space above it where there was once a room ( in pictures section). Sitting overlooking 2 lakes( anyone can have one ) ,the house is quite simply breathtaking . My bias towards the beauty of this house , I’m rarely lost for words , requires me to state , show me another as pure and elegant .This is of National, if not international importance. Lovett Pearce also was responsible for amongst other buildings the former Irish Parliament on College Green and Castletown House. The house is ,as seen in the pictures ,undergoing extensive renovation work after a period of some neglect and possible inept or at least ill advised refurbishment works, but also the ravages of time, standing for not far off 300 years might take its toll on any building .I’m positive all owners tried their best during their time .
One of Ireland’s most architecturally important houses, Bellamont Forest in Cootehill, Co Cavan has sold
Wed, Jun 3, 2015
by Madeleine Lyons
One of Ireland’s most architecturally important houses, Bellamont Forest in Cootehill, Co Cavan has sold for around €2million. The substantial Palladian villa on 1000 acres has been purchased by a US couple with Irish interests and a number of international properties. The 18th century property had been on the market by a liquidator for €1.35million, until three weeks ago when final offers of more than €1.5million were invited by selling agent Ganly Walters. It’s understood the new owners, who currently own a holiday property in Ireland, plan to refurbish Bellamont for private use in a restoration project that will cost upwards of €2million.
According to Robert Ganly most of the bidding took place over a 48 hour period between the US couple and two other interested parties from the UK and Ireland. There had been a lot of interest in the property both for its historical significance as one of the finest examples in the British Isles of a Palladian villa and its role at the centre of a 1991 divorce action between the late owner John Coote and his wife Andrea (an Australian politician)….
Built between 1725 and 1730 for Thomas Coote, the Lord Justice of Ireland and designed by Coote’s gifted nephew, architect Sir Edward Lovett Pearce. Pearce’s other works include the former Houses of Parliament in College Green, now The Bank of Ireland. He later became Surveyor General of Ireland, a post which he held until his death in 1733.
The house is four bays square, built over two storeys, with a basement. The house is built of red brick with ashlar facings, and has a Doric limestone portico, with pediments over the windows.
Considered one of the most perfect Palladian villa ever built in Ireland, Bellamont House is not well known, but the Coote family who built it are. The first was Sir Charles Coote who died in battle at Trim in 1642, leaving his four estates to his four sons.
His youngest son Col. Thomas Coote was granted the lands in County Cavan after the Act of Settlement in 1662 and was the founder of the town known as Cootehill.
After his death in 1671 the estate was passed to his nephew Thomas Coote, who later became a Lord Justice of the Kings Bench in Ireland and was made a Knight of the Bath ‘in testimony of his good and laudable service in suppressing tumultuous and illegal insurrection in the northern parts of Ireland’.
After Thomas married his third wife Ann Lovett in 1697, Coote became the uncle-in-law of Sir Edward Lovett Pearce, a cousin who was the most important architect in Ireland during the early 18th century. It was Pearce who built Thomas Coote’s new house in 1730, the design based on Palladio’s Villa Rotonda at Vicenza.
The name was changed to Bellamont Forest by Coote’s grandson Charles, who inherited the estate in 1764 and became the Earl of Bellamont in 1767. Lord Bellamont was a interesting figure, described by some as a man of ‘the highest refinement’, but also a ‘tyrant’, ‘madman’ and ‘a person of disgusting pomposity’.
An consumate womaniser, he sired at least six illegitimate children, with six different women, including 5 from his wife. After his death the estate passed to these descendants who became less than prosperous.
In 1874 Edward Smith, a coal tycoon bought the Bellamont house and lands for £145,000. Following his death in 1880, the estate was continuously passed down until 1984 when the Irish ‘troubles’ persuaded the family to sell the estate.
Three years later John Coote a descendant whose family immigrated to Australia in the early 1900s, visited Ireland and discovered the derelict estate was for sale and seized the chance to buy it.
After 23 years of renovation, Coote completed the work of his lifetime at his family home, Bellamont Forest. It is truly an extraordinary achievement and the house is virtually unaltered since Pearce’s day. The 11,350 square foot, two-storey main house was re-roofed, rewired and replumbed, with underfloor heating installed on the ground floor.
Double doors lead into the 25ft by 29ft ballroom, the most ornate room in the house that showcase an exceptional coffered ceiling. The main reception room is the library, whose original flat ceiling was replaced by Lord Bellamont in 1775 with a more elaborate coved one to match the dining room. This was the only major alteration made to the house in 238 years.
The stone staircase leads to the mezzanine floor, which leads to a large bedroom with ensuite bath and an office, both with vaulted ceilings.
The staircase continues up to the first-floor bedroom hall, top-lit by a decorative elliptical lantern that later became a typical feature of Irish houses.
A second staircase leads to the basement, where much of the original stone-flag flooring and vaulted brick ceiling has been restored. There’s an apartment, large orignial kitchen, dining room, media room and wine cellar.
The servants’ tunnel links the basement with the landscaped walled garden to the rear of the house.
The vast former linen hall has also been restored to provide five reception rooms and five bedrooms with bathrooms.
John Coote died in 2012 and the property sits empty and quietly awaits someone with the financial ability to make the needed repairs and love this ancient family seat once again.
Ballyhaise House, Ballyhaise, Co. Cavan – agricultural college
Ballyhaise House, County Cavan, photograph by Robert French, Lawrence Photograph Collection, National Library of Ireland.
Bence-Jones, Mark. 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. 22. “[Humphryes] An important house by Richard Castle, built ca 1733 for Brockhill Newburgh. Of 2 storeys over basement, and 7 bays, faced in brick, with ashlar dressings. Entrance front with pedimented central feature of 4 Ionic pilasters superimposed on a Doric entablature and 4 Doric pilasters. Garden front with central curved bow, which has round headed windows and a doorway under a consoled pediment. The bow contains an oval saloon which Dr. Craig considers may well be the earliest surviving oval room in the British Isles; it keeps its original plasterwork on the ceiling, which, surprisingly, is a brick vault; the groun dfloor as well as the basement being vaulted over, as in the King House in Boyle, Co Roscommon. The doors and chimneypiece in the saloon are all curved. Sold ca 1800 to William Humphreys, who extended the house by adding 2 storey wings of the same height as the original block and also of brick with stone facings; but with a neo-Classical flavour; the slightly projecting end bays on the entrance front being framed by broad corner strip pilasters, supporting entablatures with dies. The windows in these bays are tripartite, with entablatures over them on console brackets. Sold by the Humphrys family in the present century, now an agricultural college.”
