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This was the least personal of our tours to date, when we went on Saturday May 18th 2019, as there was no sign of the owners, the Rohan family, living in the grand reception rooms, although it is their family home. Ken and Brenda Rohan purchased the house in 1981. A visit to a house that is no longer owned by descendants of the early occupiers resonates less history, although in this case one must admit the current owners are probably no less invested than if their ancestors had occupied it for centuries, as they have maintained it to a high standard, and have carried out sensitive restoration to both house and garden. Dublin architect John O’Connell oversaw work on the interiors.
We are told in Great Irish Houses that the demesne is intact, with the original estate walls and entrance gates surviving. [1]
The National Inventory of Architectural Heritage website tells us that Charleville is a detached nine bay two storey Palladian style mansion, built in 1797 to designs by Whitmore Davis, an architect originally from County Antrim, who was then based in Dublin [2]. He also built another Section 482 house, Harristown House in County Kildare [3].
The house has a three-storey pedimented breakfront, the pediment is carried on four Ionic columns at the second and third storey level of the house, the ground floor level of the breakfront being “rusticated” as if it were a basement. [4] The windows on the ground floor level in the breakfront are arched. The Buildings of Ireland website claims that the breakfront facade is inspired by Lucan House in County Dublin, which is indeed very similar. Lucan House was designed by its owner, Agmondisham Vesey, consulting with architect William Chambers, a British architect who also designed the wonderful Casino at Marino in Dublin, as well as Charlemont House in Dublin (now the Hugh Lane Municipal Art Gallery) and the Examination Hall and Chapel in Trinity College Dublin.
It was hard to find, as we were directed to the back entrance, and the gps gave us directions to a different entrance. However the person to whom I’d spoken, from Rohan Holdings, specified where to go. We found someone waiting to let us in. He was very friendly and when I stated my name, for him to write down along with licence plate of car, for security, he asked was I related to the Baggots of Abbeyleix! Indeed, I am the daughter of a Baggot of Abbeyleix! And are they related to the Clara Baggots, he asked? Yes indeed, they are my cousins! So that was a great welcome! He opened the gates for us and said he would see us on the way out, and he directed us down the driveway, toward visitor parking.
Our tour guide came outside to meet us and invited us into the house. We entered a large impressive entry room. The guide told us that George IV was due to visit the house, but never came, as he was “inebriated.” After visiting Slane Castle, we knew all about George IV’s visit, and why he did not get to Charleville – he was too busy with his mistress in Slane Castle! The marquentry wooden flooring (applying pieces of veneer to a structure to form decorative patterns, designs or pictures) in the front hall was installed at great expense in preparation for his visit to the house. It’s still in excellent condition.
The well-informed guide told us about the previous owners and shared details about the furniture and paintings. The house is perfectly suitably decorated, sumptuous and beautiful. The main reception rooms lead off the entrance hall and run the length of the facade. The house was built for Charles Stanley Monck (1754-1802), 1st Viscount Monck of Ballytrammon, County Wexford, after his former house on the property was destroyed by fire in 1792.
Charles Stanley Monck succeeded his uncle Henry Monck to the estate when his uncle died in 1787. Henry Monck had inherited from his father, Charles Monck (1678-1752). Charles Monck, a barrister who lived on St. Stephen’s Green in Dublin, came into the property of Charleville through his marriage in 1705 to Agneta Hitchcock, the daughter and heiress of Major Walter Hitchcock. [5]
Although Henry Monck had no son to inherit his estate, he had a daughter, Elizabeth, who married George de la Poer Beresford (January 1734/35-1800), 1st Marquess of Waterford, of Curraghmore.
The Honourable George de la Poer Beresford (1735–1800), 2nd Earl of Tyrone, Later 1st Marquis of Waterford by Johann Zoffany, courtesy of National Trust Images.
Charles Stanley Monck was the son of Henry’s brother Thomas Monck (1723-1772) and Judith Mason (1733-1814) from Masonbrook, County Galway. Thomas Monck was a barrister, and served as MP for Old Leighlin in County Carlow.
Charles Stanley Monck married Anne Quin in 1784, daughter of Dr. Henry Quin and Anne Monck (she was a daughter of Charles Monck and Agneta Hitchcock so was a first cousin). He rebuilt the house in the same year that he was raised to the peerage as Baron Monck of Ballytrammon, County Wexford. He served as MP for Gorey, County Wexford from 1790 to 1798. In 1801, as a reward for voting for the Union of Britain and Ireland, he was awarded a Viscountcy.
As well as having Charleville rebuilt, he had a terrace of houses built in Upper Merrion Street in Dublin. Number 22 of this terrace was known as “Monck House,” and number 24 was Mornington House (where some say the Duke of Wellington was born) – the terrace is better known today for housing the Merrion Hotel.
The large entry hall has fluted Ionic columns, a ceiling with coving and central rosette plasterwork, an impressive fireplace and several doors. It is full of portraits, including, over the fireplace, a painting of the family of the Verekers, Viscount Gort. The double-door leading to the staircase hall is topped with a decorative archway, and the passageway between the front hall and the staircase hall is vaulted.
Leading off the hallway were large double doors, “elevator style” (see Salterbridge), the guide pointed out that they are not hinged, and are held in place by the top and bottom instead, swinging on a small bolt from frame into door on top and bottom. They are extremely sturdy, smooth and effective.
The tour is limited to the outer and inner entrance halls, the morning, drawing and dining rooms.
Charles Stanley did not have long to enjoy his house as he died just a few years later in 1802. He was succeeded by his son Henry Stanley Monck (1785-1848), 2nd Viscount, who was also given the title the Earl of Rathdowne. It was this Henry who made the alterations to the house in preparation for the visit of George IV in 1821.
The Earl of Rathdowne married Frances Mary Trench, daughter of William Power Keating Trench, 1st Earl of Clancarty.
William Power Keating Trench (1741-1805) (later first Earl of Clancarty) by Hugh Douglas Hamilton (1739-1808), courtesy Adam’s 28 March 2012. He was the father of Frances Mary, who married Henry Stanley Monck, 2nd Viscount of Ballytrammon, County Wexford and 1st Earl of Rathdowne.
Mark Bence-Jones in his A Guide to Irish Country Houses tells us that the Grecian Revival plasterwork is probably designed by Richard Morrison. There are also floor length Wyatt windows to the side of the house, similar to ones added to Carton in Kildare in 1817 by Richard Morrison.
The staircase hall contains a cantilevered Portland stone staircase and a balustrade of brass banisters. Hanging prominently over the stairs is a huge portrait of George IV’s visit to Ireland, picturing the people saying goodbye to him at the quay of Dun Laoghaire. He stands tall and slim in the middle. The painter flatters the King who in reality was overweight. The other faces were all painted by the artist from life, as each went to pose for him in his studio. The scene never took place, our guide told us, as George IV was too drunk to stand on the quays as pictured!
The sitting room has a barrel-vaulted ceiling and the decorative plasterwork features musical instruments, gardening implements and sheaves of corn. Desmond Guinness pointed out that the plasterwork installed at Powerscourt for the royal visit is similar to decoration found at Charleville. [6] The dining room’s centrepiece of shamrock and foliage is probably earlier than 1820 but the acanthus frieze may have been added. The impressive gilt pelmets were purchased in the sale of the contents after fire destroyed the house at neighbouring Powerscourt. The drawing room also has impressive ceilings. It is furnished beautifully and has magnificent curtains framing views. The trellis-pattern rose-pink and red carpet was woven specially for the room, and the wallpaper replicates a found fragment. In their attention to detail, the Rohans had the wallpaper replicated by Cowtan of London.
The Library and Morning Room sit behind the front reception rooms. The regency plasterwork in Greek-Revival style contains laurel and vine leaves.
An Irish Times article sums up the continuation of the Monck family in Charleville:
“As Henry had no living sons (but 11 daughters), when he died in 1848, the Earldom went with him. His brother became 3rd Viscount for a year until his own death in 1849, and his son, Charles, became 4th Viscount for almost the remainder of the century, until 1894. Charles married his cousin—one of Henry’s 11 daughters who had lost out on their inheritance because of their gender. He was Governor General of Canada from 1861 – 1868. The last Monck to live at Charleville was Charles’ son, Henry, 5th Viscount who died in 1927. As he was pre-deceased by his two sons and his only brother, he was the last Viscount Monck. There are extensive files in the National Library for the Monck family.” [7]
Charles the 4th Viscount entertained Prime Minister Gladstone at some point in Charleville and Gladstone planted a tree near the house to mark the occasion. Later Charles fell out with Gladstone over Home Rule in 1886 as Charles maintained the strongly Unionist views of his family. He married Elizabeth Louise Mary Monck (d. 1892). Charles Monck (1819-1894) 4th Viscount served as Lord-Lieutenant of County Dublin between 1874 and 1892.
Henry Power Charles Stanley Monck, 5th Viscount Monck of Ballytrammon (1849-1927) gained the rank of Captain in the Coldstream Guards. He held the office of Vice-Lord-Lieutenant of County Wicklow, High Sheriff of County Wicklow and Justice of the Peace for County Dublin. He married Edith Caroline Sophia Scott, daughter of John Henry Scott, 3rd Earl of Clonmell.
