We visited Leinster House, the seat of Irish Government, during Open House Dublin 2025. We were lucky to get tickets! Open House Dublin events book out almost immediately.
Leinster House was built from 1745-1752 for James Fitzgerald (1722-1773) 20th Earl of Kildare and first Duke of Leinster.
James Fitzgerald (1722-1773) 20th Earl of Kildare later 1st Duke of Leinster, by Robert Hunter c. 1803, courtesy of National Gallery of Ireland.
James’s father, Robert FitzGerald (1675-1744) 19th Earl of Kildare, made Carton in County Kildare his principal seat and employed Richard Castle (1690-1751) from 1739 to enlarge and improve the house (see my entry https://irishhistorichouses.com/2024/06/04/carton-house-county-kildare-a-hotel/ ). Before that, the Earl of Kildare had lived in Kilkea Castle in County Kildare.
After the destruction of Maynooth Castle, occupied by Earls of Kildare, in 1641, George, 14th Earl of Kildare, resided at Kilkea Castle from 1647-1660, and it continued as the family’s principal seat until Robert, the 19th Earl, built Carton House. [1]
Robert, 19th Earl of Kildare (1675-1744) after Frederick Graves, courtesy of Adam’s auction 15th Oct 2019. Robert FitzGerald, (1675 – 1744) was married to Mary O Brien, daughter of William O’Brien 3rd Earl of Inchiquin. They had 12 children but only 2 survived to majority. They had lived quietly at Kilkea Castle, near Athy, but in 1739 Robert bought back the lease of Carton, in Maynooth, for £8,000. He commissioned Richard Castle, the eminent architect, to reconstruct the existing house. In the pediment over the South front, previously the main entrance, is the coat of arms of Robert FitzGerald and his wife Mary O’Brien. Robert also employed the La Franchini brothers to construct the wonderful ceiling in the Gold Salon. The additions to Carton were not finished when Robert died in 1744 but he left instructions in his will to finish the restoration according to his plans. A monument dedicated to Robert FitzGerald is situated in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin. (This portrait hung in Carton until 1949 when the Fitzgerald family sold the estate. It hung in Kilkea Castle until 1960. It was in the FitzGerald family collection in Oxfordshire until 2013.)
The 20th Earl, James, employed Richard Castle from 1745 to build him a new house in the city, which is now called Leinster House, and began to be so called around 1766 when James Fitzgerald was created Duke of Leinster. He was told that this was not a fashionable area to build, as at that time most of the upper classes lived on the north side of the Liffey around Mountjoy Square and Henrietta Street. He was confident that where he led, fashion would follow, and indeed he was correct.
The building as it was originally constructed is a double cube of granite on the east and north fronts and Ardbraccan limestone on the west entrance front. It has a forecourt on the Kildare Street side, which Christine Casey tells us in her Dublin volume of the Pevsner series The Buildings of Ireland is in the French seventeenth century manner, which probably derived via Burlington House in London, a house which would have influenced Richard Castle. The form is Palladian, an eleven bay block of three storeys over basement with a “tetrastyle” (i.e. supported by four columns) Corinthian portico over advanced and rusticated central bays. “Rustication” in masonry is a decorative feature achieved by cutting back the edges of stones to a plane surface while leaving the central portion of the face either rough or projecting markedly, emphasising the blocks. [2]
Casey points to the unusual arrangement of pediments on the windows of the first floor, as an alternating pattern would be the norm, rather than the pairs of segmental (i.e. rounded) pediments flanked by single triangular pediments in the bays to either side of the central three windows. [see 2]
The centre block has a balustraded balcony, and the attic and ground floor windows have lugged architraves: the architrave is the classical moulding around the window and “lug” means ear, so the windows have “ears,” otherwise called shoulders. The term “Lugs” was made famous as a nickname for a policeman in the Dublin Liberties, “Lugs” Branigan, a man known for his sticking-out ears. A heavyweight boxing champion, he had a reputation as the country’s toughest and bravest garda. The ground floor windows have are topped with a further cornice – a horizontal decorative moulding.
Originally, Casey writes, the house was linked to the side walls of the forecourt by low five-bay screen walls with Doric colonneads and central doorcases flanked by paired niches. The colonnade was given a pilastered upper storey in the nineteenth century, and was rebuilt in the 1950s when the colonnade was filled in, Casey explains. The lower storey on the left side when facing the building (north side) still has the colonnade: you can compare the stages of building the colonnades in the pictures below. In fact this colonnade was reinstated after being filled in. It was recently (when written before 2005) reinstated, Casey tells us, by Paul Arnold Architects, and topped with the nineteenthy century screen wall above which we see today.
In the Malton drawing of Leinster house we can see that the side walls of the forecourt had pedimented arches. The present piers, wrought iron gates and railings were added in the 1880s, built by T.N. & T.M. Deane.
To the south of the forecourt lay a stable court, with a stable and coach house block and a kitchen block which was linked to the house by a small yard, which must have been very inconvenient when dinner was served!
The garden front is fully rusticated on the ground floor, with advanced two-bay ends.
The central first floor window has a triangular pediment. The door porch was added in the nineteenth century. The lawn lay on property leased from Viscount Fitzwilliam.
Irish Architectural Archive exhibition about Leinster House.It was designed by Richard Castle (1690-1751) with later input from Isaac Ware (1704-1786) and Thomas Owen (d. 1788). Here we see the location of the Main Hall, Supper Room and Parlour and Drawing room on first floor, Picture Gallery and principal bedrooms on second floor and Nursery and children’s and staff rooms on third floor. There is a separate kitchen and stores block and stable block.
James’s father died in 1744 before his house at Carton was complete, so it was finished for James the 20th Earl. James was the second son of his parents the 19th Earl and his wife Mary (d. 1780), eldest daughter of William O’Brien, 3rd Earl of Inchiquin. His elder brother died in 1740.
The Dictionary of Irish Biography tells us that James’s political career began on 17 October 1741, when (then known as Lord Offaly) he entered the Irish house of commons as member for Athy. In 1744 he moved to the House of Lords after he inherited the earldom. [3] It was then that he embarked on his town house in Dublin. Now the houses of parliament are located next to Leinster house, but at the time, they were located in what is now the Bank of Ireland on College Green in Dublin.
Parliament House, Dublin, with the House of Commons dome on fire, 27th February 1792.Parliament Buildings Bank of Ireland, College Green, Dublin, between ca. 1865-1914, photograph by Robert French, Lawrence Photograph Collection, National Library of Ireland.House of Lords, Parliament Building, Bank of Ireland, Dublin, between ca. 1865-1914, photograph by Robert French, Lawrence Photograph Collection, National Library of Ireland.
The Dictionary of Irish Biography continues:
“His seniority in the peerage, popularity, and electoral interests ensured his appointment to the privy council (12 May 1746). He was made an English peer, Viscount Leinster of Taplow, Bucks. (1 February 1747), and appointed lord justice (11 May 1756). Master general of the ordnance (1758–66), he became major-general (11 November 1761) and lieutenant-general (30 March 1770). He was also promoted through the Irish peerage, becoming marquis of Kildare (19 March 1761) and duke of Leinster (26 November 1766).” [see 3]
James married Emilia Mary Lennox (1731-1814) in 1747, two years after Richard Castle began work on James’s townhouse. She was the daughter of General Charles Lennox, 2nd Duke of Richmond. Her grandfather the 1st Duke of Richmond was an illegitimate son of King Charles II of England. Emilia’s sister Louisa (1743-1821) married Thomas Conolly (d. 1803) and lived next to her sister in Carton, at Castletown in County Kildare (see my entry https://irishhistorichouses.com/2024/03/15/castletown-house-and-parklands-celbridge-county-kildare-an-office-of-public-works-property/
Emily Fitzgerald née Lennox (1731-1814) Duchess of Leinster 1770s by Joshua Reynolds.This terrific portrait of William Conolly (1662-1729) of Castletown, County Kildare is in the dining room.
Richard Castle died in 1751 before the town house was complete. He died at Carton, the Earl of Kildare’s country seat, while writing a letter with instructions to a carpenter at Leinster house. Isaac Ware stepped in to finish the house. An exhibition about Leinster House in the Irish Archictural Archive explains that following the death of Richard Castle in 1751, little further about the building is recorded until 1759. By this time, English architect Isaac Ware, famous for his A Complete Body of Architecture published in 1756, had become involved with the project. The Fitzgeralds began to use the house in 1753 while work on the interior continued.
Inside, the house has a double height entrance hall with an arcaded screen of Doric pillars toward the back which opens onto a transverse corridor that divides the front and rear ranges. I found the hall hard to capture in a photograph, especially as we were part of a tour group. The hall reminded me of the double height entrance hall of Castletown, and indeed Christine Casey notes in her Buildings of Ireland: Dublin that the plan and dimensions of Leinster House relate directly to those of Castletown house in County Kildare, which was built in 1720s for William Conolly, and which was probably, she writes, built under the direction of Edward Lovett Pearce, possibly with the assistance of Richard Castle. [2]
It is the double height that reminds me of the great hall in Castletown, although Castletown has a gallery and Leinster house does not. The niches remind me of the similar front hall in Gloster house in County Offaly, which although a private family home, in 2025 is a Section 482 property which you can visit on particular days.
The black and white flooring is original to the house. [see 2] The red marble doorframe was added later.
The coffered ceiling in the Hall in Leinster house is different from the ceilings in the front hall in Castletown or Gloster. The deep coffered cove rises to a plain framed flat panel with central foliated boss. There is an entablature above the Doric columns around the four sides of the hall. The square ovolo framed niches above have statues and above the main door the niches have windows.
The chimneypiece in the front hall, Casey tells us, was originally faced with a pedimented niche on the north wall opposite, flanked by the doorcases. The chimneypiece is of Portland stone, she describes, with ornamental consoles and above the lintel, enormous scrolls flanking a bust pedestal.
The principal stair hall is a two bay compartment north of the front hall. Casey tells us that Isaac Ware inserted an imperial staircase – one in which a central staircase rises to a landing then splits into two symmetrical flights up to the next floor – into a hall compartment which was meant for a three flight open well staircase. The staircase is further marred, Casey tells us, by a later utilitarian metal balustrade. Casey does not mention the plasterwork here, which is very pretty. The wooden staircase is a later addition.
Beyond the stair hall is the former Supper Room, which is now the Library of the Oireachtais, which fills the entire depth of the house. I found the lights rather offputting and think they ruin the intended effect of the room and the ceiling, which Casey tells us derives from Sebastiano Serlio (1475-1554), an Italian architect who was part of an Italian team who built the Palace of Fontainbleau, and Tutte l’opere d’architettura et prospetiva (All the Works of Architecture and Perspective) is Serlio’s practical treatise on architecture.
The room has three screens of fluted Ionic columns – one at either end and one in front of the bow at one side of the room. Originally, Casey informs us, there were six fluted columns to each screen, paired at the ends of the room and in the centre of the north bow, but in the 19th century one column was removed from each pair. On the walls the corresponding pilasters would have matched the six columns.
The bow is considered to be the first bow in Dublin, and the design of the house is said to have inspired the design of the White House in Washington DC, designed by a man from Kilkenny, James Hoban.
A pedimented doorcase is flanked by ornate chimneypieces based on a design by William Kent. These are surmounted by Corinthian overmantels after a design by Inigo Jones, possibly made to frame portraits, Casey suggests, of the Earl and Countess of Kildare painted by Reynolds in 1753-54. [see 2]
Next to the Supper Room on the garden front is the large dining room, also designed by Isaac Ware. It is of three bays, and has decorative doorcases and a beautiful ceiling attributed to Filippo Lafranchini.
Christine Casey next describes the Garden Hall, with a more modest shell and acanthus ceiling and a chimneypiece with claw feet. Next is the former Private Dining Room, she tells us, a room from 1760, which has a ceiling with acanthus, rocaille shells and floral festoon forming a deep border to a plain chamfered central panel.
Casey tells us that the Earl of Kildare’s Library is at the southeast corner of the house, and that it has pedimented bookcases. It too was designed by Isaac Ware.
Designs for the ceiling of the Earl of Kildare’s dressing room by Richard Castle, 1745, IIA 96/68.1/1/17, 18, 19. Irish Architectural Archive exhibition about Leinster House.As with the several surviving designs for the front elevation of Leinster House, these three beautifully executed drawings for proposed ceilings in the Earl of Kildare’s dressing room are indicative of the attention to design detail which Richard Castle brought to the project in an effort to satisfy his demanding clients. The third variant shows the ceiling almost as executed.
Before we go into the separate building that holds the current Dáil chamber, let us go up to the first floor. The former gallery now holds the Senate Chamber, and it fills the north end of the eighteenth century house. Both Richard Castle and Isaac Ware prepared plans for this room, but the room was unfinished when the Duke of Leinster died in 1773.
James died on 19 November 1773 at Leinster House and was buried in Christ Church cathedral four days later. His eldest son George predeceased him, so the Dukedom passed to his second son, William Robert Fitzgerald (1748/49-1804). The 2nd Duke completed the picture gallery in 1775 to designs by James Wyatt (1746-1813).
The ceiling as designed by James Wyatt is tripartite. I defer to Christine Casey for a description:
“at its centre a chamfered octagon within a square and at each end a diaper within a square, each flanked by broad figurative lunette panels at the base of the coving and bracketed by attenuated tripods, urns and arabesque finials… It remains among the finest examples of Neoclassical stuccowork in Dublin.“
Irish Architectural Archive exhibition about Leinster House: Sketch showing the interior of the Senate Chamber of Leinster House by Con O’Sullivan, 1930s (IAA 96/145.1). Founded in 1747, Henry Sibthorpe & Co were one of the leading painting and decorating firms in Dublin from the first half of the 19th century to the mid 20th, and they closed in 1970s. Some of its records survive in the National Archives and in the IAA. Drawings showed perspective views of proposed decorative schemes to prospective clients. This dawing by Sibthorpe employee Con O’Sullivan shows a proposed repainting of the Senate Chamber.
Wyatt created an elliptical vault over the principal volume of the room and a half-dome above the bow.
On the inner wall of the room Wyatt places three ornate double-leaf doorcases and between them two large white marble chimneypieces. The chimneypieces have high-relief female figures to the uprights and on the lintel, putti sit “between headed spandrels enclosing urns and confronted griffins.”
Unfortunately with the tour group I was unable to get good photographs of the room, the chimneypieces or the carved doorframes.
At the south end of the ground floor corridor is a top-lit stair hall which leads to the Dáil chamber. This separate building originally housed a lecture theatre, built in 1893 by Thomas Newenham and Thomas Manly Deane. Before this was built, let us look at the rest of the history briefly of the Dukes of Leinster who continued to use the house as their Dublin residence.
The first duke’s wife Emilia went on to marry her children’s tutor, William Ogilvie. This would have caused quite a scandal, and she and her husband lived quietly in Blackrock in Dublin at their house called Frascati (or Frescati), which no longer exists. She and the Duke of Leinster had had nineteen children! She had happy times when the children were young and their tutor would take them bathing in the sea near Frescati house. She and her second husband went on to have two daughters.
Frescati House, County Dublin, photograph by Robert French (between ca. 1865-1914), Lawrence Photograph Collection, National Library of Ireland.
A younger son of Emilia and the Duke of Leinster, Edward (1763-1798) became involved in an uprising in Dublin, inspired by the French Revolution, and he was put in prison as a traitor and where he died of wounds he’d received while resisting arrest.
Edward Fitzgerald (1763-1798)
Another son, Charles James (1756-1810) served in the Royal Navy. He also acted as M.P. for County Kildare between 1776 and 1790, Commissioner of Customs between 1789 and 1792 and M.P. for County Cavan between 1790 and 1797. He held the office of Muster Master-General of Ireland between 1792 and 1806 and Sheriff of County Down in 1798. He was M.P. for Ardfert between 1798 and 1800 and was created 1st Baron Lecale of Ardglass, Co. Down [Ireland] in 1800. He held the office of Member of Parliament (M.P.) for Arundel in England between January 1807 and April 1807.
A sister of Edward Fitzgerald (1763-1798), Emily Maria Margaret (1751-1818) married Charles Coote 1st Earl of Bellomont, County Cavan.
William Robert Fitzgerald, 2nd Duke of Leinster, K.P. (1749-1804), circle of Joshua Reynolds courtesy of Christie’s Irish Sale 2002.