Ballyhaise House was built for the Newburghs, a local landowning family, in the 1730s. Richard Cassels (1690-1751) was of German origin and also known as Richard Castle. He settled in Ireland around 1728 and worked with Edward Lovett Pearce on the Houses of Parliament before becoming the leading country house architect of his day in Ireland. Ballyhaise House has been used as an agricultural college since the beginning of the 20th century and has been much altered.
Detached eleven-bay two-storey over basement former country house, built c.1735, possibly with core of c.1700, comprising seven-bay central block having pedimented centre bays with superimposed orders and a three-bay semi-circular bow to rear elevation. Lower outer bays added c.1820 with recessed intermediate bays and advanced end bays having tripartite windows, southern bay forming end of four-bay side elevation. Now in use as college. Hipped and slated roofs with lead ridges and rendered chimneystacks of simplified Vanbrughesque design, having clay chimneypots with lotus-flower decoration. Parapet to central block as stone entablature with central pediment retaining trace of tympanum sculpture, similar entablature over bow to rear, lower stone cornices to outer bays and south wing. Red brick walls with architectural detailing of ashlar sandstone to front of main block and to later end wings, ashlar stone to centre three bays. Centre bays articulated with pilasters in superimposed Doric and Ionic orders, upper Ionic order having pulvinated frieze and cornice extending across higher central block. Doric order having blank metope frieze, cornice carried across central block and intermediate bays with plain ashlar band above and plain frieze below. Plain raised ashlar bands flanking end bays over both storeys carried round to the side elevations. Ruled-and-lined rendered walls to basement below string course at window head level and ashlar outer bays. Side elevation to south with simplified banding courses at mid height and a continuous string course under the upper storey sills. Side elevation to north of rubble stone with brick surrounds to openings and large quoins to the north-west corner. The rear elevation of roughcast render, smooth ruled-and-lined render to bow. Shouldered architraves to ground and first floor windows with ashlar sill course at ground floor and six-over-six timber sash windows. Tripartite windows to outer bays with ashlar mullions and cornice hoods on scrolled brackets, six-over-nine timber sash windows to centre section at ground floor windows. Segmental-headed windows to basement with plain architraves and six-over-six timber sashes. Square-headed door opening to central bay with recent glazed double-leaf entrance doors in shouldered architrave surround topped by a segmental pediment with shell motif over carved floral garland. Rear elevation with round-headed windows to basement and ground floors, segmental-headed to first floor, both types having plain reveals to bow and brick surrounds elsewhere. Square-headed door opening to bow with shouldered architrave surmounted by corbelled canopy with carved sandstone swag motif, round-headed blind door opening to main ground level above with Gibbs surround and open-bed pediment on scroll brackets. Entrance hall with plastered brick-vaulted ceiling with deep severies and coffered centre. Black and white stone floor tiles and tall Kilkenny limestone open-bed pedimented chimneypiece. Four main reception rooms off hall, Bishop’s Room having marble chimneypiece, running mould cornice and decorative centrepiece. Peacock Room having plastered brick-vaulted ceiling with elliptical-headed formerets, modillion cornice and heavy foliate centrepiece. Walls having hand-painted wallpaper with dado rail and deep skirting, panelled window joinery and panelled door with flanking pilaster architraves and plain entablature over-door and replacement marble fireplace. Oval Room in bow opens off hall to rear with compartmentalised oval ceiling having dentil cornice and foliate centrepiece, stucco panelled walls with dado rail and round-headed windows with panelled window joinery, curved Kilkenny limestone chimneypiece having central corbel with fish-scale design. Ballroom now in use as a lecture room with decorative modillion cornice and centrepiece with decorative feather motifs, dado rail and deep skirting boards, Carrara marble chimneypiece with fluted Corinthian columns supporting mantle having decorative Greek key and palmette motif to lintel. Panelled window shutters, soffits and window backs with fan detail to reveals, timber panelled doors with similar fan details to panels and overdoor with floral garlands. Stair hall off entrance hall to south with service stair beyond lobby room to the north. Dogleg stair from basement to first floor with sandstone steps from ground floor to basement. Turned balusters set on pears and blocks and scrolled tread ends with decorative fretwork detail. Door openings in stair hall have round-headed overdoors with decorative spider-web motif emulating fanlight and flanking pilaster architraves. Dining room in end bay now used as a boardroom with decorative cornice having palmette motifs, grey marble chimneypiece having flanking Ionic columns, timber panelled window and doors with fan details to panels and decorative floral garland to overdoor. Arched recess to west-end wall. Offices to basement all with brick vaulted ceilings, stone flags in parts with black and red quarry tiles to entrance hall, plain rendered window embrasures with simple historic timber shutters to some windows and some cast-iron fireplaces. Ground floor raised above surrounding area opening onto steps flanked by balustrade at raised level enclosing basement area across front and south elevation, further steps lead down to driveway. Situated within an extensive designed landscape on rising ground in a meander of Annalee River. Extensive stable and farmyard complex extends up hill to west, large south-facing walled garden to north-west, gates and lodge to south-east.
Ballyhaise House is architecturally one of the most significant houses in Cavan. A multiple phased building set in an early designed landscape, the core of house, vaulted over basement and ground floor, date from c.1705. A historic watercolour painted before 1730 depicts the earlier house with related buildings and bridge in the wider landscape setting. The house was remodelled after this date for Brockhill Newburgh MP, and the work has traditionally been attributed to Richard Castle (1690-1751), one of Ireland’s foremost Palladian architects. However, it is now thought to be the work of Sir Edward Lovett Pearce. The demesne landscape was described in Rev Henry’s ‘Upper Lough Erne’ in 1739. The advanced outer bays were added c.1820, possibly by the Dublin architect William Farrell (d. 1851), and are similar in detail to his work at nearby Rathkenny House and Kilmore See House. The interior is well preserved, the architectural detail reflecting the historic evolution of the house, with classical detailing added to earlier vaulted ceilings being a notable feature. The demesne constitutes an ensemble of structures and designed landscape features of high quality, including a largely intact stable yard, a walled garden, and entrance gates, and adds to its setting and context.
Built by Brockhill Newburgh and originally composed with wings in the classic Palladian manner (removed when the house was extended in the early nineteenth century), Ballyhaise was deemed by Jonathan Swift, ‘not only the best, but the only house he had seen in Ireland’.
