During Heritage Week in 2025 we were given a wonderful tour by its resident Alicia Clements, daughter of the Earl of Rosse, who married a descendant of Nathaniel Clements who built the Áras an Uachtaráin in the Phoenix Park.
Mark Bence-Jones. A Guide to Irish Country Houses (originally published as Burke’s Guide to Country Houses volume 1 Ireland by Burke’s Peerage Ltd. 1978); Revised edition 1988 Constable and Company Ltd, London.
p. 278. “(Parsons, Rosse, E/PB) A house ca 1815 with a fanlighted Ionic doorway under a giant arch. A Gothic central window was inserted later and the interior remodelled in Gothic, probably for 2nd Earl of Rosse’s two bachelor brothers. Afterwards occupied by agents of subsequent Earls of Rosse.”
https://theirishaesthete.com/2019/01/12/tullanisk/
The entrance front of Tullynisk, County Offaly. Dating from the early 19th century and replacing an older property on the site, the house is a mixture of the classical and gothic, the former evident in the doorcase with its Ionic columns, the latter in the window directly above. The combination of the two is as unselfconsciously assured as the sheep grazing in the immediate vicinity.
See Robert O’Byrne, The Irish Country House, A New Vision. With photographs by Luke White. Rizzoli, New York, Paris, London, Milan, 2024.
“In 1620 Sir Laurence Parsons, who had followed the example of his elder brother William by moving from England to Ireland, came to live in Birr Castle, then a dilapidated fortress. Originally constructed by the once-powerful Ely O’Carroll family, the property and surrounding 1.277 acres were among the lands wrested from them by the English government and granted to Sir Laurence, at the time receiver general of Crown Lands. Demonstrating a determination that he and his descendants would remain living on the site, he renamed the place the Manor of Parsonstown.
Sir Laurence did not enjoy possession of his Irish property for long since he died in 1628. His elder son followed a few years later, after which Birr Castle was inherited by a younger son William. He is remembered for being a doughty soldier, governor of the surrounding territory, who survived a fifteen month siege of the castle during the Confederate Wars of the 1640s. And although eventually obliged to surrender, the family was later able to return to Birr and repair the building, which remains their home to the present day.
At the start of the nineteenth century, Birr Castle was extensively remodelled and enlarged by architect John Johnson in a fashionable castellated Gothic style for Sir Laurence Parsons, future second Earl of Rosse. The work undertaken here may have inspired the earl’s two younger sons, John Cleare Parsons and Laurence Parsons, when they were given the opportunity to overhaul a villa owned by the family on the edge of the town. Originally called Woodville but now known as Tullanisk, it had been built in the midst of ancient oak trees around 1810 as a dower house, the design attributed to local architect Bernard Mullins. Three years after a fire in the building in 1820 had left it badly damaged, the Parsons siblings chose to put their own stamp on the place. The result is a house that fearlessly, yet successfully, mixes the classical with the Gothic, reflecting gradual shifts in taste during the period in which it was renovated.
While the Parson brothers might have had a hand in Tullanisk’s design – as their father had at neighbouring Birr Castle two decades earlier – there is some debate over who might have been the architect employed here. The most likely candidate is Richard Morrison, responsible for a number of other country houses with similar features in the same part of the country: Tullanisk’s garden front, for example, has a three-bay central bow almost identical to that seen at Cangort Park, another property designed by Morrison, some ten miles to the south. Of two storeys over basement, Tullanisk’s garden front conforms to classical expectations, as do the building’s elevations to the southeast and northwest. The appearance of the entrance front, on the other hand, is somewhat unexpected. Of five bays, that in the centre takes the form of a recessed arch, its outline traced by clustered shafts. Within this enclosure is an Ionic doorcase with side- and fanlight and then, somewhat surprisingly, a tripartite Gothic window on the floor above.
The Gothic influence continues inside the house, beginning with the entrance hall that has a vaulted ceiling with bosses, all supported by slender wall shafts. In style, this is a simplified version of the Gothic saloon created in Birr Castle by John Johnston, and so too are the narrow flanking passages that leaad to Tullanisk’s main reception rooms. Further Gothic inspiration was emplyed for the narrow spiralling staircase, reminiscent of those found in medieval castles, which climbs to the bedroom floor where, as below, the corridors are vaulted.
Returning downstairs, classicism reigns in the principal rooms, perhaps because they were too large to accommodate the same Gothic motifs, perhaps because the Parson brothers recognised that they lived in a house and not a castle. In consequence, the only variation found in these rooms comes from the different motifs employed in the cornicing.
While Laurence Parsons lived to be almost ninety and enjoyed two marriages, his elder brother was not so lucky. In 1828, a week shy of his twenty-sixth birthday, John Cleare Parsons died of scarlet fever. As for the building they had renovated, it served a variety of uses, including for many years as residence for the agents of the Birr Castle estate and, during the 1990s, as a popular guesthouse. In more recent years, it has once more become home to a member of the Parsons family, Lady Alicia Clements, daughter of the present Earl of Rosse, and her husband Nat Clements, together with their children. Ireland’s foremost decorative artist, Nat Clements has been responsible for giving Tullanisk its present appearance, from the faux-stone blocking in the entrance hall to the dragged paint walls of the saloon. As for the pictures and furnishings, they are a happy blend of items inherited from both of the couple’s families, together with new acquisitions, joyously married to form a unified whole.”
