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. 96. “Described by Dr Craig as “perhaps the most splendidly masculine house in the whole country,” an early C18 house of noble proportions and bold, self-confident detail; of two storeys over a basement, with two adjoining pedimented breakfront elevations, one of five bays and the other of seven. The longer of two fronts had a Venetian window above a pedimented doorcase flanked by two windows; the shorter had a doorcase with a pediment on tapering pilasters copied from Sir John Vanbrugh’s door at King’s Weston, Glos, which in turn derived from Michaelangelo. Roof on massive cornice with tall stacks. The house is said to have been built for a fmily named Fraser; it seems likely that Sir Edward Lovett Pearce had at least a hand in the design. By the end of C18 it belonged to a branch of the Daly family; early in C19, it became a school, one of the masters of which was the uncle of Rev A.B. Nicholls, who brought his bride, Charlotte Bronte, to stay here on their honeymoon 1854. The house was unroofed ca 1946, and in recent years, much of the ruin has been demolished.
Cuba Court, County Offaly, entrance front 1978 photograph: William Garner, 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.
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. 121. designed by school of Edward Lovett Pearce for the fraser family…
Cuba Court, CURRAGHAVARNA AND PORTAVOLLA, Banagher, County Offaly
Detached L-plan five-bay two-storey school house, built c.1720. Now disused. Set within the former demesne of Cuba Court. Hipped slate roof with terracotta ridge tiles. Rendered walls. Square-headed window openings with limestone sills, round-headed door opening and carriage arch opening. Site accessed through stone gate piers with cast-iron gates.
Appraisal
This building was part of the Cuba Court Demesne, and is one of the only remaining structures in what was described by Maurice Craig as ‘perhaps the most splendidly masculine house in the whole country’. Cuba Court was built for the Fraser family in the early eighteenth century and has been associated with Irish architect Sir Edward Lovett Pearce. Charlotte Brontë stayed in Cuba Court on her honeymoon and was impressed to find ‘so much English order and repose in the family habits and arrangements’. Unfortunately the house no longer remains, but the remaining buildings give an impression of the demesne’s former glory, retaining much character and original fabric.
Cuba Court, now demolished, was built around 1730 for George Fraser former Governor of Cuba. The 1629 Charter of Charles I gave Banagher a Royal Free School which was located here in the 19th century.
Arthur Bell Nicholls grew up in Cuba Court while his uncle Rev. Alan Bell was Headmaster (1821-1839). Bell Nicholls was ordained a clergyman in 1844 and in the following year became assistant in Haworth to the Rev. Patrick Bronte (originally Prunty from Co. Down) whose daughter Charlotte, the English novelist, he married in June 1854.
Part of their honeymoon was spent in Cuba Court. Sadly Charlotte died in March the following year, 1855. She was expecting a child at the time. In addition to Bell Nicholls other famous past students of Cuba Royal School were Sir William Wilde, father of Oscar Wilde, and William Bulfin, author of ‘Rambles in Erin’.
Banagher’s Cuba Court (now demolished) is said to date from the 1730s and may have been constructed by one George Frazer, a former Governor of Cuba and perhaps to a design of Sir Edward Lovett Pearce. The house was unroofed in 1946 because, like so many Irish houses, it was ruined by the policy on rates at the time. If the abolition of rates in 1977 was disastrous for the National Debt and local government at least, it may have contributed to the saving of many Irish houses.
Towards the end of the eighteenth century Cuba was the home of Denis Bowes Daly. Bowes Daly was a prominent member of the local ascendancy. Prior to his death in 1821 he had leased Cuba Court to the Army Medical Board as of 1804 on a 61-year lease. The building was but little used as a hospital and the Medical Board was quite happy to give it up to the Commissioners of Education for the purpose of the Royal School. In 1819 the school had some forty pupils. The then headmaster, Thomas Morris, was succeeded by Revd Alan Bell in 1822. Bell purchased the headmastership from Morris for £1,000.
Alan Bell was at the time master of a classical school in Downpatrick and was the son of a County Antrim farmer. He graduated from T.C.D. in 1814. One of his assistant teachers in the late 1830s was Arthur Nicholls, a nephew and a past pupil of Banagher school. Alan Bell died in 1839 and was succeeded by Revd James Hamilton. After a succession of school masters James Adamson Bell, son of Revd Alan Bell, was appointed in 1848 – at the age of 21. The later agreed, at an inquiry at Tullamore in 1855, that he had not the experience at the time to run the establishment. He graduated from T.C.D. with a B. A. in 1847 and in 1852 became a clergyman. The school improved under his management and had 36 pupils in 1852.