The Dictionary of Irish Biography tells us about the second duke:
“He was returned as MP for Dublin city in 1767, though he was too young to take his seat, and it was only in October 1769 that he returned to Ireland to sit in parliament. He represented the constituency until 1773, supporting the government for most of this period. On learning that he was a freemason, the grand lodge of Irish freemasons rushed to make him their grand master and he served two terms (1770–72 and 1777–8). On 19 November 1773 he succeeded his father as 2nd duke of Leinster. The family home of Carton in Co. Kildare had been left to his mother but he, somewhat vainly, was determined to own it and purchased her life interest, a transaction that was the major source of his future indebtedness. His aunt, Lady Louisa Conolly, believed that he was ‘mighty queer about money’ and that his ‘distress’ about it was ‘the foundation of all that he does’ (HIP, iv, 160). In November 1775 he married Emilia Olivia Usher, only daughter and heir of St George Usher, Lord St George, a union that helped to ease some of his financial problems.“
HUGH DOUGLAS HAMILTON portrait of Emilia Olivia née St. George, 2nd Duchess of Leinster courtesy of Bonhams Old Master Paintings 2018.
The 2nd Duke was active in politics. He died in 1804 and is buried in Kildare Abbey.
William Robert Fitzgerald (1749-1804) 2nd Duke of Leinster wearing Order of St. Patrick, by Gilbert Stuart, courtesy Christies.
One of William Robert Fitzgerald’s daughters, Emily Elizabeth (1778-1856) married John Joseph Henry of Straffan house in County Kildare, now the K Club. A son, Augustus Frederick (1791-1874) became the 3rd Duke of Leinster. He sold the town house in 1814. Since the Union in 1801 when there was no longer an Irish Parliament, a townhouse in Dublin was no longer essential. It was purchased by the Dublin Society, a group founded for “improving Husbandry, Manufactures and other useful arts and sciences.”
Augustus Frederick Fitzgerald (1791-1874), 3rd Duke of Leinster, engraver George Saunders after Stephen Catterson Smith, courtesy of National Gallery of Ireland.
From 1815-1922 Leinster House was the Headquarters of the Royal Dublin Society – the “Royal” was added to the Society’s name in 1820. Rooms in the house were used to accommodate the Society’s library and museum as well as offices and meeting spaces. The original kitchen wing of the house was converted to laboratories and a lecture theatre. Gradually more buildings were added around the house, including sheds and halls for the Society’s events, namely the Spring Show and the Horse Show.
Note at Irish Architectural Archive exhibition about the RDS at Leinster House.Irish Architectural Archive exhibition about Leinster House.Configuration of Leinster house as RDS and centre of culture, learning and innovation the site of The Dublin Society (1815-1820) and the RDS (1820-1922). The School of Drawing (1845) was to the left, and later became the Metropolitan School of Art and the National College of Art and Design which continued as the National College of Art on this site until 1980, when it moved to Thomas Street and its facilities were incorporated into the adjacent National Library. The former kitchen and stable block were amended and expanded to host sculpture galleries, a stone yard, laboratories and lecture facilities. It had a 700 seat lecture theatre. To the right, Shelbourne Hall and the Agricultural Hall in the mid 19th century had facilities to display agricultural and industrial products, and it was later the site of the Museum of Archaeology. The Museum of Natural History (1857) and the National Gallery of Art (1860) were first developed for RDS collections, an dwere later expanded in conjunction with the Department of Science and Art/South Kensington and the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction.
Leinster Lawn was the site of industrial and agricultural exhibitions. In 1853, the Great Industrial Exhibition ran on the RDS grounds at Leinster House, just two years after Prince Albert’s Exhibition in the Crystal Palace in London. Constructed of iron, wood and glass, the Irish Industrial Exhibition building was paid for by William Dargan and installed by Richard Turner on Leinster Lawn in a matter of months. Its architect was John Benson, who was knighted for his efforts.
Spring Shows and Industries Fairs (1831-1880) and early Horse Shows (1864-1881) were also held on Leinster Lawn.
Irish Architectural Archive exhibition about Leinster House.Opening of the Dublin Great Exhibition, Illustrated London News 4th June 1853, IIA 80/010.20/1. A successor to the Great Exhibition held in the Crystal Palace, London in 1851, the Great Industrial Exhibition ran on the RDS grounds at Leinster House from 12 May to 31st October 1853. As much a marvel as any of the objects on display was the edifice in which the exhibition was housed. Constructed of iron, wood and glass, the Irish Industrial Exhibition building was paid for by William Dargan and installed by Richard Turner on Leinster Lawn in a matter of months. Its architect was John Benson, who was knighted for his efforts.
The National Museum and National Library were built in 1890, and were designed by Thomas Newenham Deane and his son Thomas Manly Deane.
The museum and library were designed as a pair of Early Renaissance rotundas facing each other. The rotundas have a single storey yellow sandstone Roman Doric colonnade surrounding them. Above is a row of circular niches. Above that are columns framing round headed windows and panels of red and white marble. The pavillions next to the rotundas have a rusticated ground floor, with Venetian windows on first floor level and Corinthian pilasters.
The Lecture Theatre was built in 1893, and was also designed by Thomas Newenham Deane. The lecture theatre is a horseshoe shaped top-lit galleried auditorium with a flat west end that originally accommodated a stage and lecture preparation rooms.
Irish Architectural Archive exhibition about Leinster House: The RDS lecture theatre.
Single and paired cast iron Corinthian columns support the gallery in the former theatre. The building was appropriated as a temporary Dáil chamber in 1922 on Michael Collins’s recommendation, and in 1924 the government acquired Leinster House to be the seat of the Oireachtais. The theatre was remodelled: a new floor was inserted over the central block of seats to make a platform for the Ceann Comhairle, the clerk of the Dail, and the official reporters. The lower tier of seating was replaced with rows of mahogany and leather covered seats designed either by Hugh O’Flynn of the OPW, as the exhibition in the Irish Architectural Archive tells us, or by James Hicks & Sons according to Christine Casey, and the upper tiers became the press and public galleries. The stage was closed in and replaced by a press gallery and adjoining press rooms. The gallery was remodelled around 1930.
To enter Leinster house, you go through a security hut upon which a controversial sum was spent by the Office of Public Works. I love the way the hut goes around a large tree. I assume a large part of the cost of the hut was the beautiful marble countertops!
[1] MacDonnell, Randal. The Lost Houses of Ireland. A chronicle of great houses and the families who lived in them. Weidenfeld and Nicolson. London, 2002.
[2] Casey, Christine. The Buildings of Ireland: Dublin. The City within the Grand and Royal Canals and the Circular Road with the Phoenix Park. Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2005.
Farmleigh,photograph courtesy of Farmleigh facebook page.Farmleigh,photograph courtesy of Farmleigh facebook page.
Farmleigh House is part of a 78-acre estate inside Dublin’s Phoenix Park. The government bought it in June 1999 to provide accommodation for high-level meetings and visiting guests of the nation. The rest of the time it is maintained by the Office of Public Works and is open to the public for tours.
Farmleigh was originally a two storey Georgian house, belonging to the Coote family and the Trenches, then bought by Edward Cecil Guinness (1847-1927) in 1873, a great grandson of brewery owner Arthur Guinness, at the time of his marriage to his cousin Adelaide Guinness.
Farmleigh was built for the Trench family in 1752, according to a Dublin City Council website, Bridges of Dublin. Charles Trench built the walled garden. I am afraid I am unable to find more information about the Trenches of Farmleigh so I would appreciate any feedback about them.
The Landed Estates database identifies John Chidley Coote (1816-1879) as a previous owner, the son of Charles Henry Carr Coote (1794-1864) 9th Baronet. John Chidley was from Ballyfin in County Laois, later and school and now a beautiful hotel. He married his neighbour Margaret Mary Pole Cosby from Stradbally Hall in County Laois (see my entry https://irishhistorichouses.com/2021/10/14/stradbally-hall-stradbally-co-laois/ ), daughter of Sydney Cosby (1807-1840). They had no children, and she went on to marry Charles Robert Piggott 3rd Baronet of Knapton, County Laois, after John Chidley’s death.
Edward Cecil Guinness enlarged the house, using designs first by James Franklin Fuller (1832-1925), who extended the house to the west, refurbished the existing house and added a third storey. Edward Cecil later engaged William Young (1843-1900), a young Scottish architect, who added the ballroom wing in 1896. Young also worked on the Guinness’s English country seat Elveden in Surrey and Edward Cecil’s house on St. Stephen’s Green. A conservatory was added adjoining the ballroom in 1901. Edward Cecil Guinness was created the 1st Earl of Iveagh in 1919.
Edward Cecil Guinness (1847-1927) 1st Earl of Iveagh, by William Orpen, photograph courtesy of Farmleigh website.Adelaide Maria Guinness by George Elgar Hicks, photograph courtesy of Farmleigh website.
From the website:
“Farmleigh is a unique representation of its heyday, the Edwardian period. Edward Cecil Guinness [(1847-1927) 1st Earl of Iveagh], great-grandson of Arthur Guinness (founder of the brewery), constructed Farmleigh around a smaller Georgian house in the 1880s. According to his tastes, the new building merged a variety of architectural styles.
“Many of the artworks and furnishings that Guinness collected remain in the house. There is a stunning collection of rare books and manuscripts in the library. The extensive pleasure-grounds contain wonderful Victorian and Edwardian ornamental features, with walled and sunken gardens and scenic lakeside walks. The estate also boasts a working farm with a herd of Kerry cows.” [1]
In the Dublin between the canals book by Christine Casey, part of the Buildings of Ireland series, she describes Farmleigh as a mediocre building. It is of three storeys with an extensive south facing front, rendered with a pediment and Corinthian Portland stone portico to the two advanced central bays and central canted bows to the flanking five-bay ranges. The five bays on the right of the porch correspond to the eighteenth century house, of which one interior survives, she tells us.
One is not allowed to take photographs inside the house but you can see pictures of the house and take an online tour on the website. It operates as the official residence for guests of the Irish state, which is why photography is not allowed inside.
The website tells us:
“With the addition of a new Conservatory adjoining the Ballroom in 1901, and increased planting of broadleaves and exotics in the gardens, Farmleigh had, by the early years of the twentieth century, all the requisites for gracious living and stylish entertainment. Its great charm lies in the eclecticism of its interior decoration ranging from the classical style to Jacobean, Louis XV, Louis XVI and Georgian.
“Farmleigh was purchased from the Guinness family by the Irish Government in 1999 for €29.2m. The house has been carefully refurbished by the Office of Public Works as the premier accommodation for visiting dignitaries and guests of the nation, for high level Government meetings, and for public enjoyment.” [2]
Edward Cecil Guinness was the son of Benjamin Lee Guinness (1798-1868), who purchased Ashford Castle, County Galway, in 1855. The castle had been a shooting lodge belonging to Lord Oranmore and Browne. In 1867 Benjamin Lee Guinness was created 1st Baronet of Ashford Castle in thanks for his restoration of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin at his own expense. His father had lived in St. Anne’s Park in Clontarf, a house unfortunately no longer in existence.
St. Anne’s, Dublin entrance front with garden party 1912, Gillman Collection 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.Ashford Castle,photograph courtesy of Ashford Castle facebook page.
Edward Cecil’s older brother Arthur Edward (1840-1915), like his father, held the office of Member of Parliament (M.P.) (Conservative) for the City of Dublin. He succeeded as 2nd Baronet of Ashford Castle. He added to the residence at Ashford Castle and developed its grounds. He was created Baron Ardilaun of Ashford Castle in 1880. In 1871 he married Lady Olivia Charlotte White, daughter of the 3rd earl of Bantry. They had no children, and the Ardilaun barony became extinct after his death in Dublin on 20 January 1915.
The Dictionary of Irish Biography tells us about Arthur Edward:
“As well as providing funding for the completion of the restoration of Marsh’s library, begun by his father, he also contributed to the rebuilding of the Coombe Hospital. As president of the Artisans’ Dwellings Company (in which he was a large shareholder), he took particular interest in improving working-class housing conditions, most notably in the areas around St Patrick’s cathedral. Perhaps his most notable legacy was financing the transformation of the twenty-two-acre St Stephen’s Green into a landscaped garden, which, through an act of parliament sponsored by Guinness, was presented to the Board of Works for the use of Dublin citizens. This generosity was marked by the erection of a bronze statue of him in the park, financed by public subscription in 1891. Another significant purchase of his was the 17,000-acre Muckross estate in Co. Kerry, adjoining the lakes of Killarney, which he bought for £60,000 to prevent the land being exploited by a commercial syndicate, thus enabling it to continue as an important tourist attraction.“
Muckross House Killarney Co. Kerry, photograph by Chris Hill 2014 for Tourism Ireland, Ireland’s Content Pool.
Another brother, Benjamin Lee (1842-1900) who went by his middle name Lee, married Henrietta Eliza St. Lawrence of Howth Castle. It was their son who became the 3rd Baronet of Ashford Castle.
Edward Cecil Guinness, the Dictionary of Biography tells us, was: “Socially innovative, with a concern for the welfare of employees, from as early as 1870 he had established a free dispensary for his workforce and made provisions for pension and other allowances – acts of social reform that were remarkable for the time. To mark his retirement in 1890 he placed in trust £250,000 to be expended in the erection of working-class housing in London and Dublin.“
Before the Iveagh Market was built in 1906, hundreds of traders sold their goods outdoors, especially around St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and the area was a maze of poor and dirty streets and alleys with homes, as the city council said, “unfit for human habitation.” Children were sent out by their parents to work selling goods in the streets, and women tried to make money as dealers selling fish, flowers, old clothes and fruit.
Edward Cecil Guinness cleared the markets in the area to build a park and housing for the labouring poor – you can see the beautiful Victorian style brick buildings still run by the “Iveagh Trust” around St. Patrick’s Cathedral. He donated what in today’s money would be almost 20 million euro for the new housing. As the traders had long established market rights, he built a new market building, moving trading indoors, in the tradition of Victorian covered markets.
Edward’s main residence at the time he purchased Farmleigh was 80 St. Stephen’s Green, now Iveagh House, the headquarters of the Department of Foreign Affairs. He viewed Farmleigh as ‘a rustic retreat’.
Let’s take a quick diversion to Iveagh House (80 and 81 St. Stephen’s Green), which I was lucky enough to visit during Open House Dublin in 2014. 80 St. Stephen’s Green was built for Bishop Robert Clayton (1695-1758), Bishop of Cork and Ross, by Richard Castle in 1736. After both number 80 and 81 were bought by Benjamin Guinness in 1862, he acted as his own architect and produced the current house, combining the two houses. [see Archiseek] In 1866 a Portland stone facade by James Franklin Fuller was added.
“The Dublin Builder, February 1 1866: ‘In this number we give a sketch of the town mansion of Mr. Benjamin Lee Guinness, M.P, now in course of erection in Stephen’s Green, South, the grounds of which run down to those of the Winter Garden. As an illustration so very quiet and unpretending a front is less remarkable as a work of architectural importance than from the interest which the name of that well-known and respected owner gives it, and from whose own designs it is said to have been built. The interior of the mansion promises to be of a very important and costly character, and to this we hope to have the pleasure of returning on a future occasion when it is more fully advanced. The works, we believe, have been carried out by the Messrs. Murphy of St. Patrick’s Cathedral notoriety, under Mr. Guinness’s own immediate directions, without the intervention of any professional architect.’ “
The Farmleigh website tells us of the Guinness family’s source of wealth: “In 1886 Edward Cecil Guinness floated the brewery on the Stock Exchange increasing his wealth and social standing and this reflected in an extensive rebuild of Farmleigh. Despite this work, Edward and his wife Adelaide spent relatively little time there. Their primary residence was in London, but when in Dublin, they stayed mostly at 80 St. Stephen’s Green. The family only stayed in Farmleigh for short periods of a couple of weeks, mainly in the spring and summer months.“
80/81 St. Stephen’s Green was donated to the Irish government by Benjamin Guinness’s grandson Rupert, the 2nd Earl of Iveagh, in 1939 and was renamed Iveagh House.
One enters Iveagh House through a large nineteenth century entrance hall with two screens of Ionic columns, which incorporates the front parlour of the Clayton house. The hall is adorned with sculptures bought by the Guinnesses at the Dublin Exhibition of 1865. Through a door at the west end is a Victorian domed vestibule and beyond it a service stair. East of the hall is an Inner Hall that was the entrance hall of Bishop Clayton’s house. This has niches flanking the chimney breast, fielded panelling and a modillion cornice.
The two stair compartments of the eighteenth century house on St. Stephen’s Green were combined to create the space for the grand imperial staircase inserted by James Franklin Fuller in 1881.
The drawing room’s ceiling is modelled on the Provost of Trinity House dining room ceiling. There is also a room downstairs in Iveagh House with a room which was added in 1866 with Georgian Revival ornament derived from the Provost’s House.
Christine Casey describes the ballroom of Iveagh House, which was designed, as was that in Farmleigh, by William Young. Casey writes in her Buildings of Ireland: Dublin book (p. 498): “This is an impressive if vulgar room. Tripartite, with a big shallow central dome and lower vaulted end bays with canted bay windows overlooking the garden. Elaborate, almost Mannerist stucco decoration by D’Arcy’s of Dublin.”
