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. 301. “(Bateson, sub Deramore, B/PB; Blakiston-Houston/IFR) A large two storey symmetrical Victorian house, probably incorporating an earlier structure. Five bay front, triple window over balustraded porch with Doric columns and rusticated piers. Quoins, string-courses; segmental pediment over centre window in upper storey, entablatures on console brackets over windows on either side. Roof on cornice with curved dormers.”
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. 228. (FitzGerald, Leinster, D/PB; De Ros, B/PB) A low, rambling two-storey house of mid-C19 aspect, with many gables, some of them set on three-sided bows, the angle walls of which curved outwards under the eaves, so that some of the upstairs windows were bent in a vertical plane, like the windows at the stern of an old man-of-war ship. There were barge-boards on the gables and hood mouldings over the windows. In a magnificent setting at the entrance to Strangford harbour. Burnt ca 1920, the family now live in a simple two storey eight bay house with astragals. In the grounds, in a glade on the edge of the sea, is a delightful chapel, originally built 1629 by 16th Earl of Kildare’s agent, Valentine Payne, and greatly enlarged and altered C19. Old Court went to a junior brach of the Leinsters, descended from Lord Henry FitzGerald (a younger son of the 1st Duke of Leinster and a brother of the patriot, Lord Edward), who married Charlotte, Baroness de Ros in her own right.”
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. 220. “(Craig-Laurie, sub Birney/LG1952; Wallace/LGI1912) A castle built ca 1850s by Rowland Craig-Laurie with plain, rendered walls and none of the pseudo-medieval detail which one would expect in a castellated house of its period; relying for its effect on the skilful grouping of its elements.
Dominated by a tall, four-storey entrance tower, containing nothing but stairs, with a round turret at the other side of the front.
Very simple battlements; rectangular windows, some with unobtrusive mullions.”
Murlough House, County Down, photograph by Robert French, (between ca. 1865-1914), 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. 221. “Hill, Downshire/M/PB) A two storey Victorian house in the Georgian manner, built 1860 for 4th Marquess of Downshire to the design of William Haywood, of London. Seven bay entrance front, prolonged by lower wing of two storeys over basement; three bay side, all faced in ashlar. Projecting porch with doors at sides and round-headed window with massive rusticated surround in its front face. Blocking round windows; continuous hood mouldings over upper storey windows, which have cambered heads. Eaved roof on cornice. Now leased by the Church of Ireland for retreats, conferences and meetings.”
Mourne Park House, County Down, photograph by Robert French, (between ca. 1865-1914), 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. 218. (Needham, Kilmorey, E/PB) In 1806, Robert Needham, 11th Viscount Kilmorey, was left the Mourne estate by William Nedham, whom he had never met, and who may or may not have been a distant kinsman of his. Soon afterwards, he built a house among the glorious oak and beechwoods of his newly-inherited demesne – which lies on the souther slopes of the Mourne Mountains – in lace of an earlier house. It was modest in scale; two storey, three bay, with Wyatt windows and a doorway with sidelights. Some time later, probably post 1820. a third storey was added, then, post 1859, a new two storey front was built onto the house; so that the new front rooms had higher ceilings than the rooms in the older part of the house at the back. The new front, of granite ashlar, was of three bays, like the original front; but with unusal paired rectangular windows, set in shallow recesses rising through both storeys with relieving arches above them. In the centre, the entrance door was treated as though it were simply another window, flanked on either side by windows of similar shape and size.
Towards the end of the 19th century, the 3rd Earl of Kilmorey added rectangular bows to this front; and around 1904, he built a single-storey wing at the back of the house containing a large room known as the Long Room, with a vaulted ceiling on timber supports.
Between 1919-21, the 4th Earl built a wing to the left of the front, containing various rooms including a new large drawing room and a top-lit entrance hall; the entrance being moved round to this side of the house. At the same time, the principal staircase was remodelled to fit in the new entrance.”
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. 216. “(Annesley, E/PB; Moore/LGI1912( A noble house of ca 1770. Very fine room with Adamesque plasterwork on the walls and ceiling. Now ruinous.”
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. 191. “(Whyte/IFR) Two-storey, late Georgian house with a front of three bays plus a three-sided bow, to which a two-storey wing was added in the Victorian period.