Like Bellamont, the house at Ballyhaise is distinguished as a building predominantly built of brick with its classical detail perfectly mediated, cleanly and precisely, in contrasting stone trim. Instead of a freestanding portico, the idea of the temple front is addressed in the frontispiece, a pedimented breakfront formed with two tiers of pilasters – Ionic over Doric – which observed the strict hierarchy that applies to the classical orders. Ballyhaise was further innovative for its introduction to Irish domestic architecture of the central bowed projection, distinctive here in its accommodation of a complete oval form within the plan, a shape that derives from French baroque architecture of the seventeenth
century. Though difficult to conceive now, Ballyhaise was even more remarkable in that its original form had been conceived with the classic expanded Palladian layout, its central block set between curved wings in a manner that enjoyed an enduring popularity in Ireland, having begun with houses like Carton and Castletown in County Kildare. At Ballyhaise, this grand composition with its low arcaded wings terminating in polygonal pavilions, equal to the most ambitious of Palladio’s villa designs, was swept away when new wings were formed in the early nineteenth century. The massing of the central block at Ballyhaise between lower square subsidiary towers and a series of small pyramid roofs recurred at Lismore (fig.14), where the surviving wings rather more grandly reaffirm the Palladian idea of closely integrating the agricultural practicalities of the farm with the house.
Ballyhaise House As part of James I’s plantation of Ulster, in 1609 John Taylor of Cambridge received a grant of 1,500 acres in an area of County Cavan called Aghieduff. Here he established the town of Ballyhaise and, according to a mid-19th century report, ‘built a strong Bawn of lime and stone for his own residence, on the site of the present castle, which, from it position, commanded the ford over the river.’ John Taylor married Ann the daughter and heiress of Henry Brockhill of Allington, Kent – their elder son was Brockhill Taylor who served as Member of Parliament for the borough of Cavan in the 1630s. On his death he left no son but two daughters one of whom, Mary inherited the Cavan estate. She married Thomas Newburgh - their second son, Colonel Brockhill Newburgh, (c.1659 – 1741) was the next owner of Ballyhaise since his elder brother died in 1701 without heirs. During the Williamite Wars, Colonel Newburgh had raised a company of soldiers and participated in several battles in support of what would prove to be the winning side.
In 1704 he was appointed High Sheriff of Cavan and served as an M.P. from 1715 to 1727, as well as acting as chairman of the local linen board. Ballyhaise remained in the possession of the Newburgh family until around 1800 when it was sold to William Humphreys, a Dublin merchant who had made his fortune in the wood trade. In 1905 the state bought the property and has run it as an agricultural college every since.
‘It were also to be wished that even our gentlemen would in their country-seats imitate Colonel Newburgh, a great improver in the Co. of Cavan, who as well as several others, does not only use stucco work, instead of wainscot, but has arched his fine dwelling-house, and all his large office-houses, story over story, and even all their roofs in the most beautiful manner without any timber.’ Samuel Madden, Reflections and Resolutions Proper for the Gentlemen of Ireland, Etc.1738. ‘This seat, for beauty and magnificence, may vie with any in Ireland. There is an ascent to it by several terraces from the river, which are adorned with ponds, jets d’eau, fruit and flowers. The house is about 140 feet in front – it is made to last for ever – the roofs and all the apartments being vaulted, and curiously finished with stucco work; and yet scarce any house in Ireland has so brisk and lively an aspect – the just mixture of the brick and hewn stone, and the proportion of the parts adding life to one another; the large court and offices also behind it are all vaulted. It is not easy to pass by this fine seat without delaying at it, but to do justice to the house, its various apartments, gardens, vistas, avenues, circular walks, roads and plantations rising to the tops of all the hills around, would require a description that would draw me too far from my present design.’ Rev. William Henry, Upper Lough Erne, 1739. ‘The affairs of Ireland being sometime happily settled, the gentlemen of the country now began to quit their cottages, and build mansion houses, suitable to their estates and fortunes. The arts hitherto unknown in Ireland, architecture in particular, began to receive encouragement; of which no gentleman of private fortune gave juster and more useful specimens than Mr Newburgh. His dwelling house as well as offices being arched throughout, in the upper as well as lower stories are thereby of course, free from the danger and power of fire. The compliment that the late Dean Swift paid to Mr Newburgh on the planning such a singular but useful edifice, was as uncommon, as there is reason to believe it sincere, viz. That it was not only the best, but the only house he had seen in Ireland.’ Particulars relating to the Life and Character of the Late Brockhill Newburgh Esq. ,1761.
As part of James I’s plantation of Ulster, in 1609 John Taylor of Cambridge received a grant of 1,500 acres in an area of County Cavan called Aghieduff. Here he established the town of Ballyhaise and, according to a mid-19th century report, ‘built a strong Bawn of lime and stone for his own residence, on the site of the present castle, which, from it position, commanded the ford over the river.’ Further English and Scottish settlers were encouraged to move into the area and when Nicholas Pynner undertook his government-commissioned survey of the province’s plantation in 1618-19 he found eighteen such families living at Ballyhaise ‘and everything around the infant colony appeared in the most prosperous condition.’ The disturbances of the 1640s were a setback to the enterprise but by the time of Charles II’s restoration to the throne in 1660, Ballyhaise’s settlement was once more progressing. John Taylor had married the daughter and heiress of Henry Brockhill of Allington, Kent and their elder son was duly christened Brockhill Taylor; he served as Member of Parliament for the borough of Cavan in the 1630s. On his death he left no son but two daughters one of whom, Mary inherited the Cavan estate. She married Thomas Newburgh and the couple had several sons, the second of which, Colonel Brockhill Newburgh, was the next owner of Ballyhaise since his elder brother died in 1701 without heirs. During the Williamite Wars, Colonel Newburgh had raised a company of soldiers and participated in several battles in support of what would prove to be the winning side. In 1704 he was appointed High Sheriff of Cavan and served as an M.P. from 1715 to 1727, as well as acting as chairman of the local linen board. However it is for the building projects he undertook on his Ballyhaise estate that Colonel Newburgh is best remembered. In 1703 he and another local landowner rebuilt the bridge here as an eight-arched stone structure, and during the same period he also embarked on a grand scheme to lay out a new town, described after his death as being ‘in the form of a Circus, the houses all arched, with a large circular market house in the center; a building, in the opinion of some good judges, not unworthy the plan of Vitruvius or Palladio; and which (if we may be allowed to compare small things with great) bears no distant resemblance to the Pantheon at Rome, but with this difference, without the opening of the convex roof at the summit, contrived to give light to the latter.’ Unfortunately in 1736 the market house collapsed and had to be rebuilt; in 1837 it was reported to be ‘an arched edifice built of brick and of singular appearance.’ It has since gone and the present market house, with ill-considered uPVC windows, does little to improve what remains of Colonel Newburgh’s once-elegant and innovative programme of urban planning.