The ballroom, our guide to Iveagh House told us, was created to host a Royal visit. The room was built specially to have room for the guests, for £30,000.
Now that we have placed Edward Cecil Guinness in the context of the house he lived in at the time of purchasing Farmleigh, let’s return to Farmleigh.
Casey writes that inside Farmleigh, two ranges of rooms open off an east-west spinal corridor, with a “showy” central entrance hall opening through a columnar screen to a large top-lip double-height stair hall.
The entrance hall at Farmleigh, photograph courtesy of Office of Public Works Farmleigh website.
The immediate front hallway is also toplit by roundels set in the ceiling of the hallway/porte cochere. The porte cochere is upheld by Portland stone pilasters and there is a screen of six columns of Connemara marble on pedestals with Ionic capitals on pedestals. The columns support the coffered ceiling of the Entrance Hall.
The chimneypiece is of carved and inlaid marble, and the website tells us it is probably a nineteenth-century copy of an original, though the plaque may date from the eighteenth century.
The entrance hall at Farmleigh, photograph courtesy of Office of Public Works Farmleigh website.Fireplace plaque in the entrance hall at Farmleigh, photograph courtesy of Office of Public Works Farmleigh website.
The doors leading off the hall have carved mouldings and pediments, and the doors are of veneered mahogany on the hall side and of oak on the other.
The website continues: “The classical motif continues at the Staircase to the rear of the hall. Corinthian pilasters rise from first-floor level to a strongly projecting cornice. San Domingo mahogany is used for the Staircase on which the wrought iron balusters were made to correspond exactly with those on the staircase of Iveagh House, formerly the Earls of Iveaghs’ city mansion.“
After Edward Cecil’s death in 1927 his eldest son Rupert became the second Earl of Iveagh and inherited Farmleigh and 80 St Stephen’s Green. He was aBritish MP for Southend at the time, and ceased to be an MP when he succeeded to his father’s earldom. His wife Gwendolen the Countess of Iveagh won the Southend by-election in November 1927 to replace her husband as MP. She served until her retirement in 1935.
He presented the house on St. Stephen’s Green to the Irish State in 1939.
The website tells us about the family in Farmleigh: “Rupert gave Farmleigh to his grandson and heir, Benjamin (Rupert’s eldest son and Benjamin’s father, Arthur, was killed in WWII). Farmleigh became a family home for Benjamin (3rd Earl of Iveagh) and Miranda Guinness, and their children. Benjamin became a keen bibliophile and collector of rare books, parliamentary and early bindings, as well as first editions of the modern poets and playwrights. The library in Farmleigh in now dedicated to Benjamin Iveagh and his wonderful collection of books.
“Benjamin died in 1993 in London and in 1999, his son Arthur Guinness (4th Earl of Iveagh), sold Farmleigh to the Irish State.” [2]
The website continues:
“The door to the left of the hall leads to the Dining Room, which is lined with boiseries in the style of Louis XV. There is some spectacular woodcarving in this room, of particular note is the chimney piece, supported by a pair of female herms, with a clock at its centre surmounted by a grotesque face. Bronze figures of Bacchantes are placed in the shell-topped niches on either side of the fireplace, while beneath them are late Victorian oak buffets. The London firm of Charles Mellier & Co., supplied the interior here (apart from the ceiling which was designed by the architect J.F. Fuller).”
The Dining Room panelling was designed by decorators Charles Mellier & Co to incorporate four late seventeenth century Italian tapestries which once belonged to Queen Maria Christina of Spain. Three of the embroidered panels have been identified as the planetary gods, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn. These panels are likely to be part of a larger set of seven panels relating to the Roman deities. One such panel, apparently from the same set and depicting Mercury, is in the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. The fourth panel above the fireplace is thought to depict a personification of Africa and to be part of a further set, depicting the continents.
The Dining Room in Farmleigh, photograph courtesy of Office of Public Works Farmleigh website.
Beyond the dining room is Guinness’s Study, a wainscoted room with a sky painted ceiling. A concealed door next to the window at the southwest corner led to a basement stronghold, a secret chamber for Guinness to escape in case of attack.
The Study in Farmleigh, photograph courtesy of Farmleigh facebook page.
The website tells us:
“The main entrance to Farmleigh was originally on the north side of the house (in part of what is now the Library) and this was probably a reception room where guests either dined or withdrew after dinner. By 1873, when Edward Cecil Guinness bought the house, the entrance had been changed to the south of the building and this room was the entrance hall. It subsequently became a boudoir and reverted in later years with the Guinness family to a reception room while keeping its appellation as ‘boudoir’. (Generally the boudoir was a ‘private’ room for the lady of the house, decorated in a light and elegant style. Her ‘public’ room was the drawing room, just as the gentleman’s study was his ‘private’ room and the library his ‘public’ room.).
“The Boudoir is oval in shape with two niches, one each side of the door into the Corridor. The niche to the right of the door as one enters contained a jib door into the Oak Room but the space between the rooms now holds a safe accessed from the Oak Room.“
Christine Casey describes the Oak Room in her Buildings of Ireland: Dublin (p. 298). She writes: “On the right of the hall is the studiolo-like Oak Room, which has a coffered oak ceiling and tall panelling with pilasters, scalloped tympana and grotesque terms. …Beefier and more textured than most of the carving at Farmleigh. It has been suggested that Fuller used salvaged panelling, although the regularity of execution seems at odds with the seventeenth century style.”
The Boudoir,Farmleigh, photograph courtesy of Office of Public Works Farmleigh website.
The website describes the Boudoir: “The ceiling plasterwork dates from about 1790 and is in the Adam style, with husk chains and classical motifs in medallions surrounding the central decoration of a fan-like or bat’s-wing motif, which is itself echoed in the heads of the niches. The unusual medallion motifs here are similar to those in a ceiling in 35 North Great George’s Street, Dublin which has been attributed to Francis Ryan or Michael Stapleton and dated to 1783. It is in particularly fine condition and clearly articulated without excessive applications of paint.
“During the OPW restoration work, it was possible to examine the original decorations and colour scheme of the Georgian house here because the ceiling heights had been changed in the Guinness alterations. Particular attention has been paid in the selection of fabrics for this room to reflect its character.
“An item of particular interest is the pair of engraved brass lock-plates on the door into the corridor which are similar to some in Iveagh House where they are original to that 1736 house! They are the only examples of these at Farmleigh and it is presumed that they got here through Fuller who also worked at Iveagh House.“
One of the former drawing rooms is now called the “Nobel Room” and honours the memory of Ireland’s four Nobel Laureates for literature: George Bernard Shaw, William Butler Yeats, Samuel Beckett and Seamus Heaney. It interconnects with the “Blue Drawing Room.” These rooms were significantly re-modelled by Fuller in the 1880s, and again in the 1890s by William Young. The saucer-domed ceiling in the Nobel Room is in the style of the 1820s and its plasterwork of vine-leaves, grapes and vases filled with fruit and flowers indicates that it may have been a dining room. A clever touch is the window over the fireplace, an unusual feature. Christine Casey writes: “Taking a leaf from Charles Barry’s book, Fuller went to pains to move the fireplace to the centre of the rear wall to create an arresting overmantel window.”
The Nobel Room and Blue Room, with the window over the fireplace, Farmleigh, photograph courtesy of Office of Public Works Farmleigh website.
The Blue Room is an ante room to the Ballroom. The ceiling was copied from that in the Oval Room, though it is not at all as finely executed as the original. The three arched doorways in these rooms were created out of windows in the old house when Young added the Ballroom in 1896.
The Blue Drawing Room, photograph courtesy of Farmleigh facebook page.Blue Room, Farmleigh, with a “portiere” over the arched door on the right, photograph courtesy of Office of Public Works Farmleigh website.The spandrels in the Nobel Room support a circular ceiling. The spandrels have overscaled Rococo-revival flower baskets, Farmleigh, photograph courtesy of Office of Public Works Farmleigh website.
The suite for state guests, which is not included in the house tour, is inspired by designs of Irish modernist Eileen Gray (you can see examples of her work in the Museum at Collins Barracks in Dublin).
The house also contains the Benjamin Iveagh Library, donated by the Guinness family to Dublin’s Marsh’s Library and on permanent display in Farmleigh. The Library, which is panelled in Austrian Oak with exquisitely rendered carvings in the neo – Jacobean style, was part of the renovation undertaken by Edward Cecil in the 1880s. Scholars can access material from the collection by arrangement. The Benjamin Iveagh Library is open for use by suitably qualified scholars, third-level students, and independent researchers. A full electronic catalogue of the collection may be viewed online via Marsh’s Library.
The Library, Farmleigh, photograph courtesy of Office of Public Works Farmleigh website.
Applications to carry out research in the Benjamin Iveagh Library may be made to the Keeper of Marsh’s Library. Email: reading.room@marshlibrary.ie
The librarian Nuala Canny writes:
“While the printed works which include many rare imprints and early periodicals represent the majority of the holdings, there is some exceptional manuscript material, including a copy of the Topography of Ireland by Gerald of Wales c.1280, and the trilingual language primer used by Queen Elizabeth I c. 1564 to learn Irish, together with letters from Sean O’Casey, W.B. Yeats, Lennox Robinson, Daniel O’Connell and Roger Casement.
“The items that adorn these shelves represent important moments in the areas of Irish Politics, Literature, and Science: we have a triumphant letter from Daniel O’Connell to his wife in 1829 telling her of the passing of the Roman Catholic Relief Act, which led to Catholic Emancipation, a first edition of James Joyce’s seminal work Ulysses published in 1922 and the first appearance in print in 1662 of Boyle’s Law.”
The Ballroom with adjoining conservatory is the piéce de resistance of the house. The ballroom was designed by William Young in 1892. It is a large rectangular room with bows in the centre of the north, east and south walls. Casey writes that “it is a much more reticent affair than the showy marble ballroom that Young designed the Guinness townhouse at St. Stephen’s Green [as pictured above].”
The Ballroom, Farmleigh, photograph courtesy of Office of Public Works Farmleigh website.Ballroom at Farmleigh, photograph courtesy of Farmleigh facebook page.
The website tells us:
“The Guinness’ guests could not fail to be impressed with the superb decoration in the style of Louis XVI with swags, wreaths, musical trophies, urns, sphinxes, and Corinthian pilasters. The rich decoration is executed in plaster that is applied to wood panelling, and the whole room, including the ceiling, is painted off-white to resemble plaster. The chimney piece is also made of wood and this, together with the overmantel, the ceiling, and the elegant portieres, were all part of an integrated scheme designed by Young. The Edinburgh-based interior design company Morrisons probably supplied the portieres as they had done so for the Young-designed ballroom at Iveagh House.“
“Hanging from the centre of the ceiling is a magnificent late nineteenth-century cut-glass and gilt metal chandelier complete with coronet. Purchased specifically for the Ballroom, it is on loan from the Guinness family. There is a story that the oak floor was made from disused barrels at the brewery but that has never been confirmed!“
The Ballroom, Farmleigh, photograph courtesy of Office of Public Works Farmleigh website.
The Conservatory: “Erected in 1901-2, it was supplied by Mackenzie and Moncur of Edinburgh, on the recommendation of Young. Exotic plants and flowers were grown here, and have been re-introduced by the Office of Public Works. Hot water pipes that ran around the perimeter were covered up by cast iron grilles, which have been restored. The marble floor, which is original, is tiled in the traditional eighteenth-century pattern of carreaux octagons.
“This room posed one of the most difficult conservation problems for the OPW at Farmleigh, as it was in a dangerous condition when the State took over the house. It was completely re-glazed and new structural supports for high-level metal work were introduced. As a result the character of the Conservatory has been retained and its life span increased for at least another 100 years.“
A room we don’t see on the tour is discussed on the blog on the Farmleigh website: the Billiard Room:
“Located at mezzanine level between the ground and first floors, typical of nineteenth century billiard rooms to keep offending cigar odours away from the rest of the house and male visitors appropriately distanced from visiting ladies, it is very much a masculine enclave. Beneath a top-lit roof – reconstructed and reglazed with ultraviolet screens by the OPW – the plaster cornice, deep ceiling cove and decorative ribs are painted in imitation of timber. The oak chimneypiece with Corinthian columns and carved frieze to the south of the room is dark in colour, lending to the heaviness about the overall decor when combined with the distinctive red cotton wall fabric which is printed with an arabesque motif.“
The Billiard Room at Farmleigh, photograph courtesy of Office of Public Works Farmleigh website.
The grounds contain a clock tower, a large classical fountain in the Pleasure Grounds, an ornamental dairy, garden temple and four acre walled garden and sunken garden. The outbuildings have been adapted to house an art gallery and a theatre and a courtyard for additional state accommodation. The Boathouse now houses a cafe overlooking the lake.
“Sunken gardens in various formal styles were popular in the early twentieth century… This one is in the Dutch of Early English style and was created some time after 1907, probably by Edward Cecil Guinness. The design has some similarities with the sunken pond garden at Hampton Court, which dates from the original Early English period, and may relate to his connections with the British Royal family.
“An ornamental gate leads into the rectangular garden, which was designed with three descending brick terraces leading to an oval pool in the centre, with a marble fountain of carved putti figures. The fountain has been restored under the direction of OPW and the Carrara marble exposed. Fine topiary peacocks and spirals surround this fountain on two levels. A brick wall enclosing the garden is paralleled by a high yew hedge, which leads the eye to the two conifers framing the view to the small apple orchard beyond.” [3]
“The Walled Garden covers about four acres and is sloped ideally towards the south. A fine pair of highly decorative wrought iron gates lead into a diagonal walk with double herbaceous borders backed by high yew hedges. South of the main crosswalk is a small orchard and potager, while north of it there is a small rose and lavender garden. The Walled Garden dates from the early nineteenth century, when Charles Trench owned Farmleigh; it is shown on the 1837 Ordnance Survey map as having a diagonal layout with seven squares and glasshouse. Later that century it had an extensive range of glasshouses on the south wall for many plants grown in typical Victorian fashion to support large-scale bedding schemes as well as producing exotic fruit and flowers and foliage, particularly orchids and ferns, for year round display in the house.
“Among the additions made by Edward Cecil Guinness were the small Victorian fernery under glass and grotto nearby with two old ogee windows from St Patrick’s Cathedral in the end wall of the garden. He also erected a number of glasshouses, including a fine three quarter span cast-iron vinery behind the high yew hedge, the potting shed, and the gardener’s house and pump house which were built in the Arts and Crafts style. His daughter in-law, Gwendolen, Lady Iveagh, subsequently created a compartmentalised layout, which was fashionable in the early twentieth century along with renewed interest in old style garden plants and herbaceous borders. A new traditional path led from the wrought iron gateway connecting the Walled Garden to the broad walk at the back of the house. This new axis of the garden was reinforced by tall yew hedges backing the long double herbaceous borders which she also planted.
“A stone temple was created as a focal point of the garden by Benjamin and Miranda Guinness in 1971: it has six antique columns of Portland with a copper roof and ornamental weather vane. The main cross path either side of the temple has metal structures designed by Lanning Roper for climbing roses and wisteria similar to those in the famous Bagatelle Garden in Paris. A paved rose garden was laid out to the north east of the temple backed by a yew hedge and looking across a lawn to the small orchard and potage. Lanning Roper suggested planting a quince, a mulberry, a catalpa, and a magnolia, to complete what he described as a Carolingian Quartet on this lawn. Lady Iveagh subsequently planted the double herbaceous borders, which include yuccas, phormiums, paeonies, astilbe and euphorbias.” [4]
General Enquiries: 01 493 9462, rathfarnhamcastle@opw.ie
Rathfarnham Castle is a wonderful property to visit and I suspect, much underappreciated! It is one of the oldest surviving residences in Ireland, and has a variety of impressive ceilings. It is also another property which was inhabited by the Jesuits at one time, as was Emo Court in County Laois. Although they no longer own either of these properties, they still run schools in the former Castle Browne in County Kildare (now Clongowes Wood College) and Belvedere House in Dublin. They certainly knew how to pick impressive properties! [1]
Rathfarnham Castle was built around 1583 for Adam Loftus (1533-1605), a clergyman originally from Yorkshire, who rose to the position of Archbishop of Dublin and Lord Chancellor of Ireland. Its position outside the city of Dublin made it vulnerable to attack, so it was built as a fortified house, with four flanker towers shaped to give maximum visibility of the surrounding landscape. The OPW website tells us:
“Loftus wanted the Castle to be a grand and impressive home which would reflect his high status in Irish society. He also needed it to be easily defended against attack from hostile Irish families such as the O’Byrnes based in the mountains to the south. The design was radically modern for the time and based on recent continental thinking about defensive architecture. The angled bastion towers located at each corner of the building were equipped with musket loops which allowed a garrison of soldiers to defend all approaches to the castle.”
