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. 201. “(Burke, Bt/PB) A house built ca 1775 by John Burke, and enlarged post 1813 by Sir John Burke, 2nd Bt. Of three storeys over a high basement; entrance front with one bay on either side of a three-sided bow; doorcase with rusticated pilasters. Side elevation of two bays and a further two bays projecting forwards. Now a ruin.”
Listed in Vanishing Country Houses of Ireland by The Knight of Glin, David J. Griffin and Nicholas K. Robinson, published by The Irish Architectural Archive and The Irish Georgian Society, 1988.
Lisreaghan (also known as Bellevue), Lawrencetown, Co Galway – ‘lost’
Lisreaghan House, County Galway, entrance front, collection: Fr. Egan, 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.
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. 187. “(Lawrence/LGI1912) This vast two storey house C18 with its Doric frontispiece and frescoed rooms has vanished; two tell of its former glories are two Gothic follies and the avenue, at one end of which is a fine triumphal arch flanked with pedimented lodges, which was erected by Walter Lawrence to commemorate the Irish Volunteers of 1782.”
Listed in Vanishing Country Houses of Ireland by The Knight of Glin, David J. Griffin and Nicholas K. Robinson, published by The Irish Architectural Archive and The Irish Georgian Society, 1988.
p. 74. “...The principal rooms of its lavish interior were the Aurora Hall, Constantine Hall and Italian drawing room, some of which were decorated with large frescoes. There was a sale of contents in 1912 and a final sale in the 1920s. The house was later demolished to provide building materials. A number of follies survive including a triumphal arch.”
Paddy Rossmore. Photographs. Edited by Robert O’Byrne. The Lilliput Press, Dublin 7, 2019.
“Lisreaghan was formerly an estate owned by the Lawrence family, which had originally settled in the late sixteenth century nearby at Ballymore Castle, but, having espoused the Royalist cause, were dispossessed of this during the Cromwellian period. In 1730 the Lisreaghan estate was inherited by one-year-old Walter Lawrence following the deaths of both his parents. On reaching adulthood and following the requisite Grand Tour of mainland Europe, he built a large new residence for himself, called Belleview or Belview. In 1782 Lawrence further commissioned a new entrance to his estate, a monumental gateway intended to commemorate Henry Grattan’s efforts to acheive greater legislative independence for the Irish parliament. Known as the Volunteer Gate (after one of the period’s local militias of which Lawrence was colonel), this consists of a triumphal arch flanked by smaller openings which are in turn connected to two-room lodges. A recessed panel directly beneath the pediment bears a Latin inscription: translated this read “Liberty after a long servitude was won on the 16th April 1782 by the armed sons of Hibernia, who with heroic fortitude, regained the Ancient Laws and established their Ancient Independence.”
Bellevue having been abandoned at the start of the last century and then demolished, the Volunteer Arch is hte most visible reminder of its former presence. Anumber of follies also survive inside what was once the estate’s demesne, such as this eighteenth century Gothic eyecatcher, photographed by Paddy with members of the travelling community then in residence nearby.”
Two years before his father’s death, John’s surviving son and heir Walter of Lisreaghan continued the family’s connection with the family of Cloghan castle, by marrying his cousin Cecily, daughter of Colonel Garrett Moore.[xxi] The couple had two sons, John and Walter and a daughter Honoria. Both sons were minors at their father’s death in 1677. The eldest John, however, died young and without heirs and so the younger, Walter, inherited the family estates. [xxii]
Their sister Honoria married Hyacinth Pelly of Kill, County Galway, the only son of Peter Pelly of Ballagh in the nearby parish of Clontuskert. [xxiii] Hyancinth Pelly had been married firstly to Anne, daughter of Nicholas Arcedeckne of Gortnamona in the parish of Clontuskert, of a family who had been transplanted from County Kilkenny to Clontuskert during the Cromwellian period.[xxiv] (Descendants of this first marriage would later be seated at Hearnesbrook in the parish of Killimorbologue in the nineteenth century.)
Walter Lawrence of Lisreaghan 1677 to 1706
By the early years of the eighteenth century the Lawrences had removed from Ballymore to Lisreaghan and Ballymore’s new occupants were Eyre’s tenants, the Seymours, descendants of Cromwellian origin.[xxv] Walter of Lisreaghan married Mary Arcedeckne in 1699, another daughter of Nicholas Arcedeckne of Gortnamona and sister-in-law of Hyacinth Pelly and had two sons, John and Peter and two daughters, Bridget and Honoria.[xxvi]
The younger son pursued a career in the Royal Navy, being credited with the capture of a Spanish galleon named the ‘St. Joseph’ laden with treasure that was later conveyed under escort to the Tower of London. He was said to have been present at the battle of Carthagena in 1741, where he was wounded and rose to the rank of Rear Admiral. Of the sisters Bridget and Honoria, the former married Redmond Burke, Esq. of Clonlee, County Galway while Honoria married an individual only identified in records by his surname Burke.[xxvii]
The village of Lawrencetown
To Walter Lawrence was attributed the original foundation about the year 1700 of an organised settlement on their estate about the townland of Oghilmore.[xxviii] A fair was held nearby in the adjacent denomination of Oghilbeg (wherein lay what appears to have been a small cluster of houses known as Oghil) on the 25th March and a market on Wednesdays and Saturdays in the early seventeenth century, granted to the Earl of Clanricarde.[xxix] From its founding family the new settlement would derive its name of Lawrencetown, which initially would appear to have been small in size and further developed by later members of the family.
The Cromwellian Eyre family had by that time established a small village about their mansion house with a Protestant church and, having brought together a small group of Protestant settlers there, had been rewarded late in the seventeenth century by the Crown with a grant of manorial status, providing for a demesne, court, and associated rights, including the holding of a market and fairs there. [xxx] A similar organised townscape would be applied to the settlement at Ballinasloe under the Trench family, following their consolidation of property thereabout in the latter half of the seventeenth century.
John Lawrencetown of Lisreaghan 1706 to 1730
John, the elder son of Walter, succeeded his father at Lisreaghan on Walter’s death in 1706.[xxxi] In 1729 he married a wealthy heiress, Mary daughter of John Scott, Esq. of Greenish and Cappavarnagh, co. Galway, and of Mont Serat, West Indies and that same year converted to Protestantism.[xxxii] The family relationship of the mainline of the Lawrences with the Meelick friary would appear to have eventually petered out after John Lawrence’s conversion, but his wife ‘having overcome many trials tempting her to deny her Catholic faith’ remained a Roman Catholic. She died at the young age of twenty-three years in January of 1730 and was buried at Meelick.[xxxiii] The friars, to whose convent she left a legacy, acknowledged her adherence to her faith in their obituary book at her death.[xxxiv] (They described her husband still at that time as ‘of Ballymore’.) John of Lisreaghan died, however, in 1730, apparently at a young age and left an only son of one year, Walter.
The same year that John of Lisreaghan died, another, less senior, member of the family died in France. In the Jacobite Williamite War members of the Lawrences, like most of the local landed families, served in the Jacobite army or supported that cause and at least one member of the family was among those to die on foreign shores in the gradual exodus after the final defeat of the Jacobite army. A generation older than the brothers John and Peter of Lisreaghan, William Lawrence, originally of Ballymore served as a sergeant in the company of Charles Dillon the elder, Irish Regiment of Dillon and was, by the time of his death in 1730 at the age of sixty-one, an invalid with poor sight, carrying injuries sustained from a gunshot wound to his thigh received on service in Spain. He had spent most of his life in military service in the French army. Despite his being unfit for service he died on detachment in Dax.[xxxv]
Colonel Walter Lawrence of Lisreaghan 1730 to 1796
During the minority of Walter Lawrence following the early death of his father John in 1730 his uncle Rear Admiral Peter Lawrence appears to have played a role in the maintenance of the family estates at Lisreaghan. It was he who was credited with enlarging the village of Lawrencetown about 1750 and with planting numerous cedar of Lebanon and other specimen trees about the estate between 1740 and 1750.[xxxvi] He was seated at Woodfield, Eyrecourt by 1749, in which year he converted to Protestantism, twenty years after his brother.[xxxvii] He died unmarried at the age of fifty-seven years in November 1758.[xxxviii] He was said to have been buried in the Lawrence family ancestral vault at Clonfert.[xxxix]
Born in 1729, Walter Lawrence utilised the fortune which came to him through his mother’s family, the Scotts, and built a large mansion at only a short remove from Ballymore on his lands at Lisreaghan set in landscaped grounds and filled with art treasures collected during his travels. He appears to have contributed further to the extensive tree plantation of his estate. From this time the house and estate became known also as Belview. He appears to have undertaken his own Grand Tour in his early years, spending time with artists, philosophers and figures of the Enlightenment such as Voltaire and Canova, the latter whom he patronised and a number of whose sculptures he possessed. The interior of the mansion he erected on his estate stood apart in marked contrast to many of the houses then extant in the immediate vicinity of the local landed class in its opulence and its reflection of the height of contemporary continental artistic taste.
The location of the Lawrence residence at Lisreaghan prior to the construction of Belview is uncertain. It is possible that the new mansion was built on the site of the former. However, Lord Walter Fitzgerald, a noted antiquary who visited Belview in the early twentieth century noted what he described as ‘some remains of the ruins of Lissreaghaun Castle’ ‘opposite the hall door’ of Belview. There are no references to a late medieval tower house at Lisreaghan and the existence of such a structure is unlikely given the proximity of the former Lawrence tower-house at Ballymore. Other than an ice house, one structure is evident in front of Belview on mid nineteenth century Ordnance Survey maps. This structure would appear to have been in a ruinous state by the late nineteenth century when Ordnance Survey maps show only part thereof remaining. It would appear likely that it was this structure to which Lord Walter referred as the ruins of Lissreaghaun Castle. Given his experience in the field of architecture and archaeological remains, it would appear that he was confident that this structure may have been of some antiquity and may perhaps have been an earlier residence or building pre-dating the construction of Belview by Colonel Lawrence.
Walter Lawrence converted to Protestantism in 1751 and married Marjery Netterville in 1760, the only daughter of Edmond Netterville of Longford, Co. Galway and of Glasnevin, County Dublin.[xl] Walter and Marjery Lawrence had two children, both of whom would die without issue, Peter and Maria.
A number of those landed proprietors such as Lawrence were influenced by the Enlightenment belief in man’s ability to improve his condition through industry and reason.[xli]About 1765 Colonel Lawrence was said to have rebuilt the village of Lawrencetown or at least undertaken some development work there to promote the Linen Industry among his tenants, which was at that time thriving in Ireland, with companies established in that industry in Eyrecourt and on the ffrench estate at Monivea.[xlii]
Death of the male heir and remarriage
When Colonel Walter was about sixty-one years, Peter, his twenty-eight year old son by his first marriage, died in July of 1790. In memory of his son, the disconsolate father had a memorial erected on the lawn to the north of the family house. The memorial was described in the early twentieth century as ‘a square pillar of cut stonework surmounted by a terra-cotta urn, the latter bearing the name Coade, London, 1791. On two small white marble tablets inserted in the monument, one on either side, are cut the following lines’:-
Sacred to the Memory of Peter Lawrence a Youth of gentle manners, brilliant talents & a virtuous mind, who died 25th July 1790 aged 28 years & 16 days, having been born the 16thAugust 1762; this frail memorial was erected by Walter Lawrence his father, who felt, as he should, the loss of such a son. On the opposite side’:- Adieu, thou gentle shade, adieu, Who living virtue’s path hast trod, Enjoy those pleasures ever new, wrapt in the bosom of thy God. Freed from a world of varied woes, Thy soul, attuned to sounds divine, Will, in the regions of repose, Mid choirs of holy seraphs, shine.’[xliv]
The death of his son left Colonel Lawrence without a male heir and his daughter Maria was unmarried. (She would die unmarried in 1823.)[xlv] His wife Margery appears to have been dead by this time or not long deceased and he re-married in August 1791. He married secondly Catherine Darcy, the widow of Charles Blake of Merlin Park, Co. Galway and daughter of John D’Arcy of Ballykine, County Mayo. By his second wife he had a son and daughter, Walter of Lisreaghan, born in 1793, and Matilda, who would marry in 1822 Thomas Seymour of Ballymore Castle. [xlvi]
Colonel Walter Lawrence died in October of 1796 aged about sixty-seven years, leaving his daughters Maria by his first marriage, Matilda by his second and his son and heir Walter, a minor aged about three years to eventually succeed to the family estates.[xlvii]
Walter Lawrence of Lisreaghan 1796 to 1853
Walter Lawrence of Lisreaghan, son of Colonel Lawrence, married Georgiana daughter of Charles Blake of Moyne, County Mayo and of Merlin Park, County Galway in 1813 at the age of about twenty years. He served as a Justice of the Peace and High Sheriff from 1820 to 1821.