The near-contemporaneous accounts carried above give us an idea of Colonel Newburgh’s ambitious developments of his own house and grounds at Ballyhaise, and the impact these made on visitors to the area. The gardens, it is clear, were an elaborate baroque arrangement of ‘ponds, jets d’eau, fruit and flowers’ spread across a sequence of terraces that descended to the river before the land rose up once more on its far side. As for the house, its architect has long been the subject of speculation. It used to be attributed to Castle, but given that Colonel Newburgh is believed to have been born c.1659 (and died in 1741) and that certain elements of the building, not least the red brick used in its construction, are associated with Sir Edward Lovett Pearce, he now seems more likely to have been responsible. Ballyhaise was probably constructed on the site and incorporated parts of an earlier dwelling dating back a century to around the time of John Taylor’s arrival; one imagines this to have been defensive in character. Colonel Newburgh’s house, on the other hand, projects its owner’s assurance and the more tranquil character of the time. The core of the building was of two storeys over half-basement, and of seven bays. As already mentioned red brick was used except for the three centre bays which are of limestone with Ionic over Doric pilasters below a full entablature supporting a pediment. The narrow entrance is reached at the top of a flight of steps, a garland of carved flowers fitted beneath the door case’s segmental pediment containing a scallop shell. In 1746 the architect and designer Thomas Wright who was then visiting Ireland as a guest of Lord Limerick (see Do the Wright Thing, July 28th 2014) made a sketch of the front of Ballyhaise as it then was. This can be seen above and indicates the house was the centrepiece of a Palladian scheme extended on either side by quadrants before terminating in pavilion wings. None of this remains today and the interior has likewise undergone changes since first completed when it was vaulted throughout, allegedly as a precaution against fire. What remain largely unaltered are the entrance hall and rooms immediately on either side; one of these, the so-called Peacock Room, contains wall paper from the first half of the 19th century, covered in varnish at some later date but otherwise in good condition. To the rear of the entrance hall is the room which best evokes Colonel Newburgh’s house, a small oval saloon. Its walls covered in plaster panelling beneath a shallow coffered dome, the saloon contains a simple Kilkenny marble chimneypiece and two windows on either side of what surely must once have been an opening onto a balcony at the centre of the projecting bow.
Ballyhaise remained in the possession of the Newburgh family until around 1800 when it was sold to William Humphreys, a Dublin merchant who had made his fortune in the wood trade. By then the house must have looked very old-fashioned and it was therefore subjected to a complete overhaul. The quadrants and wings were demolished and the main block extended on either side to hold drawing and dining room respectively, both lit by generous tripartite windows. The contrast between these and the original early 18thcentury windows is only one of a number of incongruities, accentuated on the exterior by the unmistakable difference in tone of brick. Inside rather narrow passages provide access to the main reception rooms which are large and mostly plain although the overdoors carry floral friezes. The main staircase, squeezed into too tight a space, leads to the first floor former bedrooms which are also simple although some, such as that immediately above the oval saloon, retain their Georgian decoration and chimney piece. Mr Humprheys’ heirs enjoyed the advantages of his wealth for barely a century before it ran out and the house was once more sold, this time to the state which in 1905 bought the estate to run as an agricultural college. Ballyhaise has served this purpose every since, a mixed blessing for the place. Inevitably there have been losses, not least to the surrounding parkland where no evidence of Colonel Newburgh’s fantastical gardens survive; of course, these may well have been swept away when the property was modernised by Mr Humphreys. Recent additions to the building stock in the grounds are pedestrian in design, but the old stable blocks remain and have suffered relatively little compromise. And most importantly the house itself survives and has of late benefitted from remedial works, particularly to the roof. Not all is as was when Colonel Newburgh embarked on his improvements but the words of the Rev. William Henry written in 1739 still ring true: Ballyhaise appears to have been ‘made to last for ever.’
THE HUMPHRYS’ OWNED 5,146 ACRES OF LAND IN COUNTY CAVAN
WILLIAM HUMPHRYS, of Ballyhaise, County Cavan, younger brother of Christopher Humphrys, of Dromard, married Letitia Kennedy, and had issue,
Christopher, b 1786; WILLIAM, of whom we treat; John, 1809-18; Anne; Matilda; Letitia; Amelia; Caroline; Sophia.
Mr Humphrys, High Sheriff of County Cavan, 1822, was succeeded by his second son,
WILLIAM HUMPHRYS JP DL (1798-1872), of Ballyhaise House, High Sheriff of County Cavan, 1832, who wedded firstly, in 1826, Anna Maria, daughter of John Pratt Winter, of Agher, County Meath, and had issue,
WILLIAM, his heir; JOHN WINTER, succeeded his brother; Mervyn Archdall; Anne Elizabeth.
He espoused secondly, in 1838, Maria Clarissa, daughter of Hugh Moore, of Eglantine House, County Down, and had issue,
WILLIAM HUMPHRYS (1827-77), High Sheriff of County Cavan, 1877, who died unmarried, and was succeeded by his brother,
JOHN WINTER HUMPHRYS (1829-84), of Ballyhaise House, High Sheriff of County Cavan, 1879, who married, in 1854, Priscilla Cecilia, daughter of the Rev J P Garrett, of Killgaron, County Carlow, and had issue,
WILLIAM, his heir; John Mervyn; James Winter; Charles Vesey; Mervyn Archdall; Francis Edward; Arthur Armitage; Llewellyn Winter; Percy Raymond; Caroline Elizabeth; Priscilla Cecilia; Clara Christina; Anna Maria; Emily May.
Mr Humphrys was succeeded by his eldest son,
WILLIAM HUMPHRYS JP (1855-97), of Ballyhaise House, Lieutenant RN, who wedded, in 1879, Alice, daughter of James Stannard JP, of Bricketstown House, County Wexford, and had issue,
WILLIAM, his heir; NUGENT WINTER, succeeded his brother; Ethel Elizabeth; Evelyn Alice.
Mr Humphrys was succeeded by his eldest son,
WILLIAM HUMPHRYS (1883-1906), of Ballyhaise House, Lieutenant, 17th Lancers, who died unmarried, and was succeeded by his brother,
NUGENT WINTER HUMPHRYS (1885-1931), of Ballyhaise House, Lieutenant, Manchester Regiment, who espoused, in 1911, Blanche Ada de Vivefay, daughter of William Edward Wilson, of Daramona.