Archbishop-Chancellor Adam Loftus (1533-1605). The portrait is in Trinity College Dublin, as he was the first Provost. He was also Keeper of the Great Seal of Ireland, and he is here holding the embroidered purse which held the seal.Adam Loftus (1533-1605), Lord Chancellor, 1619. Painting hangs in Malahide Castle, courtesy of National Museum of Ireland.This shows the special shape of Rathfarnham Castle’s flanker towers.
Loftus had previously lived in an archiepiscopal palace in Tallaght, and it had been sacked by the O’Byrnes and O’Tooles from the Wicklow mountains, which is why he ensured that his new house in Rathfarnham had strong defenses. The Bishop’s Palace in Raphoe, now a ruin, is similarly shaped.
Maurice Craig points out in his The Architecture of Ireland from the earliest times to 1880 that there are a group of similar buildings, built over a period of fifty years or more: Rathfarnham; Kanturk for MacDonagh MacCarthy, built before 1609; Portumna for the Earl of Clanrickarde, before 1618; Manorhamilton for Sir Frederick Hamilton, probably around 1634; Raphoe, for Bishop John Leslie (the “Fighting Bishop” – see my entry on Castle Leslie https://irishhistorichouses.com/2020/08/07/castle-leslie-glaslough-county-monaghan/) in 1636, and Burncourt for Sir Richard Everard before 1650. Manorhamilton is a section 482 ruin (see my entry https://irishhistorichouses.com/2025/02/20/manorhamilton-castle-castle-st-manorhamilton-co-leitrim/) and we visited Portumna in County Galway – see my entry https://irishhistorichouses.com/2022/02/14/office-of-public-works-properties-connacht/. The buildings resemble a fort, such as Mountjoy Fort in County Tyrone built 1600-1605. Killenure, County Tipperary, is similar but has cylindrical flankers, Craig tells us. This last was unroofed by 1793, and it is now (2025) a Section 482 property which I must visit!
Loftus attended Cambridge, where he took holy orders as a Catholic priest. Upon Queen Elizabeth’s accession to the throne in 1558, he declared himself Anglican. The Dictionary of Irish Biography tells us that a major turning point in Loftus’s life and career occurred in 1560, when he emigrated to Ireland as a chaplain to Thomas Radcliffe, 3rd Earl of Sussex, who had been granted a commission to serve as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland by Queen Elizabeth. On the recommendation of Sussex, Loftus was appointed Archbishop of Armagh, his consecration taking place on 2 March 1563. In January 1565, on account of the poverty of the archbishopric of Armagh, Queen Elizabeth granted Loftus the deanery of St Patrick’s cathedral in Dublin. In 1567 he was made Archbishop of Dublin.
It was Adam Loftus who had Reverend Dermot O’Hurley executed, whom I wrote about a couple of weeks ago in my entry about Doheny & Nesbitt.
The Dictionary of Irish Biography tells us:
He was “a strongly delineated establishment figure whose primary concerns were to serve the crown in Ireland, in whatever capacity the queen and her advisers thought fit; and to build up his own personal affinity, so that he would be in a position to execute the offices that came his way with a measure of genuine political and social authority. Thus, during the periods when the archbishop served as lord chancellor of Ireland (1581–1605), or as acting governor of the country during the periodic absences from Ireland of a serving viceroy (August 1582–June 1584, November 1597–April 1599, September 1599–February 1600), he was also careful to establish a network of connections throughout the country, particularly through the marriage of his children to leading families among the new English protestant elite. Among the families with which Loftus made these connections were the Bagenals of Co. Down, the Dukes of Castlejordan, the Hartpoles of Shrule, the Usshers of Dublin, the Colleys of Castle Carbury, the Berkeleys of Askeaton, and the Warrens of Warrenstown. The social ascent of Loftus and his family was also evident in the archbishop’s decision to proceed with the purchase of the estate of Rathfarnham, Co. Dublin (c.1589–90), on which he built a stately castle.” [2]
Adam Loftus married Jane Purdon. They had twenty children, not all of whom survived to adulthood, and those who did married very well.
Anne Loftus married, first, Henry Colley of Castle Carbury in County Kildare, and second, Edward Blayney, 1st Lord Blayney, Baron of Monaghan.
Martha Loftus (d. 1609) married Thomas Colclough (1564-1624) of Tintern Abbey in Wexford.
Isabelle Loftus (d. 1597) married William Ussher (1561-1659)
Thomas Loftus (d. 1635) married Helen Hartpole of Shrule.
Alice Loftus (d. 1608) married Henry Warren of Warrenstown, County Offaly.
Katherine Loftus married Francis Berkeley of Askeaton, County Limerick.
son Adam died unmarried in 1599.
Margaret Loftus married George Colley of Castle Carbury.
Edward Loftus (d. 1601) married Anne Duke of Castle Jordan, County Meath.
Dudley Loftus (1561-1616) married Anne Bagenal of Newry Castle, County Down, daughter of Nicholas Henry Bagenal, Marshal of Ireland.
Dorothy Loftus (d. 1633) married John Moore (d. 1633)
Adam Loftus was the first Provost of Trinity College Dublin.
The Dictionary of Irish Biography continues:
“Although by the early 1590s Loftus had largely reconciled himself to the reality that the task of converting the indigenous community to protestantism, and securing its allegiance to the state church, was beyond him, the queen and her advisers still expected him to discharge his religious duties and press ahead with reforming initiatives on behalf of the state church. To this end, and in the midst of a period of mounting political crisis that culminated in the outbreak of the Nine Years War, Loftus was the prime mover behind the foundation of TCD, which received its royal charter on 3 March 1592. The archbishop also served as the college’s first provost till June 1594.“
Adam Loftus died in the old Palace of St. Sepulchre beside St. Patrick’s Cathedral, which until recently was the Garda barracks on Kevin Street, now housed in a new building. I hope they will make something of the historic old archbishop’s palace now, which could be a great museum!
Adam’s son Dudley (1561-1616) sat in the Irish parliament for Newborough in County Wexford. He married Anne Bagenal of Newry Castle, County Down, daughter of Nicholas Henry Bagenal, Marshal of Ireland. The castle passed to their son, Adam Loftus (1590-1666), who married Jane Vaughan of Golden Grove, County Offaly.
Another son of Dudley and Anne Bagenal was Nicholas Loftus (1592-1666), the ancestor of Henry Loftus, the Earl of Ely. Nicholas’s second son Henry (1636-1716) lived in Loftus Hall in County Wexford.
Loftus Hall, County Wexford, for sale April 2025 courtesy Colliers.Formerly named Redmond Hall, it is a three-storey mansion built in 1871, incorporating parts of a previous house here, which was late 17th century or early C18. [3]
Adam Loftus (1590-1666) and Jane née Vaughan’s children also made good marriages. Their son Arthur Loftus (1616-1659) married Dorothy Boyle (1616-1668), daughter of Richard Boyle the 1st Earl of Cork. Arthur also served as MP for County Wexford, as well as Provost Marshall of Ulster.
The castle came under seige in 1641 and in 1642 the house was occupied by Cromwell’s Parliamentary troops. [4] In 1649 it was stormed and taken by Royalist troops under the Marquess of Ormond and all occupants were taken as prisoners. Ormond writes that nobody was killed. [5] Rathfarnham Castle was restored to Adam Loftus (1590-1666) when Charles II was crowned king.
Adam’s son Arthur predeceased him, so the castle passed to Arthur’s wife Dorothy née Boyle. In 1665 she obtained six firelock muskets from the Master of Ordinance to protect the castle.
Arthur Loftus and Dorothy née Boyle had a son Adam Loftus (1632-1691). Adam Loftus was Ranger of the Phoenix Park in Dublin and from 1685, a member of the Irish Privy Council. King James II created him Baron of Rathfarnham and Viscount Lisburne in the Peerage of Ireland. Adam married Lucy Brydges, daughter of George Brydges, 6th Baron Chandos of Sudeley, England.
Lucy Loftus née Brydges (1654-1681), by Peter Lely.She was a renowned Restoration beauty and the first wife of Viscount Adam Loftus. He died at the Siege of Limerick in 1691 and the cannon ball which reputedly killed him hangs in St Patrick’s Cathedral. Lucy is dressed in pseudo-antique clothing against an Arcadian landscape. The parrot in the background is an ambiguous symbol and can refer to a number of characteristics including eloquence, marital obedience or exoticism. Peter Lely was of Dutch origin but spent most of his career in England and became the most influential portrait painter at court following the death of Anthony van Dyck. He successfully navigated the turbulence of the 17th century to paint at the court of Charles I, the Cromwellian Commonwealth and Charles II following the Restoration. Lely was prolific, often only painting the sitter’s head while students and assistants at his studio completed the portraits.
After his wife Lucy died, Adam Loftus married Dorothy, the daughter of Patrick Allen or Alen, of St. Wolstan’s of Celbridge in County Kildare. Adam was a gallant at the court of King Charles II.
Despite earning his peerage from King James II, Adam Viscount Lisburn supported the cause of William III. He died at the Siege of Limerick in 1691 and the cannon ball which reputedly killed him hangs in St Patrick’s Cathedral.
The castle passed to Adam’s daughter Lucy, who married Thomas Wharton, 1st Marquess of Wharton in 1692, who in 1715 was created 1st Earl of Rathfarnham, 1st Marquess of Carlow and 1st Baron of Trim.
Lucy Loftus, Marchioness of Wharton (1670-1717) by Godfrey Kneller.
Lucy and the Marquess of Wharton had a son Philip, who became the Duke of Wharton. He was a Jacobite and supporter of the titular James III, and was subsequently granted many titles. The Peerage website lists the titles. As well as those he inherited from his father, he was created 1st Viscount Winchendon, Co. Buckingham [England] and 1st Marquess of Woodburn, Co. Buckingham [England], 1st Earl of Malmesbury, Co. Wilts [England] on 22 December 1716, Jacobite.
He was appointed Privy Counsellor (P.C.) in Ireland between 1717 and 1726. He was created 1st Duke of Wharton, Co. Westmorland [Great Britain] on 28 January 1717/18, in an attempt by the authorities to wean him from his Jacobitism and make him a good Whig like his father. Darryl Lundy of The Peerage website tells us that his Dukedom did at least make him for a while speak and vote with the Tories in the House of Lords, for instance in debates on the South Sea Bubble. He lost a fortune from participation in the South Sea Bubble. In June 1725 he left the country. He was Envoy to Vienna in August 1725, for the Jacobite King James III, and then Envoy to Madrid in March 1725/26.
Philip Wharton Duke of Wharton by Rosalba Carriera – Royal Collection, Public Domain.
Out of money, he took a position in the Jacobite forces and commanded a Spanish detachment at the Siege of Gibraltar in 1727, fighting against the English. On 3 April 1729 he was outlawed and his titles and such estates as he still held in Britain forfeited.
He had no surviving male issue when he died on 31 May 1731. On his death, all his titles, most forfeited by his treason, expired, except the Barony of Wharton, which was deemed by the House of Lords in 1915 to be descendible to his heirs.
He sold Rathfarnham Castle in 1724. It was purchased by Speaker William Conolly for £62,000. Speaker Conolly never lived in the Castle since he had built Castletown in County Kildare, and he leased Rathfarnham in 1742 to Dr. Hoadley, Archbishop of Armagh.
Dr. Hoadley was interested in building, and he had built an Episcopal mansion in Tallaght to replace a medieval castle. He then restored Rathfarnham Castle. It was famed for its excellent agriculture and fruit gardens. [see 5].
Dr. Hoadley’s daughter Sarah married Bellingham Boyle (1709-1772), and they inherited Rathfarnham Castle. Boyle also took an interest in farming and grew the first oats in Ireland. [see 5]. The Hoadley-Boyle tenancy lasted for twenty-five years, and Bellingham Boyle and his wife mixed in high society, entertaining two Lords Lieutenant in the castle: the Duke of Devonshire and the Earl of Harrington. Boyle may be be responsible for installing some of the delicate rococo ceilings in the castle.
“Bellingham Boyle (1709-1772). He inherited Rathfarnham Castle in 1746 from his father-in-law, Archbishop John Hoadley who leased the castle in 1742 by “indented lease renewable forever.” Bellingham Boyle served as an MP, first for Bandon then for Youghal in Cork and was later appointed a Commissioner for the Revenue. Prior to his marriage, Belingham travelled across Europe to Italy where he had his portrait painted by Giorgio Dupra.”
Interestingly, in Aug 1742, Bellingham Boyle was appointed to a commission to investigate the soundness of mind of Jonathan Swift, Dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin. The Writ “De Lunatico Inquirendo,” in the case of Jonathan Swift, D.D. was issued to investigate and ascertain whether the ailing Dean Swift was of unsound mind and memory to safely conduct his own business. Belllingham Boyle was one of 12 commissioned to perform the investigation. Dean Swift was found to be of unsound mind and memory and was placed under the protection of the Court of Chancery. [6]
Boyle’s daughter Anne married Robert Langrishe 2nd Baronet Langrishe, of Knocktopher, Co. Kilkenny.
Knocktopher Abbey, Knocktopher, Co. Kilkenny, for sale November 2024, photograph courtesy DNG Country Homes & Estates.
The castle returned to the ownership of the Loftus family in 1767, to Nicholas Hume Loftus, 2nd Earl of Ely, a descendant of the original owner Adam Loftus. Nicholas never married and on his death in 1769 the Castle passed to his uncle, Henry Loftus (created Earl of Ely in 1771). Henry continued the remodelling of the castle and the works were completed by the time of his death in 1783.
Let us backtrack now to look at the descendants of the first Adam Loftus. Adam’s grandson Nicholas lived in Fethard, County Wexford, in the precursor to Loftus Hall. His son Henry (1636-1716) of Loftus Hall was the father of Nicholas Loftus (1687-1763) who was created 1st Viscount Loftus of Ely.
Nicholas Loftus, 1st Viscount Ely (1687-1763). Painter unknown. This painting was completed in 1758 to mark the 70th birthday of Nicholas, father of both Nicholas (the 1st Earl of Ely) and Henry Loftus. He sits next to a book entitled The Present State of Ireland. This anonymous work was originally published in 1730 and contained criticism of the amount of money flowing out of Ireland to absentee landlords, no doubt reflecting Nicholas’s concern with the financial state of the kingdom. He is sometimes known as “the Extinguisher” because of his threat to extinguish the Hook lighthouse in Wexford unless the rent he received from it was increased.
Nicholas served as MP for Wexford, and married Anne Ponsonby, daughter of William Ponsonby, 1st Viscount Duncannon. He was first created Baron Loftus of Loftus Hall in 1751, and then assumed a seat in the House of Lords, and became Privy Counsellor of Ireland in 1753. He was created Viscount Loftus of Ely in County Wicklow in 1756.
After Anne died, around 1724, Nicholas Viscount Ely married Letitia Rowley (d. 1765) of Summerhill in County Meath. To make matters more confusing, she had been previously married to Arthur Loftus (1644-1725) 3rd Viscount of Ely!
Summerhill, County Meath, etnrance front, 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.
Viscount Loftus is a title that has been created three times in the Peerage of Ireland for members of the Anglo-Irish Loftus family. The first creation was for Adam Loftus (1568-1643) on 10 May 1622, who served as Lord Chancellor of Ireland in 1619. He is not to be confused the our Adam Loftus (1533-1605) of Rathfarnham Castle. This title became extinct in 1725 upon the death of the third viscount, who had no male heir, despite having married three times.
Nicholas and Anne’s son Nicholas Loftus (1708-1766) became the 1st Earl of Ely, and added Hume to his surname after marrying Mary Hume, daughter of Gustavus Hume, 3rd Baronet of Castle Hume, County Fermanagh. As well as Loftus Hall in Wexford, they owned 13 Henrietta Street in Dublin. He became known as the “wicked earl” due to a court hearing about the supposed mental incapacity of his son, also named Nicholas. Young Nicholas’s uncle, George Rochfort (1713-1734), brother of the 1st Earl of Belvedere, sought to have young Nicholas declared incapable of succeeding to the title. George Rochfort was married to another daughter, Alice, of Gustavus Hume, 3rd Baronet of Castle Hume. Family members testified that young Nicholas was of normal intelligence, and that any eccentric behaviour should be blamed on his father’s ill-treatment. The trial lasted for nine years and was even brought to the House of Lords. Poor young Nicholas died before the trial was finished and Rochfort’s case was declared invalid.