Walter and Georgiana had a large family of at least nineteen children, a number of whom died at a young age; Captain Walter, Charles, who died young in 1816, John, Peter-Charles, who also died young in 1822, Rev. Charles, Peter, Denis-John, George and Henry-William, and daughters Georgiana, Catherine, Mary, Matilda, who died in 1835, Margaret, Frances, Anne, Adelaide, Julia, who died in 1837 and Elizabeth, who died in 1838.[xlviii]
The eldest son and heir apparent, Captain Walter Lawrence was that ‘Captain Walter Lawrence the younger of Lisreaghan’ active in Freemasonry circles in Ireland, England and Scotland in the mid nineteenth century and who was appointed Deputy Provincial Grand Master of the Provincial Grand Lodge of Sterlingshire in Scotland in January 1849.[xlix] He was first admitted to that fraternal association in Banagher, King’s County in 1844. [l] Within a short time he held high office in the fraternity in Ireland, holding the office of ‘Most Wise Sovereign of the Grand Chapter of Ireland’ and was subsequently admitted to a chapter of the fraternity in Manchester about 1845.[li] He was long attached thereto as he was about to leave England (possibly for Scotland) in that year. Described as an officer of the 41stRegiment, his appearance thereafter in Scotland would suggest that he was about to be posted there or abroad in 1845. He married in 1848 Olivia, eldest daughter of Sir Michael Dillon Bellew, bart.[lii]
Like many of the larger estates in the aftermath of the Great Famine of the late 1840s, the Lisreaghan estate was in serious financial difficulty and approximately four thousand acres of land, located in the baronies of Longford, Clare and Dunmore in County Galway and another approximately three hundred acres in the barony of Kilmaine in County Mayo, the property of Walter Lawrence the elder, were advertised for sale in 1851 in the Encumbered Estates Court.[liii] Some of the lands were eventually sold about that time but the Lawrences managed to retain their family mansion and the lands about Lisreaghan.
Captain Walter Lawrence of Lisreaghan 1853 to 1863
A small part of the former Lawrence properties was purchased in 1853 by Captain Walter Lawrence, thus preserving for the family their seat and a reduced estate about Lisreaghan and the village of Lawrencetown. While the family would still be in possession of about two thousand acres in County Galway in the 1870s, the property would be heavily encumbered by debts, not least of which was a mortgage for £8,000 made in 1853 between Captain Walter Lawrence and the Scottish Amicable Insurance Company.[liv]
In 1863 Walter Lawrence the elder suffered the loss of his wife and his eldest son Captain Walter Lawrence. The latter left an only daughter, Honora Mary who five years later married Charles Blake of Coolcon, County Mayo.[lv] His brother John thereupon became the inheritor of the Lisreaghan estate.[lvi]
John Lawrence of Lisreaghan 1863 to 1872.
Walter Lawrence the elder’s second surviving son, John of Lisreaghan died in 1872 unmarried and without a male heir.[lvii] The following year Walter Lawrence the elder died in September of 1873 at the age of seventy-nine years. As the four eldest sons of Walter Lawrence the elder died either in infancy or in adulthood, Lisreaghan was inherited by his fifth son Rev. Charles Lawrence.[lviii]
Rev. Charles Lawrence of Lisreaghan 1872 to 1905
Charles Lawrence initially followed a military career and was commissioned in the Austrian Hussars.[lix] He cast that aside and pursued a career in the Anglican Church, entering holy orders in 1864. He settled in England and married in 1866 Cecily, the youngest daughter of General Sir Charles Wade K.C.B. of Shelford, in Cambridgeshire and served as the Vicar of Thurton in the Anglican Diocese of Norwich.[lx]
The Lawrence estate inherited by Rev Charles Lawrence on the death of his brother John was heavily burdened by both external and internal outgoings. With the sale of the greater part of the Lawrence estates in 1851 there was less resources to provide for Charles’ younger brothers and sisters. By settlements made when they were underage in 1848 the sum of £13,000 was to be allocated for their use, but this figure had to be derived after 1851 from a much-reduced estate that could ill afford the continuous burden. By a deed of 1865 the children were to take £500 each instead of the £1,000 provided under the 1848 settlements. Charles’ younger siblings or a number of them at least were dissatisfied with this arrangement and in 1880, to Charles’ displeasure, successfully appealed the earlier deed. The cost of providing this increased figure to his younger brothers and sisters proved a heavy burden on Rev. Charles Lawrence, who found that the property was unable to meet these demands, the money for which, he claimed, came out of his own private means and swallowed up his own income.[lxi]
Of Charles’ brothers, Henry was resident at Lisreaghan in the mid 1870s and appears to have had a degree of limited responsibility with regard to dealing with tenants and the running of the estate, subject to the final approval of his elder brother Charles.[lxii] (The latter’s Land Agent from 1872 until his death in 1892 was John J. Madden of Cartron, Kilrickle, near Loughrea.)[lxiii]
Denis-John as a young man had travelled abroad and was in the United States of America in 1869 travelling about the southern states and seeking employment there. He informed his father in May of that year that he had been promised a position with a railroad company who were constructing a line from St. Paul, Miami to Lake Superior.[lxiv] By the mid 1870s he appears to have been involved with decisions regarding the estates, with he and his brother Henry consulting on matters before Henry would write to their brother Charles regarding proposals regarding tenants and lands.[lxv] Not receiving his due annual interest from the estate from Charles nor receiving a reply to numerous requests for the same, Denis had his solicitor threaten Charles with legal action in February of 1882 unless the full amount due was paid. In June of that same year he married Eliza Jane, eldest daughter of Edward Parsons, Commissions Agent, of 127 Oxton Road, Birkenhead, England at Christ’s Church, Claughton in Cheshire.[lxvi]
Charles spent a large part of his years in England after inheriting the estate but in 1881 his wife Cecily died and he thereafter returned to Lisreaghan.[lxvii] His younger brother Peter was established in Brooklyn, New York by 1882 and maintained a close interest in the affairs of the family and County Galway. He wrote to his elder brother in April of that year seeking monies due him and noting that his brother had escaped the fate of other landlords who had been shot for evicting tenants, given that he had heard that his brother had evicted four the previous December.[lxviii] He returned to Ireland and was resident at 7 Nuns Island in Galway by 1887 but appears to have been regularly in financial difficulty, requiring urgently monies due him from his brother Charles from the family estates but not always immediately forthcoming when needed, given the financial difficulties encountered by his brother.[lxix] By 1892 he was resident at Beech Avenue, Galway and still in financial distress and deeply unhappy with the financial response from his brother and his brother’s then Agent, Mahon. Such was his want that he complained of having been ill throughout the previous winter with an affliction of the kidneys and of being ‘unable to procure nourishment for want of money.’[lxx] He does not appear to have had any surviving male issue but at least one daughter, Georgina.[lxxi]
The Lawrence estate and the family members who derived an income therefrom were in serious financial straits by the early 1890s. Rev. Charles Lawrence sought to sell off one thousand trees from the estate at that time to timber merchants, a number of which were the Cedars of Lebanon planted by his great uncle Rear Admiral Peter Lawrence about one hundred and fifty years earlier (Trees had previously been sold from the estate about 1871). When word spread that he was contemplating the sale of timber from the property, at least one creditor demanded part of any monies received from their sale to avert his taking legal proceedings against Lawrence.[lxxii] The Rev. Charles went so far as to consider the sale of various works of art and valuable books from the house. In May of 1892 Lawrence’s Agent George Ker Mahon of Ballydonlan Castle, Loughrea was appointed Receiver of the lands of ‘Lisreaghan otherwise Bellview, Lisafroon otherwise Lisafarsoon, Ohillmore otherwise Lawrencetown, Cooleney and Craughwell’ all about the family seat at Lisreaghan.[lxxiii]
Rev. Charles Lawrence was living at Lisreaghan in 1901 with his younger brother, a widower, Denis, aged sixty-two and his seventeen year old niece Ethel Lawrence, who was born in Cheshire. Charles at that time was sixty-four years of age and described himself as a retired clergyman of the Church of England.[lxxiv]
Denis John Lawrence, the last of Lisreaghan
Denis John Lawrence succeeded his elder brother at Lisreaghan on the latter’s death in July of 1905.[lxxv] A steady decline in the fortunes of the estate and family had set in and by about 1908 there were no longer any members of the Lawrence family living in the townland of Belview or Lissreaghaun. In 1912 there was a sale of art treasures from the house and a final sale in the 1920s. By then most of the estate lands remaining had been sold to former tenants.
Lord Walter Fitzgerald, a noted antiquary and son of Charles, 4th Duke of Leinster, visited Belview in 1912, apparently after the sale of art treasures. He described the house as ‘till about four years ago, for generations (been) the home of the Lawrence family; but owing to mortgages the place had to be sold up about 1908 and there is now not a stick of furniture left in the house, a one-storied building (recte: two-storied) with a wing at right angles, and a large portico, in the canopy above which is a shield bearing the Lawrence arms (“Argent, a cross raguly gules.” Crest: A fish’s tail) surrounded by cannon, flags, drums, &c., all in terra-cotta ware by Coade of London, as appears on one of the cannon. Below them on a scroll is the motto:- PRO . REGE . SAEPE . PRO . PATRIA . SEMPER. As the house in all probability will never again be occupied, and consequently will fall into decay, mention will be made of an oil-painting which, painted on wall, occupies the whole of one end of the hall. It is painted in a very amateurish fashion, and of doubtful taste, by (it appears on the painting “ I. Ryan. INV. Et PINX. 1796.” It is supposed to represent a Review of Troops, but it is principally taken up with the figures of low-dressed ladies, two or three officers and a nearly nude Neptune with a trident, &c. Overhead is pained the inscription’:-
General de Burgh inspecting the Bellvue or Lawrencetown Volunteers at Birr 20th September, 1784.
‘Below the picture are painted the names of the principal personages who are introduced into it, thus’:-General de Burgh, Adjutant Lennon, Mrs. Naughton, Dolly Minogue, The 13th Earl of Clanricarde, Miss Olivia Nugent of Pallas, Colonel Walter Lawrence, Mary Egan, P. Banan, Major Peter Lawrence, Mrs. Lawrence née Darcy.
It was Fitzgerald’s opinion that within a short time the picture would ‘peel away with damp’ but was of the view that, in such an event, ‘the loss will not be great.’ He noted the presence in one of the rooms of a gilded inscription stating that it was “occupied by H.R.H. George Prince of Wales, Prince Regent 1780-1790.” In later giving a description of the house in the 1912 Journal of the ‘Association for the Preservation of the Memorials of the Dead, Ireland,’ he also gave a description of the monument erected by Colonel Lawrence on the lawn in memory of his son Peter and noted the presence of a ‘small thick mural slab’ lying inside the back door of the house, which he believed dated from the latter end of the sixteenth century, ‘from one of the MacCoghlan castles in the Kings County.’[lxxvi] Elements of the Lawrence memorial were later reconstructed in front of the nearby Ballymore Castle.[lxxvii]
Despite the presence of the Lawrence family in east Galway since the latter years of the sixteenth century and the many children born in the early nineteenth century to Walter Lawrence (none of whose sons produced male heirs), the Clonfert historian Fr. Patrick K. Egan noted in the mid twentieth century that there was at that time no member of the family in the male line alive.
The penultimate landholder of the family at Lisreaghan, Rev. Charles Lawrence, had a volume of photographs and documents relating to their family history compiled in the late nineteenth century, known as the ‘Lawrence Family Album.’ The Album included biographical notes on various members of the family but not all members of the wider family appear to have been recorded. No reference was made to one Thomas Laurence of Belview, who converted to Protestantism in 1788 and it is unclear if this individual had offspring.[lxxviii] Similarly no mention was made in that record of William Lawrence, originally of Ballymore, who served as a sergeant in the Irish Regiment of Dillon in the French army and who died in 1730.[lxxix]Again it is unclear if this individual had children.
No record was given in the ‘Lawrence Family Album’ or ‘Burke’s Landed Gentry’ to any children deriving from John, Edward, Peter or Joseph Lawrence, the younger sons of John Lawrence who would have flourished about the early decades of the seventeenth century.[lxxx] Unlike several other families who served the Elizabethan administration and settled about east Galway in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, such as the Moores of Cloghan Castle, minor branches of the wider family descended from junior sons of the mainline were not established about County Galway and the expiration of the mainline in the early twentieth century witnessed the disappearance of the family from the county.
Bellview, the family mansion at Lisreaghan, shorn of its works of art, was demolished following the sale of lands in the 1920s, leaving only the ruins thereabout of its walled garden. Many of the trees had been sold at the end of the previous century and its small lake to the south of the mansion dried up. By the middle of the twentieth century the avenue serving the house and demesne was designated a public road running under the Volunteer Arch.
While the family passed away, the physical landscape of the immediate vicinity about Lisreaghan served as a reminder of their former presence, about which lay such landmarks as their earlier castle at Ballymore, the Volunteer Arch and folly along the demesne’s former avenue and most significantly the village of Lawrencetown that carried their name.
[ii] The Elizabethan Colony in Co. Roscommon, Irish Midland Studies, Athlone, 1980, pp. 114-5.
[iii] Hamilton, H.C. (ed.), Calendar of the State Papers relating to Ireland of the reign of Elizabeth 1574-1585,London, Longman, Green, Reader and Dyer, 1867, pp. 270-2.
[iv] Calendar of Fiants Queen Elizabeth I, The thirteenth Report of the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records in Ireland, 12 March 1881, Dublin, A. Thom & Co., 1881, Appendix IV, Fiants Eliz. I, p. 154. Pardon dated 10th March XXIV, to ‘Rob. Longe of Athlone, Co. Westmeath, soldier, Tho. Larane of Bellaneslowe, Co. Roscommon, soldier and Matthew Everard of Roscommon, soldier.’
[v] MacCuarta, B., S.J., A Settler’s land disputes in a Gaelic Lordship: Matthew de Renzy in Delvin Mac Coghlan, 1613-18, Studia Hibernica, No. 30, Studia Hibernica Editorial Board, Dublin, 1998-9, pp.69-70. The parcel in dispute appears to have comprised ‘the three acres of Aghamullan and Cullipoble and the acre called Aghanadurlogh and the acre of Clonyatin and Athishane’ as ‘parcel of the moiety of Clanona’ or Clonony.