Henry the 5th Viscount’s widow Edith continued to live in Charleville after his death. She died in 1929. Their daughter married Arthur William de Brito Savile Foljambe, 2nd Earl of Liverpool and lived in England. Their son the 6th Viscount married but predeceased his father, and his children moved away. The house was then purchased by Donald Davies. He established one of his “shirt dress” manufacturing bases in the stables.
Davies and his family lived in the house for forty years. His only daughter, Lucy, married first, Michael Edward Lindsay-Hogg, 5th Baronet of Rotherfield Hall, Rotherfield, County Sussex, but they divorced in 1971 and she married Antony Charles Robert Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon, the photographer son of Anne née Messel, Countess of Rosse of Birr Castle. He had been previously married to Princess Margaret, Queen Elizabeth II’s sister. He and Lucy later divorced, but had a daughter together.
According to the article in the Irish Times:
“before the Rohan family became owners, the place was popular for film settings. An American couple called Hawthorne were the previous owners, and filled it in summertime with orphaned children. Before the Hawthornes, it was owned by Donald Davies, famous for his handwoven, fine wool clothes, who had his workshops in the courtyard to the back of the house.”
The gardens are also beautiful. I believe they are open to the public at certain times of the year. [8]
The article goes on to mention the gardens:
“And then there are the gardens….It was wet and lovely, along the hedged walks and bowers, by the Latinate barbeque terrace where a lime tree was in fruit, in the rose garden, and orchard. Old flowers clustered in bursts of colour – lupins and peony roses, forget-me-not and hydrangea, wisteria covering a wall.
One steps out of the house and goes around one side, by the courtyard and stables, through that courtyard to the tennis courts. One passes along the tennis court to reach the central part of the garden.
We liked the sundial especially, which in itself as a pillar was the dial in a way, though there was a proper sundial on the top also, on the sides of the pillar, on two sides.
[1] Great Irish Houses. Forwards by Desmond FitzGerald, Knight of Glin; The Hon Desmond Guinness; photography by Trevor Hart. Image Publications Ltd, Dublin, 2008.
[5] Charles Monck married and came into Charleville. Charles’s sister Rebecca married John Foster and had a daugther who married Bishop George Berkeley, the famous philosopher! My husband Stephen is also distantly related to the Monck family as his third great aunt, Jane Alicia Winder, married William Charles Monck Mason.
Jane Winder
Charles’s older brother, George (1675-1752) married Mary Molesworth and had a daughter, Sarah, who married Robert Mason, and they were parents of Henry Monck Mason who was the father of William Charles Monck Mason.
[6] p. 257. Montgomery-Massingberd, Hugh and Christopher Simon Sykes. Great Houses of Ireland. Laurence King Publishing, London, 1999.
Stephen and I visited Altidore Castle on a grey Saturday, June 1st 2019. I contacted Philip Emmet beforehand and he suggested we come at 3pm for a tour of the house. Philip Emmet is a descendant of the family of the Irish rebel Robert Emmet, who was hung for treason in 1803.
Execution of Robert Emmet, copyright 1897 by Kurz & Allison-Art publishers, Chicago
We arrived early and Philip’s wife Vicky suggested we look around the gardens until the other couple who were coming for the tour arrived. We had spied a pond to our left on our way up the long driveway, and there were stone steps up from the driveway across from the front of the house to a large rectangle of a lawn, edged by huge rhododendrons, so we headed off to explore.
We only had about fifteen minutes, so after looking at the lawn above, we went down toward the pond and the gardens directly outside the house. We found a lovely sunken garden with two lions guarding it, containing a “wishing well.”
We walked around the back, I was conscious that we could look in the windows and not wanting to disturb or pry, I carefully kept my back to the windows and gazed at the impressive view of the wide valley below. What a view!
We headed back to the front of the house then. It is a most odd-looking home. It’s quite small but has imposing castellations. This must be why it is called a “toy fort” (by Mark Bence-Jones) or a “toy castle” (National Inventory of Historic Architecture).
Mark Bence-Jones describes it in his A Guide to Irish Country Houses:
A charming late-Georgian “toy fort,” with four octagonal corner turrets; of two storeys on the entrance side and three on the other sides, where the ground falls away. Despite the battlements on the turrets, the house is more Classical than Gothic; it is symmetrical and has a central Venetian window over a pillared porch. [1]
The house was built for General Thomas Pearce around 1730. It may have been designed by his nephew, Edward Lovett Pearce. General Thomas Pearce (ca. 1670-1739) was a British Army officer, a privy councillor and member of Parliament. He was appointed to Ireland in 1715, ultimately becoming General of His Majesty’s Forces in Ireland. He represented Limerick in Parliament from 1727 until his death. He married Mary daughter of William Hewes of Wrexham, and they had three sons and two daughters. His daughter Anne married her first cousin, Edward Lovett Pearce. [2]
Edward Lovett Pearce was a young Irish architect, born in 1699. He favoured the Palladian style of architecture and studied initially under his cousin the English Baroque architect John Vanbrugh. Lovett Pearce is best known for his work on Castletown House and the Irish Houses of Parliament, which later became the Bank of Ireland on College Green in Dublin. In Italy he met the Florentine architect Alessandro Galilei who was making plans for Castletown. Pearce seems to have taken over the work on Castletown based on Galilei’s plans.
Pearce was also commissioned by his uncle-in-law Thomas Coote (Coote married Edward Lovett Pearce’s aunt Anne Lovett – she was Thomas Coote’s third wife) to build Bellamont House in Cootehill, County Cavan (around 1730). He also designed two houses on Henrietta Street in Dublin, including number 9, for his cousin Mrs. Thomas Carter, and he designed Summerhill, County Meath. He died of an abscess at the young age of 34 in his home The Grove in Stillorgan, Dublin, and is buried in St. Mary’s Graveyard, now a closed graveyard in Donnybrook, which I was lucky enough to see in a tour a couple of years ago.
We followed the other couple in through the porch to meet Philip Emmet, who welcomed us. We stepped into a large high-ceilinged hall.
The inside of the front hall and staircase is odd as the windows don’t look as if they fit the plans, or else the staircase has been moved. Philip does not know a lot about the background of the house. The Irish Historic Houses website states that Altidore was enlarged and modified for a subsequent owner, Major Henry Brownrigg. [3] We did not go upstairs, but Mark Bence-Jones tells us that the staircase is “of stout but elegant joinery with a scrolled end to its balusters.”
By 1773 the house was owned by Reverend William Blachford, Librarian of Marsh’s Library in Dublin. Philip has a portrait of Reverend Blachford’s daughter Mary Tighe, a poet who was famous in her time and was grouped with the Romantic writers Byron and the revolutionary Mary Wollestonecraft. The poet John Keats admired her work. I must borrow her book, Psyche or the Legend of Love from the library!
Mary Tighe (1747-1791), Poet, by George Romney, courtesy of National Gallery of Ireland.
Mary, nee Blachford, had a severely religious upbringing. William Blachford died in 1773 leaving his wife Theodosia (daughter of William Tighe of Rossana, County Wicklow), a son John and daughter Mary. Theodosia converted to Methodism, founded by John Wesley, and was involved in many charitable works including supporting the Leeson Street Magdalen Asylum for unmarried mothers, and the Female Orphan House on Prussia Street in Dublin. [4]
Theodosia Blachford née Tighe (c.1780) A self portrait, seated three-quarter length, with her children, Mary and John courtesy of Adam’s 2 April 2008.William Tighe of Rosanna! Portrait by by Charles Jervas (c.1675-1739), courtesy of Adams auction 19 Oct 2021.
At the young age of 21, Mary married her cousin Henry Tighe (1771-1836), son of William Tighe of Woodstock, County Kilkenny. Henry served as an MP in the Irish Parliament representing Inistioge, County Kilkenny.
Mary contracted tuberculosis and lived her final months as an invalid in her brother-in-law William Tighe’s estate of Woodstock, where she died at the age of 37.
A marble statue of Mary, commissioned by her son after her death and carved by Lorenzo Bartolini of Tuscany, stood in the hall of Woodstock before the house was burnt in 1922. Although the original statue was destroyed in the fire at Woodstock, the plaster original of Bartolini’s statue is in the Accademia in Florence. There is also another life-size sculpture of her by English sculptor John Flaxman in her mausoleum in the graveyard attached to the former Augustinian priory in Inistioge, County Kilkenny. [5]
Mary Blachford Tighe (1772-1810) as sculpted by Lorenzo Bartolini ca. 1820, photograph from National Library of Ireland, flickr constant commons.
Woodstock was not rebuilt after it was burned in 1922 and it remains a ruin but the gardens are open to the public.
Reverend Blachford’s son John inherited Altidore and lived there with his wife Mary Anne, daughter of Henry Grattan MP (1746-1820) from nearby Tinnehinch [6]. I don’t think they had any children.
Henry Grattan (1746-1820).