Arthur Bell Nicholls
Arthur Bell Nicholls was born of Scottish parents in County Antrim in 1818. He was orphaned early and subsequently brought up by his headmaster uncle in Banagher. He graduated from T.C.D. in 1844 and became curate of Haworth in 1845. It was at Haworth in the West Riding of Yorkshire that he met Charlotte Bronte, daughter of Patrick Bronte, a clergyman at Haworth. Charlotte was born in 1816 and at 31 published an extremely successful novel, Jane Eyre. Her sister, Emily, had earlier published Wuthering Heights. Bell was two years younger than Charlotte and was said to be very serious, almost grave, reserved religious young man of strong convictions – highly conscientious in the performance of his parish duties and narrow in his ideas. Phyllis Bently in her book The Brontes and their World described the marriage proposal and acceptance as follows:
‘For some time Charlotte had been uneasily aware of constraint and awkwardness in Nicholl’s behaviour in her presence, and when one evening in December 1852, just after the disappointing reception of Villette by George Smith, Nicholls on leaving Mr. Bronte’s study tapped on the parlour door, she guessed in a flash what was coming. But she had not realized how strong his feelings for her were. Pale, shaking from head to foot, speaking with difficulty in a low but vehement tone, Nicholls made her understand what this declaration meant to him. She asked if he had spoken to Mr. Bronte; he said, he dared not. She half led, half pushed him from the room, promising him an answer on the morrow, then went immediately to her father with news of the proposal. Mr. Bronte was furious. Charlotte’s own accounts of this courtship and eventual engagement, given in her letters to Ellen Nussey as it went along, could not be bettered in the finest novel in the world. Mr. Bronte’s jealous fury, expressing itself as snobbish resentment – a curate with £100 a year marry his famous daughter! Mr. Nicholl’s stubborn passion, which almost unseated his reason – he would not eat or drink; stayed shut up in his lodgings at the Browns’ (though he still took poor old Flossy out for walks); broke down in the Communion Service, while the village women sobbed around; was rude to a visiting Bishop; resigned his Haworth curacy and agreed to remain till Mr. Bronte found another curate; volunteered as a missionary to Australia but finally took a curacy at Kirk Smeaton, in the West Riding itself. Charlotte, exasperated by Nicholl’s lack of the qualities she desired in a husband, infuriated by her father’s ignoble objections to the match, conscious of the absence of alternatives. The villagers, torn between opposing parties – some say they would like to shoot Mr. Nicholls, but they gave him a gold watch as a parting present. What a tragic drama – or a roaring comedy, depending on its result. Love, coupled with Charlotte’s loneliness and Mr. Bronte’s dissatisfaction with his new curate, Mr. De Renzi, triumphed.
The only-known surviving portrait of Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte was painted by their brother Branwell in 1834 and then bought by the National Portrait Gallery in 1914 after it was rediscovered in Banagher. The painting is creased because it was discovered folded up on top of a cupboard in 1914 by the second wife of Charlotte’s husband.
The marriage took place at Haworth on 29 June, 1854, just 165 years ago. The honeymoon was in Ireland and if Bell was a poor unknown curate in England – in Banagher he was a member of a respectable family. In a letter quoted by Mrs. Gaskell in her book The Life of Charlotte Bronte, Charlotte wrote:
“My dear husband, too, appears in a new light in his own country. More than once I have had deep pleasure in hearing his praises on all sides. Some of the old servants and followers of the family tell me I am a most fortunate person; for that I have got one of the best gentlemen in the country . . . . I trust I feel thankful to God for having enabled me to make what seems a right choice; and I pray to be enabled to repay as I ought the affectionate devotion of a truthful, honourable man. “
Cuba Court about 1977
She noted of the school in Cuba House where she stayed while in Banagher: “It is very large and looks externally like a gentleman’s country seat – within most of the rooms are lofty and spacious, and some – the drawing room, dining room &c handsomely and commodiously furnished. The passages look desolate and bare – our bedroom, a great room of the ground floor, would have looked gloomy when we were shown into it but for the turf fire that was burning in the wide old chimney. “Mrs. Bentley felt in her biography that it was difficult to judge whether Charlotte was happy in her marriage. “We’ve been so happy,’ she murmured to her husband, and she spoke warmly of his care and affectionate company when she was ill. But to Ellen she wrote: ‘It is a solemn and strange and perilous thing for a woman to become a wife.’ At least she was no longer lonely, but alway occupied, always needed; she had a parish and two men to care for – ‘my time is not my own now’ – and knew the reality of sex.