[vi] MacCuarta, B., S.J., A Settler’s land disputes in a Gaelic Lordship: Matthew de Renzy in Delvin Mac Coghlan, 1613-18, Studia Hibernica, No. 30, Studia Hibernica Editorial Board, Dublin, 1998-9, pp.69-70. On the 14th July 1613, in the middle of the legal dispute, it was ordered that John Lawrence should leave the stock distrained by him within Kings County and he and de Renzy were both to appear before the next judge of assizes into that county. It may suggest that the estate of this Lawrence was not solely confined to Kings County if he could be in a position to remove the stock to elsewhere and may serve to further suggest this man as John Lawrence of Ballymore.
[vii] Inquisitonum in Officio Rotulorum Cancellariae Hiberniae asservatorum Repertorium, Vol. I, Dublin, G. & J. Grierson and M. Keene, 1826, (Leinster), Inquisitions King Charles I, p. 10 No. 27. John Lawrence had financial dealings with one Christopher Bryan concerning property further to the east within Kings County, about Ballynasmear, south west of Kinnity.
[viii] Walter Lawrence, son of John Lawrence of Ballymore in east Galway was said in the records of the family to have married Cecily Moore in 1603. If the dates in those records are correct, John Lawrence of Ballymore could not equate with the John who had a claim to Clonony in 1613. As the latter was born in 1591 he could not have had a son Walter who married in 1603.
[ix] Egan, Rev. P. K., The Royal Visitation of Clonfert and Kilmacduagh 1615, JGAHS Vol. 35 1976.
[x] The other landowners being Thomas O Kelly of Clontuskert and also Teig McWilliam O Kelly and Conor oge O Kelly of Lismanny, the latter two holding their 3 cartrons of Ballymore jointly.
[xi] Burke, J. and Burke, J.B., A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. I, A-L, London, Henry Colburn, 1847, pp. 695-6.
[xii] ‘Lawrence Family Album’ which quotes as sources Pat. Rolls Jas. I and Manuscript Pedigree of Earls of Clanricarde by Chevalier O Gorman, 1747. Also Tribes and Customs of Hy Many, J. O Donovan
[xiii] Fennessy, I., OFM, The Meelick Obituary and Chronicle (1623-1873) (with index), Archivium Hibernicum, Vol. LX, 2006-7, p. 411. ‘This day the 6th (December) 1675 Mrs. Mary Lawrence, daughter of Mr. Walter Lawrence of Billimore and Eveline Donnellan, the wife of Brian Lorcan, departed from this life. She is buried in the burial place of the said Brian Lorcan. She left a legacy to this friary. May she rest in peace. Amen.’
[xiv] Burke, J. and Burke, J.B., A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. I, A-L, London, Henry Colburn, 1847, pp. 695-6.
[xv] Fennessy, I., OFM, The Meelick Obituary and Chronicle (1623-1873) (with index), Archivium Hibernicum, Vol. LX, 2006-7, p. 347.
[xviii] NLI, Dublin, Ms. 3268, Seymour of King’s Co., Co. Galway by H. Seymour Guinness. Genealogical Notes with Pedigree Table relating to the Seymour family; Lawrence Family Album, Galway County Council Archives, Lawrence of Lawrencetown, GSO1/1. Johns will, dated 1675, appointed his bothers in law John McCoghlan and John O Donnellan and ‘his honoured and affectionate cousin Garrett Moore of Brieze and Cloghan castle’, as executors.
[xix] Egan, Rev. P. K., Clonfert Museum and its collections, J.G.A.H.S., Vol. 27, 1956-57, p. 50. Inscribed on the foot of the chalice, later maintained in the Clonfert diocesan museum, ‘We leave this as a Guift to be left to either Church or convent to pray For the Soul of John Lawrence and Mary Coghlan and James Dean. Anno Domi: 1705’ and underneath the foot: ‘Maria Coghlan, 1705.’ The chalice was presented from Quansboro Parish Church to the museum.
[xx] Fennessy, I., OFM, The Meelick Obituary and Chronicle (1623-1873) (with index), Archivium Hibernicum, Vol. LX, 2006-7, p. 401.
[xxii] Burke, J. and Burke, J.B., A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. I, A-L, London, Henry Colburn, 1847, pp. 695-6.
[xxiii] Burke, J. and Burke, J.B., A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. I, A-L, London, Henry Colburn, 1847, pp. 695-6; J. Ainsworth (ed.), The Inchiquin Manuscripts, Dublin, Stationary Office for the Irish Manuscripts Commission, 1961, p. 406. ‘No. 1194. 17 May 34 Chas. II, 1682. Lease for a year by Peter Pilley of Ballagh, Co. Galway, gent. to John McDonnogh of Ballikeile, Co. Clare, gent. of forty Irish acres profitable ‘Irish Plantation measure and of Staffords Survey’ in Caherserkin. The deed was witnessed by Cornelius Horan, Garret Wale, Walter Wale, another Walter Wale, John Haverty and William Wale and endorsed with affidavit of John Haverty to sealing and delivery of deed by Peter Pilley. Sworn before William Worth, 1 Oct. 1684.’
[xxiv] Pine, L. G. (ed.), Burke, B., Burke’s Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry of Ireland, 4th edition, London, Burke’s Peerage Ltd., 1958, pp. 566-7.
[xxv] While one Hugh Madden of Clare was buried in the friars church at Meelick in 1730, (Meelick Chronicles) one Belinda, the daughter of A. Madden married five years later a prominent Protestant landholder, Thomas Seymour of Ballymore.
[xxvi] Burke, J. and Burke, J.B., A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. I, A-L, London, Henry Colburn, 1847, pp. 695-6; Byrne, E. and Chamney, A. (ed.), The Convert Rolls, the Calendar of the Convert Rolls, 1703-1838 with Fr. Wallace Clare’s annotated list of converts, 1703-78, Dublin, IMC, 2005, p. 382. Bridget was later described as Bridget Burke, sister of Peter Lawrence in his will dated 1758 and kinswoman Anne Pilley.
[xxvii] Burke, J. and Burke, J.B., A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. I, A-L, London, Henry Colburn, 1847, pp. 695-6.
[xxviii] Lawrence Family Album; Galway County Council Archives, GP1/ Lawrence Papers, Lisreaghan (Belview), Lawrencetown, Co. Galway 1826-1930, including Golding Letters, Shrule, Co. Mayo 1966, A Descriptive List Prepared by Galway County Council, 2008, p. 73 (No. 254). The denomination was described in the nineteenth century as ‘Ohillmore otherwise Lawrencetown.’ Lewis’ Topograpical Dictionary also suggests that the later denomination of Lawrencetown originally formed part of that of Oghilmore, stating that ‘near the town are the ruins of the castle of O’Hill, from which it formerly took the name of Ohillmore.’ The ruins of a structure were indicated on early nineteenth century O.S. maps in the townland of Oghilbeg, near the hamlet of Oghill, but the name derived not from an individual named O Hill but from the Irish ‘Eó choill’, a yew wood.
[xxix] Calendar Patent Rolls, 8 James I, Part 2, pp. 179-180.
[xxx] 15th Annual Report of Records of Ireland, p. 358.
[xxxi] Burke, J. and Burke, J.B., A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. I, A-L, London, Henry Colburn, 1847, pp. 695-6.
[xxxii] Byrne, E. and Chamney, A. (ed.), The Convert Rolls, the Calendar of the Convert Rolls, 1703-1838 with Fr. Wallace Clare’s annotated list of converts, 1703-78, Dublin, IMC, 2005, p. 382.
[xxxiii] Johns Lawrence’s mother’s family, the Archdekins, also sent their sons to Meelick friary and Nicholas Archdekin was sheltering the last of the Clontuskert friars on his estate a year before he himself converted in 1733.
[xxxiv] Fennessy, I., OFM, The Meelick Obituary and Chronicle (1623-1873) (with index), Archivium Hibernicum, Vol. LX, 2006-7, p. 331.
[xxxv] E. O Hannrachain, ‘Some Wild Geese of the West’, appendix (Galway applicants for admission to the Hôtel Royal des Invalides), JGAHS, No. 54, 2002, p. 17. This Williams name does not occur in the pedigree of the Lawrence family given in the Lawrence Family Album or Burkes Genealogical and Heraldic history of the landed gentry of Great Britain & Ireland. If he is not another son of John Lawrence of Ballymore who died in 1675 or Walter who died in 1677, he may be a descendant of one of the four younger sons of the earlier John Lawrence, founder of the family in Ireland.
[xxxvi] Galway County Council Archives, GP1/ Lawrence Papers, Lisreaghan (Belview), Lawrencetown, Co. Galway 1826-1930, including Golding Letters, Shrule, Co. Mayo 1966, 2008, p. 81. (no. 286); Lawrence Family Album.
[xxxvii] Byrne, E. and Chamney, A. (ed.), The Convert Rolls, the Calendar of the Convert Rolls, 1703-1838 with Fr. Wallace Clare’s annotated list of converts, 1703-78, Dublin, IMC, 2005, p. 382.
[xxxviii] Byrne, E. and Chamney, A. (ed.), The Convert Rolls, the Calendar of the Convert Rolls, 1703-1838 with Fr. Wallace Clare’s annotated list of converts, 1703-78, Dublin, IMC, 2005, p. 382. His will dated 1758 mentioned his sister Bridget Burke, niece Sisely Maddin, nephew Walter Lawrence and kinswoman Anne Pilley.
[xl] Byrne, E. and Chamney, A. (ed.), The Convert Rolls, the Calendar of the Convert Rolls, 1703-1838 with Fr. Wallace Clare’s annotated list of converts, 1703-78, Dublin, IMC, 2005, p. 381; Burke, J. and Burke, J.B., A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. I, A-L, London, Henry Colburn, 1847, pp. 695-6.
[xli] Cronin, J.J., An Overview of the Linen Industry in Loughrea in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries, in Forde, J., Cassidy, C., Manzer, P. and Ryan, D. (eds.), The District of Loughrea, Vol. I, History 1791-1918, Galway, Loughrea History Project, 2003, pp. 65-66.
[xliii] Lawrence Family Album; Galway County Council Archives, GP1/ Lawrence Papers, Lisreaghan (Belview), Lawrencetown, Co. Galway 1826-1930, including Golding Letters, Shrule, Co. Mayo 1966, A Descriptive List Prepared by Galway County Council Archives, 2008, pp. 82-83.
[xliv] Byrne, E. and Chamney, A. (ed.), The Convert Rolls, the Calendar of the Convert Rolls, 1703-1838 with Fr. Wallace Clare’s annotated list of converts, 1703-78, Dublin, IMC, 2005, p. 381; Fitzgerald, Lord W. (ed.), Association for the Preservation of the Memorials of the Dead, Ireland. Journal for the year 1912, Vol. VIII, No. 6, p. 562-4. Lord Walter Fitzgerald noted in 1912 that ‘there are various empty panels in the monument, from which terra-cotta medallions have disappeared; below one of them is cut:- An. Dom. 1792.’ Several decades after the demolition of Bellview and after the acquisition of the lands about the house by local families by way of the Land Commission, a part two-storey part single-storey house was built in the early twenty-first century about the location where formerly stood the monument erected in memory of Peter Lawrence.
[xlv] Burke, J. and Burke, J.B., A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. I, A-L, London, Henry Colburn, 1847, pp. 695-6.
[xlvi] Burke, J. and Burke, J.B., A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. I, A-L, London, Henry Colburn, 1847, pp. 695-6.
[xlvii] Burke, J. and Burke, J.B., A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. I, A-L, London, Henry Colburn, 1847, pp. 695-6.
[xlviii] Burke, J. and Burke, J.B., A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. I, A-L, London, Henry Colburn, 1847, pp. 695-6.
[xlix] The Freemason’s Quarterly Review and General Assurance Advocate, second series, March 31 1849, p. 80. He was appointed at a meeting of the Lodge in Stirling in January and thereafter installed at an assembly in Gibb’s Hotel, Stirling.
[l] Galway County Council Archives, GP1/ Lawrence Papers, Lisreaghan (Belview), Lawrencetown, Co. Galway 1826-1930, including Golding Letters, Shrule, Co. Mayo 1966, 2008, p. 3.
[li] Moore, C.W., The Freemason’s Monthly Magazine, Vol. IV, Boston, Tuttle & Dennett, 1845, p. 376. Both Burkes Landed Gentry and the Freemason’s Monthly Magazine give this Captain Walter as serving in the 41st Regiment.
[lii] Burke, Sir B., A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. II, Fifth Edition, London, Harrison, 1871, p.759.
[liii] Galway County Council Archives, GP1/ Lawrence Papers, Lisreaghan (Belview), Lawrencetown, Co. Galway 1826-1930, including Golding Letters, Shrule, Co. Mayo 1966, 2008.
[liv] Galway County Council Archives, GP1/ Lawrence Papers, Lisreaghan (Belview), Lawrencetown, Co. Galway 1826-1930, including Golding Letters, Shrule, Co. Mayo 1966, 2008, p. 73.
[lv] Burke, Sir B., A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. II, Fifth Edition, London, Harrison, 1871, p.759.
[lviii] Burke, J. and Burke, J.B., A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. I, A-L, London, Henry Colburn, 1847, pp. 695-6.
[lx] Urban, S., The Gentleman’s Magazine and Historical Review, January-June 1866, London, Bradbury, Evans & Co., 1866, p. 581.