There was another fascinating portrait in one of the beautifully decorated rooms, this time of an Indian military man, who was a servant of an ancestor of Philip’s wife. This ancestor, named Dennehy, worked in India under Queen Victoria, and introduced Victoria to Indian servants – and through him she met her beloved Indian servant, about whom, and their relationship, there was a movie a few years ago, “Victoria and Abdul”! Philip’s wife was in Osbourne, Victoria’s home on the Isle of Wight, and noticed that there is a series of these pictures, matching her own, of Queen Victoria’s other Indian servants. Stephen and I also loved the tv series about young Victoria.
Before the Emmets purchased the house in 1944, the Dopping-Hempenstals owned the house, from 1834-1918. They owned extensive lands in County Wicklow. They rarely lived in Altidore and instead leased it out. At one stage it housed a tuberculosis sanatorium. According to the Irish Historic Houses website, Altidore changed hands many times over the next decades and was owned by two different banks on separate occasions.
Finally, in 1945, James Albert Garland Emmet (who went by “Garland”) purchased the house on three hundred acres from Percy Burton, a bachelor. The Emmets carried out extensive restoration and created a large new garden, centred on a pair of canals from the early 18th century garden layout. These are the bodies of water we saw on the way in. The present owners, Philip (grandson of Garland Emmet) and his wife Vicky, have farmed the estate organically for nearly 20 years.
We moved from the drawing rooms to the dining room. The walls are adorned with fine medallions of Classical figures in stucco relief. They were uncovered when the walls were being redone, under layers of paint and wallpaper! The Irish Aesthete writes about them, and has beautiful photographs on his website:
“One of the past year’s most fascinating personal discoveries was the dining room at Altidore Castle, County Wicklow …. Much of the interior decoration dates from that period [ca. 1730], including the dining room’s panelling. In the last quarter of the 18th century, however, additional ornamentation was added with the introduction of oval and circular plaster medallions featuring female classical deities and graces: this would have been around the period that Altidore was owned by Rev William Blachford … During the same period the interiors of nearby Mount Kennedy – designed by James Wyatt in 1772 but only built under the supervision of Thomas Cooley the following decade – was being decorated by the celebrated stuccadore Michael Stapleton. The medallions are not unlike those seen in Lucan House, County Dublin where Stapleton also worked: might he have had a hand in the plasterwork at Altidore?” [7]
Michael Stapleton (1747-1801) was a famous Irish stuccodore, known as the “Dublin Adam,” referring to the Scottish architect and interior designer Robert Adam (1728-1792), who worked in the neo-Classical style of plasterwork. [8]
Philip told us that his ancestors, the Emmets, had to leave Ireland after Robert (1778-1803) and his brother Thomas Addis Emmet rebelled. Thomas Addis Emmet moved to the United States.
Robert Emmet. Published by Fishel, Alder & Schwartz 64 Fulton St. New York (1880), coloured and framed and entitled ”Robert Emmett, The Irish Patriot” courtesy Adam’s auction 18 April 2012Thomas Addis Emmett (1764-1827) by William Carroll, bearing inscription on back Thomas Addis Emmet by William O’Carroll, 57 Henry Street Dublin, courtesy of Adam’s auction 22 Nov 2015.
Thomas Addis Emmet (1764-1827) was a lawyer and politician from a wealthy Anglo-Irish Protestant family. He sought to end discrimination against Catholics and Protestant Dissenters such as Presbyterians. He tried to find a peaceful way of introducing a non-sectarian democracy to Ireland.
He acted as a legal advisor for the Society of United Irishmen. However, the United Irishmen were declared illegal, so efforts for a peaceful Catholic emancipation were abandoned. Instead, the United Irishmen sought independence from Britain by armed rebellion. Thomas Addis Emmet advocated waiting until the French had arrived for the rebellion, but Edward Fitzgerald (1763-1798) was more impatient and decided to go ahead with the rebellion in 1798. British intelligence infiltrated the United Irishmen and arrested most of the leaders, including Thomas Addis Emmet, on the eve of their rebellion on March 12, 1798. On his release in 1802 he went to Brussels, where he was visited by his brother Robert in October that year, who informed of the preparations for a fresh rising in Ireland in conjunction with French aid. However, at that stage France and Britain were briefly at peace, and the Emmets’ pleas for help were turned down by Napoleon.
I came across this painting of the Emmet house in St. Stephen’s Green in Dublin in the museum at Lissadell.
Thomas received news of the failure of Robert Emmet’s rising in July 1803 in Paris. Robert was hung for treason in front of St. Catherine’s Church in Thomas Street in Dublin on September 20th 1803. Thomas Addis then emigrated to the United States and joined the New York bar where he had lucrative practice.
Thomas Addis Emmet became a member of the “New York Society for Promoting the Manumission of Slaves, and Protecting Such of Them as Have Been, or May Be Liberated,” commonly known as the New-York Manumission Society (N-YMS). Emmet denounced slavery for destroying the character, dignity and natural rights of man. [9]
Thomas Addis’s son John Patten Emmet (1796–1842) studied medicine and developed an interest in Chemistry. He was a chemistry professor at the University of Virginia from 1825 until his death in 1842.
Thomas Addis Emmet’s grandson, son of John Patten Emmet, also named Thomas Addis Emmet (1828-1919), visited Ireland in 1880. He hoped to move to Ireland but unfortunately he was not allowed by the government to live in Ireland, although he was a gynaecologist by profession, because it was thought that, like his ancestors, he may harbour rebellious tendencies. He requested that he be buried in Ireland so he could “rest in the land from which my family came.” Dr Emmet was interred according to his wishes in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin in 1922. His grave marker was designed by the father and brother of the revolutionary Padraig Pearse (they also sculpted the statues adorning St. Augustine and St. John church on Thomas Street).
It was Dr. Thomas Addis Emmet’s grandson, James Garland Emmet, who returned to Ireland and purchased Altidore Castle in 1944. He married Jocelyn Portman, daughter of Claud Berkeley Portman, 4th Viscount Portman of Bryanston, County Dorset in England.
He set up his home as the base the Irish branch of the Emmet family and gathered objects for a collection of Emmet memorabilia. Altidore still hosts an Emmet Museum. Fascinated, Stephen lingered in the museum room and traded stories with Philip. There are lovely miniatures of the Emmet family, and a sketch of Emmet done from his time in court, by – oh, who was it? Someone famous! [10] They also have Robert Emmet’s college books, with his sketches of uniforms – he was a good artist! He was thrown out of Trinity for being a revolutionary. The house also has some artifacts from Thomas Addis Emmet, and also Robert Emmet’s final letter from prison – written not to his fiance, Sarah Curran, as Stephen and I had believed, but to a politician, to urge him to excuse himself for not anticipating the rebellion. Robert Emmet was reknown for his secrecy.
We wandered back out to the ponds, which are divided into three, and are part of a canal running down the mountain. We found the old walled garden – not in use currently – and looked around the farm and the beautiful old farm buildings.
Help me to fund my creation and update of this website. It is created purely out of love for the subject and I receive no payment so any donation is appreciated! For this entry I paid for petrol to drive from Dublin and for the entrance fee for myself and Stephen.
€10.00
[1] Bence-Jones, Mark. A Guide to Irish Country Houses published by Constable and Company Limited, London, 1988, previously published by Burke’s Peerage Ltd as Burke’s Guide to Country Houses, vol. 1 Ireland, 1978.
[4] Mary Delany (1700-1788) whose letters are published, was Godmother to a musician in the Wesley family, and explains how the Methodist Wesleys were cousins of Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington – who is honoured in the Wellington obelisk in the Phoenix Park.
The Irish Aesthete also notes: A new biography of Mary Tighe by Miranda O’Connell has been published by the Somerville Press.
[6] Tinnehinch was presented to Grattan, according to Mark Bence-Jones, in gratitude for the part he played in obtaining freedom from British control in 1782. The house has been destroyed by fire but one storey of the ruin still stands and has been made into a feature of the garden of the present house, which is in the former stables.
[8] Other work by Michael Stapleton can be seen in Marlay House in Dublin, several houses in North Great George’s Street including Belvedere House, Powerscourt Townhouse, 59 South William Street, Dublin 2 and in Trinity College Dublin, especially in the Exam Hall and the Chapel. Note that Stapleton was the executor of Robert West’s will, and may have trained with Robert West. We came across Robert West’s characteristic stucco work in Colganstown.
Examination Hall, Trinity College Dublin.
[9] Landy, Craig A. “Society of United Irishmen Revolutionary and New-York Manumission Society Lawyer: Thomas Addis Emmet and the Irish Contributions to the Antislavery Movement in New York” New York History, Vol. 95, No. 2 (Spring 2014), pp. 193-222 (30 pages).