BALLYHAISE HOUSE, Ballyhaise, County Cavan, is one of the most notable mansions in County Cavan.
The house comprises two storeys over a basement, with seven bays; with ashlar dressings, faced in brick.
The entrance front has a pedimented feature with four Ionic pilasters.
The garden front has a central carved bow with round-headed windows.
The bow contains an oval saloon, which has been considered one of the earliest of its kind in the British Isles.
Ballyhaise was sold in 1800 to William Humphrys, who enlarged the house considerably by adding two storey wings of the same height as the original block.
The estate was sold by the Humprys family in 1906 and now serves as an agricultural college.
Ardagh House, Ardagh, Co. Longford – Sisters of Mercy convent
Ardagh House, County Longford, photograph courtesy of National Inventory.
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. 7. “[Fetherston, Bt/PB1923] An irregular 2 storey house of predominantly early to mid C19 appearance. Eaved roof on bracket cornice; porch and corridor with pilasters. Now a domestic science college.”
Ardagh House, County Longford, photograph courtesy of National Inventory.
Attached eight-bay two-storey (originally three-storey) over-basement former country house, originally built c. 1730 and altered c. 1826 and c. 1863. Three-bay two-storey block (formerly a ballroom) attached to the southeast end, having hipped slate roof with overhanging bracketed eaves. Single-bay porch with tetrastyle porch to the centre of the front façade (south), adjoined to the east by a four-bay single-storey addition/conservatory with pilasters and lean-to roof. Now in use as training college by the Sisters of Mercy (from c. 1927) with multiple extensions to the east and the northeast. Hipped slate roof with overhanging bracketed eaves and cast-iron rainwater goods. Flat roof to porch. Painted rendered walls. Square-headed window openings with painted sills and a mixture of replacement, six-over-six, and three-over-three pane timber sliding sash windows. Moulded cornices, square profile piers, and pilasters to porch. Wrought-iron cross finial over porch. Square-headed window openings to single-storey addition/conservatory having eight-over-eight pane timber sliding sash windows with moulded sills. Segmental-headed with moulded surround to west elevation of porch having one-over-one pane timber sliding sash window with moulded bracketed sill. Square-headed entrance opening to porch (recessed) with moulded surround, decorative console brackets, and timber panelled double leaf door. Accessed via stone steps. Painted rendered boundary wall with piers and wrought-iron railings to basement area of front elevation. Set in landscaped surroundings to the north of Ardagh. Gates and gate lodges to the west and the southeast, complex of outbuildings and stable block to the rear (north) and to the northeast.
Appraisal
This substantial former country house retains much of its early character; despite a fire in 1948 that resulted in it being reduced it to two storeys in height. Much interesting fabric remains, such as some timber sliding sash windows, and console brackets to the porch. Although probably early-to-mid eighteenth century in date, this structure now has a predominantly early-to-mid nineteenth-century appearance. The elegant porch and conservatory, and the former ballroom/block to the east, were also added at this time. It also retains some of its early fabric to the interior, despite the fire in 1948 (see below), including plasterwork and fireplaces. This building has important historical connections with the Fetherston family, who developed much the village of Ardagh, particularly in the 1860s. The first recorded mention of the Fetherston family at Ardagh is of a Thomas Fetherston (died c. 1749), who bought a house and 235 acres of land in 1703. The Fetherston estate was some 11,000 acres in size by c. 1900. It is thought that Thomas Fetherston built Ardagh House (or an earlier house) sometime during the first half of the eighteenth century, perhaps c. 1730. The house was in existence in 1744/5 when Oliver Goldsmith (c. 1728 – 1774) visited the house. Apparently, Goldsmith based his most famous play ‘She Stoops to Conquer’ on his experience at Ardagh House, when he mistook the house for an inn/hotel. However, Lewis (1837) states that the play in question is ‘Mistakes of a Night’. The Fetherston were later granted the rank of Baronet in 1780. There was an Ardagh House in existence c. 1780 (Taylor and Skinner maps 1777 – 1783). John Hargrave (1788 – 1833) carried out ‘trifling alterations for Sir George Fetherston’, c. 1826 (IAA). James Rawson Carroll (1830 – 1911) later carried out extensive ‘alterations, repairs and additions’ for Sir Thomas John Fetherston, between c. 1860 – 1864. Plasterwork was carried out in 1877 for the Fetherston Trustees (the fifth Baronet, Revd. Sir George Ralph Fetherston had moved to Wales). In 1903 Sir George sold the freehold of their farms to over 300 of his tenants under the Irish Land Act of 1903 but retained the house and the surrounding lands until his death in 1923. The house was partially destroyed by fire in 1922 during Irish Civil War (1922 – 1923). It was sold to the Sisters of Mercy in 1927, who then established a convent and domestic science school here. The house was again badly destroyed by fire in 1948 and the top floor had to be removed as a result. This building forms the centrepiece of a large group of related sites and is an important element of the social history of Ardagh and County Longford.
Ardagh House, County Longford, photograph courtesy of National Inventory.Ardagh House, County Longford, photograph courtesy of National Inventory.Ardagh House, County Longford, photograph courtesy of National Inventory.
In Irish Castles and Historic Houses by Brendan O’Neill
and Irish Castles and Historic Houses. ed. by Brendan O’Neill, intro. by James Stevens Curl. Caxton Editions, London. 2002:
Lady Fetherstone’s ancestral home was Ardagh House, a manor house, situated to the north of the village and now a convent. It was here, it is fabled, that young Oliver Goldsmith swaggered and bragged in the mistaken belief that he had arrived at an inn. The landlord humoured him for the night, but Goldsmith’s dismay on realising his mistake the following morning can easily be imagined. However, he later turned his embarressment to his advantage, the incident being central to his comedy, ‘She Stoops to Conquer,’ which was first performed in 1773.
When you stand in the centre of Ardagh Village and look south, you get an impressive view of the former Ardagh House with also was a Former Convent, also known as St Brigid’s Training Centre. Originally, it was Ardagh House, home of the Fetherston family.
The house was built about 1730 by Thomas Fetherston and it remained the principal seat of his family until the early 1920s. It underwent alterations on a couple of occasions in the 1800s.
A north of England family, the Fetherstons arrived in Ardagh around 1700, having acquired a small amount of land here. They expanded their estate in later years and it was they who built Ardagh Village as it stands today.
Ardagh House was the scene of a famous episode in the youth of the writer Oliver Goldsmith (separate entry on Goldsmith). While travelling back to his home in Pallas from school in Edgeworthstown, he stopped in Ardagh to seek lodgings.