[lxi] Galway County Council Archives, GP1/ Lawrence Papers, Lisreaghan (Belview), Lawrencetown, Co. Galway 1826-1930, including Golding Letters, Shrule, Co. Mayo 1966, 2008, pp. 17, 89. (nos. 26, 311)
[lxii] Galway County Council Archives, GP1/ Lawrence Papers, Lisreaghan (Belview), Lawrencetown, Co. Galway 1826-1930, including Golding Letters, Shrule, Co. Mayo 1966, 2008, p. 19 (nos. 28-31).
[lxiii] Galway County Council Archives, GP1/ Lawrence Papers, Lisreaghan (Belview), Lawrencetown, Co. Galway 1826-1930, including Golding Letters, Shrule, Co. Mayo 1966, 2008, pp. 29-32.
[lxiv] Galway County Council Archives, GP1/ Lawrence Papers, Lisreaghan (Belview), Lawrencetown, Co. Galway 1826-1930, including Golding Letters, Shrule, Co. Mayo 1966, 2008, pp. 1-2 (no. 4).
[lxv] Galway County Council Archives, GP1/ Lawrence Papers, Lisreaghan (Belview), Lawrencetown, Co. Galway 1826-1930, including Golding Letters, Shrule, Co. Mayo 1966, 2008, p. 19 (no. 28, etc.).
[lxvi] The Loughrea Illustrated News, 1 July 1882; Galway County Council Archives, GP1/ Lawrence Papers, Lisreaghan (Belview), Lawrencetown, Co. Galway 1826-1930, including Golding Letters, Shrule, Co. Mayo 1966, 2008, p. 18 (no. 27).
[lxvii] Galway County Council Archives, GP1/ Lawrence Papers, Lisreaghan (Belview), Lawrencetown, Co. Galway 1826-1930, including Golding Letters, Shrule, Co. Mayo 1966, 2008, p. 20 (no. 34).
[lxviii] Galway County Council Archives, GP1/ Lawrence Papers, Lisreaghan (Belview), Lawrencetown, Co. Galway 1826-1930, including Golding Letters, Shrule, Co. Mayo 1966, 2008, p. 21. He wrote from the ‘Office of Dr. P. Lawrence, No. 235 North Sixth Street, Brooklyn, New York’ dated 18th April 1882.
[lxix] Galway County Council Archives, GP1/ Lawrence Papers, Lisreaghan (Belview), Lawrencetown, Co. Galway 1826-1930, including Golding Letters, Shrule, Co. Mayo 1966, 2008, p. 21.
[lxx] Galway County Council Archives, GP1/ Lawrence Papers, Lisreaghan (Belview), Lawrencetown, Co. Galway 1826-1930, including Golding Letters, Shrule, Co. Mayo 1966, 2008, p. 21-2 (nos. 35-42).
[lxxi] Galway County Council Archives, GP1/ Lawrence Papers, Lisreaghan (Belview), Lawrencetown, Co. Galway 1826-1930, including Golding Letters, Shrule, Co. Mayo 1966, 2008, p. 21-2 (nos. 35-42).
[lxxii] Galway County Council Archives, GP1/ Lawrence Papers, Lisreaghan (Belview), Lawrencetown, Co. Galway 1826-1930, including Golding Letters, Shrule, Co. Mayo 1966, 2008, p. 80 (No. 283). Letter from John Edward MacDermott, solicitor, 13 Nassau Street, to Lawrence dated 5th January 1892.
[lxxiii] Galway County Council Archives, GP1/ Lawrence Papers, Lisreaghan (Belview), Lawrencetown, Co. Galway 1826-1930, including Golding Letters, Shrule, Co. Mayo 1966, 2008, p. 73 (No. 254).
[lxxiv] Census of Ireland Records 1901. Charles was given as being born in 1828 in Burkes genealogical and historical history of the landed gentry of Great Britain and Ireland. All three Lawrences including Charles were listed as Church of Ireland. Four servants also lived at Bellview, a Mahon, Boland, Kenny and Dervan.
[lxxv] Sir B. Burke, The genealogical and heraldic history of the Landed Gentry of Ireland (rev. by A.C. Fox-Davies), London, 1912.
[lxxvi] Fitzgerald, Lord W. (ed.), Association for the Preservation of the Memorials of the Dead, Ireland. Journal for the year 1912, Vol. VIII, No. 6, p. 562-4.
[lxxvii] Information provided by Christopher Cunniffe, Galway Community Archaeologist.
[lxxviii] Byrne, E. and Chamney, A. (ed.), The Convert Rolls, the Calendar of the Convert Rolls, 1703-1838 with Fr. Wallace Clare’s annotated list of converts, 1703-78, Dublin, IMC, 2005, p. 146.
[lxxix] E. O Hannrachain, ‘Some Wild Geese of the West’, appendix (Galway applicants for admission to the Hôtel Royal des Invalides), JGAHS, Vol. 54, 2002, p. 17.
[lxxx] Burke, J. and Burke, J.B., A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. I, A-L, London, Henry Colburn, 1847, pp. 695-6.
Clonbrock, County Galway, photograph courtesy of National Library of Ireland.
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. 86. “(Dillon, Clonbrock, B/PB1926; Dillon-Mahon, sub Mahon, Bt/PB) A house of three storeys over basement built between 1780 and 1788 by Robert Dillon, afterwards 1st Lord Clonbrock, to the design of William Leeson, replacing the old castle of this branch of the Dillons which remained intact until 1807 when it was burnt owing to a bonfire lit to celebrate the birth of 2nd Baron’s son and heir. Seven bay entrance front with three bay pedimented breakfront; doorway with blocked engaged Tuscan columns and entablature. A single storey Doric portico by John Hampton was added ca 1824, while in 1855 3rd Baron added a single-storey two bay bow-ended wing to the right of the entrance front, which is balanced by a single-storey wing on the left hand side, though the two do not match. Good interior plasterwork of the 1780s, in the manner of Michael Stapleton. Classical medallions and husk ornament on the walls of the hall, at the inner end of which stood a splendid organ in a mahogany case surmounted by a baron’s coronet. Medallions and husk ornaments also on the walls of the staircase hall, which has an oval ceiling of particularly graceful plasterwork on fan pendentives; coloured salmon pink, brown, pale grey and white. Stone staircase wiht balustrade of brass uprights. Large drawing room with coved ceiling and modillion cornice in 1855 wing opening with double doors into a smaller drawing room in the main block, to form what is in effect one long room which, a few years ago, still had a delightful early Victorian character; with a grey watered silk wallpaper and curtains of cream and faded pink as background to the glitter of two crystal chandeliers and of the many gilt frames of the pictures and of the mirror over the fine statuary marble chimneypiece. When the room was being fitted up, 3rd Baron’s son, who at the time was a young diplomat in Vienna, wrote home to give instructions as to how the floor was to be laid, so that it might be suitable for dancing the latest waltzes. After the death of 5th and last Baron 1926, Clonbrock passed to his sister, Hon Ethel Dillon; it was subsequently made over to her nephew, Mr Luke Dillon-Mahon, who sold it 1976.”
Clonbrock, County Galway, 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.Clonbrock main staircase plasterwork, County Galway, photograph: William Garner c. 1975. 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.
Clonbrock, County Galway, courtesy of National Inventory of Architectural Heritage.
Detached eight-bay three-storey over basement country house, built c.1790, now ruined, having square plan with three-bay pedimented breakfront, Doric entrance porch added c.1824, three-storey over basement single-bay extension with parapet roof and brick cornice to north-west, single-storey bow-ended wing to south-east added c.1855, and two-storey wing to north-west. Ruled and lined lime rendered façade. Porch, accessed by four stone steps, has carved stone entablature with triglyph and metope detail and moulded cornice with dentils above, supported on four fluted Doric columns. Remains of two pairs of rendered chimneystacks to centre of plan, brick chimneystack to north-west wing, moulded cornice at eaves, cast-iron rainwater goods. Square-headed window openings with tooled limestone sills and moulded shouldered limestone surrounds, remains of six-over-six pane timber sliding sash windows to rear. Double-leaf timber entrance door with lancet-patterned fanlight above, fluted entablature and column and block limestone surround with patera motif. Set in own extensive grounds with two-storeyrendered outbuildings forming a courtyard to rear, one of which in use as private dwelling.
Appraisal
Clonbrock House was designed by William Leeson for Robert Dillon, the 3rd Baron Clonbrock, and constructed from 1780-1788 to replace the old castle which stood on the site. Unusually, it remained in the possession of the Dillon family for almost 200 years. Sold in 1976 when the last member of the Clonbrock family, Miss Ethel Dillon, moved out, the contents of the house were auctioned off. The National Library of Ireland acquired the estate papers in the auction, a valuable insight into the management of a large Irish country house. A fire blazed through the house in 1984, destroying the intricately detailed interior. Though now ruined, this imposing country house retains its sense of grandeur and the high level of design and craftsmanship is evident in the remaining fabric, such as the ornate entrance porch and the finely tooled stone window surrounds. It is an important part of the social and architectural heritage of the area.
Clonbrock, County Galway, courtesy of National Inventory of Architectural Heritage.Clonbrock, County Galway, courtesy of National Inventory of Architectural Heritage.
Listed in Vanishing Country Houses of Ireland by The Knight of Glin, David J. Griffin and Nicholas K. Robinson, published by The Irish Architectural Archive and The Irish Georgian Society, 1988.
THE BARONS CLONBROCK WERE MAJOR LANDOWNERS IN COUNTY GALWAY, WITH 28,246 ACRES OF LAND
This family deduces its descent from a common progenitor with the Dillons, Earls of Roscommon, and the Dillons, Viscounts Dillon.
Sir James Dillon, brother of Sir Maurice, who was ancestor of the Viscount Dillon, was father of Sir Robert, who had two sons, Sir Richard, of Riverston, ancestor of the Earls of Roscommon; and Gerald, ancestor of the Barons Clonbrock.
This Gerald married Elizabeth, daughter of John, Baron Barry, and was ancestor of Thomas Dillon, of Clonbrock, County Galway, Chief Justice of Connaught, 1603; from whom was descended
ROBERT DILLON (c1704-46), MP for Dungarvan, 1728-46, who wedded Margaret, daughter of Morgan Magan, of Togherston House, County Westmeath, and was father of
LUKE DILLON, of Clonbrock, who wedded Bridget, daughter of John Kelly, of Castle Kelly, County Galway, and the Lady Honoria Burke, daughter of John, 9th Earl of Clanricarde, and had issue,
ROBERT, his heir; Luke; John; Honoria; Susanna.
The eldest son,
ROBERT DILLON (1754-95), MP for Lanesborough, 1776-90, was elevated to the peerage, in 1793, in the dignity of BARON CLONBROCK, of Clonbrock, County Galway.
His lordship married, in 1776, Letitia, only daughter and heir of John Greene, of Old Abbey, County Limerick, and niece, maternally, of John, Earl of Norbury, and had issue,
LUKE, his successor; Catherine Bridget; Letitia Susannah.
His lordship was succeeded by his son,
LUKE, 2nd Baron (1780-1826), who wedded, in 1803, Anastasia, only daughter and heir of Joseph Henry, 1st Baron Wallscourt, by the Lady Louisa Catherine Bermingham, his wife, third daughter and co-heir of Thomas, Earl of Louth, and had issue,
ROBERT, his successor; Louisa Harriet; Letitia.
The only son,
ROBERT, 3rd Baron (1807-93), espoused, in 1830, Caroline Elizabeth, daughter of Francis, 1st Baron Churchill, and had issue,
Luke Almeric, died in infancy; LUKE GERALD, his successor; Fanny Letitia; Caroline Anastasia.
His lordship was succeeded by his surviving son,
LUKE GERALD, 4th Baron (1834-1917), KP PC, who married, in 1866, Augusta Caroline, daughter of Edward, 2nd Baron Crofton, and had issue,
ROBERT EDWARD, his successor; Georgiana Caroline; Edith Augusta; Ethel Louisa.
His lordship was succeeded by his only son,
ROBERT EDWARD, 5th Baron (1869-1926), who died unmarried, when the title expired. CLONBROCK HOUSE, Ahascragh, County Galway, was built between 1780-88 by Robert Dillon, later 1st Baron Clonbrock. It comprised three storeys over a basement, and replaced a an older castle which was burnt in 1807 owing to a bonfire lit to celebrate the birth of his lordship’s son and heir, the 2nd Baron. Clonbrock had a seven-bay entrance front with a three-bay, pedimented breakfront.
A single-storey Doric portico was added about 1824. In 1855, the 3rd Baron added a single-storey, two-bay bow-ended wing to the right of the entrance front.
Following the death of the bachelor 5th Baron in 1926, Clonbrock passed to his sister, the Hon Ethel Louisa Dillon.
It was subsequently bequeathed to her nephew, Mr Luke Dillon-Mahon, who sold it in 1976. Clonbrock suffered a catastrophic fire in 1984 and is now ruinous.
First published in March, 2014. Clonbrock arms courtesy of European Heraldry.
One of my favorite houses featured in my first book is Clonbrock in Galway. While the house exists today in ruins, every so often a piece of furniture comes up for sale that evokes the grandeur of this house. The location of these items today is surprising, sometimes London and in this instance New York. In March 2014, a set of ten George III, Painted Dining Chairs came on the market having been supplied by Gillows of Lancaster in June, 1801 to Luke, 2nd Baron Clonbrock for his home, Clonbrock. These chairs together with the remaining contents of the house were sold in 1976. Clonbrock stood empty for a number of years until it burnt down in the 1980’s.