[10] Perhaps the artist was John Comerford, who sketched Robert Emmet during his trial, and a miniature has been made from the sketch. The miniature is now in the National Gallery.
www.powerscourt.ie Open in 2025: Jan 1-Dec 24, 27-31, house and garden, 9.30am-5.30pm, ballroom and garden rooms, 9.30am-1.30pm
Fee: Jan-Oct, adult €14, OAP, €12, student €10.50, child €5.50, family €20, Nov-Dec, adult €10.50, OAP €9.50, student €9, child €5.50, Jan- Oct, concessions-family ticket 2 adults and 3 children under 18 years €33, concession-Nov-Dec family 2 adults and 3 children under 18 €25
I haven’t revisited Powerscourt Estate this year but I have been there many times, and as the lockdown continues for Covid 19, I will write another entry from previous visits and research. I want to write about Powerscourt in continuation of our Wingfield run!
It used to be that one went to the estate to see the 47 acres of landscaped gardens, since the house was gutted by fire in November, 1974, and remained closed for many years. The fire was probably due to a chimney fire that ignited. Since then, it has been gradually renovated. The Slazenger family, living in the house at the time of the fire, moved into a section of the wing that was not destroyed by the fire. Nowadays inside is a shopping mecca and lovely Avoca cafe, with a growing exhibition about Powerscourt estate itself. My family has been visiting Powerscourt estate since I was a child. The ultimate in romantic, with terraces, groves of trees, stone sculptures, nooks, the mossy labyrinth in the Japanese gardens, the “secret” boat house with its view onto the surface of the lake, and the Versailles-like Neptune fountain, the memory of its purple and grey dampness was an aesthetic touchstone for me when I lived in hot, dry, bright Perth and California.
In 1974, David Hicks tells us in his Irish Country Houses, a Chronicle of Change, only months before the fire, Stanley Kubrick filmed Barry Lyndon in the house, and the film shows the interiors of the house before they were destroyed.
Powerscourt by George Barret the Elder, courtesy of Yale Centre for British Art.
The estate is named after previous owners of the land, the Powers, or Le Poers. The site was a strategic military position for the Anglo-Normans in the 12th century, and by 1300 the Le Poers had built a castle there. In 1609 the land was granted to Richard Wingfield, Marshall of Ireland.
Richard (1697-1751) 1st Viscount Powerscourt (of 3rd creation) built Powerscourt, designed by Richard Castle (or Cassells) in 1728.
Powerscourt, Hall, County Wicklow, photograph by Robert French, Lawrence Photograph Collection, National Library of Ireland.
In 1961 the estate was sold by the 9th Viscount, Mervyn Patrick Wingfield, to Mr. Ralph Slazenger, and the Slazenger family still own it. [1] The same family owned Durrow Abbey near Tullamore in County Offaly (which they purchased in 1950, but it now belongs to the OPW). [2][3]
According to the Dictionary of Irish Biography, Richard Wingfield (1551?–1634) 1st Viscount Powerscourt, a soldier, was eldest son of Sir Richard Wingfield, governor of Portsmouth, and his wife Christian Fitzwilliam of Milton. He was born into a family with a strong martial tradition: his brothers and uncles bore arms for the crown in the Low Countries, France, and Ireland. He came to Ireland c.1573 to serve as a soldier under his uncle Sir William Fitzwilliam (1526-1599) who was twice Lord Deputy of Ireland. Richard then returned to fight overseas but returned to Ireland, where he fought with the rebel forces of Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone.
On 27 January 1600 he was made marshal of the Irish army and was a member of the Irish privy council by 24 March. He played a key role in organising the royal army during the latter part of the Nine Years War.
He played a prominent role in both the siege and battle of Kinsale in late 1601. He was granted the lands of Rebane, Queen’s County, in March 1602. After the final suppression of the rebellion, he was granted in October 1603 a 21-year lease of the district of Ferncullen (formerly held by the O’Tooles) in north Co. Wicklow. He established his residence there at Powerscourt castle. [4]
Richard Wingfield appealed to James I for the land in order to secure the district from the incursions of native Irish lords and the families who had previously occupied the land, such as the O’Tooles. [5] In 1609 the King granted him full ownership.
Information board.Detail of an order given by King Henry VIII granting deed and title of Ferncullen, which is the land of Powerscourt, to the O’Tooles in around 1535. This chronology is on a board in the whiskey distillery, shop and cafe in the Millhouse on the grounds of Powerscourt.
He also received 1,000 acres at Ballnabarney as part of the Wexford plantation in November 1613. He sat as MP for Downpatrick in the 1613–15 parliament after being rejected by the largely Scottish electorate of Co. Down, acting as one of the chief government spokesmen in the house of commons. On 1 February 1619 he was created Viscount Powerscourt, having paid £2,000. He died on 9 September 1634. [see (4)]
He had no children so his cousin Edward Wingfield (d. 1638) succeeded him. Although they are both Wingfields they were actually cousins through the Cromwell line. Richard had married Frances Rugge, widow of 3rd Baron Cromwell. Edward Wingfield (d. 1638) married Anne Cromwell, daughter of the 3rd Baron Cromwell and Frances Rugge.
Edward Wingfield and Anne Cromwell had two sons: Lewis and Richard (d. 1644).
Richard (d. 1644), married Elizabeth Folliott daughter of Henry, 1st Lord Folliott, Baron of Ballyshannon, and they had a son Folliott Wingfield (1642-1717) who was created 1st Viscount Powerscourt in 1664/65. Folliott married Elizabeth, daughter of Roger Boyle, 1st Earl of Orrery. On his death, his title became extinct as they had no children.
The other son of Edward Wingfield and Anne Cromwell, Lewis, had a son Edward (d. 7 January 1728). Edward lived at Powerscourt, and was MP for County Wicklow. I suspect he moved to Powerscourt when Folliott Wingfield died. He married Eleanor Gore, daughter of Arthur, 1st Baronet Gore, of Newtown Gore, Co. Mayo. Their son Richard (1697-1751) was created 1st Viscount Powerscourt, of Powerscourt, Co. Wicklow in 1733/34. Their daughter Isabella married Henry King, 3rd Baronet of Boyle Abbey, County Roscommon [we will come across the King family when I write about King House in County Roscommon, a section 482 property.] Their daughter Sidney married Acheson Moore of County Tyrone. [6]
Richard (1697-1751) 1st Viscount Powerscourt was MP for Boyle, County Roscommon between 1727 and 1744, and was created a Privy Counsellor in 1746. He married twice. His first wife was Dorothy Ussher, daughter of William Ussher of Ussher’s Quay in Dublin. She died childless in 1723, and then he married Dorothy Rowley, daughter of Hercules Rowley of Summerhill, County Meath.
Richard Wingfield (1697-1751) 1st Viscount Powerscourt by Anthony Lee courtesy of Christie’s sale catalogue.
It was Richard 1st Viscount Powerscourt who built the Powerscourt house we see today. He incorporated some of the old building into a new residence he had built in 1728. According to Sean O’Reilly in Irish Houses and Gardens. From the Archives of Country Life, the 1974 fire exposed the fabric of the history of the house. He writes:
“The original structure consisted of a low range incorporated in the two bays to the left of the entrance. This appears to have been a long, two-storey, rectangular block, raised to a third storey in later development, and retaining, in one corner, a cross-shaped angle-loop. The vaulted room on the ground floor in this range survived into later remodellings. This earliest block, which dates from no later than the fifteenth century, was extended by a connecting block now incorporated in the garden front and, finally, by a third rectangular range fronted by the two bays on the right of the entrance, creating a U-plan.” [2]
The Wicklow house built for Richard Wingfield was designed by Richard Castle (or Cassels), who had worked with Edward Lovett Pearce. Both Lovett Pearce and Cassels favoured the Palladian style, and Cassels took over all of Lovett Pearce’s commissions after his untimely death aged just 34. Cassels worked on Carton, designed Russborough House(another section 482 house https://irishhistorichouses.com/2020/11/08/russborough-house-blessington-county-wicklow/ ) and Leinster House.
Powerscourt consists of a three storey centre block (see photograph above) joined by single-storey links to two storey wings, in the Palladian style. Borrowing from Mark Bence Jones’s description in his Irish Country Houses, the centre block has nine bays and the entrance front is made of granite. [6] There is a five bay breakfront in the centre of the middle block front facade, with a pediment of six Ionic pilasters (Ionic pillars have scrolls) standing on the bottom storey, which is, according to Bence-Jones, treated as a basement, and rusticated (rustication is the use of stone blocks with recessed joints and often with rough or specially treated faces, which is generally confined to the basement or lower part of a building). (see [6]) The pediment contains the arms of Richard Wingfield and his wife Dorothy Rowley.
Between the pilasters on the breakfront are rondels containing busts of Roman emperors, and a female in the centre rondel. The 7th Viscount called the bust in the middle “Empress Julia” after his wife. He purchased the busts of Caesar in London. They came from Maidenhead, Buckinghamshire, and once belonged to the Duke of Sussex.
The four bay links as well as the central block have balustraded parapets. The wings have four bays, and the facade is prolonged beyond them by quadrant walls, each interrupted by a pedimented Doric arch and ending in an obelisk carrying an eagle, the Wingfield crest. [8]
The garden front, pictured above, has seven bays between two bows on either end, and the bows are topped with copper domes. One side has a two storey wing. The garden slopes down to a lake in a magnificent series of terraces. Powerscourt was built with sixty-eight rooms!