Nicholas Hume Loftus, 1st Earl of Ely (1708-1766), unknown artist. It was after Nicholas Loftus (son of the Extinguisher) had married into the wealthy Hume family that the Ely earldom was created for the first time. This depicts Nicholas, the so-called “Wicked Earl” in the doctoral robes of Trinity College Dublin.Nicholas Hume Loftus, 1st Earl of Ely (1708-1766) by Jacob Ennis. These two portraits depict Nicholas, the so-called “Wicked Earl” at various stages of his life. Nicholas is much older in the Ennis portrait. Jacob Ennis was an Irish historical and portrait painter who spent some time studying in Italy. He was later a Master in the Dublin Society’s Drawing Schools.
Nicholas Loftus Hume officially succeeded as 2nd Earl of Ely (1738-1769). It was through him that Rathfarnham Castle returned to Loftus ownership. Nicholas bequeathed Rathfarnham Castle and the estate to his uncle, Henry Loftus (1709-1783) who became the 1st Earl of Ely of the second creation. Henry was the younger son of Nicholas Loftus (d. 1763) 1st Viscount Loftus and Anne née Ponsonby, brother to the earlier Nicholas Hume Loftus (d. 1766) 1st Earl of Ely, the Wicked Earl.
Henry Loftus, 1st Earl of Ely of the 2nd Creation (1709-1783) by Angelica Kauffman. Henry inherited Rathfarnham Castle and its demesne in 1769 upon the death of Nicholas, his nephew. Nicholas had been the subject of a long running legal case concerning the state of his mind and Henry had supported him throughout. The Swiss artist Angelica Kauffman is known to have spent several months in Dublin in 1771. As well as this portrait which was probably completed to mark Henry’s elevation to the earldom of Ely, this renowned painter also completed a group portrait of Henry and his family (now in the National Gallery) as well as a series of ceiling paintings for the long gallery on the first floor depicting scenes from Greek mythology.
Between 1769 and his death in 1783 Henry funded some of the most substantial 18th century changes to Rathfarnham Castle and the demesne.
He contracted Sir William Chambers to remodel several of the rooms including the Ballroom and Anteroom. Externally, the window openings were enlarged, and a new stone Tuscan entrance portico added, probably to the designs of William Chambers. The original battlements were removed and the new parapet was embellished with ball finials and urns some of which also serve as chimneys. On the south front new garden steps were added, while on the east front a three bay bow had been added by 1774.
“Loftus’s castle, with its four flanker towers, is an excellent example of the Elizabethan fortified house in Ireland. In the late eighteenth century, the house was remodelled on a splendid scale employing some of the finest architects of the day including Sir William Chambers and James ‘Athenian’ Stuart. The collection includes family portraits by Angelica Kauffman, Sir Peter Lely, and Hugh Douglas Hamilton.“
From an information panel in the entrance hall: “This room is believed to have been built to a design by the influential architect Sir William Chambers (1723-1796). Despite never visiting Ireland, Chambers left a significant mark on Dublin where he also designed the Casino at Marino, Charlemont House on Parnell Square, and much of Front Square in Trinity College. The floor and free standing Doric columns are in Portland stone. The painted glass panels featuring fruit and flowers are believed to be by the Dublin Huguenot artist Thomas Jervais (d. 1799). The marble relief busts on the walls depict well known figures from the Classical and Renaissance past, including the Egyptian queen Cleopatra and Italian poet Dante. These sculptures seem to have been acquired in Italy and would have been incorporated into the design of the Entrance Hall to signal the taste and refinement and learning of the Loftus family. The original eighteenth century marble fireplace was replaced with a painted timber one in around 1913. It was one of several of the original fireplaces which were removed and sold when the Blackburne family left the castle in 1911.“
Henry Loftus (1709-1783) is pictured below. He married first, Frances Monroe of Roe’s Hall, County Down, (pictured below), who died in 1774, then married secondly Anne Bonfoy. He purchased Ely House in Dublin (built 1770) from Sir Gustavus Hume, 3rd Baronet (now owned by the Knights of Columbanus).
Painting by Angelica Kauffman, who spent several months in Dublin in 1771. It shows Henry Loftus 1st Earl of Ely of the 2nd Creation (1709-1783) with his wife Frances, her nieces and an exotic trophy servant, a young Indian page in Oriental dress carrying a cushion with two coronets, symbolising the title the Earl had just received. The older niece, Dolly Monroe, was Classical costume. Her younger sister Frances plays a fashionable aria on the harpsichord.
As well as the ante room and ballroom and the entrance hall on the first floor, Chambers was responsible for the small drawing room ceiling, back staircase lobby, and the octagonal room in one of the towers.
There are also several rooms which are attributed to architect and designer James “Athenian” Stuart, whose best work in Ireland is the Temple of the Winds at Mount Stewart, County Down. Stuart was employed at Rathfarnham from at least 1769 and was responsible for the design of the ground floor gallery and two rooms above it. He was also involved in the decoration of some interiors at the family townhouse, Ely House, Dublin.
Henry Loftus was succeeded by his nephew Charles Tottenham (1738-1806), son of Henry’s sister Elizabeth (1720-1747) and her husband John Tottenham (1714-1786) 1st Baronet of Tottenham Green, County Wexford. Charles Tottenham’s name was changed to Charles Loftus in 1783 after the death of Henry Loftus 1st Earl of Ely of the 2nd Creation.
Charles held the office of Member of Parliament (M.P.) for New Ross between 1761 and 1768, M.P. for Bannow between 1768 and 1776, M.P. for New Fethard between 1776 and 1783. and M.P. for County Wexford between 1783 and 1785. He was created 1st Baron Loftus of Loftus Hall, Co. Wexford [Ireland] on 28 June 1785. He succeeded as the 2nd Baronet Tottenham [I., 1780] on 29 December 1786. He was created 1st Viscount Loftus of Ely [Ireland] on 28 December 1789 and 1st Earl of Ely [Ireland] on 2 March 1794. He was created 1st Marquess of Ely [Ireland] on 1 January 1801 and 1st Baron Loftus of Long Loftus, Co. York [U.K.] on 19 January 1801. He was also Privy Counsellor.
Charles Tottenham Loftus, Marquis of Ely by Hugh Douglas Hamilton. Charles was the nephew of Henry Loftus Earl of Ely and inherited Rathfarnham Castle and the demesne on his death in 1783. The painting shows Charles in the robes of the Irish House of Lords. He is also wearing a chain indicating his membership of the prestigious Order of St Patrick. He was elevated to a Marquis, given a baronetcy in England as well as £45,000 in return for his votes in favour of the Act of Union. Hugh Douglas Hamilton (1740-1808) was born and grew up in Dublin and attended the Dublin Society’s Drawing Schools. He had a long and successful career as an artist and worked in London and Rome as well as Dublin. He is perhaps best known for his work in pastels and left an extensive series of portraits of leading figures in Irish society.
At Rathfarnham, Charles did little beyond the erection in 1790 of the Gothic or Back Gate, now almost competely demolished to make way for a road.
He married Jane Myhill of Killarney, County Kerry. Her sister Hannah married Hercules Langrishe, 1st Baronet of Knocktopher, County Kilkenny.
The Dining Room. “This room remains unrestored which allows us to see the changes and alternations which were made to the building over the years. The door on the left-hand (northern) wall is typically eighteenth century in style and decoration. However to the left of it a trace of the original Elizabethan doorway is visible. It was blocked up during the 18th century refurbishments. The bow extension to the eastern side of the building is another change dating to that period which added space and brought more light into these rooms. The 18th century timber wall panelling and lining paper survives in this room. It is likely that the walls were covered with silk. Although designed as a dining room, in the 20th century the Jesuits used this room as a library.“
The Castle fell into disrepair. From the Parliamentary Gazetteer of Ireland 1846 (vol. iii): ‘Rathfarnham Castle, situated in a once noble demesne, at the south-east extremity of the village, was not long ago esteemed a magnificent building, and boasted a gorgeous picture-gallery, and superb series of garden and pleasure grounds, but it was allowed to fall into decay in consequence of the prolonged non-residence of its proprietor, the Marquis of Ely, and it now prosaically, though usefully, figures as a diary‘.
At this time, John Loftus (1770-1845) was 2nd Marquess of Ely, who inherited the Castle and lands from his father, Charles Tottenham Loftus. John Loftus rented out the house and surrounding lands, and between 1812 and 1852 the estate was leased to the Roper family. [from the castle’s Instagram page]
Oil painting on canvas, John Loftus, 2nd Marquess of Ely (1770-1845), attributed to Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830). A three-quarter-length portrait, in a brown coat and blue sash. Peer’s robes to the right, red curtain to the background. A picture of the sitter’s wife by Lawrence is in the Art Institute of Chicago. By Studio of Thomas Lawrence – Sothebys, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15266849
Rathfarnham Castle was sold in 1852 to Francis Blackburne (1782-1867), Lord Chancellor of Ireland.
Francis Blackburne (1782-1867), Lord Chancellor of Ireland, 1852 by engraver George Sanders, after Stephen Catterson Smith, courtesy of National Gallery of Ireland.
His family lived there until 1911. Coincidentally almost in the footsteps of Adam Loftus who built Rathfarnham Castle, Francis Blackburne became Vice-Chancellor of Trinity College.
The Society of Jesus then acquired the building and for much of the remainder of the 20th century it was used as a Retreat House for lay visitors as well as accommodation for seminarians attending college in the city. Following the departure of the Jesuits in 1985, the Castle came into the care of the state and a great deal of restoration work has been carried out. Most of the rooms have been restored to their 18th century state and several are furnished with a collection of fine eighteen and nineteenth century pieces from continental Europe, Britain and Ireland.
Belvedere House in Dublin, Castle Browne, now Clongowes Wood College, and Manresa House in Clontarf, formerly called Granby Hall and Baymount Castle.
Manresa Jesuit Retreat Centre, Clontarf, photograph courtesy of National Inventory.A three-bay three-storey house over basement, dated 1838, incorporating mid-eighteenth-century fabric.Originally known as Granby Hall, this house was leased by Doctor James Traill, Church of Ireland Bishop of Down and Connor, in 1775. Robert Warren was later granted a lease of the land and house from J.E.V. Vernon in 1838, undertaking to construct new outbuildings, gate lodges, and to repair and improve the house, and renaming it Baymount Castle.
Clongowes Wood College, County Kildare:
Clongowes Wood College, County Kildare, is a school run by the Jesuits. It was purchased by the Jesuits in 1814. There was a castle here since 1450, built by the Eustace family to protect the area called The Pale. The Pale rampart itself was a six foot high bank surrounded by a double ditch. There are two areas of well preserved Pale on the property of Clongowes Wood. The name comes from a hybrid of Latin and Irish, meaning “the wood of the meadow of the smith.” See https://www.clongowes.net/about-us/clongowes-history/ Photograph by Brian O’Neill, This file is licensed under the Creative CommonsAttribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
In 1718 Stephen Fitzwilliam Browne (d. 1767) rebuilt Clongowes Wood Castle, creating the western front facade as it appears today, comprising the central keep and two square towers. In 1788 Thomas Wogan Browne (d. 1812) extended and decorated the castle. The extension consists of the eastern facade and two round towers at the back of the castle. Note that this information is from the Clongowes Wood school website, with information from A Short History of Clongowes Wood College by Brendan Cullen.
Stephen and I visited Belvedere House during Open House in 2015. We went into three rooms upstairs, up the beautiful staircase. We weren’t allowed photograph on the tour, unfortunately, in the Apollo Room, Venus Room and Jupiter Room.
Belvedere House is a symmetrical five-bay four-storey Georgian townhouse over exposed basement, completed 1786, designed by Robert West who, in addition to being a stuccodore was also an architect and property developer. It was built for George Augustus Rochfort, 2nd Earl of Belvedere. The house was built for £24,000 on what would have been rural green fields with a view of the Custom House, the bay and distant mountains. It is alleged that the house is haunted by Mary Molesworth, the first lady of Belvedere, mother to George Rochfort – we came across her at Belvedere in County Westmeath.
Rochfort was the son of the cruel Robert Rochfort, 1st Earl of Belvedere, who kept his wife under lock and key in the countryside after he believed she had an affair with his brother. Some believe that she was the inspiration for Charlotte Bronte’s “madwoman in the attic.” Robert Rochfort had the summer lodge, Belvedere, built in County Westmeath, now open to the public, which also has fine plasterwork. Robert O’Byrne writes that it was the 1st Earl who bought the property on Great Denmark Street. At first his son attempted to sell the property, but then he finished having the house built. Robert O’Byrne also tells us that it is similar to 86 St Stephen’s Green (Newman House, now housing the Museum of Literature of Ireland (MOLI), which was begun in 1765, and which is also attributed to Robert West.
North Great Georges Street itself was originally laid out in 1774 as a driveway leading to Belvedere House.
In 1841 the house was bought by the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) to accommodate their growing boys school which had started life ten years previously around the corner on Hardwicke Street, now known as Belvedere College.
One of the more outstanding features of the house is the stucco-work of Adamesque style popularised by Robert and James Adam. This can be seen in the ornamental surrounds, wherein pictures are framed in plaster rather than oil.
Dublin stuccodore and designer Michael Stapleton (1740-1801) was responsible for this work and further examples of his craftsmanship include the ceiling in the exam hall in Trinity College as well as some of the plasterwork in Powerscourt House in South William Street in Dublin and the Aras an Uachtarain in Phoenix Park.
It seems odd that a house designed by Robert West would have plasterwork by Michael Stapleton. Robert O’Byrne elucidates this for us:
“In 1967 C.P. Curran’s Dublin Decorative Plasterwork of the 17th and 18th centuries noted in the collection of drawings left by stuccodore Michael Stapleton several items directly relating to the design of ceilings in Belvedere House. Accordingly, this work was assigned to Stapleton. However, the fact that West was responsible for designing the house complicates matters, and the consensus now appears to be that both he and Stapleton had a hand in the plasterwork. Conor Lucey (in The Stapleton Collection, 2007) suggests that Stapleton may have been apprenticed to, or trained with, West and the fact that he was named the sole executor of the latter’s will in 1790 indicates the two men were close. The source material for the stucco work is diverse, that in the stair hall deriving in part from a plate in Robert Adam’s Works in Architecture, but the first-floor rooms feature a wider range of inspiration, much of it from France and Italy.”
“The ground floor rooms were intended for everyday and business use and therefore are minimally ornamented. However when one ascends they will encounter Stapleton’s stucco-work that depicts scenes from Greek and Roman mythology.On the half-landing the Bacchanalia is celebrated. The left panel depicts Bacchus with his thyrsis and staff, the right panel is Ceres with her cornucopia. The central oval shows Cupid being demoted by the three Graces. The arched window is ornamented with symbols of the authority of ancient Rome. The tall pilasters on each side have the Green anthemion (honeysuckle) motifs.
“At the top of the stairs the panel between the two doors on the right show Juno seated on a cloud with her peacock. The panel on the centre wall is Aurora in her chariot pulled by winged horses. Under this plaque “The New Bride” from an ancient marble popular in 18th century Rome. All the five doors have the same over-door: Silenus, the tutor of Bacchus. On the ceiling, Eros is depicted gazing at Psyche as she sleeps. Next is an Apollo head with winged lions and lastly, Cupid with a flower.
“The door immediately to the right of the stairs leads to the Apollo Room, named after the featured frieze of Apollo the music-maker holding court with attendent putti playing a variety of instruments. The adjoining Diana Room depicts Diana, patron of the chase, in a chariot drawn by stags. The design is taken directly from Pergolesi, however, Stapleton added the outer circle of flowers.
“Finally the Venus Room’s flanking panels have lunettes representing astronomy, architecture and sculpture. Notice the beautiful over-doors in all three rooms, each with the head of the principle subject.”
Venus was taken down by the Jesuits as she was nude, and it is supposedly in the National Gallery.
Belvedere House, Dublin, photograph from Brendan Merry and Partners website from their conservation and restoration of Belvedere House.Belvedere House, Dublin, photograph from Brendan Merry and Partners website from their conservation and restoration of Belvedere House.Belvedere House, Dublin, photograph from Brendan Merry and Partners website from their conservation and restoration of Belvedere House.Belvedere House, Dublin, photograph from Brendan Merry and Partners website from their conservation and restoration of Belvedere House.Belvedere House, Dublin, photograph from Brendan Merry and Partners website from their conservation and restoration of Belvedere House.
[3] Loftus Hall: Formerly named Redmond Hall, it is a three-storey mansion built in 1871, incorporating parts of a previous house here, which was late 17th century or early C18.
Loftus Hall, County Wexford, for sale April 2025 photograph courtesy Colliers.Loftus Hall, County Wexford, for sale April 2025 photograph courtesy Colliers.Loftus Hall, County Wexford, for sale April 2025 photograph courtesy Colliers.Loftus Hall, County Wexford, for sale April 2025 photograph courtesy Colliers.Loftus Hall, County Wexford, for sale April 2025 photograph courtesy Colliers.