In January 1855 Charlotte discovered she was pregnant. It was accompanied by severe illness and she died on 31 March 1855 probably killed by the same illness – consumption – that had killed her two sisters and her brother. The marriage was of short duration – no more than nine months. As to Mr. Nicholls he “remained faithfully with Mr. Bronte in Haworth for the six long years which remained of the old man’s life. He was a somewhat stern guardian of the bedridden invalid that Mr. Bronte rapidly became, and allowed himself a strong dislike to references to his wife’s fame, refusing, for example to baptize infants with the names of any of the Bronte family. Mr. Bronte, learning this, once baptized an infant in his bedroom from a water jug – a sufficient indication of the terms on which the two men stood. When Mr. Bronte died in 1861 Mr. Nicholls returned to Banagher, taking with him his wife’s portrait, her wedding dress (of which a copy has been made), some of Charlotte’s letters and other mementoes, including Mr. Bronte’s dog Plato and Martha Brown. He made a happy second marriage with his cousin, but did not forget Charlotte. Forty years later, when the critic Clement Shorter prepared to write Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle, he found at Banagher among other cherished relics two diary notes of Emily and Anne, in a tin box, and some of the minute childhood writings wrapped in newspaper at the bottom of a drawer. The following report of the pictures he brought from Haworth appeared in 1914 in a local newspaper:
Banagher and Valuable Pictures The Trustees of the National Portrait Gallery have purchased and placed in Room XXXVII a group and a single portrait of considerable personal value. The group represents the portraits of Charlotte Bronte and her two sisters Emily and “dear”, gentle Anne”; the single image is believed to be a long lost portrait of Emily, both pictures from the brush of the brother, Branwell, who was born a year later than Charlotte. The importance of the discovery is indicated also by the reference of the London daily papers. The Morning Post, from which the above extract is taken, says further:- “There seems to have been another group of the three sisters by Branwell. Mr. A. B. Nicholls took the picture with him to Ireland, and not caring much for the portraits of his wife, Charlotte, and Ann he cut them out of the canvas and destroyed them. He retained the portrait of Emily, however, and gave it Martha Brown, the Brontes servant, on one of her visits to Ireland. Martha took it back with her to Haworth, and from that date the fragment disappeared until recently rediscovered in the possession of the widow of Mr. Nicholls, and from her acquired for the National Portrait Gallery.
In order to ascertain particulars the editor of the King’s Co. Chronicle communicated with the Revd. J. J. Sherrard, B. D. , Banagher, wrote to the Chronicle on 7th March –
“The Rev. A. B. Nicholls, left an orphan at six, was practically adopted by Rev. A. Bell, Headmaster of Cuba School, which Mr. N. who was a relative, attended as a boy. He returned to Banagher after the death of Rev. P. Bronte, to whom he was curate in Yorkshire, and married Miss Bell, daughter of Rev. A. Bell. The pictures, two in number – one of the three sisters and one of Emily, were found wrapped in brown paper in a wardrobe a few weeks ago in the Hill House, Banagher, by Mrs. Nicholls, who sent them to Mr. Smith, of Smith and Elder, Publishers of Charlotte Bronte’s books, and were sold through him to the National Gallery. The enclosed cutting (from the Morning Post) is wrong in stating the picture given to Martha Brown was among these. It was not and is believed to be lost.
Banagher Church of Ireland where Bell Nicholls was buried
Subsequent to the publication of the above there appeared in the Morning Post a letter from James J. Sherrard of Banagher a letter dated March 8, 1914. ” Sir, I have received a copy of the “Morning Post” containing an article animadverting on some information I had recently forwarded to the King’s County Chronicle with reference to the above. I may state that your account of the discovery, &c. , of the pictures – though not quite correct- was nearer the truth than any of the accounts I read in other newspapers. The facts are as follows: The pictures sent by Mrs. Nicholls to the National Gallery have been at The Hill House, Banagher, ever since they were brought there by the late Rev. A. B. Nicholls. The single one of Emily – cut out of a large portrait containing three sisters – was preserved by Mr. Nicholls. The rest of picture, with the portraits of his wife Charlotte and Anne, was handed to Martha Brown – who lived at The Hill House for upwards of eight years – not for preservation, but to be destroyed, and it is believed it was destroyed by her. I need not go into all the reasons for this action on the part of Mr. Nicholls. You see, therefore, that I was correct in saying that the picture of Emily forwarded to the National Gallery was never in Martha Brown’s possession, though I was mistaken in implying that Mr. Nicholls had ever given any portrait to Martha Brown. I have the above facts on the best living authority. Yours &c. “ James J. Sherrard.