Richard and Dorothy had two sons. The first, Edward, 2nd Viscount Powercourt, died childless, so his brother, Richard (1730-1788), became 3rd Viscount Powerscourt.
Portrait of a gentleman, traditionally identified as Edward 2nd Viscount Powerscourt, in a brown coat by circle of Francis Cotes, Hugh Douglas Hamilton.Richard Wingfield (1730-1788) 3rd Viscount Powerscourt.
I wrote about the history of the Wingfield family briefly in my entry for Powerscourt Townhouse. [9] Seven years after inheriting the title, Richard 3rd Viscount began the building of Powerscourt Townhouse, so that he had a grand Palladian home in Dublin for residing and entertaining, when not living in his estate in Wicklow. He married Amelia Stratford, daughter of John Stratford, the 1st Earl of Aldborough. For the rest of the Wingfield successors, see [10] and also the Powerscourt website and see my entry about Powerscourt Townhouse https://irishhistorichouses.com/2020/04/02/powerscourt-townhouse-59-south-william-street-dublin-2/
Powerscourt House front hall, County Wicklow, photograph by Robert French, Lawrence Photograph Collection, National Library of Ireland.
Richard and Amelia’s son Richard 4th Viscount Powerscourt was brave enough to vote against the Act of Union in 1800, upsetting his neighbours. He married, firstly, Lady Catherine Meade, daughter of John Meade, 1st Earl of Clanwilliam County Tipperary, who gave birth to the heir and “two spares.” Catherine’s sister married the 10th Earl of Meath. After her death, he married Isabella Brownlow, daughter of William, MP for Armagh, and they several more children.
His son Richard (1790-1823) became the 5th Viscount and Richard’s son Richard (1815-1844), the 6th Viscount. The 5th Viscount married Frances Theodosia Jocelyn, daughter of the 2nd Earl of Roden, and the 6th Viscount married Elizabeth Frances Charlotte Jocelyn, daughter of the 3rd Earl of Roden.
Richard Wingfield (1815-1844) 6th Viscount Powerscourt, portrait on display at the Irish Georgian Society.Richard Wingfield, 6th Viscount Powerscourt (1815-1844), photograph courtesy of National Gallery of Ireland.Elizabeth Jocelyn (1813-1884), Marchioness of Londonderry, formerly Viscountess Powerscourt, by James Rannie Swinton, courtesy of Mount Stewart National Trust. She was married to the 6th Viscount Powerscourt.She was the daughter of Robert Jocelyn 3rd Earl of Roden.After her husband’s death she married Frederick William Robert Stewart, 4th Marquess of Londonderry, of Mount Stewart, County Down(see my entry about Places to visit and stay in County Down https://irishhistorichouses.com/2023/10/06/places-to-visit-and-stay-in-county-down-northern-ireland/)
From 1842 onwards, the 6th Viscount of Powerscourt employed Daniel Robertson of Kilkenny to improve the gardens. Robertson created Italian gardens on the terraces, with broad steps and inlaid pavement, balustrades and statues. In the fountain below the “perron” of the main terrace, Mark Bence-Jones tells us, there is a pair of bronze figures of Eolus, “which came from the Palais Royale in Paris, having been sold by Prince Napolean 1872 to the 7th Viscount [Mervyn Edward Wingfield], who completed the garden.”
The garden work was continued by F.C. Penrose when Daniel Robertson died in 1849 while working on the gardens at Lisnavagh, County Carlow. Apparently Robertson was often the worse for wear during his work, as he was fond of the sherry. He took to directing from a wheelbarrow, as he had gout and difficulty walking – maybe not just due to the gout!
Quote above from “In Harmony with Nature, The Irish Country House Garden 1600-1900” in the Irish Georgian Society, July 2022, curated by Robert O’Byrne.See below also.
Robert O’Byrne tells us that Daniel Robertson was born in America, and that he was one of the most influential garden designers to work in Ireland in the second quarter of the 19th century.
From “In Harmony with Nature, The Irish Country House Garden 1600-1900” in the Irish Georgian Society, July 2022, curated by Robert O’Byrne.From “In Harmony with Nature, The Irish Country House Garden 1600-1900” in the Irish Georgian Society, July 2022, curated by Robert O’Byrne.
Mervyn Wingfield, 7th Viscount Powerscourt sought to create gardens similar to those he had seen in the Schonbrunn Palace in Vienna and at the Palace of Versailles. His task took twenty years, completed in 1880. He enlisted the help of Alexander Robertson.
There are many more elements of the garden to explore, such as the Japanese gardens, the pet cemetery, the pepperpot tower, and the walled gardens. I only recently discovered the pepperpot tower! When I visited the gardens with my parents, we must have always been too tired as a family, after exploring the rest, to walk up from the Japanese gardens to the pepperpot tower!
The dolphin pond, with fountain brought from Paris by the 7th Viscount (photograph by Jane Flanagan)The Pepper Pot Tower. Photograph from Tourism Ireland, photographer unknown. [9]The walled garden (photograph by Jane Flanagan)
I have always loved the Japanese gardens, which remind me of the Japanese tea gardens in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. I have a lovely memory of having a cup of tea and a fortune cookie in San Francisco’s Japanese gardens, and the cookie contained the fortune I’d seen photographed earlier that day in a large photograph on display in a museum: “You will have many interesting and artistic people to your home.” It seemed too much to me at the time to be a coincidence – and it would be, I thought, at the age of about twenty, a dream come true. I sellotaped the fortune onto a small bookshelf on my desk, hoping it would come true. And indeed it has!
Bence-Jones writes of an incident about Powerscourt Waterfall, which is further out on the estate:
“the waterfall, the highest in the British Isles, which, when George IV came to Powerscourt 1821, was dammed up in order that the monarch might have an even more exciting spectacle; the idea being to open the sluice while the Royal party watched from a specially-constructed bridge. The King took too long over his dinner and never got to the waterfall, which was fortunate; for when eventually the water was released, the bridge was swept away.“
The collection of statues, and the wrought iron gates, are beautiful.
Bamberg Gate in the Walled Garden, with its “vista” view of columns. Photograph by John Slazenger, 2014, from Tourism Ireland. [9]
The Irish Aesthete tells us that the Bamberg Gate:
“was originally constructed in Vienna in 1770 and installed in Bamberg Cathedral, Northern Bavaria. Probably in the late 1820s, when all Baroque additions were stripped from the building, the gate was removed and sold: around 1870 Mervyn Wingfield, 7th Viscount Powerscourt bought it from a London dealer and placed it in the present position. On the opposite side of the walled garden is the so-called Chorus Gate, the design supposedly based on a 17th century original (although this has not been found) and likewise purchased in London. Its intricate ironwork features myriad winged seraphim blowing trumpets. Both gates have recently been cleaned and re-gilded.” [10]
The National Inventory has two good pictures of the interior of the house, which is gradually being restored since the 1974 fire:
I cannot recall seeing this room. Is it because the house is now so full with everything going on, that I didn’t notice the decorative pillars and ceilng? That is quite possible! The columns and arches lead me to believe that this was the saloon, comparing it to archival photographs from before the fire, as seen in Sean O’Reilly’s book.Photograph from the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage, Buildings of Ireland.
The interior of Powerscourt before the fire was magnificently sumptuous and slightly crazy! Fortunately photographs exist, and some are in the National Library archives:
The entrance hall of Powerscourt before the fire. Photograph from the National Library archives, on flickr commons.
I have never seen shells on a ceiling decoration such as these, although I know the famous letter writer Mary Delaney made similar decoration on a fireplace as well as filling an outdoor shell house, similar to the one at Curraghmore [see my entry about Curraghmore]. The Wingfields must have prided themselves on their military connection, with their display of armour and guns, and their hunting prowess, with all the deer head and antler trophies and the skin rugs. There is even an antler chandelier, which Sean O’Reilly tells us is called an Austrian “Lusterweiblen.” Some of the antlers were made of papier-mache! O’Reilly published other old photographs of the interior in Irish Houses and Gardens, including of the saloon, which he explains is more in the Roman Renaissance than Palladian style, which is reflected somewhat in the rest of the house. (see [1])
The house was occupied by the Slazenger family in 1974 when the fire broke out on the top floor, leaving the main building completely destroyed. They had purchased the house complete with all of its contents. Fortunately, nobody was injured. The house was left abandoned for twenty years, but they opened the gardens to the public. In 1996 the family started the renovation process with a new roof and restoration of the windows. [13] (Surely not) coincidentally, Ralph Slazenger’s daughter Wendy (Ann Pauline) Slazenger married Mervyn Niall Wingfield, the 10th Viscount Powerscourt, in 1962. They divorced, however, the same year as the fire, in 1974.