A local directed him to the ‘big house’, saying it was the local inn. The Fetherstons recognised him and ‘played along’ with his misunderstanding to the extent that a daughter of the squire waited on him. The next morning, Goldsmith was told the truth, and he later wrote the play She Stoops To Conquer or The Mistakes Of A Night’, based on the episode.
The last landlord, Rev. Sir George Fetherston was an Anglican clergyman who lived mainly in England. He died in 1923, but by then the estate had been broken-up, with most tenants buying their farms under the land acts. In 1922, the I.R.A. had attempted unsuccessfully to burn the house.
In 1927, the Sisters of Mercy arrived and soon established a training centre for domestic science. The course was modernised later and the centre – St Brigid’s – remained open until 2008. There was a serious fire in the convent in 1949 resulting in renovations that included the removal of the top storey.
Beside the house is a spacious coach yard, which was restored by the Sisters of Mercy
Casey, Christine and Alistair Rowan. The Buildings of Ireland: North Leinster. Penguin Books, London, 1993.
p. 111-112.
p. 112 “Now much altered, it clearly followed a double-pile plan, with a large entrance hall, the principal stair in the centre of the E flank and the reception rooms opening off the hall. The decoration is now C19 and neoclassical in character. All that survives from the early Georgian house is fielded panels to the shuttering and door jambs. In the C19, the house was extended by adding a ballroom at the SE corner, a projecting three-bay block with ample sash windows and a hipped roof with oversailing bracketed eaves. A classical porch and arcaded conservatory were added to the entrance front. Most of the C19 alterations were carried out either by Sir George Fetherston, who landscaped the demesne grounds, or by Sir Thomas, who built a large stable court and erected the picturesque estate buildings in Ardagh village. The stables of 1863 by J. Rawson Carroll are attractive redbrick ranges with slated half-hipped roofs in vaguely Scandinavian idiom.
THE FETHERSTON BARONETS, OF ARDAGH, WERE MAJOR LANDOWNERS IN COUNTY LONGFORD, WITH 8,711 ACRES.
The founder of this family,
CUTHBERT FETHERSTON, of the ancient stock of the Fetherstons of Heathery Cleugh, County Durham, settled in Ireland after the battle of Worcester, in which Sir Thomas Fetherstonhaugh was made prisoner, and afterwards beheaded at Chester.
The eldest son of this Cuthbert,
CUTHBERT FETHERSTON, had three sons,
Cuthbert, ancestor of Fetherston of Bracklyn; THOMAS, of whom hereafter; Francis.
The second son,
THOMAS FETHERSTON, settled at Ardagh, County Longford and marrying Miss Sherlock, had four sons,
John (Very Rev), Dean of Raphoe; William, of Carrick; Francis; RALPH, of whom we treat.
The youngest son,
RALPH FETHERSTON (c1731-80), of Ardagh, MP for Longford County, 1765-6, was created a baronet in 1776, denominated of Ardagh, County Longford.
He wedded firstly, Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Samuel Achmuty, of Brianstown, County Longford, by whom he had an only daughter, Elizabeth; and secondly, Sarah, daughter of Godfrey Wills, of Will’s Grove, County Roscommon, by whom he had four sons and four daughters,
THOMAS, his heir; Godfrey, killed in the East Indies; John; Francis; Sarah; Maria; Letitia; Elizabeth.
Sir Ralph was succeeded by his eldest son,
SIR THOMAS FETHERSTON, 2nd Baronet (1759-1819), MP for County Longford, 1783-1800, for several years in parliament, who married Catherine, daughter of George Boleyn Whitney, of New Pass, County Westmeath, and had issue,
GEORGE RALPH, his successor; John; THOMAS, succeeded his brother; Elizabeth; Catherine; Isabella; Sarah; Octavia.
Sir Thomas was succeeded by his eldest son,
SIR GEORGE RALPH FETHERSTON (1784-1853), 3rd Baronet, MP for County Longford, 1819-30, who espoused, in 1821, Frances Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Richard Solly, of York Place, Portman Square, London, though the marriage was without issue.
Sir George and Lady Fetherston landscaped the demesne grounds and the village of Ardagh. The conversion of the old house into the mansion within its demesne may have been completed at this time, and involved the re-siting of the village street or road. The village clock-tower and surrounding buildings were erected in 1863 in remembrance of Sir George and of his life-long devotion to the moral and social improvement of his tenantry, and the site whereon they stand purchased by Frances Elizabeth, his widow. A memorial stone in the old church records his death on 12th July 1853, and that his wife died in London twelve years later and was buried in Walthamstow.
Sir George was succeeded by his youngest brother,
THE REV SIR THOMAS FRANCIS FETHERSTON (1800-53), 4th Baronet, who married firstly, in 1823, Adeline Godley; and secondly, Anne L’Estrange, of Moystown, County Offaly, and had issue,
George Ralph, died in infancy; THOMAS JOHN, his successor; Edmund Whitney; John Henry; Albert William Boleyn; Boleyn Henry Francis; Henry Ernest Wiliam; Rosa Elizabeth; Catherine.
Sir Thomas was succeeded by his eldest surviving son,
SIR THOMAS JOHN FETHERSTON, 5th Baronet (1824-69), who espoused, in 1848, Sarah, daughter of Henry Alcock, and had issue,
GEORGE RALPH, his successor; Adeline Margaret; Caroline Louisa.
Sir Thomas was succeeded by his only son,
THE REV SIR GEORGE RALPH FETHERSTON (1852-1923), 6th and last Baronet, who died unmarried, when the baronetcy expired.
Sir George was born in Dublin and educated at Brighton College.
In his mid-twenties he entered Salisbury Theological College to prepare for ordination into the ministry of the Church of England.
He served as curate in Tenby and Worcester City, and for six years as Rector or Vicar of the Parish of Pydeltrenthide in Dorset.
He served also as an honorary chaplain to Millbank Military Hospital, London, during the 1914-18 War.
He was one of the first two men in Holy Orders to serve as Sheriff in their Counties until the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland clerics of the Anglican Communion were not permitted to hold such Office.
Being Sheriff in 1897 he received the Diamond Jubilee Medal and preached his Jubilee Sermon in St. Patrick’s Church, Ardagh.
Sir George was a man of many interests and hobbies — music, travel, cycling, fishing, photography, collecting ancient china and stamps, bird-watching and study of insects.
He travelled widely in Europe, Africa, North and South America.
This must have absorbed some of the Ardagh estate income.
He was Fellow and Vice-President of the Guild of Church Musicians and of the Victoria College of Music London.