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Doheny & Nesbitt, photograph courtesy of Flickr, “photos by Joe.”
Doheny & Nesbitt, a popular bar on Lower Baggot Street, occupies what was once a residence, built around 1790. Now it holds one of the finest Victorian pubs in Dublin.
Not long before, until 1773, the road had been called Gallows Road, as it led to the Gallow Mount, where criminals were hung. It was not just criminals, however, but also Catholics: Dermot O’Hurley, Archbishop of Cashel, was hung on 20 June 1584, and officially recognised as a Catholic martyr by Pope John Paul II in 1992. I first heard of the painful fate of Dermot O’Hurley when exploring the park of St. Kevins church, where the Archbishop is buried. His feast day, coincidentally, is this week, the 20th June.
Dermot O’Hurley was born in County Tipperary and studied in Louvain in Belgium. Catholics from Ireland had to go abroad to study. He knew that when he was ordained, his life would be that of a fugitive, ministering when possible. When he travelled to Ireland after his appointment, he never reached Cashel . Officials believed that O’Hurley was plotting to overthrow the English in Ireland. He was captured and tortured, including putting his feet into boots filled with boiling pitch and oil.
Richard Verstegen’s depiction of the 1584 torture and execution of Archbishop Dermot O’Hurley. The 1579 hanging of fellow Irish Catholic Martyrs Bishop Patrick O’Hely and Friar Conn Ó Ruairc is shown in the background.Coloured engraving from Richard Verstegan, Theatrum crudelitatum haereticorum nostri temporis, 1587.
Another person executed in the same spot was “Darkey” Dorcas Kelly, a “Madam” who operated the Maiden Tower brothel on Copper Alley, off Fishamble Street in Dublin. She was burnt at the stake in 1761 – not all that long before the Georgian houses were built on Gallows Road.
Doheny & Nesbitt, photograph from the pub’s facebook page.
The pub occupies both numbers 4 and 5, two Georgian houses of two bays and four storeys, fronted in brown brick, with corner quoins. The windows diminish in size from ground to top storey. The Georgian period spans over a century, referring to the four successive reigns of King Georges of the House of Hanover, from the accession of George I to the throne in 1714 to the death of George IV in 1830.
Dublin Georgian town houses are typically terraced. Dublin Civic Trust’s website tells us that the house facade, including the spacing and shape of windows, is designed in accordance with classical rules of proportion. Servants quarters and kitchens were housed in the basement, while the principal living space was at first floor level, called a ‘piano nobile’ (Italian for main floor). Large windows at this level let in lots of light. Bedrooms, with smaller windows, were on upper storeys.
The National Inventory tells us that the timber pub front is from around 1890. The Inventory describes panelled pilasters over a painted masonry plinth.
Doheny & Nesbitt, photograph from the National Inventory.
A decorative brass sheet reads ‘Tea & Wine Merchant’.
Doheny & Nesbitt, photograph from the National Inventory.
Wooden oversize scrolled foliate consoles frame the signage. Inside the pub retains its Victorian decor, with its original joinery in the bar, snugs and carved timberwork ceilings (according to the National Inventory). The website tells us that the ceiling is of papier maché, and that it has been restored. There’s a replica Victorian bar in the rear.
Doheny & Nesbitt, photograph from the National Inventory.Doheny & Nesbitt, photograph from the pub’s facebook page.
The main bar retains the original counter, and almost all of the original fittings date from the 19th century. I think it’s unfortunate the bar has big tvs so that customers can follow sports, as they ruin the old world atmosphere.
The National Inventory tells us that the liquor licence has been held by several owners. It was a grocers as well as a pub. Shaw’s Directory of 1850 records William Burke as the occupant of the premises. The website tells us that it became a pub in the 1840s. Burke ran the pub as ‘Delahuntys’ for almost fifty years.
In 1924, Philip Lynch and James O’Connor took it over for around thirty years, before passing it onto a Felix Connolly. A sign over the bar retains the Connolly name. Ned Doheny and Tom Nesbitt, two Co. Tipperary men, then took over and gave it the current name. It now has newer owners, who retained the name.
There are three rooms available to book for functions: Tom’s Bar, Paul’s Bar and the Marble Bar. There is also a cellar bar.
Doheny & Nesbitt, photograph from the pub’s facebook page.Doheny & Nesbitt, photograph from the pub’s facebook page.Doheny & Nesbitt, photograph from the pub’s facebook page.Doheny & Nesbitt, photograph from the pub’s website.Doheny & Nesbitt, photograph from the pub’s website.Doheny & Nesbitt, photograph from the pub’s website.The smoking area, Doheny & Nesbitt, photograph from the pub’s website.Doheny & Nesbitt, photograph from the pub’s website.
I receive no funding nor aid to create and maintain this website, it is a labour of love. I travel all over Ireland to visit Section 482 properties and sometimes this entails an overnight stay. A donation would help to fund my accommodation.
€150.00
2026 Diary of Irish Historic Houses (section 482 properties)
To purchase an A5 size 2026 Diary of Historic Houses send your postal address to jennifer.baggot@gmail.com along with €20 via this payment button. The calendar of 84 pages includes space for writing your appointments as well as photographs of the historic houses. The price includes postage within Ireland. Postage to U.S. is a further €11 for the A5 size, so I would appreciate a donation toward the postage – you can click on the donation link.
€20.00
Donation
Help me to fund my creation and update of this website. It is my “full time job” and created purely out of love for the subject and I receive no payment so any donation is appreciated! My costs include travelling to our destinations from Dublin, accommodation if we need to stay somewhere nearby, and entrance fees. Your donation could also help with the cost of the occasional book I buy for research (though I mostly use the library – thank you Kevin Street library!). Your donation could also help with my Irish Georgian Society membership or attendance for talks and lectures, or the Historic Houses of Ireland annual conference in Maynooth.
The Odeon, formerly Harcourt Street Railway Station.
Donation
Help me to fund my creation and update of this website. It is my “full time job” and created purely out of love for the subject and I receive no payment so any donation is appreciated! My costs include travelling to our destinations from Dublin, accommodation if we need to stay somewhere nearby, and entrance fees. Your donation could also help with the cost of the occasional book I buy for research (though I mostly use the library – thank you Kevin Street library!). Your donation could also help with my Irish Georgian Society membership or attendance for talks and lectures, or the Historic Houses of Ireland annual conference in Maynooth.
€15.00
I have created my 2026 Diary Calendar, which is available to order now. Please note that if you are purchasing from outside Ireland, I would appreciate a donation toward postage, by clicking on the donation button.
2026 Diary of Irish Historic Houses (section 482 properties)
To purchase an A5 size 2026 Diary of Historic Houses send your postal address to jennifer.baggot@gmail.com along with €20 via this payment button. The calendar of 84 pages includes space for writing your appointments as well as photographs of the historic houses. The price includes postage within Ireland. Postage to U.S. is a further €11 for the A5 size, so I would appreciate a donation toward the postage – you can click on the donation link.
€20.00
Donation towards accommodation
I receive no funding nor aid to create and maintain this website, it is a labour of love. I travel all over Ireland to visit Section 482 properties and sometimes this entails an overnight stay. A donation would help to fund my accommodation.
€150.00
The Odeon, 57 Harcourt Street, Dublin 2, D02VE22, formerly the Old Harcourt Street Railway Station, is now a bar and currently a Section 482 property:
Open in 2025: all year Tue-Sat, National Heritage Week, Aug 16-24, 12 noon-12 midnight
Railways began in the 1550s as wooden rails used in mines to transport tubs carrying ore. That reminds me of the way Bord na Mona used trains to carry their turf on the bog, and the Guinness brewery also had its own train lines for transporting barrels of stout within the site.
The first public commuter railway system in Ireland launched in 1834 and ran between Dublin and Dún Laoghaire, formerly named Kingstown. [1] The Dublin and Kingstown Railway (D&KR) travelled from Westland Row in Dublin.
The Harcourt Street Station, built in 1859, was the terminus for the Dublin to Bray, County Wicklow train. Passengers could travel to the villages of Dundrum, Stillorgan and Milltown, and the train line helped to develop Bray into a seaside resort. An article in the Irish Independent, “Fascinating story of Harcourt Street line retold,” published 29th February 2012, tells us that two companies vied for the contract to run the train line. One company started building from Harcourt Street, the other from Bray. It was decided that the first to reach Dundrum would win the contract to run the Railway line. William Dargan was the successful contractor. [2]
Before trains, public transportation comprised of stagecoaches travelling specified routes between coaching inns and horse-drawn boats carried paying passengers along canals.
The Harcourt-Bray train travelled for a century, ceasing in 1959. Much of the former trackbed remained intact and now carries the Luas, the Dublin light rail, the modern version of the tram. The Luas station ‘furniture’ impedes photography of the building and my attempts to highlight its architectural features!
An entry about Dublin tram history on the Dublin City Public Participation Network tells us that the idea of transporting people along a fixed routewithin a city began in Nantes, France, around 1823, when Stanislas Baudry opened a bath house outside the city and started a shuttle service that left the town centre on a regular schedule. [3] I’m glad that the first fixed route city public transport system was for bathing and not for work, as I would have expected!
After Baudry realised some passengers used the shuttle to travel to destinations along the route, he created the first urban transit service in 1826 in Nantes, calling his coaches the “Omnibus” (Latin for “for all”). He quickly expanded to Bordeaux, Lyon, and eventually Paris. [see 3]
Architect George Wilkinson (1840-1890) designed the Harcourt Street station. [4] After he built twenty-four workhouses in England, in 1839 the Poor Law Commission in Ireland invited Wilkinson to design 130 workhouses. After eleven years, the Commissioners of the Poor Law decided that they could no longer afford their own full-time architect, and in September 1855 Wilkinson was retired on a pension of £300 per annum. [5]
Next, Wilkinson designed railway stations, mostly for the Midland Great Western Railway Company. As he acknowledged, a workhouse had to be “uniform and cheap, durable and unattractive” so that people would be discouraged from applying to them for aid and accommodation. He took pride in his work, however. To underline the painstaking attention he had given to the materials used in the construction of the workhouses, Wilkinson published in 1845 his Practical Geology and Ancient Architecture of Ireland, which included a detailed account of the building materials available in the different counties with tables of the experiments he had conducted on the principal Irish building stones. [see 5] He managed to insert an Italianate tower in the Carlow workhouse.
The Dictionary of Irish Architects tells us that in August 1860 Wilkinson was appointed architect to the Commissioners of Asylums for the Lunatic Poor at a salary of £300 per annum. He designed two identical asylums at Castlebar, Co. Mayo, and Letterkenny, Co. Donegal. He remained in the post until 1886. He appears to have done relatively little private work. A few houses are recorded in Bray and Dalkey and a marble staircase for the Marquess of Sligo at Westport House (1858) but he does not seem to have designed any commercial premises or churches. His last important recorded commission was the new agricultural hall for the Royal Dublin Society at Ballsbridge, built in 1879-80. [see 5]
The building is brown brick with granite stone dressing. Two colonnades of Tuscan columns flank the central monumental arch porch which has the entrance doors inside under a further two stone arches. The building is fronted by stone steps as it was built on an embankment.
The central block is double height, topped by an open pediment portico which has ends sitting on a frieze on top of pairs of oversized granite scrolled “corbels.” The large entrance arch is supported on a structure of paired columns.
At the rear of Harcourt Street Station at Hatch Street is the curved end wall of the former trainshed. The curved is due to the placement of the former turntable upon which steam locomotives turned to travel in the opposite direction. [6] This engine shed was used at another time as a bonded warehouse.
In 1900 an accident occurred, when a train failed to stop at the station due to the weight of 30 wagonloads of cattle.
The 1900 crash, photograph courtesy of Odeon websiteThe 1900 crash, photograph courtesy of Odeon website, copyright Ciaran Cooney.
Archiseek describes:
“Beneath the station shed are excellent arched vaults originally designed as a bonded spirit store and now housing a wine merchants and one of Dublin’s trendiest nightspots. The main front part of the building has recently been renovated and cleaned and is now an enormous bar which looks and feels bigger that the external dimensions of the station would suggest. The bar design manages to be sympathetic to the original design suggesting a large ‘Gentleman’s Club’ of the Victorian era without descending to pastiche.
“The rear of the station has various store buildings which were accessible from a raised ramp off Harcourt Road. Due for redevelopment, these stores are quite large containing many brick archways from area to area and were used by Dunlop for many years.” [4]
The Odeon, photograph courtesy of Lisney Commercial Real Estate, June 2025.The Odeon, photograph courtesy of Lisney Commercial Real Estate, June 2025.The Odeon, photograph courtesy of Lisney Commercial Real Estate, June 2025.The Odeon, photograph courtesy of Lisney Commercial Real Estate, June 2025.The Odeon, photograph courtesy of Lisney Commercial Real Estate, June 2025.
This entry makes me want to visit the Steam Museum in County Kildare, another Section 482 property! More next week on a different pub, Doheny and Nesbitt.
Help me to fund my creation and update of this website. It is my “full time job” and created purely out of love for the subject and I receive no payment so any donation is appreciated! My costs include travelling to our destinations from Dublin, accommodation if we need to stay somewhere nearby, and entrance fees. Your donation could also help with the cost of the occasional book I buy for research (though I mostly use the library – thank you Kevin Street library!). Your donation could also help with my Irish Georgian Society membership or attendance for talks and lectures, or the Historic Houses of Ireland annual conference in Maynooth.
Ashtown Castle is in the Phoenix Park. The Office of Public Works are currently running one tour per day. [1] The tower house had been incorporated into a house in the late 1700s, and the Office of Public Works demolished the house, which had become very dilapidated, to restore the tower house.
Hugh Tyrrell (d. 1199), later 1st Baron of Castleknock, came to Ireland with Strongbow, Richard de Clare, 2nd Earl of Pembroke. Tyrrell, a second cousin of Strongbow, became right hand man to Hugh de Lacy, Lord of Meath. De Lacy conferred the feudal barony of Castleknock to Tyrrell.
The land at Ashtown, now part of the Phoenix Park, was granted by Hugh Tyrrell to the Hospital of St. John the Baptist in the 12th century. The Hospital belonged to the “Crutched Friars” (brothers of the cross) and was one of the earliest city charities.
When the monasteries were dissolved in 1540, Walter Foster was leasing the land, which he in turn sublet to two tenants.
It is not known when the tower house was built but a fragment of a wooden roof truss, found in the wall during the restoration project, has been dated by dendrochronology to the early seventeenth century. The OPW website tells us that it could date further back, as early as the fifteenth century.
In 1429 a statute was passed by King Henry IV to grant £10 to every man within the Pale who would build a castle of certain minimal dimentions in the following ten years. Ashtown may have been built in this period.
On the tour, our tour guide told us the castle was built for a General Lambert in the early 1600s. I am not sure if this is conjecture or fact! General John Lambert (7 September 1619 – 1 March 1684) was an English army officer and politician and he fought in Cromwell’s army for the Parliamentarians. He was also Deputy Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.
Major-General John Lambert, (1619-1683), Parliamentarian, Deputy Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, courtesy of National Gallery of Ireland.
From the OPW website:
“For years it was completely hidden within the walls of a Georgian mansion once occupied by the under-secretary for Ireland. When that house was demolished in the late 1980s, the castle was rediscovered. It has since been fully restored and now welcomes visitors.”
Ashtown Castle, Dublin, courtesy of Phoenix Park website. The arrangement of the growing hedges outline where the house was, before it was demolished.
Outside, the hedges to one side of the castle form the shape of the house that used to stand there, attached to the old castle.
“The castle was dated to the early seventeenth century on the basis of surviving fragments of a roof truss found in the wall during the restoration project in the early 1990s. There is in the stonework some suggestion of a further wing to the north, but no archaeological evidence was found, leaving this section unresolved. The builder is unknown, but in 1641 the estate was in the ownership of John Connell, a distant ancestor of Daniel O’Connell. Curiously the Civil Survey, 1654, lists him as a Protestant. Stone from a quarry at Pelletstown owned by Connell was used in the building of the original wall of the Park.”
When James Butler 12th Earl of Ormond (who later became 1st Duke of Ormond) was created Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1662, he purchased the tower house and lands around it to create a deer park for King Charles II.
In 1668 Marcus Trevor, Viscount Dungannon, was appointed Ranger of the Park. Along with two Keepers, he was responsible for overseeing the Fallow deer imported from England.
The tower house became the official residence of second Keeper of the Park, William Flower, but he assigned it to a subordinate.
In the late eighteenth century the tower house was extended to become the Under Secretary’s residence, and was called Ashtown Lodge.
After Irish Independence, the house served as the residence of the Papal Nuncio. In 1978 the Papal Nuncio moved to a different residence.