Christies held a sale of the rescued contents of Powerscourt in 1984. Many of the belongings were purchased by Ken Rohan, owner of nearby Charleville House. When I visited Charleville, another section 482 house, the tour guide pointed out the grand decorative curtain pelments purchased in the Powerscourt sale. [see my entry on Charleville House https://irishhistorichouses.com/2020/09/18/charleville-county-wicklow/
Finally, there is a Bagot connection to the Wingfields, albeit indirectly, and I haven’t found any connection (yet!) of my family with this Irish Bagot family. Christopher Neville Bagot (1821-1877) married Alice Emily Verner. When Christopher died, he left a large estate. His son was born less than nine months after he married, and his brother contested the will, claiming that the son, William Hugh Neville Bagot (1875-1960) was not really Christopher Bagot’s son. Alice Emily and her son won the trial to the extent that her son inherited Christopher’s money, but Christopher’s brother inherited the land. Alice Emily came from a well-connected family. Her mother was a Pakenham. Her grandmother was Harriet Wingfield (1801-1877), a daughter of Edward Wingfield (1772-1859), who was the son of Richard Wingfield, 3rd Viscount Powerscourt – the one who built Powerscourt Townhouse!
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[2] A Bagot married into the Herbert family, who owned Durrow Abbey before the Slazenger family. John Bagot married Mary Herbert, daughter of the 2nd Baronet of Durrow Abbey in 1728.
[8] Mark Bence-Jones. A Guide to Irish Country Houses.[originally published as Burke’s Guide to Country Houses volume 1 Ireland by Burke’s Peerage Ltd. 1978]; Revised edition 1988 Constable and Company Ltd, London.
[10] For the continuation of the Wingfield line who lived in Powerscourt, I refer to Burke’s Peerage, and to the website of Timothy William Ferres, otherwise known as Lord Belmont:
The Wingfields married well. The 3rd Viscount’s son inherited the title and estate: Richard Wingfield, 4th Viscount (1762-1809).
He married firstly, in 1789, Catherine, second daughter of John Meade, 1st Earl of Clanwilliam, by whom he had his successor, Richard.
RICHARD, 5th Viscount (1790-1823), married Frances Theodosia, eldest daughter of Robert Jocelyn, 2nd Earl of Roden, and their son, Richard, became his successor.
RICHARD, 6th Viscount (1815-44), who married, in 1836, his cousin, the Lady Elizabeth Frances Charlotte Jocelyn, daughter of Robert Jocelyn, 3rd Earl of Roden. He was succeeded by his son, Mervyn Edward Wingfield.
MERVYN EDWARD, 7th Viscount (1836-1904), KP, Privy Counsellor, who wedded, in 1864, the Lady Julia Coke, daughter of Thomas William Coke, 2nd Earl of Leicester (of the seventh creation!). According to Turtle Bunbury [14], Mervyn published two books: “Wingfield Memorials” (1894) and “A History of Powerscourt” (1903). He was elected president of the Royal Dublin Society and was also a member of the Royal Irish Academy of Science. He was made a Knight of the Order of St. Patrick in 1871. He was later appointed to the Privy Council of Ireland, acting as one of the Lord Justices of Ireland in 1902.
Mervyn Edward and Julia’s son, Mervyn Wingfield (1880-1947), become the 8th Viscount and succeeded to Powerscourt. The 8th Viscount was the last Lord-Lieutenant of County Wicklow, from 1910 until 1922. After Irish Independence, he was elected by W.T. Cosgrave to serve as a Senator in 1921. His son, Mervyn Patrick Wingfield (1905–73) became the 9th Viscount.
The 9th Viscount followed in the family’s military tradition and served in WWII and was captured and became a prisoner of war. According to wikipedia [15], he suffered from shell shock. His wife and children moved to Bermuda during the war and returned to Powerscourt afterwards but their marriage fell apart, and Mervyn Patrick sold Powerscourt.
According to Turtle Bunbury, Richard Wingfield 1st Viscount had a daughter, Isabella, who in 1722 married Sir Henry King, MP for Boyle and Roscommon, who built King House in County Roscommon, another section 482 property.
Turtle Bunbury also tells us that the 6th Viscount Powerscourt purchased Luggala, also in County Wicklow, in 1840, from the “financially challenged” La Touche family. We will come across the La Touch family when I write about Harristown, another Section 482 property.
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We have been to this estate several times, but were lucky enough to have a tour of the house when we went with IDFAS, Irish Decorating and Fine Art Society in June 2015. This was before tours were regularly held for visitors, as they are now. I returned in May 2023 for a second tour. The house is still occupied by the family who built it, and three generations occupy it: the current Lord Meath, who is a forester by trade, and his son Anthony who runs the farm and income generating businesses such as the café, markets, and events.
Killruddery House and Gardens, Bray, Co Wicklow, photograph by Sonder Visuals 2014 for Fáilte Ireland [1]Killruddery House and Gardens, Bray, Co Wicklow, photograph by Sonder Visuals 2014 for Fáilte Ireland
The website describes Killruddery: “Killruddery is a living, working House, Gardens and Farm. It has been home to sixteen generations of the Brabazon family and over the centuries many other families have joined this special place as a home and in employment.”
“In 1534, Henry VIII sent Sir William Brabazon of Leicester to Ireland to serve as Vice-Treasurer. Later in 1539, Sir William secured ownership of the Abbey of St. Thomas, which stood between present day Thomas Street and the River Liffey in Dublin. Conflicting reports state that Killruddery was not granted to the Brabazon family until 1618 but it is surely of relevance that the monastic lands of St. Thomas’s included the lands of Kilrotheri (or Killruddery), being the Little Sugar Loaf, Bray Head and the valley running between them. “
Killruddery has a special place in my heart since we live in the Liberty of the Earl of Meath in Dublin, near the former location of the Abbey of St. Thomas. It is called a “liberty” as it lay outside the walls of the city of Dublin and had its own laws – initially, the laws were those of the abbeys and monasteries that owned the land. In 1538, King Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries, including the Abbey of St. Thomas in Dublin. At that time the abbey owned property also in Counties Meath, Louth, Wicklow and Kildare. The property was divided between William Brabazon and the Lord Deputy, Richard St. Leger. The property in County Wicklow, on which the monks had built a retreat, farm and burial ground, came with a small castle and its outbuildings. [2]
Sir William’s son Edward (d. 1625) was appointed Privy Counsellor of Ireland in 1584. He held the office of Member of Parliament for County Wicklow in 1585. In 1598 he purchased the estate of Nether Whitacre, Warwickshire, and he was High Sheriff of County Stafford from 1606 to 1607. This property was sold by the family in 1630. He was M.P. for Bangor between 1613 and 1615. He was created 1st Lord Brabazon, Baron of Ardee, County Louth in 1616.
His children married very well. His daughter Susannah married Lucas Plunkett, 1st Earl of Fingall, 10th Baron of Killeen. Ursula married James Hamilton, 1st Viscount Claneboy of County Down, and Elizabeth married three times, having a daughter by the Bishop of Meath George Montgomery, who married Nicholas St. Lawrence, 10th Baron Howth. Edward’s son Anthony lived in Tallanstown, County Louth, and his son William (d. 1651) was forty-five years old when he succeeded as 2nd Baron of Ardee. He was created 1st Earl of Meath in 1627, with a special remainder to his brother Anthony. When he was made Earl of Meath, henceforth the Liberty of St Thomas and Donore was called the Earl of Meath Liberties.
The Earl was sent to the Tower of London in 1644, as he fought against Cromwell’s Parliamentary forces. [3] He was exchanged seven months later for another prisoner.
His house in County Wicklow was burned down by Cromwell’s troops. He died in 1651 and his son Edward (1609-1675) became the 2nd Earl of Meath.
The Killruddery website tells us that:
“The 2nd Earl of Meath built a house at Killruddery to replace one burned six years earlier. An illustration from about 1680 shows a building of five bays facing east. In 1666, the 2nd Earl increased the estate with the addition of “the section of Great Bray between Main Street and the sea and between the river and Main Street.”
He held the office of Member of Parliament (M.P.) for Athlone from 1634 to 1635. He had married Mary Chambré in 1632. She was from Carnew Castle in County Wicklow. He fought in the English Civil War as a Royalist, like his father. He was rewarded by King Charles II when the throne was restored to the Stuart family, and was appointed Privy Counsellor in Ireland between 1660 and 1669.
He died in 1675 as a passenger on the HMV ‘Mary’ which was shipwrecked off Beaumaurice in Anglesey during a voyage to England. His son, Edward, was rescued from the wreck.
His son William succeeded as 4th Lord Brabazon, Baron of Ardee, Co. Louth during his father’s lifetime in 1665 when he was about thirty years old. In 1671 he killed a man in a duel but was pardoned. He succeeded as the 3rd Earl of Meath when his father died in 1675. He had two daughters: Elizabeth married Philips Coote of “Mount Coote” County Limerick, which is now Ash Hill, another section 482 property, where we stayed during Heritage week in 2022, see my entry. She married a second time to the son of the Earl of Lindsay of England.
Elizabeth Brabazon née Lennard, Countess of Meath (1650-1701), Wife of the 3rd Earl of Meath, photograph courtesy of National Gallery of Ireland.