In 1976, the decision was taken to sell the contents of the house by Luke Dillon Mahon. Agents from Christies and Linseys were dispatched to evaluate every last item in the house and an extensive catalogue was produced which described the 1500 lots in great detail. The fateful day eventually came when two blue and white striped tents were erected on the lawn in front of the house and the drive and adjoining fields were alive with the hum of cars and lorries. Over 500 people attended the auction and packed the auctioneers tent, just to view the proceedings of the end of an era or to bid on some memento of the big house. All the lots were displayed throughout the house, the dining room table heaved with china and porcelain and the lengthily sideboard displayed large dinner plates and chargers. Some of the locals seen the sale as necessary and others a tragedy. Most people at the time seen no future for a house of this nature unless some foolish person was looking for a home with a lot of cold rooms and acres of leaky roof. The beginning of the auction was marked by a storm which was a metaphor for perilous state that a house like this had been reduced to in the 1970s. Luke Dillon Mahon said his abiding memories of Clonbrock would be the family members that lived there and the view from the drawing room window. The final decision to sell was determined by the harsh economic realities of the time together with the problem of the interior being too large for one person to manage and the exterior that would exhaust the abilities of numerous men. Luke Dillon in a 1976 interview described the house, as a problem and daily life living in it, as a struggle.
Clonbrock For sale by Helen Cassidy, Premier Propertie Ireland
Clonbrock House ( in ruins) is offered for sale with approx 20 acres of grounds with two-storey rendered outbuildings forming a courtyard to rear,
one of which in use as private dwelling, and a series of working stables with fenced riding arena.
SOLD
Clonbrock House was designed by William Leeson for Robert Dillon, the 3rd Baron Clonbrock, and constructed from 1780-1788 to replace the old castle which stood on the site.
It remained in the possession of the Dillon family for almost 200 years until it was sold in 1976.
A fire blazed through the house in 1984, destroying the intricately detailed interior.
Though now ruined, this impressive historic Irish Mansion stands proud, overlooking extensive verdant countryside.
The high level of design and craftsmanship is evident in the remaining fabric, such as the ornate entrance porch and the finely tooled stone window surrounds.
It is an important part of the social and architectural heritage of the area.
Clonbrock House ( in ruins) presents as a detached eight-bay three-storey over basement country house, built c.1790, with a square plan with three-bay pedimented breakfront, Doric entrance porch which was added c.1824, and a three-storey over basement single-bay extension with parapet roof and brick cornice to north-west, a single-storey bow-ended wing to south-east added c.1855, and two-storey wing to north-west.
Ruled and lined lime rendered façade. The Porch, accessed by four stone steps, has carved stone entablature with triglyph and metope detail and moulded cornice with dentils above, supported on four fluted Doric columns.
There are the remains of two pairs of rendered chimney stacks to centre of plan, brick chimney stack to north-west wing, moulded cornice at eaves and cast-iron rainwater goods.
Square-headed window openings with tooled limestone sills and moulded shouldered limestone surrounds, remains of six-over-six pane timber sliding sash windows to rear.
Double-leaf timber entrance door with lancet-patterned fanlight above, fluted entablature and column and block limestone surround with patera motif.
The property is offered for sale with approx 25 acres of grounds with two-storey rendered outbuildings forming a courtyard to rear, one of which in use as private dwelling, and a series ofworking stables with fenced riding arena.
*******************
For Sale:
Clonbrock Castle, Gardener’s Villa, Cottages and Turret,
on approx 7 acres, at Ahascragh, County Galway.
Sold
The entire property available consists of;
Clonbrock Castle,
The largely restored 15th century O Kelly castle ,
assorted outbuildings including new greenhouse, garden sheds, etc.
Plus three additional ruined turrets, one very restorable. Assorted woodland walks. Frontage on the trout stream the river Bunowen.
Quiet, beautiful setting, by a river and gardens on the historic estate.
On about 7 acres of atmospheric private woodland, gardens and riverbank.
Lovely woodland walks. Fallow deer, red squirrels, pine martens, foxes – even very occasionally otters, – as well as ravens, herons and many other birds – may be seen.
The property has continually been offered on airbnb for exclusive holiday rentals and continues to be in constant demand.
Clifden Castle, County Galway, photograph by Robert French, (between ca. 1865-1914), Lawrence Photograph Collection, National Library of IrelandClifden Castle, County Galway, entrance front c. 1865, photograph: F.H.Mares, 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.
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. 84. “(D’Arcy/LG1894 and IFR) A castle built by John D’Arcy who settled here 1815 and developed the town of Clifden from scratch. Two storey; porch tower with slender round turrets; round tower to one side and rectangular tower behind. Gothic windows and doorway. Visited by Thackeray, who described it somewhat inaccurately as “a fine chateau.” Fine pleasure grounds; lawns sloping down to Clifden Bay; grotto with stream running through it; shell house or ‘marine temple.’”
Listed in Vanishing Country Houses of Ireland by The Knight of Glin, David J. Griffin and Nicholas K. Robinson, published by The Irish Architectural Archive and The Irish Georgian Society, 1988.
p. 69. “Picturesque Norman Revival castle built c. 1815 for John D’arcy. Now a ruin.”
Clifden Castle County Galway, 1948, photograph courtesy of Dublin City Library Archives.Clifden Castle, County Galway, photograph courtesy Daniel Finnerty, instagram ‘greatirishhouses’.Clifden Castle, County Galway, photograph courtesy Daniel Finnerty, instagram ‘greatirishhouses’.Clifden Castle front 1948, photograph courtesy of Dublin City Library Archives.Clifden Castle, County Galway, photograph courtesy Daniel Finnerty, instagram ‘greatirishhouses’.Clifden Castle, County Galway, photograph courtesy Daniel Finnerty, instagram ‘greatirishhouses’.Clifden Castle, County Galway, courtesy Tourism Ireland.Entrance to Clifden Castle, County Galway 1948, photograph courtesy of Dublin City Library Archives.
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. 75. “A massive tower-house with C18 tracery windows, to which a three storey house was added in early c19. The early C19 house was plain except for a stepped battlement and a pair of ables with blind tracery at one side of its front’ it has a curved bow at one end. The home of John Shawe-Taylor, a prominent figure in the Irish Revival at the beginning of this century. Sold 1930s or 40s by his son, Michael Shawe-Taylor; subsequently demolished.”
Listed in Vanishing Country Houses of Ireland by The Knight of Glin, David J. Griffin and Nicholas K. Robinson, published by The Irish Architectural Archive and The Irish Georgian Society, 1988.
p. 69. “…built by the Taylors, incorporating a superb tower house. Now a ruin.”
Featured in Irish Country Houses, Portraits and Painters. David Hicks. The Collins Press, Cork, 2014.
p. 135. Portrait of Captain John Shawe-Taylor… while this man was a member of the upper classes, he was also a catalyst of change in the early 20th century in Ireland. He was well-connected, being a cousin of the famous art-collector Hugh Lane, and a nephew of Lady Gregory of Coole Park. He has been described as an aristocratic nationalist who wanted to bridge the gap between landlords and their tenants. John Shawe-Taylor succeeded in bringing these two fractious sides together, helping to build the foundations of the eventual Land Act of 1903, which allowed tenants to purchase their land. In 1908, when John was painted by William Orpen, it woudl be only three years until his life was extinguished at the young age of 45. It as his early death that threw the affairs of the Castle Taylor estate into disarray. …Today Castle Taylor is a ruin and the unremarkable grave of John Shawe-Taylor in Ardrahan churchyard bears little testament to the character and foresight of this great man.
The ancestral home of John Shawe-Taylor was Castle Taylor of Ardrahan in Galway, not far from Roxborough, the birthplace of Lady Gregory. Her sister Elizabeth Presse, John’s mother, married Walter Shaw-Taylor in Nov 1864. Walter was the son of Francis Manley Shawe who succeeded to Castle Taylor on the death of his uncle Lt Gen Sir John Taylor. Francis assumed by Royal License dated 1844 the additional name of Taylor. [rather, according to The Peerage, Lt Gen John Taylor was Francis Manley Shaw’s wife’s father].
p. 136. The ancestral home in Galway, Castle Taylor, was originally known as Ballymacrath and it was always expected that John [T-S], as the elder son, would inherit the estate. …his brother Francis, who was sometimes known as Frank, became aggrieved in later years that the wills made by his father and brother resulted in him being unable to inherit the Castle Taylor estate.
The castle in Galway began life as a three-storey 16th century tower house. Over the years, with numerous improvements, the building was enlarged and eventually had a substantial country house attached to it. In 1818 the architect David Laing produced a design for General Sir John Taylor for a spacious mansion that incorporated the original tower house. It is the robust construction of the tower house that has stood teh test of time and today the more modern extension is languishing in a fragile state. The attractive gate lodge, built around 1820, still guards the entrance to the estate in relatively good order. In the grounds of the castle there was a walled kitchen garden, constructed around 1860, which would help ensure that a house of this size was self-sufficient. Outbuildings were improved in the 1890s when Francis Fitzadelm Presse designed new stables that were erected for Walter Shawe-Taylor with fittings specially designed by Musgrave & Co, Belfast, with air-pump ventilators by Boyle & County. Francis Presse, an architect and brother-in-law of Walter, was the sixth son of Dudley Presse of Roxborough by his second wife, Frances, who came from Castle Corr near Inishshannon in County Cork, and the younger frother of Elizabeth and Augusta (Lady Gregory). In the 1901 census, the castle was listed as having 28 rooms. It is occupied by Walter Shawe-Taylor, who is now a widower, and his six servants. [p. 137]
p. 137. John Shawe-Taylor came to be recognised nationally when in Sept 1902 he wrote a letter, which was published in the newspapers, calling for a conference to settle the Irish Land Question. He appealed for representatives of the landlords and tenants to meet in a civilised conference and discuss the issues at stake. He felt this would result in a united and national effort to settle the land issues that plagued landlords and tenants at the time. Shawe-Taylor hoped this stategy would bring to an end the agitation which was preventing the economic development of Ireland. At the time of his appeal, John was politically unknown but, as a result of his letter, teh following month, the Earl of Mayo brought the matter before teh Irish Landowners Convention and proposed a motion that such a conference was desirable. The motion was rejected and received opposition but this did not stop a Land Conference Committee beign formed, consisting of the Earls of Dunraven, Meath and Mayo, Viscount Powerscourt, Lord Castletown, Sir Algernon [p. 138] Coote adn others. The Committee sent out papers to 4,000 landlords of which 1,128 voted for and 578 against such a conference. From this ballot, representatives were chosen to represent the tenants and landlords. They met at Molesworth Street in Dublin in December 1902 and deliberated for two weeks with John Shawe-Taylor acting as Honorary Secretary. In Jaunarly 1903, the conference presented its report, and its recommendations were incorporated into the Wyndham Act of 1903. The report had advised that a massive scheme of land purchase with the assistance of Treasury loans be extended to tenants to buy their farm holdings from the landlords. Under this act, tenants were offered favourable terms to buy and there were inducements for landlords to sell. In January 1903 after the report was issued, Captain Shawe-Taylor undertook a five-week tour of America to promote the merits of his actions in Ireland and he met President Roosevelt.
While John did not court media attention he woudl again be featured in the press in 1905 when he took action to defend the reputation of his cousin Hugh Lane. At this time a row had broke out over a painting by Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot called “Peasants by a Lake.” Some said it was not actually an original work by Corot but was a painting of a lesser known Huguenot artist, Geza Meszoly, as it bore a striking resemblance to a much larger canvas by him.
p. 139. The picture was one of four paintings presented by the Prince of Wales to support the establishment of a gallery of modern art in Ireland during a visit to Dublin in Feb 1905. The Prince of Wales’s gift included two works by Corot: an early example of his work and one of his later paintings. Hugh Lane was the dealer selling the panting, and some said he was trying to pass of f the work of another artist as an original Corot; no sooner had the Prince of Wales left Ireland than the rumours began to circulate…
p. 140. In 1906, John hoped that, based on his earlier successes, a political career would materialise. He stood as a Devolutionist for the parliamentary representation of Galway city but was defeated. AFter this he set about encouraging native industries [p. 141] and organised exhibitions of the work, hoping that this woudl lead to economic betterment of his tenants.
p. 141. Sir Hugh Lane was born Cork in 1875 but raised in England. He became a successful art dealer whose interest in Ireland was cultivated by his aunt, Lady Augusta Gregory. He had wanted to create a national portrait gallery in Ireland as, according to Lane, “so many celebrated men have not been painted or modelled while living.” This idea of painting the eminent figures of Ireland began in 1901 when he went to an exhibition organised by Sarah Puerser, which included the work of John Butler Yeats. He commissioned John, father of the poet William and painter Jack, to paint 25 portraits of a number of distinguished Irish people. Yeats worked slowly and had completed just five portraits in the series by 1907 when he moved to New York. Yeats was replaced by Orpen, who continued painting the series of portraits. Orpen was experiencing financial difficulties and agreed to a fee of £10 per canvas. He found that the commission did not exert his talents but the interactions with the subjects, such as Michael Davitt, interested him. [The portrait of John Taylor-Shawe by Orpen was a gift of Lane to the Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, now the Hugh Lane Gallery, in 1908).
p. 143. John… died in London in 1911 after a brief illness….he suffered an internal haemorrhage after medical treatment in Heidelberg and lapsed into a coma and died.
p. 143. With John’s early death, the ramifications of Walter’s will [i.e. his father] became apparent. At this time Walter was 79 and was living in teh castle with his son Frank and his family. In September, Walter recorded in his diary that he woudl not remake his will until after the probate of John’s will had been processed. He todl Frank that he intended to remake his will and made adequate provision for him and his wife and their children. However, he did not, despite having adequate time after the grant of probate of John’s will before his own death the following year in 1912. It was said taht after the death of his wife Elizabeth, in 1896 he was committed to a mental asylum “for a short period, his hold on life temporarily damaged.” It appears that Eliza [Persse] had been the dominant force in the management of the estate during her lifetime and that after her death Walter was possibly overwhelmed without her guiding hand. Their son Frank now became involved in the day-to-day running of the estate.
p. 144. [John’s will left all to his wife, Amy Eleanora, and their children.] Upon Walter’s death the residue of his assets and the Castle Taylor estate passed to Amy Shawe-Taylor, who was named as the universal legatee of her husband. It was the following paragraph that ensured that his living son, Frank, would not inherit his family’s estate: “I hereby devise all my real estate…unto my elder son, John Shawe-Taylor, his heirs…” She acted as trustee until her son Michael came of age.