The guide showed us what the house used to look like, that had been attached to the castle. For some more photographs, you can visit the Irish Tower House website. [2]
Restoration started in Autumn 1989. Corbels that carried the floor levels were uncovered, and also portions of fireplaces on the first and second floors and a piece of window jamb on the first floor.
Restoration work including new stonework, insertion of oak floors and roof was carried out by craftsmen attached to the National Monuments depot in the Phoenix Park.
Help me to fund my creation and update of this website. It is my “full time job” and created purely out of love for the subject and I receive no payment so any donation is appreciated! My costs include travelling to our destinations from Dublin, accommodation if we need to stay somewhere nearby, and entrance fees. Your donation could also help with the cost of the occasional book I buy for research (though I mostly use the library – thank you Kevin Street library!). Your donation could also help with my Irish Georgian Society membership or attendance for talks and lectures, or the Historic Houses of Ireland annual conference in Maynooth.
€15.00
MOLI (Museum of Literature Ireland), Newman House, 85-86 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin
“No. 85 St. Stephen’s Green was built in 1738 by Richard Cassels, architect of Powerscourt House and Russborough House, and is notable for its exquisite baroque plasterwork by the Lafranchini brothers. The adjoining townhouse at No. 86 was constructed in 1765 and features superb examples of rococo stuccowork by the distinguished Dublin School of Plaster Workers.“
85 St. Stephen’s Green was built for Captain Hugh Montgomerie. Robert O’Byrne tells us that Hugh was one of five children born to Sir Thomas Montgomerie and Clemence Hovell. Clemence was married to Charles Stuart, who died in 1709, and her children with Thomas Montgomerie were born before her husband’s death so were illegitimate. [1]
In 1738 Hugh Montgomerie married Mary Bingham, eldest daughter of Sir John Bingham 5th Baronet of Castlebar, County Mayo, and it may have been her wealth that helped to build their new house on St. Stephen’s Green designed by Richard Castle (or Cassels). After Hugh Montgomerie’s death, Mary married Vesey Colclough (1734-1745), whom we came across when we saw Tintern Abbey in County Wexford.
86 St Stephen’s Green is a granite-faced townhouse built in 1765 for Richard Chapel Whaley (d. 1796) who was called “Burn Chapel” Whaley due to his anti-Catholic sentiment. The “Chapel” or “Chapell” was really part of his name, from his mother’s family. The Dictionary of Irish Biography tells us “he was a fervent priest-hunter, and once while hunting a priest burned down a catholic chapel when he fired his fowling-piece into the roof and the wadding lodged in the thatch. Forever afterwards he was known as ‘Burn-Chapel ’ Whaley.”
It is ironic that Richard Chapel Whaley’s house is now owned by the Catholic university, University College Dublin, and named for Cardinal John Henry Newman (1801-1890) who famously converted from Protestantism to Catholicism, and by his example, encouraged many others to convert to Catholicism! The house may have been designed by Robert West, more famous as a stuccadore [2]. Much of the stucco work inside is in the style of Robert West – he may have done some of the work and it is thought that others were involved also. [2]
Richard Chapel Whaley (1700–69) wanted to create a house that dwarfed his neighbour in number 85, which was owned at that time by John Meade, 1st Earl Clanwilliam. 85 St. Stephen’s Green was known as Clanwilliam House.
The two houses, 85 and 86, were joined in the mid 19th century and named after Cardinal Newman (1801-90). Together they contain some of the most spectacular plasterwork in Ireland.
The MOLI website continues: “The building takes its name from the theologian and educationalist Dr. John Henry Newman, who was rector when the Catholic University was founded in 1854. UCD Newman House also boasts many literary and cultural associations. The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins lived here during his time as Professor of Classics at the university, and James Joyce was a student here before graduating with a BA in 1902. Other famous Irish writers to have studied at UCD Newman House include Flann O’Brien, Kate O’Brien and Maeve Binchy.
“Explore the stunning surroundings and turbulent history of Numbers 85 and 86 St Stephen’s Green on MoLI’s Historic House Tour.
“These beautiful examples of Georgian opulence – with lavish stuccowork by the famous Lafranchini brothers – have served not only as a university and a museum, but also as the townhouse of Buck Whaley, one of Ireland’s most infamous playboys and adventurers.
“Join your guide as they bring you on a journey through these hidden historic rooms, witness these architectural treasures up close, and learn about the many fascinating characters that have passed through over the centuries.“
86 St. Stephen’s Green is of five bays across, of four storeys over basement. It has a two bay entrance hall flanked by two further rooms, and the service stair is on the transverse axis between the entrance hall and the rear right-hand parlour, Christine Casey tells us. [3]
The stair hall decoration is particularly splendid. Acanthus ornament mixes with Rococo elements such as trophies of musical instruments, asymmetrical scrolls and birds distinctive of the Dublin school of plasterwork.
Richard Chapel Whaley was the father of Thomas “Buck” Whaley (1766-1800). Thomas’s father died when he was only three years old, and Thomas inherited much property and wealth. He gambled away nearly everything he owned and died almost penniless aged just 34. [4] Another house he inherited was Castletown in County Carlow – not to be confused with the more well-known Castletown in County Kildare (or Castletown “Cox” in County Kilkenny), and also Whaley Abbey in County Wicklow. Jimmy O’Toole tells us that his annual income was the equivalent of about £700,000 today. Poor Buck Whaley was a gambler, and he made a bet that he could travel to Israel and back within two years. He won the wager, and £15,000. I read his memoir and he comes across as a lovely man despite his foibles.
Thomas “Buck” Whaley (1766-1800), c. 1780.Buck Whaley’s Memoirs, courtesy Fonsie Mealy auction.The sitter’s maiden name was Maria Courtney but for some seven or eight years before her death in 1798 in Douglas, Isle of Man, she was known as Mrs. Whaley. She was the constant companion of a wealthy and dissolute young Irishman, Thomas, or Buck, Whaley, by whom she had four children: Thomas, Richard, Ann, and Sophia Isabella. They lived in a house Buck Whaley built on the Isle of Man, where this portrait may have hung in the dining room. Portrait is attributed to George Chinnery, c. 1795. Picture courtesy of The Met, New York.
Thomas “Buck” Whaley’s sister Anne married John Fitzgibbon, later 1st Earl of Clare, who became Lord Chancellor of Ireland. After his lover Maria Courtney died, he married Mary Catherine Lawless, sister of Valentine Lawless 2nd Baron Cloncurry.
Valentine Lawless, 2nd Baron Cloncurry, a portrait in 85 St. Stephen’s Green.
The front ground-floor drawing room is, Casey tells us, virtually identical to the now lost French Room at Charlemont House, the home of James Caulfeild, 1st Earl of Charlemont, a house built in 1763. The plaster and timber panels of the walls, Casey writes, appear to emulate the boiserie interiors of mid eighteenth century France.
The Great Room, three bays wide and overlooking St. Stephen’s Green, is not normally part of the MOLI tour, but our guide let us pop our heads in to marvel at the plasterwork. It is let to the School of Music. It has an elaborate and stylized bird ceiling, similar to one by Filippo Lafranchini at 9 St. Stephen’s Green. [see 3].
The Bishop’s Room is to the rear of the house. It has a Rococo ceiling composed of interlocking C-scrolls and acanthus ornament. The front drawing room has a Rococo ceiling with a flock of birds encircling the central boxx, “rocaille-backed scrolls” in the corners, flower baskets and garlands of flowers.
We then went outside on the tour to enter 85 St Stephen’s Green, next door. This is a smaller building, a Neo-Palladian urban palazzo designed by Richard Castle for Captain Hugh Montgomerie (d. 1741), built for entertaining! It has a rusticated granite street front, a Venetian window overhead formed by pedimented openings, and a balustraded parapet. The strict symmetry of the front hides an asymmetrical interior.
85 St. Stephen’s Green is of three bays and two storeys. Its lower floor is rusticated, and the first floor has a central Venetian window. Inside, it has a two bay entrance hall with a screen of two rounded arches opeing to the stair hall behind. On the right is a single bay front parlour, called the Apollo Room. The stair hall is flanked by a back parlour, and their is a service stair behind the stair hall, and a third room projecting out the back. [3] Christine Casey describes the spatial sequence as Baroque, and points out that it shows us the link Castle had to the Vanbrugh-Pearce circle of architects. The hall retains its eighteenth century flagsone, wainscoting and Kilkenny marble chimneypiece.
I don’t think we entered the Apollo room. Christine Casey tells us that it is rich in stucco ornament, which is accepted to be by Paolo and Filippo Lafranchini. Around the walls are high-relief almost Neoclassical figures of the Nine Muses set in moulded rectangular frames. I mistook the picture in Dublin City Library and Archives (below) to be of Riverstown House in County Cork, which is very similar.
Christine Casey tells us that the stair is mahogany with finely crafted Tuscan balusters and carved tread ends. The upper stair hall, she tells us, was much altered in the nineteenth century and a reconstruction of its ceiling and plasterwork was recently installed, based on an outline of the original scheme found behind the nineteenth century plaster.
At the head of the stair is the ante-room to the saloon, which was much altered c. 1830 by Judge Nicholas Ball (the last private owner), who cut through the ceiling and created an elegant top-lit galleried library. A large extension with a canted bow was built across the back wall of the house in the early nineteenth century, creating a new reception room on each floor, blocking the light into the now windowless ground floor parlour and first floor ante-room.
The Great Room or Saloon is the full width of the house and overlooks St. Stephen’s Green. The stucco work is by the Lafranchini brothers Paolo and Filippo. The room is entered by a pair of Corinthian doorcases. It is lit by a central Venetian window flanked by two sash windows, all with Corinthian frames.
Newman House 1953, Dublin City Library and Archives.A layer of plasterwork has been added below the dentil cornice in this photograph, as we can see in my photographs. [2]
The frieze below the dentil cornice was deed relatively recently and was copied from the saloon frieze at Tyrone House. [see 3]
The cove, Christine Casey tells us, is ornamented with six lobed ovals containing figure groups, two on each of the long walls and one at each end. These are linked by a frieze of putti who grasp and swing from the oak garlands!
The figures of Prudence and Justice at each end of the room derive from paintings by Simon Vouet in the Salon de Mars at Versailles, Christine Casey tells us.
[3] Casey, Christine. The Buildings of Ireland: Dublin. The City Within the Grand and Royal Canals and the Circular Road with the Phoenix Park. Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2005.
[4] p. 125, O’Toole, Jimmy, The Carlow Gentry: What will the neighbours say! Published by Jimmy O’Toole, Carlow, Ireland, 1993. Printed by Leinster Leader Ltd, Naas, Kildare.
In 1840 Samuel Bewley and his son Charles began to import tea directly from China. Charles’s brother Joshua established the China Tea Company, the precursor to Bewleys. Fiona Murdoch tells us that Joshua Bewley started off with a premises consisting of three houses on Sycamore Street in Dublin, just off Dame Street beside the Olympia Theatre. He dealt mostly in tea and sugar and a small amount of coffee. He also sold vases and ornaments. [1]
The Georges Street café, which is no longer a Bewleys café, opened in 1894. Joshua changed supplier for his coffee and had to purchase in larger quantities. Worried he would not sell it all, he started to hold coffee-making demonstrations at the back of the shop, hoping people would purchase the coffee on their way out. His wife Bertha made rolls and scones which Joshua carried on his bicycle into town to serve with the coffee.
In 1896, he opened another café at 10 Westmoreland Street. Joshua’s son Ernest joined the business. In 1916 he bought 12 Westmoreland Street.
The Grafton Street branch opened in 1927 in what were originally two Georgian townhouses.
The higgeldy piggeldy rooms upstairs remind us that it was a private residence. One of the rooms upstairs now houses a lunchtime theatre, which opened in 1999. They have lately introduced a new Soirée performance, which takes place on the second Thursday of each run at 7pm.
The buildings on Grafton Street previously housed Whyte’s Academy, a school attended by Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, and Robert Emmet.
The Buildings of Ireland publication on Dublin South City tells us: “Rebuilt in 1926 to designs by Miller and Symes, the playful mosaics framing the ground and mezzanine floors are indebted to the Egyptian style then in vogue following the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb. The interior, originally modelled on the grand cafés of Europe and Oriental tearooms, was restructured in 1995 but retains a suite of six stained glass windows designed (1927) by the celebrated Harry Clarke (1889-1931). Four windows lighting the back wall of the tearoom are particularly fine and represent the four orders of architecture.” [2]
The 1995 renovation was designed by Paul Brazil.
Image by James Fennell, 2014, Tourism Ireland, from Ireland’s Content Pool.Bewleys, courtesy Bewleys stock photographs, flickr, 2009.
The four orders of architecture represented are the Doric, Corinthian, Ionic and Composite.
Ernest Bewley’s three sons Victor, Alfred and Joe took over: Victor ran the business, Alfred cooked and Joe ran Knocksedan farm with its prize-winning Jersey cows. Ernest imported the first Jersey cows to Ireland. I remember looking forward to the jersey cow milk when we’d visit when I was young. I used to think the waitresses’ smart black and white uniform the height of glamour.
My great-aunt Harriet, famed for her severity, who used to say one should always leave the table hungry, would buy the famed cherry buns in the vestibule, which was a shop, and bring them inside to eat, as they were cheaper in the shop than in the café!
In the 1980s and 90s Dubliners loved the coffee with hot milk that Bewleys served, a precursor to today’s flat white. A group of friends met weekly for a conversation group downstairs in the Grafton Street branch. It was a rare venue open in the evening that was not a pub. One evening we were locked in when the staff didn’t notice we were still deep in discussion!
The Westmoreland Street venue was my haunt in the late 1990s, where I loved the animal skin themed snug downstairs and where we could chat philosophy for hours.
Bewleys Westmoreland Street courtesy Liam Blake, Real Ireland [3]
Recently Paddy Bewley died, the last of the family directly involved with the running of the cafe and coffee business of Bewleys. Paddy was responsible for starting the coffee supplying end of the Bewley business.
Paddy, like those in his family before him, was a Quaker, and he lived by their ethos. Mungo Bewley left Cumberland for Ireland in 1700 and settled in Edenderry, County Offaly. Ireland offered religious tolerance under the Toleration Act. Many Quakers entered trade rather than professions because the former did not require an oath, and Quakers did not believe in taking oaths, believing that their word was enough.
Victor Bewley writes in his memoir that Maud Gonne frequented Bewleys. He adds:
“Bewley’s was obviously a place conducive to writers because there was a lot of life milling around, so to speak. Mary Lavin was donkey’s years coming in and I believe she wrote some of her early stories in the cafés. Maeve Binchy became a regular customer when she worked on The Irish Times.” [4]
In 1986 Patrick Campbell acquired the company of Bewleys, forming the Campbell Bewley Group, and Paddy Bewley continued to work for the company.
In 1996, Paddy Bewley signed up the company to purchase Fair Trade coffee only, guaranteeing that producers of coffee and their communities would be paid a good price for their beans, irrespective of market fluctuations. In 2008 the company’s roasteries and headquarters in Dublin became 100% carbon neutral. (notes from Paddy Bewley’s obituary in the Irish Times, Saturday January 8th 2022).
There has been much discussion lately about the beautiful Harry Clarke windows in the Grafton Street Bewleys – are they part of the building, or removeable art? I believe they are not actually the windows but can be removed. It is being discussed because it’s not clear who owns them.
The Bewleys business branched into hotels. Stephen and I held our wedding reception in the Bewleys hotel in Ballsbridge, a former school run by the Freemasons. The hotels too have been sold on to another business.
Royal Hospital Kilmainham, Military Road, Dublin 8.
Since the 2025 Revenue Section 482 list has not yet been published, today’s entry is about the Royal Hospital Kilmainham: not a Historic House, but of relevance since designed by several important architects: William Robinson, Thomas Burgh and Francis Johnson.
The most decorative rooms have been closed to the public for years for renovation, but I am writing now as I had an opportunity to enter the magnificently baroque chapel in order to see a film. Excuse the poor quality of my photographs in the chapel – I didn’t want to disturb the other film viewers.
“Since 2018, The North Range has been closed due to remedial works and essential upgrades, including fire safety improvements, mechanical and electrical system replacements, and the meticulous restoration of the Baroque Chapel ceiling, historic timber panelling, and stained glass. This extensive project, operated by the Office of Public Works (OPW), was completed in July 2024, and it was announced the reopening after 6.5 years. We are more than proud to share the news that we are preparing to host events in The North Range.“
Aww, events? But what about access to the wonderful dining room with its portraits? We shall have to see if it is open…
“Kilmainham” is named after St. Maighneann who established a church and monastery in the area around AD 606. In 1174 the Knights Hospitaller, a Catholic order that focussed on aiding the sick and the poor, founded a Priory in Kilmainham, with the aid of Richard de Clare, 2nd Earl of Pembroke, better known as Strongbow. The Priory was destroyed in 1530s with the dissolution of the monasteries by King Henry VIII.