[picture caption p. 188] Immediately inside the front door… sit busts of Robert Bermingham Clements, Viscount Clements and William Markham, Archbishop of York.
p. 190 caption. The drawing room bookcase came from the now demolished Ashfield Lodge, County Cavan. Above it hangs a portrait of of the house’s former chatelaine, Catherine Markham, wife of Henry Theophilus Clements. .. The sofa came from the former Clements estate, Lough Rynn, County Leitrim. The chandelier os old Murano glass.
In the dining room, the table is a modern piece, made from a single yew tree that blew down in the storm of 1988, and in keeping with all the doors in Tullanisk that are of the same wood. .. The bronze horse is by local scuptor Siobhan Bulfin.
The bedroom corridor continues the Gothic theme found on the floor below, the vaulted ceilings ribs meeting a plaster bosses in the manner of a medieval cloister.”
Tullynisk House, WOODFIELD OR TULLYNISK, County Offaly
Detached five-bay two-storey over basement country house, built c.1810, with recessed central blind arch to façade and full-height bow to rear elevation. Set within its own grounds. Hipped slate roof with oversailing eaves having stone brackets, terracotta ridge tiles, rendered chimneystacks and cast-iron rainwater goods. Roughcast rendered walls with tooled stone plinth course, string course and quoins. Moulded tooled stone surround to recessed segmental-headed bay at façade. Timber sash windows with chamfered tooled stone surrounds and keystones. Tripartite timber sash window to first floor of façade’s recessed bay having pointed-segmental-headed mullions. Segmental-headed door opening to façade with coved and fluted archivolt, engaged Ionic columns, glazed and panelled timber double doors, fanlight and sidelights, accessed by tooled stone steps. Brick-lined servants’ tunnel to rear. Square-headed ashlar limestone gate piers to road with fluted capitals, plinth walls with spear-headed cast-iron railings and gates. Stone outbuildings with hipped and pitched slate roofs to north-west adjacent to walled garden with stone and yellow brick walls. Late twentieth-century bungalow constructed within walled garden.
Appraisal
Annotated as Woodfield on the first edition of the Ordnance Survey map and as Woodville on the nineteenth-century second edition of the Ordnance Survey map, this country house is now known as Tullynisk House. Belonging to the Rosse Estate at Birr, it is part of the architectural and historical heritage of that town. Its design is striking and although unproven, has been attributed to Richard Morrison. The garden front of Tullynisk House is similar in design to the rear elevation of Cangort Park, with the unusual chamfered window architraves. Incorporating limestone dressings, a Gothic inspired central window and a splendid doorcase with leaded lights, the decorative detailing at Tullynisk creates drama within the symmetrical façade. Its rear, being equally as pleasant, is enriched with bowed central bays that look out onto a lawn. The site is completed by highly crafted entrance gates, an attractive gate lodge and outbuildings. Of particular note is the walled garden, situated to the north-east of the house. Now housing a modern bungalow, the impressive stone and yellow brick walls enclose a large area.
Detached three-bay single-storey gate lodge, c.1810. Hipped slate roof with paired timber modillions at eave course. Rendered walls with square-headed door and window openings with timber casement lattice windows and stone sills. Set behind square-headed ashlar limestone gate piers with fluted capitals, plinth walls with spear-headed cast-iron railings and gates.
Appraisal
This highly crafted gate lodge forms part of a group of attendant structures within the Tullynisk House demesne. Annotated as Woodfield on the first edition of the Ordnance Survey map and as Woodville on the nineteenth-century second edition of the Ordnance Survey map, this country house is now known as Tullynisk House. Belonging to the Rosse Estate at Birr, it is part of the architectural and historical heritage of the town.
https://www.ihh.ie/index.cfm/houses/house/name/Tullanisk
A little over a mile north of Birr, in County Offaly, surrounded by a demesne of magnificent oak trees, Tullanisk, formerly known as Woodville, was built in about 1810 as the dower house for Birr Castle to the designs of Bernard Mullins. Despite its relatively modest size the house is remarkable for its regularity, with four formal fronts, and for its architectural ingenuity. The central feature of the five bay facade is part gothic, part Regency, all recessed within a giant arch. Otherwise the exterior is typically late-Georgian. The interior is partly classical and part gothic, with a wealth of innovative details and decoration, and craftsmanship and materials of the highest quality.
https://theirishaesthete.com/2019/01/12/tullanisk/
A Confident Blend of Styles
The entrance front of Tullynisk, County Offaly. Dating from the early 19th century and replacing an older property on the site, the house is a mixture of the classical and gothic, the former evident in the doorcase with its Ionic columns, the latter in the window directly above. The combination of the two is as unselfconsciously assured as the sheep grazing in the immediate vicinity.
Irish Historic Houses 