Who’s Who credited him with the composition of 150 alternative tunes for Hymns Ancient & Modern, various chants, songs and other music, but none of these are to be found in current chant and Hymn books.
His publications have been listed as The Malvern Hills, Through Corsica with a Pencil. The Mystery of Maple Street, A Poem: The Rose of England. An Incident in the Siege of Antwerp, A Legend of Corpus Christi College, and four books of Sermons and Addresses.
These may have been published privately for limited sale or distribution.
Sir George may not have had much interest in the ownership and management of the estate.
He entered into voluntary agreements with over 300 tenants to sell to them the freehold of their farms, under the Irish Land Act 1903.
The Ardagh estate was not acquired or purchased by the Irish Land Commission, which, however, advanced the money required by the tenants and others, and the holdings were vested in them by the Commission in 1922-23.
An area of 427 acres of bog land was vested in trustees for the use of purchasing new freeholders.
Sir George retained Ardagh House and demesne acres until his death in a Worcester City Nursing Home, and burial in Tenby, South Wales, in 1923.
An attempt to destroy the house by fire in 1922 may have been a local expression of dissatisfaction with allocation of estate land or an effort to hasten sale of the last remnants of the estate.
Manuscripts written in Irish were salvaged from the 1922 flames of Ardagh House.
ARDAGH HOUSE is an eight-bay, two-storey (originally three-storey) over-basement house, originally built ca 1730 and altered ca 1826 and ca 1863.
A Three-bay, two-storey block (formerly the ballroom) was attached to the south-east end, having hipped slate roof with overhanging bracketed eaves.
A single-bay porch with tetra-style porch to the centre of the front façade (south), adjoined to the east by a four-bay single-storey additional conservatory with pilasters and lean-to roof.
Ardagh House was acquired as training college by the Sisters of Mercy ca 1927, with multiple extensions to the east and the north-east.
It retains much of its early character despite a fire in 1948 that resulted in it being reduced to two storeys in height.
Much interesting fabric remains, such as some timber sliding sash windows, and console brackets to the porch.
Although probably early-to-mid 18th century in date, this structure now has a predominantly early-to-mid 19th century appearance.
The elegant porch and conservatory, and the former ballroom/block to the east, were also added at this time.
It also retains some of its early fabric to the interior, despite the fire in 1948, including plasterwork and fireplaces.
THE POET and novelist Oliver Goldsmith (1728-74), when a young man, once loitered on his way between Ballymahon and Edgeworthstown, strayed from the direct road, and found himself benighted on the street of Ardagh.
Wishing to find an inn, but inquiring “for the best house in the place”, he was wilfully misunderstood by a wag and directed to the large, old-fashioned residence of Sir Ralph Fetherston, 1st Baronet.
Sir Ralph, whom the poet found seated by a good fire in the parlour, immediately perceived the young man’s mistake; and being humorous and well-acquainted with Goldsmith’s family, he for some time encouraged the deception.
The incidents of the occasion form the groundwork of Goldsmith’s well-known comedy “Mistakes of a Night.”
Originally from County Durham in England, by 1651 Cuthbert Fetherstonhaugh was living in Philipstown (now Daingean), County Offaly, the first of this family to settle in Ireland. His grandson Thomas married Mary Sherlock from Kildare and the couple moved to Ardagh, County Longford where around 1703 he bought some 235 acres of land from the Farrell family. At some point between this acquisition and his death in 1749 he commissioned a new residence in Ardagh; this building is said to have provided part of the inspiration for Oliver Goldsmith’s 1773 comedy She Stoops to Conquer since the playwright mistook the Fetherstonhaugh’s house for an inn. The couple’s eldest son Ralph sat in the House of Commons of the Irish Parliament for 12 years from 1768 onwards and in 1776 was created a baronet. He also simplified the family surname to Fetherston (other branches retained the name in full). His eldest son Thomas, the second baronet, likewise sat as an M.P., in the Irish Parliament until 1800 and thereafter at Westminster until his death in 1819. The third and fifth baronets, Sir George and Sir Thomas Fetherston respectively were responsible for giving the local village of Ardagh its present appearance, by commissioning new housing for the local population. In the early 1860s Sir Thomas employed Dublin-based architect James Rawson Carroll to design one- and two-storey cottages around a green featuring a clock tower erected to the memory of his uncle, Sir George (see Commemorating a Life-long Devotion « The Irish Aesthete)
Sir Thomas Fetherston had only one son, another George, who was only 13 when he inherited the estate. He later became an Anglican clergyman and travelled widely, meaning he did not spend as much time in Ardagh as had his father. Under the terms of the Wyndham Act, in 1903 Sir George sold most of the estate – by then running to some 11,000 acres – to his tenants, retaining only the house and demesne. When he died unmarried at the age of 70 in 1923 the baronetcy died out also. Within a few years, the former family home had been sold to an order of nuns, the Sisters of Mercy who moved into the building and then gradually added extensions to the east side, from which they ran a home economics college. As in the case of so many other such properties, at the start of the present century the nuns gradually wound down operations here and in 2007 the house and surrounding 227 acres was sold at auction for €5.25 million. However, that sale fell through and it was back on the market for €5; by June 2009, as the effects of recession began to be felt, that price had dropped to €3.25 million. It was finally sold at auction in June 2012 for €1.36 million. Since then, the house has sat empty.
As mentioned, the main house at Ardagh is thought to date from the first half of the 18th century when constructed for Thomas Fetherstonhaugh. But much of its present appearance is 19th century, when it was refurbished first by Sir George Fetherston (who laid out the surrounding grounds) and then by his nephew Sir Thomas. The latter was responsible for the present stable block which, like a considerable portion… [see blog entry]
Gaulstown House, Ballynagall, County Westmeath courtesy National Inventory.Gaulstown entrance front, County Westmeath, photograph: Maurice Craig, 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.
Detached three-bay single-storey Palladian-style villa with attic level, built c.1730, over a high basement. Now in use as a private house. Single-bay pedimented breakfront to centre of front façade (south) and gable-fronted projection to centre of north façade creating cruciform plan. Pitched natural slate roof having projecting cut stone bracketed eaves course (to main roof and pediment), cast-iron rainwater goods and a tall chimneystack to either gable end (east and west). Cut stone acroterion blocks to either end and to apex of eaves pediment to entrance front. Roughcast rendered walls over projecting basement with cut stone eaves course continued around pedimented breakfront as a string course. Square-headed window openings to ground floor having cut stone sills, lugged ashlar surrounds and one-over-one pane timber sliding sash windows. Diocletian window to pediment having ashlar surround with projecting keystone over. Segmental-headed openings to the basement having cast-iron security bars. Venetian window to central bay at ground floor level to rear (north). Central round-headed doorcase with sidelights (set in ashlar panels with moulded ashlar cornices over), creating Venetian arrangement, with fanlight over having ashlar block-and-start surround. Timber panelled door. Doorcase reached up splayed flight of cut limestone steps flanked by iron railings to either side. Set back from road in extensive grounds with main entrance gates to the south, at start of long approach avenue. Located to the northwest of Castlepollard.