Since the 3rd Earl of Meath had no sons when he died in 1685, the title passed to his brother Edward. Edward (1635-1707) 4th Earl joined King William’s forces and commanded the garrison at Carrickfergus against James II. He fought in the Siege of Limerick and the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. He complained that that the “Glorious Revolution” had cost him £10,000 and, as a result, he sold a 35 year lease on the property at Killruddery to John Lovett, the uncle of Sir Edward Lovett Pearce. In 1702, the Earl took a house on the north side of St. Stephen’s Green in Dublin, where the family lived during the 18th century. [4] This house is now a school – before that, it was St. Vincent’s Hospital, set up by the nun Sister Aikenhead.
He married twice but had no children. He served as M.P. for County Wicklow in 1666 and Ranger of Phoenix Park in 1675. When he died, the title passed to another brother, Chambré.
It was Edward 4th Earl of Meath who is responsible for the gardens at Killruddery. He built a modest house on the grounds as a summer house, and he lived in the house at St. Thomas’s Abbey in Dublin. The gardens are one of the few remaining 17th century gardens in Ireland or the U.K. The Killruddery website tells us that the gardens were used for the entertainment of a large number of guests and therefore the scale is comparable to that of a park. Edward employed Monsieur Bonet, a French Landscape architect, a pupil of Le Notre, in 1682. André Le Nôtre (12 March 1613 – 15 September 1700) was a French landscape architect and the principal gardener of King Louis XIV. Most notably he designed the park of the Palace of Versailles. Monsieur Bonet created the surviving French-Baroque gardens, comprising the Angles (a patte d’oie), the Long Ponds, the Sylvan Theatre, Lime Walks and the Beech Hedge Pond. He had already worked in Ireland for twelve years for Sir William Petty before he moved to Killruddery.
In the gardens, The Angles are the middle section of the garden. They consist of a series of walks flanked by the hornbeam, lime or beech hedges which meet at two centre points. The design of the Angles, as seen from The Long Ponds are known as “patte d’oie” or goose feet.
The 4th Earl married twice but had no children, and when he died title and lands passed to his brother Chambré (c. 1645-1715). The 5th Earl of Meath served as a Privy Councillor in Ireland in 1710. He developed the Pleasure Garden and the Cherry Garden. He married Juliana Chaworth, daughter of Patrick Chaworth, 3rd Viscount Chaworth of Armagh. Their son, whom they named Chaworth, succeeded as 6th Earl, and served as MP for County Dublin and Lord Lieutenant for County Wicklow and for County Dublin. The Killruddery website tells us that the 6th Earl was a patron of the Meath Hospital, which was founded by four surgeons to care for the sick and poor of ‘the Liberties’ in Dublin. It was the 6th Earl of Meath who developed the garden “wilderness.” He married twice but had no children and when he died in 1763 he was succeeded by his brother Edward (1691-1772) who became the 7th Earl of Meath.
Opposite the Angles on the far side of the Long Ponds is a wooded area known as the Wilderness.
Killruddery House, May 2013Killruddery House, May 2013Edward Brabazon 7th Earl of Meath (1691-1772)
Edward the 7th Earl of Meath served as MP for County Dublin between 1715 and 1760. He too was a Patron for a hospital: originally called, “The Meath Hospital and County Dublin Infirmary,” it was renamed the Coombe Women’s Hospital in 1993. The story of the foundation of the Coombe is written on the remaining entrance portico to the hospital on the road called The Coombe in Dublin.
“Towards the end of the year 1825 two women, whilst making a vain attempt to reach the Rotunda hospital [which was founded originally by Dr. Mosse, whose wife had died in childbirth], perished, together with their new born babies, in the snow. When this became known, a number of benevolent and well-disposed persons founded “The Coombe Lying-In Hospital” in the year 1826, for the relief of poor lying-in women. Leading this committee was a Mrs Margaret Boyle of Upper Baggot Street, Dublin. The portico surrounding this plaque formed the entrance until the year 1967 when the hospital moved to its new location in Dolphin’s Barn.“
He died in 1772 and was succeeded by his son Anthony as 8th Earl of Meath.
Anthony the 8th Earl served as MP for Wicklow from 1745-1760 and for Dublin in 1761-62. He married Grace Leigh from Rosegarland, County Wexford, in 1758.
Anthony Brabazon 8th Earl of Meath b. 1721
William 9th Earl of Meath died in a fatal duel with Captain Robert Gore of the Mount Kennedy Corps in 1797. He also had served as MP for County Dublin. His brother. John Chambré (1772-1851) succeeded him as the 10th Earl. He held the office of Lord-Lieutenant of County Dublin between 1831 and 1851. He was raised to the Peerage of the UK in 1831 as 1st Baron Chaworth of Eaton Hall, Co. Hereford. He was appointed Privy Councillor of Ireland in 1833. He married Melosina Adelaide Meade, daughter of the 1st Earl of Clanwilliam, County Tipperary.
John Chambé Brabazon 10th Earl of Meath (1772-1851)Melosina Adelaide Meade 1780-1866, wife of 10th Earl.
In 1816-17 the 10th Earl and his wife took the Grand Tour and in Italy ordered marbles and chimneypieces, mostly with the help of Gaspare Gabrielli, a painter who had worked in Ireland decorating the drawing room of Lyons, County Kildare. When they returned to Ireland, the 10th Earl of Meath hired Richard Morrison to redesign the house. Sadly, their eldest son, Jacques, died while on tour, of diphtheria, and is buried in Naples.
William Vitruvius Morrison and his father Richard were Irish architectsin the early 1800s. They also designed Baronscourt in County Tyrone, Ballyfin in County Laois and Fota in Cork. William also designed Clontarf Castle in Dublin, Hollybrooke House in Bray and Mount Stewart in County Down. Montgomery-Massingberd and Sykes write that building work went on for nine years around the resident Lord and Lady Meath, and they moved from one part of the house to another to accommodate the construction.
The Morrisons rebuilt the house in Neo-Tudor style. It has multiple gables, balustrades, pepper-pot chimneys and crenellations.
The website tells us: “The 10th Earl carried out an extensive reconstruction of Killruddery House between 1820 and 1830. Architects Richard and William Vitruvius Morrison were instructed to build a Tudor Revival mansion, incorporating the original low-level 17th mansion. The new house took on the shape of an irregular quadrangle, enclosing a central courtyard. The interior still includes elaborate chimney-pieces by Giacinto Micali, crimson silk damask from Spitalfields, stained glass by John Milner, a domed ceiling by Henry Popje and the wonderful drawing room ceiling by Simon Gilligan who worked for Popje. Popje had received an apprenticeship in Stucco work from the Lafranchini brothers.”
In 1852 the 10th Earl added the Conservatory, or Orangerie, to the design of William Burn. According to the website, the Orangerie was designed and built by William Burn after the fashion of the Crystal Palace in England. The design for the parapet is said to have been based on a tiara belonging to Lady Meath. The original glass dome was the work of Richard Turner who designed the curvilinear range at the National Botanic Gardens in Dublin and at Kew Gardens in London, and also the glass house conservatory which we saw in Rokeby Hall in Louth (another Section 482 property, see my entry). This glass dome has now been replaced as it became unsafe. The Orangery houses a collection of marble statues gathered in Italy in the 1830 – 1850 period by the 10th Earl of Meath. Classical sculptures include Ganymede giving water to Zeus disguised as an eagle; Cyparissus with his dying deer (it is because of Cyparissus who so famously mourned his deer that cypress trees are associated with graveyards); Cupid with Pysche and Venus. Other prominent busts include Homer, Socrates, Napoleon, William Pitt and Wellington. The floor of the Orangerie is made of Italian, Carrera and Connemara marble, and has a Celtic Cross decoration inlay. Decorative iron grillwork around the edges of the floor let in warm steam for hothouse plants.
The 10th Earl hired Daniel Robertson to restore the gardens, and to create the parterre, in 1846. A neighbour, George Hodson, designed the ornamental dairy, in the fashionable picturesque style as popularised by Humphrey Repton. The dairy has marble for coolness and stained glass windows to protect from the hot sun.
The 10th Earl’s son William (1803-1887) succeeded as 11th Earl in 1851. He married Harriot Brooke, daughter of 6th Baronet Brooke, of Norton Priory, Co. Chester, England. Her portrait, with two of her children, hangs in the Main Staircase Hall of Killruddery, next to a large portrait of her husband. The 11th Earl held the office of Aide-de-Camp to HM Queen Victoria, and he gained the rank of Honorary Colonel in the 5th Battalion, Royal Dublin Fusiliers.
William, 11th Earl of Meath (1803-1887).