Frank had believed that the estate woudl pass to him following his brother’s death, his father having assured him he woudl rework his will in his favour.
p. 145. Frank inherited lands at Ballymabilla in teh Barony of Kilconnell… In 1920, Frank told a group of locals who wanted him to sell his land that “You will never see a perch of my land.” On 3 March 1920 he was shot while on his way to the fair in Galway. The Castle Taylor estate now rested in the hands of trustees waiting for 13 year old Michael to come of age.
p. 147. In 1917 Amy was the chief organiser of a local branch of the Red Cross in Ardrahan whose sole purpose was the knitting of socks and the making of shirts for British soldiers. At the second meeting of the Red Cross, a protest was held against Irish girls making socks and shirts for English soldiers, and the branch was disbanded. By 1919, Amy had let Castle Talbot and gone to England and in October 1923 Lady Gregory recorded in her journal that Amy was at Coole and was arranging an auction for Castle Taylor.
In June 1929, Lady Gregory drove to Castle Taylor to have lunch with Michael, who had now come of age. She recorded that he had carried out a great deal of improvements to Castle Taylor… However, his mother still wished that he might enter the army or take up a job in the city. Despite teh work carried out, Michael’s aspirations of running a financially viable country estate suffered a considerable blow. In July 1929, a number of shots were fired over a 15 minute period at CAstle Taylor when Michael was present in the castle with his grandmother, Mrs. Norman. Michael was the last member of the family to live in the castle.
[The castle was eventually inherited by (Walter) Michael Shawe-Taylor. He left Ireladn in 1950 when a number fo shots were fired over the Castle. He died afterwards in Trinidad (or Grenada) in 1957.] In June 1951 a sale of furniture was carried out by Joyce, Mackie adn Lougheed, Auctioneers and Valuers, at Castle Taylor under the instruction of W.M. Shawe-Taylor on 5 July 1951. ..The castle was eventually purchased by a local landowner who dismantled it and sold the materials. Today the ruins of Castle Taylor dominate the landscape; however, while the walls of this great building survive, very little of the interior does. The robust 16th century tower stands as it has done for generations while the later 19C house surrounding it is slowly crumbling. The steward’s house, which belonged to the complex of building situated to the rear of the castle, is still in use and has been beautifully maintained.”
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. 49. “(Blake, Bt, of Menlough/PB1970) A dramatic but somewhat insubstantial C19 castle on the shores of Bunowen Bay, at the southwestern tip of Connemara. Now a ruin.”
Listed in Vanishing Country Houses of Ireland by The Knight of Glin, David J. Griffin and Nicholas K. Robinson, published by The Irish Architectural Archive and The Irish Georgian Society, 1988.
In Blake, Tarquin. Abandoned Mansions of Ireland. Collins Press, Cork, 2010.
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. 30. “(Donelan/LGI1912; Mahon/LGI1912 and sub Mahon, Bt/PB) A long low and narrow 2 storey C17 house with an old castle at one end of it, the seat of the Donelans…subsequently became the seat of a branch of the Mahon family. One wing was burnt sometime ante 1913. The house is now in ruins.”
Ballydonelan Castle entrance front, County Galway, collection: Bertie Donohoe, 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.
Not in national inventory
Listed in Vanishing Country Houses of Ireland by The Knight of Glin, David J. Griffin and Nicholas K. Robinson, published by The Irish Architectural Archive and The Irish Georgian Society, 1988.
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. 86. “Trench/LGI1958; and sub Clancarty, E/PB; Mosley, Bt/PB) The Palace of the C of I Bishops of Clonfert, deep in the country by the little medieval cathedral with its splendid Irish-Romanesque doorway. A long low and narrow house of two storeys with an attic of dormer-gables; basically mid C17, dating from when the original Palace was rebuilt by Bishop Dawson; but partly rebuilt late C18. Venetian windows set in arched openings. The Palace has C17 oak beams and joists and possibly its original C17 roof. Yew avenue. When the diocese was amalgamated with those of Killaloe and Kilfenora, 1833, the Palace was bought by J.E. Trench. In 1952 it became the Irish home of Sir Oswald Mosley, Bt, but it was badly damaged by fire 1954. It is now derelict.”
Listed in Vanishing Country Houses of Ireland by The Knight of Glin, David J. Griffin and Nicholas K. Robinson, published by The Irish Architectural Archive and The Irish Georgian Society, 1988.
In Blake, Tarquin. Abandoned Mansions of Ireland II: More Portraits of Forgotten Stately Homes. Collins Press, Cork, 2012.
Detached two-storey former Church of Ireland bishop’s palace with dormer attic, largely built c.1635 and extended in late eighteenth century, but also incorporating late sixteenth/early seventeenth-century house. Front elevation is eight bays, with two-bay return recessed to rear towards west end, and having canted west gable end. Used as private residence from the 1830s to 1954, and ruinous after accidental fire. Remains of single-span pitched slate roof, possibly originally thatched, hipped to west end with diagonally set multiple chimneystacks. Pitched slate roof to surviving dormer. Roughcast rendered walls. Two segmental-headed window openings to second and second last bays of ground floor, with Venetian windows, and square-headed window openings elsewhere, all with tooled limestone sills. Angled brick chimneybreasts and timber raised and fielded shutters visible to interior. Dressed limestone boundary wall extending to west. Set within extensive formerly landscaped grounds with range of single-storey outbuildings to east of access laneway, having pitched slate roofs, rendered walls, and square-headed openings.
Appraisal
The former bishop’s palace, unfortunately a ruin since the 1950s, is an important element in the significant group of ecclesiastical buildings at Clonfert, based on the ancient Saint Brendan’s Cathedral. The building incorporates a late sixteenth-century/early seventeenth-century house, extended in the 1630s and again in the late eighteenth century. The present building is of national significance as it has the remains of a rare seventeenth-century roof, dated by dendrochronology to c.1638, and also had exceptionally rare painted posts supporting the floors. Later phases of the building, including the Ventian windows, are also of architectural interest. The house has associated gardens, a yew walk, and outbuildings, all of which are important for the context of the building and the history of the site as a bishop’s residence.
The charming cathedral dedicated to St Brendan in Clonfert, County Galway has featured here before (see The Traveller’s Rest « The Irish Aesthete). And because Clonfert was, until the 1833, a separate diocese in the Church of Ireland (it remains so in the Roman Catholic church), there was also an episcopal palace, now alas a sad ruin. Standing a short distance to the north of the cathedral, the oldest part of this building is thought to date back to the late 16th or early 17th century, possibly constructed during the episcopacy of Stephen Kirwan (bishop of Clonfert 1682-1701) who served as a justice and commissioner for the province of Connaught. There is no doubt that Clonfert, today a sleepy hamlet, was then judged a place of some importance since in 1579, Elizabeth I, in her Orders to be observed by Sir Nicholas Maltby for the better government of the province of Connaught’declared ‘We are desirous that a college should be erected in the nature of an university in some convenient place in Ireland for instructing and education of youth in lerninge. And We conceive the Town of Clonfert within the province of Connaught to be aptlie seated both for helth and comodity of the ryver of Shenen running by it and because it is also neere to the midle of the realme, whereby all men may, with small travel send their children thither.’ The queen may have heard that during a much earlier period, Clonfert had been a great seat of learning, or perhaps it was just that the cathedral and its ancillary buildings were located in a central location and, as she observed, close to the river Shannon, then a major means of travel through Ireland. However, the idea of establishing a college here never happened, and it was only in 1592 that the country’s first university was founded in Dublin.
As mentioned, while parts of the former bishop’s palace in Clonfert may go back to the late 16th century, a more substantial portion of the building dates from c.1635, during the episcopacy of Robert Dawson, who had become Bishop of the newly-united dioceses of Clonfert and Kilmacduagh in 1627 and would hold that position until his death in 1643 (incidentally, he was also the forebear of a family that would go on to become great landowners and developers in Ireland, not least his great-grandson Joshua Dawson who was responsible for laying out Dawson Street in Dublin and building what is now the Mansion House). Oak beams and roof joists in the palace have been dated to around this period, although further changes and additions were made at some time in the 18thcentury, when a Venetian window was inserted. In his memoirs, published in 1805, the playwright Richard Cumberland wrote about the palace in Clonfert, which he knew well since his father Denison Cumberland had lived there while bishop of the diocese (1763-1772). ‘This humble residence,’ he recalled, ‘was not devoid of comfort and convenience, for it contained some tolerable lodging rooms, and was capacious enough to receive me and mine without straitening the family. A garden of seven acres, well planted and disposed into pleasant walks, kept in the neatest order, was attached to the house, and at the extremity of a broad gravel walk in front stood the cathedral.’ Cumberland also remembered how, while staying with his father on one occasion, he used ‘a little closet at the back of the palace, as it was called, unfurnished and out of use, with no other prospect from my single window but that of a turf-stack’, as a room in which to begin writing what would prove to be his most successful stage work, the comedy The West-Indian (first performed at London’s Drury Lane Theatre in 1771). However, Clonfert was always one of the poorest episcopacies in the country and as a result successive bishops – many of whom managed to have themselves transferred to richer dioceses after only a short period of time – were disinclined to make improvements to their residence. For this reason, it retained much of its 17th century character, being long and low, of eight bays and two storeys with dormer windows. The surrounding demesne also underwent relatively few changes. There survives, for example, a yew walk running south-west of the palace, which may be even older, but certainly has the character of 17th century baroque garden design. Like the building to which it leads, the yew walk is now sadly neglected.
Clonfert Palace remained home to successive Church of Ireland bishops until 1834 when, following the creation of a new united diocese of Killaloe and Clonfert, it became surplus to requirements and was sold to John Eyre Trench. In 1947 his descendants sold the building to the Blake-Kelly family who, four years later, sold it to the next owners who would be the last people to live in the former palace. By then the place was in poor condition and required extensive renovation, along with the installation of electricity, new bathrooms and so forth before it could be occupied; the new chatelaine drove over from her temporary residence in Co Tipperary to oversee this work. Finally, once complete, in February 1952 she and her family arrived, along with a retinue that included housekeeper, cook, maid and chauffeur, as well as a gardener to maintain the grounds. A local newspaper, the Westmeath Independent, reported that ‘‘Sir Oswald and Lady Mosley, who have a large staff, are charmed with Ireland, its people, the tempo of its life and its scenery.’ The same publication also briefly noted that ‘Sir Oswald was the former leader of a political movement in England.’ The ‘political movement’ had, of course, been the British Union of Fascists (later the British Union) and both Sir Oswald and his wife, the former Diana Mitford, had been interned for a number of years during the second World War by the British government, and had found themselves shunned in the aftermath of their release. Ireland had several advantages, not least the fact that two of Diana Mosley’s sisters already owned properties in the country, Deborah, Duchess of Devonshire at Lismore Castle, County Waterford and Pamela Jackson at Tullamaine Castle, County Tipperary. Country houses here were going cheap, and there were still sufficient other landed families still about to make life agreeable to the newly-arrived. For the next two years, the Mosleys remained contentedly at Clonfert, attracting little attention although they were discreetly observed by both the Irish and British governments. Such might have remained the case, had not disaster struck exactly 70 years ago, in early December 1954. At the time, Diana Mosley was in London, but her husband and their two children were in County Galway when fire broke out, seemingly caused by an old beam inside the chimney of the maids’ sitting room. The blaze spread quickly, so fast indeed that according to a report in the following day’s Irish Times, a French maid, Mademoiselle Cerrecoundo, who had run upstairs to rescue some clothes, became trapped in the building. Sir Oswald, his son Alexander and the chauffeur, Monsieur Thevenon, held a blanket beneath one of the windows and the maid leapt to her safety, with only minor injuries to her back and hand. Alas, the old palace was not so lucky and while a handful of rooms and their contents were saved, most of the building was lost as it took an hour and a half for fire brigades to reach Clonfert. The following day, hurricane-force winds and torrential rain ripped across the entire country, compounding the damage done to the house and leaving it a sorry wreck. In 1955 the Mosleys moved to Ileclash, a Georgian overlooking the river Blackwater in County Cork where they lived intermittently until 1963 when the couple moved to France. As for Clonfert Palace, despite being described on www.buildingsofireland.com in 2009 as being of national significance, it was left to moulder into its present advanced state of decay. What could have been saved as a rare example of late 16th/early 17th century Irish domestic architecture has been lost.
Lismore, County Cavan, entrance front c. 1880. Vanishing Country Houses of Ireland by The Knight of Glin, David J. Griffin and Nicholas K. Robinson, published by The Irish Architectural Archive and The Irish Georgian Society, 1988.