Appraisal
An impressive and well-executed small-scale Palladian house/villa, of early eighteenth-century appearance. It is very well detailed in good quality ashlar limestone and retains most of its early fabric despite recent works after years of dereliction. The form of this house is quite unusual for a building of this type and date in that the ground floor is built over a high basement. This appealing structure was designed with obvious architectural aspirations and is extremely well-proportioned, having instant visual appeal. It is strangely imposing for a structure built on such a small scale and this is down to the quality of the massing. Gaulstown House must have been designed by an architect of some pedigree and Casey and Rowan (1993) suggest that perhaps even Sir Edward Lovett Pearce or his assistant William Halfpenny were responsible for its designs. Gaulstown House was the home of the Lill Family, c.1780. The good quality entrance gates to the south complete the setting of this fine composition, which is an important element of the architectural heritage of Westmeath.
Gaulstown House, Ballynagall, County Westmeath courtesy National Inventory.
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. 141. “A very interesting and attractive early to mid 18C single storey gable-ended house. Pedimented breakfront with Venetian doorcase, interesting plan. In the 18C the seat of the Hill family. Derelict.”
Gaulstown House, Ballynagall, County Westmeath courtesy National Inventory.Gaulstown House, Ballynagall, County Westmeath courtesy National Inventory.Gaulstown House, Ballynagall, County Westmeath courtesy National Inventory.Gaulstown House, Ballynagall, County Westmeath courtesy National Inventory.
Casey, Christine and Alistair Rowan. The Buildings of Ireland: North Leinster. Penguin Books, London, 1993.
In a book of his photographs published the year he died (2011) architectural historian Maurice Craig included the image above of Gaulstown, County Westmeath which he had taken in 1975. He recalled seeing the house then for the first time and commented, ‘It looked a bit neglected, but it seemed to be all there, especially the roof. I saw a new house only a few yards away (out of frame on the left) and drew the obvious conclusion: that my pet would soon be bundled away. I was wrong.’ In fact Maurice was wrong on two counts. Firstly there never was a new house only a few yards away, it is actually hundreds of yards away and completely invisible from Gaulstown. And of course its construction did not mean the loss of the old house which continues to stand almost four decades after it was noted by Maurice.
Gaulston House, County Westmeath, photograph by Robert O’Byrne.Gaulston House, County Westmeath, photograph by Robert O’Byrne.
As is unfortunately all too often the case, we know little about the origins of Gaulstown. It bears similarities to a pair of similarly miniature Irish villas, Whitewood Lodge, County Meath (1735) and Ledwithstown, County Longford (1746) both of which are attributed to Richard Castle. Both are also larger and more refined in their details, and one has a sense that Gaulstown, the earliest of the trio (dating from c.1730) was something of a trial run for the other two. Casey and Rowan propose that it might have been designed by Sir Edward Lovett Pearce or perhaps his associate William Halfpenny. Maurice Craig was inclined to agree with this assessment but it seems too grand an attribution for such a modest dwelling. Might not Gaulstown instead have been the work of an amateur, perhaps even the original owner, a member of the Lill family generations of which lived here in the 18th and 19th centuries (although they would change their name to de Burgh for the sake of an inheritance)? Without wishing to disparage its considerable charms and its importance Gaulstown has the appearance of a building containing a variety of architectural motifs borrowed from books but, as the interior layout reveals, without these being necessarily completely understood or interpreted.
Casey and Rowan describe Gaulstown as being of only one storey over raised basement and with an attic, but this is not really the case since it possesses a trio of reasonably substantial floors. The roughcast rendered exterior is rigorously plain of three bays, that in the centre of the south-facing facade projecting forward. A long flight of steps leads to the substantial cut-limestone doorframe, which is an adapted Venetian window above which floats a small Diocletian window beneath the pediment: the only other openings on the front are windows on either side of the entrance, so that the building has an ascetic rigour that is most appealing. Inside the main floor was originally divided (just like ancient Gaul) into three parts. The centre space formed one room running south to north for the full, albeit not terribly considerable, depth of the house. However at some date, probably for reasons of greater comfort and warmth, a partition wall was inserted dividing it into entrance hall with drawing room behind: the latter has a Venetian window mirroring that used for the entrance. To the east is a dining room, to the west the staircase and, behind it, a small boudoir or office. The stairs are lit by a large window on the return and they lead to a surprising number of bedrooms. Meanwhile the basement is also more generously spacious than would superficially appear to be the case.
Gaulston House, County Westmeath, photograph by Robert O’Byrne.
‘This appealing structure,’ comments the author of Gaulstown’s assessment in http://www.buildingsofireland.ie ‘was designed with obvious architectural aspirations and is extremely well-proportioned, having instant visual appeal. It is strangely imposing for a structure built on such a small scale and this is down to the quality of the massing.’ This is an admirable summary of the house, which further benefits from its setting, being reached at the end of a long straight drive and surrounded by open countryside. To the immediate west are the remains of the old brick-walled garden, behind is a still-working farmyard. These elements enhance the impression that Gaulstown was always intended as the residence of a gentleman farmer even though Casey and Rowan rightly refer to it possessing ‘an aristocratic or cultivated rusticity.’
Gaulston House, County Westmeath, photograph by Robert O’Byrne.
Gaulstown apparently changed hands on a number of occasions before being acquired by the current owner’s grandfather. Today it is a family home, the present generation of occupants keenly aware of the building’s need for some remedial work: damp is something of a problem on the gable walls and, as these pictures make clear, the fenestration could be improved. Yet these issues are not insuperable, and one of the pleasures of the house is that it looks to have retained so many of its original features such as the panelled doors and shutters with their chunky lugging, the plain but deep cornicing, the understated stair balustrades and so forth. It could, and ought to, be restored to better condition and the aspiration is that this will happen before too long. A little gem like Gaulstown deserves to be preserved, not least because today there are too few of its kind left in Ireland.
Gaulston House, County Westmeath, photograph by Robert O’Byrne.
Irish Historic Houses 