His son Reginald (1841-1929) became the 12th Earl of Meath. He served abroad in the British Foreign Office until he retired in 1877. The Dictionary of Irish Biography tells us that in addition to the Wicklow estate, which encompassed 14,717 acres in 1876, he owned 36 acres in the “dilapidated” Coombe district of Dublin city, as well as residences in London (83 Lancaster Gate), Surrey (Chaworth House, Ottershaw, Chertsey), and Co. Wicklow (The Coppice, Rathdrum). By 1921, however, Kilruddery’s expenses exceeded its owner’s entire Irish income and he was on the verge of bankruptcy. [5]
A committed unionist and leading member of the Irish Land Conference, Lord Meath sat in the house of lords as Baron Chaworth (UK). He was largely responsible for the construction in 1907 of the Boer War memorial arch in St Stephen’s Green. The Dictionary of Irish Biography tells us:
“A staunch imperialist, Meath was chairman of the duty and discipline movement, which had more than 4,000 members in 1917. The objectives of the movement were to combat softness, slackness, indifference, and indiscipline in young people, and to give reasonable support to all legitimate authority. Meath’s encouragement of discipline and physical education meant that he was also a strong supporter of national service and Baden-Powell’s scout movement.…Meath was the first president of the Dublin Philanthropic Reform Association, through which he initiated the police-aided clothing scheme to clothe the ‘ragged youth’ of Dublin, and was a founding member and honorary secretary of the Dublin Hospital Sunday movement, a hospital fund which raised about £200,000 between 1874 and 1922. He also founded the Hospital Saturday Fund in 1873 to help working people meet the real expenses of medical care.…From 1898 he served as lieutenant for the county and city of Dublin, JP for the counties of Dublin and Wicklow, DL for the county of Wicklow, and honorary colonel of the 5th battalion, Royal Dublin Fusiliers.…Meath wrote two volumes of reminiscences, Memories of the nineteenth century (1923) and Memories of the twentieth century (1924), as well as several works related to his social and philanthropic work. In 1868 he married Lady Mary Jane Maitland, with whom he had six children. More than half of his income was derived from his wife. He died in London after a week’s illness on 11 October 1929, and was succeeded as 13th earl by his eldest son, Reginald Le Normand Brabazon.“
Due to his philanthropy, several streets in the Liberties in Dublin are named in of the 12th Earl: Reginald Street, Reginald Square and Brabazon Square. He set up a children’s playground in Pimlico, our guide told us, and it is thanks (or no thanks, in my case!) to him that physical education is now part of the school curriculum.
His wife Mary Jane Maitland was also a dedicated philanthropist, and she financed a number of initiatives including Dublin Artisans’ Dwellings. She also set up a trust for those who suffered epilepsy, because at that time, people who suffered epilepsy were often put into psychiatric asylums. This trust continues today, the Brabazon Trust.
Normand Brabazon 13th Earl of Meath (1869-1949)
The 13th Earl fought in the Boer War and in World War I. He married Aileen May Wyndham-Quin of Adare Manor in County Limerick. He studied the art of clocks, and created the water-run clock in the clock tower, which was originally the carriage entrance, and the clock that hangs in the staircase hall, charmingly created from a copper bedwarming pan, a copper lid from a ktichen dish, and bicycle chains. The face of the clock is an old table.
The 14th Earl of Meath, John Anthony Brabazon (b. 1941), joined the Grenadier Guards. It was in his time that the house was found to be full of dry rot, and he and his wife made the difficult decision to demolish part of the house, under the guidance of the architect Claude Phillimore. A third of the house was demolished and a new formal entrance was constructed. The same materials were used in the reconstruction – the material was numbered before demolition! Although in the 1950s the house was reduced in size, a great deal of Morrisons’ design remains.
Mark Bence-Jones describes the house reduction in more detail: “…by demolishing the entrance front and all of the adjoining front except for one of the gabled projections. A new and simplified entrance was built on the same axis as its predecessor, but standing further back; the entrance being by way of a vestibule with a curving stone stair directly into the staircase hall, where one of the upper ramps of the staircase was replaced by a gallery providing communication between 1st floor rooms on either side. The library, in the surviving projection of the adjoining front, which has handsome C18 bookcases recessed in alcoves, was given a new ceiling of Caroline style plasterwork. The smaller drawing room became the dining room, the original dining room, along with the entrance hall and great hall, being among the rooms demolished.” [6]
Here is Mark Bence-Jones’s description of Killruddery:
p. 171. “The most successful Elizabethan-Revival mansion in Ireland, and also one of the earliest, having been started 1820; built for 10th Earlof Meath to the design of Sir Richard Morrison; incorporating a C17 house with plain C18 additions. Three principal fronts, with pointed and curvilinear gables, pinnacles and oriels. Symmetrical entrance front with central polygonal battlemented tower; forecourt with wrought-iron gates, flanked by gabled office range...”
Next Bence-Jones discusses the interior: “Entrance hall with segmental-pointed plaster barrel-vaulted ceiling; straight flight of oak stairs up to level of principal rooms.“
The Killruddery website tells us that inside the door on the right hand wall is the coat of arms of Sir Edward Brabazon, dated 1586. Above the door is the coat of arms of the 4th Earl of Meath. This has a five point tiara, which symbolises the status of an Earl, and shamrocks indicate that it is an Irish title. The motto is Vota Vita Mea, meaning “My Life is Service.” The stairs lead to a small domed lobby, which has niches for the china that one of the daughters of the house, Kathleen (1850-1930), who never married, collected, and a huge decorative Roman candle sconce and gilded Viennese ceiling lamp. From there, one enters the impressive staircase hall. Originall the china was held in a specially designed China Room, but this was one of the demolished rooms.
The domed ceiling over the stairs, hall and gallery was designed by Henry Popje, a Bray craftsman. Popje received an apprenticeship in Stucco work from the Lafranchini brothers. In the centre of the white dome is a golden hawk, symbol of the Brabazons. The Killruddery Wyverns stand at the end of the stairs, holding the original Brabazon shield. A wyvern is half serpent, half dragon, and in Heraldry it symbolises bravery and loyalty.
Photograph courtesy of Killruddery website.The Drum is a Grenadier Guard Drum.The Killruddery Wyverns stand at the end of the stairs, holding the original Brabazon shield. Photograph courtesy of Killruddery website.The martlet birds on the shield are said to never rest, so they symbolise tireless service.The domed ceiling over the stairs, hall and gallery was designed by Henry Popje, a Bray craftsman. In the centre of the white dome is a golden hawk, symbol of the Brabazons.Photograph courtesy of Killruddery website.
Mark Bence-Jones continues: “Great hall 40 feet high with arches opening into corridor in upper storey; ceiling of carved beams and braces carried on corbels decorated with the Meath falcon, the spaces between the beams being filled with ornate plasterwork. Staircase hall, lit by stained glass window, with massive bifurcating staircase of oak.”
Photograph courtesy of Killruddery website.The window is a picture of the Battle of Hastings, 1066, and is by Henry Victor Milner, who also made the window in Yorkminster Cathedral.
The large stained glass window is by Henry Victor Milner and dates from 1853 and depicts William the Conquerer accepting surrender from the Saxons after his victory at Hastings in 1066. Jacques de Brabancon is on his right as standard-bearer. As a result of his loyalty, de Brabacon was given lands at Bletchley Castle and Leicestershire, our guide told us.
The staircase hall contains several portraits. One of Reginald, the 12th Earl of Meath, is a reproduction as the original is by William Orpen and hangs in the Portrait Gallery in London. In the portrait he wears his robes of the Order of St. Patrick, an order created by King George III, our guide told us.
Two enormous Himalayan bugles stand on either side of the hall door into the drawing room. These, our guide told us, are meant to sound like singing elephants. and the elephants are supposed to sing you into the air and into the womb.
Mark Bence-Jones continues his description: ” Large and small dining rooms en suite, forming enfilade with Statue Gallery; both drawing rooms having Classical decoration. Large drawing room with ceiling of elaborated coved and coffered plasterwork, grey scagliola Ionic columns and panels on walls framed by scalloped gilt mouldings. Small drawing room with shallow domed ceiling of more delicate plasterwork in a pattern of foliage, flowers and trophies; plaster draperies in lunettes.“
The library is the oldest room in the house, the website tells us. It overlooks the long ponds, the “mirrors of the sky.” The room has a fireplace carved in the manner of Grinling Gibbon, with a hawk on top. A painting of the current Earl’s mother, Elizabeth, hangs by the fireplace. She was called the “DIY woman” as she was very practical. There are also portraits of King James II and Charles II. The room was fire damaged during the making of a film, and when it was repaired, the Chippendale bookshelves were recessed into the walls.
Photograph courtesy of Killruddery website.The library, in the surviving projection of the front has handsome C18 bookcases recessed in alcoves and in 1950s was given a new ceiling of Caroline [ie. in the style of the era of King Charles II] style plasterwork.
Bence-Jones describes the entrance gates as similar to those at Ballyfin, Co Laois and Fota, Co Cork.
[2] p. 137, MacDonnell, Randal. The Lost Houses of Ireland. A chronicle of great houses and the families who lived in them. Weidenfeld and Nicolson. London, 2002
[3] Great Houses of Ireland by Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd and Christopher Simon Sykes. Laurence King Publishing, 1999.
[4] MacDonnell, Randal. The Lost Houses of Ireland: A chronicle of great houses and the families who lived in them. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2002.
[6] Mark Bence-Jones. A Guide to Irish Country Houses (originally published as Burke’s Guide to Country Houses volume 1 Ireland by Burke’s Peerage Ltd. 1978); Revised edition 1988 Constable and Company Ltd, London.
Irish Historic Houses 