Bence-Jones, Mark. A Guide to Irish Country Houses (originally published as Burke’s Guide to Country Houses volume 1 Ireland by Burke’s Peerage Ltd. 1978); Revised edition 1988, Constable and Company Ltd, London
p. 186. “(Nesbitt, sub Burrowes/LGI1912; Burrowes;IFR; Lucas-Clements/IFR) A house of probably ca. 1730 and very likely by Sir Edward Lovett Pearce. The main block was of two storeys over a high basement, with a pediment breakfront centre and a widely spaced Venetian window in both storeys. There were two bays either side of the centre. Overlapping “tower” wings of one storey over basement and one bay. Detached two storey six bay office wings, joined to house by screen walls. These wings have gable-ends with curvilinear gables facing the sides of the house; the outermost bay of each, in the front elevation is also gabled; the gables here are probably originally curvilinear also, though they are now straight. Round headed windows in lower storey and basement of house and in lower storey of office wings.The house had a solid roof parapet with urns and oculi in the upper storey of the office wings. Originally the seat of the Nesbitts, passed to the Burrowes through the marriage of Mary Nesbitt [Mary Anne, born 1826, daughter of John Nesbitt and Elizabeth Tatam] to James Burrowes [1820-1860, of Stradone House, County Cavan] in 1854; Lismore passed to the Lucas-Clements family through the marriage of Miss Rosamund Burrowes to the late Major Shuckburgh Lucas-Clements in 1922.
“Having stood empty for many years, the house fell into ruin and was demolished ca 1952, with the exception of the “tower” wings. The office wings are now used as farm buildings, and the family now live in the former agent’s house, an early house with a Victorian wing and other additions.”
Listed in Vanishing Country Houses of Ireland by The Knight of Glin, David J. Griffin and Nicholas K. Robinson, published by The Irish Architectural Archive and The Irish Georgian Society, 1988.
p. 39. A house dating from c. 1730 and attributed to Edward Lovett Pearce. This house was very much in the style of Sir John Vanburgh, his cousin. the house became a ruin in this century and the central block except for one tower was demolished c. 1952. The flanking pavillions still remain.“
Of the original Lismore House, attributed to Edward Lovett Pearce (1699-1733), only the two wings and tower survive. The house was restored by Richard and Sonya Beer. [1]
It was probably built for Thomas Nesbitt, (c1672-1750), of Grangemore, County Westmeath, High Sheriff of County Cavan, 1720, MP for Cavan Borough, 1715-50 [2].
Photograph from National Inventory of Architectural Heritage.The Inventory tells us it is: “Symmetrical pair of detached six-bay two-storey flanking wings to former Lismore House, built c.1730, having advanced outermost end bays to each block, single-bay two-stage flanking tower formerly attached to south corner of house having single-bay extension to north…Rubble stone walls having red brick quoins, eaves course, and string course. Red brick surrounds to oculi at first floor over round-headed ground-floor windows and central segmental-headed door.“Photograph from National Inventory of Architectural Heritage: “Blind lunette and oculus to gables facing former house.”Photograph from National Inventory of Architectural Heritage: “Tower having mansard slate roof, rubble stone walls with cut-stone platbands, cut-stone surrounds to window openings, round-headed openings with raised keystone and impost blocks to former ground floor, and segmental-headed openings to former basement level.”
Ancestry: See Cosby Nesbitt (1718-1786) and descendants.
Lismore Lodge is a very attractive early c1800 period house and gate lodge. The main house with six bays and two storey extends to 9,680 sq ft and is bound by a large stone wall. The property is believed to be a Stewarts house which was once part of The Lismore estate.
THE NESBITTS WERE MAJOR LANDOWNERS IN COUNTY CAVAN, WITH 9,735 ACRES
ANDREW NESBITT, of Brenter (presumed to be son of Thomas Nesbitt, of Newbottle, and grandson of George Nesbitt, who died in 1590), assignee from the Earl of Annandale, of the estates of Brenter and Malmusock, County Donegal, was father of
ANDREW NESBITT, who served in the army of CHARLES I in Ireland; whose eldest son,
THOMAS NESBITT (c1672-1750), of Grangemore, County Westmeath, High Sheriff of County Cavan, 1720, MP for Cavan Borough, 1715-50, married twice, and was father of
COSBY NESBITT (1718-91), of Lismore, MP for Cavan Borough, 1750-68, High Sheriff of County Cavan, 1764, who succeeded to the Cavan estates on the death of his father.
His eldest son,
COLONEL THOMAS NESBITT (c1744-1820), of Lismore, MP for Cavan Borough, 1768-1800, High Sheriff of County Cavan, 1769, married and was father of
COSBY NESBITT JP DL, High Sheriff of County Cavan, 1798, Major, Cavan Militia, whose second son,
ALEXANDER NESBITT DL (1817-86), of Lismore House, County Cavan, and Old Lands, Sussex, High Sheriff of County Cavan, 1862, died without issue and was succeeded by his sister,
MARY ANNE BURROWES, who espoused, in 1854, James Edward Burrowes, and had issue, an only child,
THOMAS COSBY BURROWES JP DL (1856-1925), of Lismore, County Cavan, High Sheriff of County Cavan, 1888, married, in 1885, Anna Frances Maxwell, sister of 10th Baron Farnham, and had issue,
Eleanor Mary (1886-1962); Rosamund Charlotte, b 1891.
Rosamund Charlotte Cosby Burrowes, of Lismore, married, in 1922, Major Shuckburgh Upton Lucas-Clements in 1922, and had issue,
Elizabeth Anne, b 1922; Thomas, b 1925; John, b 1930; Robert Henry, b 1930.
LISMORE HOUSE, near Crossdoney, County Cavan, was built ca 1730.
The main block was of two storeys over a high basement, with a pediment breakfront centre and a widely spaced Venetian window in both storeys.
There were two bays either side of the centre, overlapping tower wings of one storey each.
The house had a solid roof parapet with urns and oculi in the upper storey of the office wings.
Lismore passed to the Lucas-Clements family through the marriage of Miss R Burrowes to Major Shuckburgh Lucas-Clements in 1922.
Having stood empty for many years, the house fell into ruin and was demolished ca 1952, with the exception of a tower wing.
The estate is three miles from the Farnham estate and hotel.
The office wings were used as farm buildings and appear to have been converted to modern living accomodation.
You know the expression, ’All to one side like Crossdoney’? Well the reason that the modest little village is all to one side is largely due to a house built it in the late 1700s by the Nesbitt family. An old stone wall, the like of which the landed gentry would erect to keep poachers and commoners at bay hides the enormous Georgian home from motorists stopped at the village’s T-junction, deciding whether to head for Ballinagh or Killeshandra. From the 1980s that stone grey edifice hid the true extent to which the proud old home had fallen into dereliction. Likewise, for the last four years it has also hidden its incredible revival under the ownership of Richard and Sonya Beer since 2014. The transformation over the last four years is worthy of TV shows Grand Designs or The Great House Revival. It’s stunning.
Over the course of two years they had viewed maybe 30 to 40 different houses around Ireland. They had even searched abroad. “We had notions at one stage of maybe moving to France, we actually went and had a look at a few places, but we decided very quickly it wasn’t for us – you have three kids living in Dublin, what’s the point of moving to France?” A professional photographer for auctioneering agents, Richard happened upon Lismore Lodge on the way to a job in Killeshandra, back in 2013. He stopped outside the wall to take a swift peek, and as there was no ’for sale’ sign, he didn’t pay it much heed. The listed building had fallen into ruin since Dr Hannah – a surgeon in the hospital – had lived in it in the 1980s. Two owners, but no homemakers had followed. “We had been looking for two years probably for ’a project’ – I mean a project that needed maybe a couple of bathrooms and a new kitchen or something,” recalls Richard with a laugh. With that first glance he decided the derelict property was “too far gone”. It was only when he saw the property online and he and his wife Sonya travelled up from their County Clare home to see it first-hand that Richard realised he’d been here before. This time he was smitten. “I had a vision of what it would look like when it was done – and that was always the goal,” says Richard. “But you didn’t share it,” quips Sonya, who has clearly invested just as much of herself in the project. Did it not seem like it would be just too much work? “Well it was too much, but the thing that sold it to us was the site, and the mature trees and all. You couldn’t buy anything like this in Germany.” It’s understandable that Sonya was dubious considering the state the property was in. They got an architect to give it a once over from a structural point of view, but having photographed homes all his working life, and with two renovation jobs under his belt with their Victorian period home in Dublin and cottage in County Clare, Richard was determined to proceed. The Beers eventually bought the house for €140,000, which sounds like a steel for the stately property it is now – it seems foolhardy when you consider the state of the property back when the sale went through in late summer 2014. At least it came with 14 acres. To finance the purchase and renovation works they sold up their Dublin property, but sadly at the bottom of the market. “We got a fraction of what we thought we’d get,” laments Richard. Lying derelict for 30 years or more, scavengers had taken what they could – copper cylinder from upstairs, lead from windows. One of the fireplaces was found amongst overgrown grass having been dumped in the garden. “There wasn’t one sheet of glass left in the whole house. And what happened was the rain was coming in [through leaks/holes in the roof] and it had nowhere to evaporate because all the windows and doors were sealed, so it was like an incubator for wet rot, dry rot, fungus and whatever you want.” Did you not think Lismore was too far gone? “The walls were two foot thick and were straight, so I mean a two foot wall is not going to go anywhere,” said Richard. “Well we thought that,” offers Sonya, as we peer into a room which is now beautiful and airy with a view of the garden’s mature trees and the village beyond. They had intended inserting a steel support in an upstairs bedroom wall which had a major crack running across it. However it collapsed as a builder tested the reliability of a supporting beam, with 50-60 tonnes of stone coming crashing down. Photos of the scene are truly eye-popping. “That wall could easily have killed somebody,” he accurately recalls.
Nuclear explosion
Separately a relatively modern brick chimney breast in the same room later collapsed and smashed through a section of a newly refurbished floor downstairs. “It was like a nuclear explosion when that thing came down,” remarked Richard. They swiftly realised that the work couldn’t be done within budget by a contractor. “The place was atrocious,” summarises Richard. It got worse. “You could squeeze the water out of some of them with your bare hands,” he says of the timber supporting the roof,” says Richard. He adds: “The roof was still on it when we got here and then about two weeks after we arrived there was an unmerciful bang at one stage.” They discovered the roof in the downstairs dining room. They had hoped they could salvage more of the roof, but they finally retained approximately 15%. Original floors of only two rooms upstairs remain. Lismore Lodge was literally caving in around them. “We couldn’t go into the building upstairs for the first nine months or something like that – there was a carpet upstairs and that was holding everything up basically,” he says with a laugh, that suggests he’s only slightly exaggerating. “It was just ridiculous, and all the plaster was off the walls.” Such perilous support structures where common place: a central heating pipe alone was holding up a collapsed support beam for the floor above the kitchen. “Until you clear everything, you don’t know what’s underneath,” adds Sonya. In the ’Morning Room’, the plaster was still up on the walls, it still had fantastic cornice going around. We came in one day and the whole thing had slid down onto the floor – in one piece!” It quickly emerged that they would be unable to afford a contractor to carry out all of the necessary works within their budget, which they prefer to keep to themselves. Richard took on the role of project leader and employed what tradesmen their endless to-do list demanded first. The couple eagerly took a hands-on role in the work they could manage themselves. While the crash undermined the value they got for their previous home, it helped in that under-employed builders were available. “I wouldn’t want to start it now because you could be waiting months for some people – we were lucky with the plumber, the electrician – the fella who did the roof – they were all really good, and they didn’t mind that I mucked in as well,” says Richard. Whilst he who modestly thinks of himself as “an amateur”, he came up with the solution to supporting upstairs floors when you already have standing walls. They cemented in re-bars where the old joists were, and welded angle iron on top of that to provide a ledge and laid the new floor on the ledge rather than trying to bore huge holes into stone walls. “They were all very doubtful about that, but touch wood, that all worked out really well, because the floors are absolutely level upstairs. “It’s the only thing that’s straight,” add Sonya.
Challenge
Life on a building site was especially difficult in the first winter. “It was a bit of a challenge,” says Sonya, who admits to having been “fed up” at times. “The first nine months we were living in a caravan. It was very cold that winter.” They were constantly removing plaster, which is a particularly messy job, and could only wash up in a basin. “We used to drive to Dublin to one of our kids and have a shower in their house,” recalls Richard. They first concentrated on renovating a secondary home on the property, a little ‘Peacock House’, so called because Dr Hannah kept the flamboyant birds there. That gave them a “very cosy” base from which to attack the main home. Eventually the rebuild started to come together. “About a year ago, once we were fairly sure that we would be able to finish the house and not fall flat on our faces, we started to call the whole enterprise the Lazarus Project – back from the dead,” quips Richard. Walking around the Lismore on one of the most glorious days of the year confirms that all the Beers’ efforts in resuscitating this great house were rewarded. Entering each of the nine bedrooms, you have expect to hear the crescendo of the big reveal music you hear on TV renovation shows. The dining room, where they celebrated their first Christmas dinner having moved in last December, is truly amazing. The rustic kitchen is the Celt’s favourite. Stoves and ovens of varying sizes dominates an entire red brick wall of the kitchen. The internal walls of no less than seven flue had all collapsed, and had to be rebuilt by craftsmen. Richard shows the Celt a beehive bread oven behind an industrial metal door, before his excitement overtakes him as he brings us to the other end of the kitchen. “There’s a three quarter inch steel plate there so you can actually cook on that if you want to,” he enthuses. “Not that we’re going to,” adds Sonya. As the couple have blown their savings on restoring the home, some of the rooms are sparsely decorated, so there’s not quite the opulence you might expect of rooms of such proportions. They are no less stylish for their modesty of furnishings. Richard estimates that they are 97% finished the restoration, with painting and priming certain areas, and carrying out work in the woodland gardens, amongst the few jobs on the dwindling to-do list. Asked if he has any advice for someone thinking of taking on a renovation project, without hesitation, Richard replies: “Do it – its definitely worthwhile. If you can see – that you can come out the other end without either killing yourself or financially destroying yourself altogether, then I would certainly say do it because you get great satisfaction when you see it finished.”