In the end of the Victorian wing facing the front is a three-sided bow, intended to balance the earlier bow, but not quite doing so, since it is taller and narrower than the earlier bow; also the Victorian wing also has an eaved roof with barge-boards and gables, whereas the other roof has a parapet.
The lower storey of the original building has two Wyatt windows flanked by a pilastered porch.”
Loughbrickland House, County Down, photograph courtesy of Mark Bence-Jones, A Guide to Irish Country Houses.
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. 172. “(Clanbrassill, E/DEP; Rowan-Hamilton/IFR; Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, Dufferin and Ava, M/PB) Basically a “Plantation Castle,” built by James Hamilton ca 1610; but with two massive round corner-towers, one of them probably surviving from a Norman castle built late C12 by John de Courcy, and the other added 1666 by Henry Hamilton, 2nd Earl of Clanbrassill; a deliberate and perhaps romantic archaicism which has its counterpart in the romantic castles built in Elizabethan and Jacobean England. 2nd Earl also built or restored the immense bawn or fortified enclosure between the castle and the town of Killyleagh; which remains as the castle’s most spectacular feature, its high walls still keeping their original battlments and gun-holes. The 2nd Earl of Clanbrassill appears to have been poisoned by his wife, after she had prevailed on him to make a Will leaving his estates to her instead of to his Hamilton cousins, who were the rightful heirs. The cousins contested the Will and the litigation continued for two generations’ in the end, there was a judgment of Solomon dividing the estates equally between Gawn Hamilton and his cousin Anne, whose share eventually passed by inheritance to the Blackwood family; even Killyleagh Castle being divided, the castle itself going to Gawn and the gatehouse and bawn to Anne. This led to a feud between the two families, who for more than a century confronted each other from opposite ends of the bawn; the Hamiltons in the castle, the Blackwoods in the gatehouse, which they rebuilt as a tall Georgian block. In the early years of C19, when the castle was lived in by the United Irish leader, Archibald Hamilton Rowan, who had returned from his exile in America after being pardoned, it fell into decay, whereas the Blackwoods of the period, , who had become the Lords Dufferin, kept the gatehouse in good order, adding to it 1830; though their principal seat was Clandeboye, at the other side of the county. When 5th Lord Dufferin (afterwards 1st Marquess of Dufferin and Ava) came of age, he ended the feud by handing over the gatehouse and bawn to his kinsman at the castle, Archibald Rowan-Hamilton. Being a romantic young man, he demanded in return a quit-rent of a pair of silver spurs and a golden rose in alternate years; which subsequently, having accumulated, were used to adorn his ambassadorial and viceregal dinner tables. As a further gesture, he built a suitably Baronial gatehouse in place of the Georgian house at his own expense; to the desin of the English architect Benjamin Ferrey. To set the seal on the reconciliation, Lord Dufferin married Archibald Rowan-Hamilton’s daughter, Hariot. Almost simultaneously with the rebuilding of the gatehouse, Archibald Rowan-Hamilton – doubtless encouraged by Lord Dufferin’s generosity – employed Charles Lanyon to enlarge, modernise and embellish the castle; the work being carried out between 1847 and 1851. Lanyon extended the castle and gave it a highly romantic skyline of turrets and pointed roofs, so that, in the words of Sir Harold Nicholson, whose mother’s home it was, “it pricks castellated ears above the smoke of its own village and provides a curiously exotic landmark, towering like some chateau of the Loire above the gentle tides of Strangford Lough.” He refaced the walls and added a stupendous Jacobean doorway with strapwork as well as rustications on the columns, incorporating an actual C17 coat-of-arms. And inside he devised a most wonderful Jacobean staircase, with a positive riot of columns and pilasters covered with strapwork, cleverly contrived to give his characteristic feeling of space within the limited confines of the old castle. In order to provide access to the upper floors, there are in fact two staircases in the one space, set at right angles to each other; both being equally massive, with scroll balustrades of oak. Lanyon also decorated the principal reception rooms, giving them fretted ceilings with modillion cornices.”
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. 97. “A gabled Victorian house with a battlemented tower at one corner.”
Irish Historic Houses 