With this history, it seemed appropriate to locate the Royal Hospital here when Arthur Forbes, later Earl of Granard, proposed the idea of building an institution to accommodate veteran soldiers, similar to Les Invalides in Paris. The building was founded by King Charles II in 1679 to accommodate 300 soldiers and construction was overseen by the King’s representative in Ireland, known as the viceroy or Lord Lieutenant, James Butler 1st Duke of Ormond. He was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland from 1661-1669 then again 1677-1684.
Over the next 247 years, thousands of army pensioners lived out their final days within its walls.
The information board from the Royal Hospital tells us that it was hoped that care for injured and elderly soldiers would promote recruitment. After the Civil War between Cromwellian Parliamentarians and Royalists, Charles II was naturally concerned to have a strong military force.
The building was designed by the Chief Engineer and Surveyor General for Fortifications, Buildings, Works, Mines and Plantations for Ireland, William Robinson (1645-1712).
The information board tells us: “Born in England, Robinson went on to hold a great number of public positions. When he resigned as Surveyor General in 1700 due to ill health, he was knighted and given the position of Deputy Receiver-General at the Privy Council of Ireland. However, he was implicated in a financial scandal and following a period of imprisonment at Dublin Castle, he fled to England. He died in 1712 and is buried in Westminster Abbey.”
He must have been forgiven if buried in the Abbey! The notice board also tells us that he personally acquired the portion of the original site near Islandbridge, and built himself a house with a view of the Royal Hospital, but it no longer stands.
Royal Hospital Kilmainham, 15th October 2023.Royal Hospital Kilmainham, 15th October 2023.
The next Surveyor General, Thomas Burgh (1670-1730), added more to the building. In 1704 he added the tower and steeple over the north range, and designed the infirmary.
In the fourth wing, not generally open to the public, is the splendid Robinson’s Chapel with a baroque plaster ceiling, carved oak and beautiful stained glass window, and the Geat Hall. You can see an online tour at https://my.matterport.com/show/?m=ce2pG4J1huc&mls=1
The chapel is dedicated to the memory of King Charles I and its ceiling is beautifully Baroque, a profusion of cherubs’ heads, geometrical shapes, borders, garlands and flowers. Amazingly, the ceiling is a papier-maché replica of the original. The original was too heavy, and the replica was installed in 1901. The artist of the original is unknown. The room is panelled in Baltic pine with ornate oak carving and Corinthian pilasters.
The oak carving of the altar is by Huguenot refugee from Paris, James Tabary. The carvings above the south, east and west Hospital entrances, which are made of wood but painted to look like stone, may also be by Tabary.
The stained glass in the Chapel’s large east window mostly dates to the 19th century, although some of it is said to come from the medieval Priory of St. John the Hospitaller.
In 1849 young Queen Victoria visited the hospital and bestowed a gift of stained glass which shows the coats of arms of the various Masters of the Hospital, which was made c. 1852 in London by Irish artist Michael O’Connor.
The Great Hall contains portraits that have hung here since 1713, and splendidly carved trophies over the doors remind me of those at Beaulieu in County Louth. The portaits include Queen Anne, Queen Mary, William III, Narcissus Marsh, Charles II, James 1st Duke of Ormond and the Richard Butler Earl of Arran and Earl of Ossory (sons of the Duke of Ormond), amongst others. A library which belonged to the original hospital is also cared by the OPW. The northern wing also contains the Master’s Lodgings, made for the Master of the Royal Hospital.
Royal Hospital Kilmainham, 15th October 2023.The Great Hall, Royal Hospital Kilmainham, photograph taken 1987, from Dublin City Library and Archives. [see 2]Royal Hospital Kilmainham dining hall by Robert French, Lawrence Photographic Collection NLI, flickr constant commons.Royal Hospital Kilmainham, 15th October 2023.Royal Hospital Kilmainham, 15th October 2023.Richard Butler (1639-1686) 1st Earl of Arran, son of the Duke of Ormonde, Royal Hospital Kilmainham, 15th October 2023.Thomas Butler (1634-1680) 6th Earl of Ossory, studio of Sir Peter Lely, circa 1678, courtesy of National Portrait Gallery NPG 371. Second son of the Duke and Duchess of Ormond and father of 2nd Duke of Ormonde.
In 1805, Francis Johnston carried out restoration work, and in the 1820s remodelled the Master’s Quarters in the northwest corner. He also designed the Adjutant General’s office and the Richmond Tower which stands at the west entrance to the hospital grounds.
The garden, known as the Master’s Garden, has been restored to its formal glory under the suprvision of architect Elizabeth Morgan. In 1693 Chambré Brabazon 5th Earl of Meath was Master of the Hospital and a Minute of the Royal Hospital Committee notes that he was asked to prepare an account for an estimate of works necessary to put some order on the garden. The work was not carried out at the time.
The Garden house is included in a painting by Joseph Tudor in 1750. It was probably designed as a small dining pavilion or banqueting house, with a high coved ceiling on the first floor, and it is attributed to Edward Lovett Pearce circa 1734.
The house was extended in the late 19th century into ahouse for the head gardener.
Happy New Year! My best wishes for the year ahead. I hope it will bring many exciting house visits.
The Section 482 Revenue list of properties that will be open to visitors won’t be published until late February in 2025, unfortunately.
2025 Diary of Irish Historic Houses (section 482 properties)
To purchase an A5 size 2025 Diary of Historic Houses (opening times and days are not listed so the calendar is for use for recording appointments and not as a reference for opening times) send your postal address to jennifer.baggot@gmail.com along with €20 via this payment button. The calendar of 84 pages includes space for writing your appointments as well as photographs of the historic houses. The price includes postage within Ireland. Postage to U.S. is a further €10 for the A5 size calendar, so I would appreciate a donation toward the postage – you can click on the donation link.
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A tour of Lambay Castle is expensive so I don’t think Stephen and I will be going any time soon, so I thought I would publish an entry about it today.
The island is owned and protected today by the Revelstoke Trust and daily management lies in the hands of Alex Baring, 7th Baron Revelstoke, and his family.
The castle on Lambay Island is privately owned but can be rented for accommodation, and there is other accommodation on the island. One can also visit the island on a day trip but the castle is not open to visitors unless booked in advance on the website.
Accommodation dates in 2025: April 1- September 30 2025
The website tells us that it the largest island off the east coast of Ireland and the largest privately owned island in North-West Europe. The island is home to seals and puffins, with deer and wallabies that were originally imported. Nesting birds include Fulmars, Guillemots, Herring Gulls, Kittiwakes, Manx Shearwaters and Puffins, while Greylag Geese are common winter visitors.
The island’s farm produces organic meat from sheep, deer and wallabies. Energy on the island is provided by a wind turbine and solar panels, and water is from a natural spring.
The island has an ancient history. The website tells us:
“Its early history is obscure but, like many other small islands, it attracted saints, hermits and pirates. It is thought to be one of the first few places where Viking raiders landed and proofs of its prehistoric history and early modern settlement were found around the harbour which date from the 1st century AD. Excavations also revealed Iron-Age graves dating back to circa 500 BC.”
St. Columba may have established a monastery on the island as early as the sixth century.
In 1181 the island was granted by Prince John (later king) to the Archbishops of Dublin, who received rents and tithes from the island.
To prevent piracy or invasion of the mainland, a license was granted to build a fort in the early 1500s. The structure built may may have formed the core of the castle still surviving when Cecil Baring later purchased the land. John Challoner (d. 1581), who was the first Secretary of State for Ireland, appointed by Queen Elizabeth I in 1560, agreed to build a village, castle and harbour on the island. The website tells us that he set up mines for copper and silver on the island, though it is not clear how successful this was, and bred falcons.
The island passed by marriage to the Ussher family in 1611. James Ussher (1581-1656) is the cleric famous for calculating that the earth was created around 6 pm on 22 October 4004 BC.
James Ussher (1580-1656) Archbishop of Armagh aged 74 by Peter Lely, courtesy of National Trust Hatchlands.
Sean O’Reilly tells us in his Irish Houses and Gardens. From the Archives of Country Life (published by Aurum Press Ltd, London, 1998) that:
“Weaver’s first article on an Irish house already showed clearly his concern for disposing of unauthenticated traditions. Among those he corrected was the presumption, promulgated in Samuel Lewis’s Topographical Dictionary of 1837, that the island was granted by Queen Elizabeth to Archbishop James Ussher, a figure famous for dating the creation of the world to 4004 BC on the basis of a chronology of the Old Testament. Weaver pointed out that the island was in fact held by Ussher’s cousin, William. Despite many vicissitudes, Lambay Island remained in possession of the Usshers from 1551 to 1804, from which time no significant work was done on the castle until the arrival of Baring.” [1]
The website tells us that the island was used as a Prisoner of War camp for over 1,000 Irish soldiers during the Williamite war after the Battle of Aughrim.
In 1805 the island was inherited by William Wolseley and in 1814 it was acquired by the family of Richard Wogan Talbot, 2nd Baron Talbot of Malahide. They built a school and a Catholic chapel on the island. The chapel was later renovated by Lutyens to resemble a Doric temple and the school no longer exists.
James Considine sold Portrane House and purchased Lambay in 1888. Count Considine set about developing the island as a hunting estate and was the first man to introduce deer onto the island.
In 1904, Cecil Baring, later the 3rd Baron Revelstoke, and his wife Maude Lorillard bought the island. Baring was a classical scholar and naturalist as well as former director of his family’s New York office of Barings Bank. The website tells us:
”In early 1904, with Maude heavily pregnant, Cecil went to investigate Lambay; he found a small line of cottages occupied by coastguards, a chapel, a walled garden, a dilapidated old fort and a magnificent wealth of wildlife. It was an intoxicating mixture.
”The first task facing the Barings was the repair of the castle and they refitted a heavy lugger, the Shamrock, to carry the necessary materials to the island. The Shamrock (version 3.0) is still in use today as Lambay’s main cargo boat and is used to transport the sheep and cattle as well as bulkier materials and equipment for the off-grid energy system.“
Baring hired Edward Lutyens to renovate the property. The website tells us:
”Lutyens was utterly delighted by Lambay and the couple, and the visit sparked a warm friendship between the three of them that would last throughout their lives. Lutyens extended the Castle masterfully and by 1910 it was a beautiful refuge for Cecil and Maude, surrounded by an impressive circular wall, which Lutyens nicknamed “The Ramparts Against Uncharity“.
p. 30. “By the time of Lutyen’s arrival much original fabric had deteriorated, and he was required to rebuild in part, though he retained triumphantly the ancient mood. A new service range was necessary, discreetly located off a corner of the castle and set into the ground so as not to dominate the main castle. Lutyens also ensured the prominence of the medieval fabric by deciding not to repeat the leitmotif of the original – the stepped gables – in the new work. Instead he used steep sweeping tiled roofs broken by dormers, gables and stacks.” [1]
Lambay Castle,photograph courtesy ofwww.lambayisland.ieFrom “In Harmony with Nature, The Irish Country House Garden 1600-1900” in the Irish Georgian Society, July 2022, curated by Robert O’Byrne. Lambay Castle, Lambay Island. Photograph from Country Life published 4th May 1912.
The Historic Houses of Ireland website describes the residence:
“Today the three-bay centre of the north-west front, which faces a bastion gateway in the Rampart Wall, is flanked by two full-height projecting bays, each with crow-stepped gables and tall chimneys. Lutyens attached a wing to provide guest accommodation at the northeastern corner and regarded the “link between the two buildings as one of his most brilliant architectural coups” since the castle, which appears single storied on this front, continues to dominate the two-storey wing. The castle and the farm buildings, and the walls of the much enlarged gardens were built in grey-green Lambay stone, with grey pantile roofs, and form a sequence of courts, walled gardens and enclosed yards that give the impression of a small hamlet nestling for protection beneath the castle walls.” [2]
The castle and west forecourt of Lambay Castle, Lambay Island. Photograph from Country Life published 4th May 1912.Lambay Castle: ground and first floor plans, as altered by Lutyens, 1908-11, courtesy https://landedfamilies.blogspot.com
Sean O’Reilly describes Lutyen’s work in more detail:
“Lutyens did need to provide suitable facilities within the surviving ruins of the castle, the most basic of these being a staircase. Curiously, the original castle fabric did not possess internal access to the upper floor, so Lutyens inserted his in the space between the bastions at the rear of the building. He linked these two with a sequence of three cross windows broken by the arched doorway leading to the staircase. The new arrangement is a typically imaginative piece of intervention by Lutyens, as it performs a number of functions with appropriate efficiency. It gives access not only to the bedrooms on the upper floor, but also to the raised ground at the rear of the castle, and it connects to the underground service passage to the kitchen wing.
“Reception rooms also needed to be provided inside the ruins, and again it was to Lutyens’s credit that he succeeded in creating an imaginative variety of shapes and spaces without intruding on the individuality of the building. Perhaps most surprising is the provision of two entrance halls, one in each of the corner bastions of the entrance front, and each with its own door. The sitting room, reached only after passing through the central dining room and staircase hall behind, is in the corner adjoining the service wing.
“Due to the need for the reconstruction of this corner Lutyens was more free to open out the architecture, without actually intruding on surviving original fabric. Here he introduced a pointed stone arch linking the section of the room in the original bastion with that part set between the bastions. Lutyens topped this range with a hipped roof – an informal nod to the detailing of the service wing – and square battlements – a more formal bow to the stepping in the original gables, seen across the view of the north court.” [1]
The Historic Houses of Ireland website tells us that the castle is “constructed with small doors and small casements so that the inhabitants seem, on rough days, to be sheltering like monks.” [see 2]
The interior has vaulted ceilings, stone fireplaces and a curved stone staircase, while much of the furniture chosen by Lutyens is still arranged just as he intended.
Spiral arches,Lambay Castle,photograph courtesy ofwww.lambayisland.ieAt the head of the stone stair at Lambay Castle. Photograph from Country Life published 4th May 1912. The staircase landing at Lambay Castle.Photograph from Country Life published 4th May 1912. The eastern half of the sitting room at Lambay Castle. Photograph from Country Life published 4th May 1912. The kitchen in the guest accommodation in the castle,Lambay Castle,photograph courtesy ofwww.lambayisland.ieThe guest accommodation in the castle,Lambay Castle,photograph courtesy ofwww.lambayisland.ie
Lutyens also adapted and enlarged a number of other early structures and integrated them into an ingenious coordinated layout for the whole island, combining the farm, gardens and plantations as a single composition, in collaboration with the horticulturalist and garden designer Gertrude Jekyll.
Mark Bence-Jones describes the wall that surrounds the castle and gardens: this wall serves the practical purpose of a wind-break, enabling trees and plants to grow inside it which would not grow outside. [3] He also describes the approach to the castle:
“Lutyens also designed the approach from the harbour, with curved step-like terraces reminiscent of the now-vanished Ripetta in Rome; characteristically, having ascended these Baroque steps, one has to cross an open field to come to the curtain wall, the entrance gaeway not being at first visible; so that there is a wonderful sense of expectancy. Close the the harbour is the White House, a largely single-storey horseshoe-shaped house with high roofs and white harled walls, which Lutyens designed 1930s for Lord Revelstoke’s daughter, Hon Mrs (Arthur) Pollen. On a hill is an old Catholic chapel, with a portico of tapering stone columns and a barrel vaulted ceiling.” [see 3]
The walled kitchen garden pierces the Rampart Wall to the South and there is the mausoleum of the Revelstokes, designed by Lutyens in 1930, on the opposite side of the enclosure. The website tells us:
”Cecil and Maude had 12 blissful years together with their little family on Lambay but alas, in 1922, a still young Maude died of cancer, leaving Cecil with two daughters, Daphne and Calypso, and their little son Rupert. Her body was brought back from London to the island for burial. Lutyens, who was then busy with war memorials and the government buildings of New Delhi, designed a large monument for her grave, set in against the rampart walls and facing towards the Castle. The mausoleum is today one of the most pleasant and peaceful spots on the island. Prefacing Cecil’s epitaph, a beautiful poem about his wife, is the word ‘Quiet’, both an imperative to the reader and a description of the monument’s setting.“
Lutyens also designed the White House overlooking the harbour on the western shores of the island, as a holiday home for the couple’s two daughters and their families. This is now available as visitor accommodation.
The website tells us that Cecil convened a congress to examine the flora and fauna of the island, the findings of which were published in The Irish Naturalist (1907).
“He also tried to introduce new species, including mouflon sheep, chamois goats, kinkajous and rheas. Today, there is a large population of wallabies on Lambay, but these were brought here in the 1980s by Cecil’s son Rupert Revelstoke, who had enjoyed having two pet wallabies in the 1950s.“
[3] 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.
Irish Historic Houses 