Bence-Jones, Mark. A Guide to Irish Country Houses (originally published as Burke’s Guide to Country Houses volume 1 Ireland by Burke’s Peerage Ltd. 1978); Revised edition 1988, Constable and Company Ltd, London.
p. 22. “(Crosbie/IFR) The original house of the Crosbies here was long, low and thatched, facing onto an enclosed bawn or countyard, in the corner of which was a strong stone tower, part of an old castle of the De Cantillons. It was in this tower that, in 1730, Thomas Crosbie placed the chests of silver which he had rescued from the Danish East Indian Golden Lyon when that vessel was lured into Ballyheigue Bay by wreckers and wrecked; his exertions in saving the treasure and the crew of the ship proved too much for him, and he died from exposure and fatigue. Some months later the castle was attacked by rapparees and the treasure carried off; it was alleged that the attack was organised by Thomas Crosbie’s widow, who subsequently obtained the bulk of the treasure. A new house appears to have been built ca 1758, which Col James Crobie turned into a romantic castle ca 1809. His architects were Richard and William Vitruvius Morrison, the design being produced by the latter though he was only 15 at the time. Like other Gothic and Tudor-Revival houses by the Morrisons, it was intended to represent a building dating from two different periods: the entrance front, in the words of Neale, “exhibiting the rich and ornamental style of teh early part of the reign of Henry VIII”; whereas the elevation towards the sea had “the character and appearance of the castellated mansions of King Henry VI.” In fact, the seaward elevation betrays itself very much as a two storey Georgian house which has been battlemented and had round and square towers and other pseudo-medieval features added to it; while the adjoining entrance front is a not very inspired gabled affair. And whereas Neale’s well-known view shows the castle dramatically situated at the edge of a sheer cliff above the sea, it stands less spectacularly at teh top of a gently sloping lawn, quite some way from the water’s edge. A castellated outbuilding is joined to the castle by a long wall. Peirce Crosbie, the son of Co James Crosbie, had trouble with his wife, who eloped to the Continent with a groom – having previously bestowed her favours on stable-lads – and was never heard of again. The castle was burnt 1921 and is now a ruin.”
Listed in Vanishing Country Houses of Ireland by The Knight of Glin, David J. Griffin and Nicholas K. Robinson, published by The Irish Architectural Archive and The Irish Georgian Society, 1988.
p. 81. “A large Tudor Revival house designed by Richard and William Vitruvius Morrison for James Crosbie c. 1809, incorporating an earlier house. The house was burnt in 1921 and one wing was recently restored.”
Remains of detached two- and three-storey Tudor Gothic Revival style country house, built 1809, incorporating fabric of earlier house, 1758. Comprising six-bay two-storey side (south) elevation of entrance block with battlemented parapet, single-bay three-storey battlemented corner turrets on circular plans and nine-bay two-storey lower wing (originally return) to west having battlemented parapet and corner machicolation. Burnt, in 1840, later used as prison, burnt, in 1921 and now mostly collapsed. Wing reconstructed and remodelled, c. 1975, to accommodate use as apartments with remainder of building now ruinous. Castellated parapets with one cast-iron hopper having floral motif. Snecked sandstone walls with grey limestone string courses and plinth, castellated machicolations, blind arrow loops and having render to parts of side wall with imitation ashlar. Square-headed openings with limestone sills, surrounds, hood mouldings and having sandstone relieving arches. Timber window frames in side openings. Four-centred arch to doorway in double-height arch having window above with carved spandrels. Detached nine-bay two-storey Tudor Gothic Revival style former stable complex, built c. 1810, to east on an L-shaped plan about a courtyard with battlemented parapet, with single-bay two-storey corner turret on a circular plan and three-bay side elevations. Extensively renovated in latter part of twentieth century with pair of single-bay single-storey gabled projecting porches added to accommodate use as apartments. Detached six-bay single-storey rubble stone-built outbuilding, built c. 1810, to east on an L-shaped plan with series of elliptical-headed integral carriage arches, now disused. Section of rubble stone boundary wall to east with series of arrow loops possibly originally part of walled garden.
Gateway to Ballyheige Castle, built c. 1830, comprising pair of single-bay two-storey lodge towers with cross apertures and battlemented parapets having elliptical-headed carriage arch to centre and single-bay single-storey flat-roofed end bay to south with battlemented parapet. Lodge to north now disused. Castellated parapet walls with sandstone copings. Sandstone ashlar facing to front and rear facades with rubble stone side walls and blind arrow loops. Pointed sandstone arches with limestone profiled sills and replacement windows. Three-centred recessed carriage arch.
Architect: Richard Morrison & William Vitruvius Morrison
Long rambling castle sited across a hillside. Burnt during 1921, a wing was recently restored. The grounds are now a golf course. Interestingly while both illustrations are a reasonable representation of the castle, both exaggerate the landscape. In reality the castle is sited on top of a rolling hillside.
THE CROSBIES WERE MAJOR LANDOWNERS IN COUNTY KERRY, WITH13,422 ACRES
This is a branch of the CROSBIES OF ARDFERT, extinct Earls of Glandore, themselves scions of a family long settled in the Queen’s County and in County Kerry, and latterly represented by the Crosbie Baronets, of Maryborough.
The common ancestor of the Baronet’s family and the two branches of Ardfert and Ballyheigue was
The Queen’s letter to the Lord Deputy of Ireland, Lord Mountjoy, dated from the manor of Oatland, in 1600, directing his appointment, describes him as “a graduate in schools, of English race, skilled in the English tongue, and well disposed in religion.”
The Bishop was previously Prebendary of Disert, in the Diocese of Limerick.
He married Winifred O’Lalor, of the Queen’s County, and had, with four daughters, six sons,
Walter (Sir), 1st Baronet, of Maryborough; DAVID, of whom presently; John (Sir), of Tullyglass, County Down; Patrick; William; Richard.
The Lord Bishop of Ardfert died in 1621.
His second son,
DAVID CROSBIE, of Ardfert, Colonel in the army, Governor of Kerry, 1641, stood a siege in Ballingarry Castle for more than twelve months.
He was afterwards Governor of Kinsale for CHARLES I; and in 1646 he inherited a portion of the estate of his cousin, Sir Pierce Crosbie Bt, son of Patrick Crosbie, who had been granted a large portion of The O’More’s estate in Leix.
Mr Crosbie wedded a daughter of the Rt Rev John Steere, Lord Bishop of Ardfert, and had, with four daughters, two sons,
THOMAS, his heir; Patrick.
Colonel Crosbie died in 1658, and was succeeded by his elder son,
SIR THOMAS CROSBIE, Knight, of Ardfert, High Sheriff of County Kerry, 1668, knighted by His Grace the Duke of Ormonde, in consideration of the loyalty of his family during Oliver Cromwell’s rebellion.
He was MP for County Kerry in the parliament held in Dublin by JAMES II in 1688, and refused to take the oath of allegiance to WILLIAM III.
Sir Thomas married firstly, Bridget, daughter of Robert Tynte, of County Cork, and had issue,
DAVID, ancestor of THE EARLS OF GLANDORE; William; Patrick (Rev); Walter; Sarah; Bridget.
He wedded secondly, Elizabeth, daughter of Garrett FitzGerald, of Ballynard, County Limerick, by whom he had no issue; and thirdly, in 1680, Elizabeth, daughter of William Hamilton, of Liscloony, King’s County, and had issue,
THOMAS, of whom hereafter; John; Charles; Pierce; Ann.
By a very peculiar, probably unique, settlement, executed on the marriages of Sir Thomas Crosbie and his eldest son respectively, to the two sisters, on the same day (1680), a new settlement and redistribution of all the family estates was made, by which those of Ballyheigue were appointed to the issue of the last marriage.
Under this settlement Ballyheigue passed to the eldest son of his third marriage,
THOMAS CROSBIE, of Ballyheigue, MP for County Kerry, 1709, High Sheriff of County Kerry, 1712 and 1714, who espoused, in 1711, the Lady Margaret Barry, daughter of Richard, 2nd Earl of Barrymore, and had issue,
JAMES, his heir; Anne Dorothy; Harriet Jane.
Mr Crosbie died in 1731, and was succeeded by his son and heir,
JAMES CROSBIE, of Ballyheigue, High Sheriff of County Kerry, 1751, who married Mary, daughter of Pierce Crosbie, of Rusheen, and had issue,
PIERCE, his heir; James; Catherine; Henrietta.
Mr Crosbie died in 1761, and was succeeded by his eldest son,
PIERCE CROSBIE, of Ballyheigue, High Sheriff of County Kerry, 1797, who wedded Frances, daughter of Rowland Bateman, of Oak Park, and had issue,
JAMES, his heir; Pierse; Elizabeth; Frances Anne.
The elder son,
JAMES CROSBIE (c1760-1836) of Ballyheigue, High Sheriff of County Kerry, 1792, MP for County Kerry, 1797-1800, espoused, in 1785, his cousin Elizabeth, daughter of Rowland Bateman, of Oak Park, and had issue,
PIERCE, his heir; James; Francis; Thomas; Letitia; Frances.
Colonel Crosbie died in 1836, and was succeeded by his eldest son,
PIERCE CROSBIE (1792-1849), of Ballyheigue, High Sheriff of County Kerry, 1815, who espoused firstly, Elizabeth, daughter of General John Mitchell. She dsp.
He married secondly, in 1831, Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas William Sandes DL, of Sallow Glen, County Kerry, and had issue,
JAMES, his heir; Margaret Catherine.
Mr Crosbie wedded thirdly, Margaret, daughter of Leslie Wren, and had further issue,
William Wren; Pierce; Leslie Wren; George Wren; Francis; Elizabeth Margaret; Alice Julia.
Mr Crosbie was succeeded by his eldest son,
JAMES CROSBIE JP DL (1832-79), of Ballyheigue, High Sheriff of County Kerry, 1862, Colonel, Kerry Militia, who espoused, in 1860, Rosa, daughter of Sir John Lister Lister-Kaye Bt, of Denby Grange, Yorkshire, and had issue,
Piers Lister (1860-78), died at Harrow; JAMES DAYROLLES, of whom hereafter; Kathleen Matilda; Rosa Marguerite; Marcia Ellen.
Mr Crosbie was succeeded by his eldest surviving son,
BRIGADIER-GENERAL JAMES DAYROLLES CROSBIE CMG DSO JP DL (1865-1947), of Ballyheigue, High Sheriff of County Kerry, 1894, who married, in 1894, Maria Caroline, daughter of Major James Leith VC, Scots Greys, and granddaughter of Sir Alexander Leith, of Glenkindie, and had issue, an only child, OONAGH MARY.
BALLYHEIGUE CASTLE, near Tralee, County Kerry, was originally low, long and thatched, facing on to an enclosed courtyard, where there was a stone tower, part of an ancient castle.
The original house on this site was constructed about 1758, but was renovated and enlarged to the design of Richard Morrison ca 1809.
The last member of the family, Brigadier Crosbie, sold Ballyheigue Castle in 1912.
The building was used as a prison at the time of the Irish civil war in 1920.
It was burnt in 1921.
Very little of the original remains, but some renovation has taken place and there is holiday accommodation at the site, now surrounded by the Golf Course.
A wing was reconstructed and remodelled about 1975, to accommodate use as apartments, with the remainder of the building now ruinous.
In 1680 two sisters from County Offaly, Elizabeth and Jane Hamilton, were married on the same day. While Elizabeth married Sir Thomas Crosbie, Jane married Sir Thomas’s eldest son (from an earlier marriage), David. Thus the latter’s heir Maurice, future first Baron Branden, was both nephew and cousin of Sir Thomas and Elizabeth Crosbie’s eldest son, also called Thomas. While David inherited the family’s main estate at Ardfert, County Kerry (see An Incomplete Story « The Irish Aesthete), Thomas Crosbie was left another estate further north in the same county at Ballyheigue. The ancient family formerly in occupation here were the Cantillons who supposedly occupied some kind of fortified building; they were displaced in the 17th century by the Crosbies (who, in turn, had been moved by the English government from their own traditional lands in Offaly). The younger Thomas died in late 1730, supposedly after he suffered from exposure and fatigue involved in rescuing the crew and cargo of a Danish vessel, the Golden Lion, which had become stranded on the local coast: the cargo happened to include 12 chests of silver valued at £20,000. A complex drama involving the disappearance of at least some of this silver, and the possible involvement of Thomas’s widow, Lady Margaret Barry (a daughter of the second Earl of Barrymore) then followed; what exactly happened and who benefitted from the theft has never been clearly established. In any case, a new residence was built at Ballyheigue c.1758 by Colonel James Crosbie, heir to the younger Thomas. Seemingly this was a long, low thatched property, by then somewhat old-fashioned in style, and surrounded by an orchard, gardens and bowling green. It was his grandson, another colonel also called James and an MP, first of the Irish Parliament and then, after the 1800 Act of Union, of the Westminster Parliament, who gave the house, renamed Ballyheigue Castle, its present – albeit now semi-ruinous – appearance. …[see website]
Irish Historic Houses 