Banagher before the First World War
Charlotte Bronte and the Bell Family Charlotte died in 1855 and her husband at Banagher in 1906. He had married his cousin and spent the last 45 years of his life there. Their writings place the three Bronte sisters on the highest eminence. Today their novels are read with the same avidity as marked their first publication, and promise to be perpetual. Charlotte’s, Jane Eyre, a romantic love story, met the public eye in 1847, and immediately had an immense circulation, which greatly relieved the straightened circumstances of the family, besides winning lasting fame for its author. Her two other principal works of fiction are known by the names Shirley and Villette, the former a tragedy appearing two years after the first, and at which time her brother and two sisters were dead. In both stories nearly all the people appear as living pictures of relatives and neighbours, and both secured a circulation surpassing expectation. Emily’s undying fame is due to her novel, Wuthering Heights, which saw the light in 1847, but she was not destined to reap the reward of her success as she expired in the course of another brief year, aged 30. The sister Anne’s novel, Agnes Grey, afforded another evidence of the almost evenly divided genius of the three immortal sisters.
Cuba School, Banagher, was one of the Royal educational institutions in Ireland, and ceased as such about 40 years ago, its last master under the endowment having been Mr. Joyce, who afterwards became a medical doctor. The school turned out not a few who rose to distinction in after life, one of these having been the late Sir William, father of Oscar Wilde.
HIll House, Banagher
Hill House, where Nicholls spent so many years, was sold to Major Bell in 1919. He died in 1944 and his wife inherited the property. Florence Bell died in 1959. It is now once again open to visitors who can enjoy its restored appearance and sense the history of a place connected in a curious way with the Bronte family.
Banagher in 1820 from a drawing by George Petrie with the old bridge, barracks and mill.
Banagher, County Offaly has associations with two well-known writers of the nineteenth century – Anthony Trollope and Charlotte Bronte. Up to recent years nothing by way of notice of this was to be found in Banagher, but that has all changed as Banagher, now hard pressed along its main street, looks again to embrace tourism in a way that it did so well in the nineteenth century and in the 1960s. The rescue of Crank House was a great feat, but the challenges are growing.
Many have tackled Trollope’s Life, but none immersed himself so much in Banagher as the late James Pope Hennessy. John McCourt in his 2015 study of Trollope Writing the Frontier: Anthony Trollope between Britain and Ireland ‘offers an in-depth exploration of Trollope’s time in Ireland as a rising Post Office official, contextualising his considerable output of Irish novels and short stories and his ongoing interest in the country, its people, and its always complicated relationship with Britain’.
2. D.H.4 bomber, aircrew posing with map (IWM, Q12021)
Offaly had a small but significant part in the early years of military aviation. In September 1913 Offaly was an important base for some of the earliest uses of aircraft in the annual British Army manoeuvres; some of the Royal Flying Corps’ earliest crashes took place in Offaly during those operations. Approximately 85 men who served in the Allied flying services were born or from Offaly, but their impact was far greater than would be expected. Ferbane hosted an operational wartime base at ‘RAF Athlone’, and there was a landing ground at Birr during the 1918-1920 mobilisation period.
The Parker Brothers of Clara and John Martin of Tullamore. One of the Parker boys was killed as was John Martin on 8 October 1918.
There was very little published work relating to Offaly in World War I until recent times. The 1983 essay by Vivienne Clarke was a first and rare examination of the period in Offaly, until Tom Burnell’s Offaly War Dead in 2010, and 2014’s Edenderry in the Great War by Catherine Watson. And so nearly every essay published in Offaly and the Great War which was launched to mark the centenary of the end of the Great War represents new and original historical research and findings, a very exciting prospect in the world of history publishing.The seventeen contributors have submitted essays that cover every aspect of the war and from almost all corners of the county.
I was fortunate to be invited to visit Banagher during Heritage Week in August 2018. Unfortunately I missed the presentation by Messrs Keenaghan and Scully but am told that all went swimmingly or, as we say up here in BAC, it was a hoot. Anyway I have many relations in the Banagher district and some of my ancestors were distillers and engineers about that town and in Kilcormac. I always like to visit Houghs when in Banagher. It was beloved by my old friend Hugh Leonard. I have had a pint or two with ‘admiralty men’ in Pawky Flynn’s and in the Railway Bar.
Not so many years ago we had fine restaurants in Brosna Lodge, the Shannon Hotel (a disgrace now) and we had Valerie Landon’s pottery. I remember the great Waller firm and Ray O’Donovan up in the Midland Maltings. It’s a fine old town and deserves a right good clean up and boost to its business. If Mrs Quirke was alive now what would she say not to mention the late R.H. Moore who my father and grandfather told me was one of nature’s gentlemen. I wonder how is the Vocational School going now. The late Elsie Naugton even had the boys playing hockey. I read somewhere that La Sainte Union had the first flush toilet in Offaly for the new French order of nuns there. It was a great place for the young ladies of the midlands. The old Royal School was long closed in my time but a bit of it survived up to when I left the area. There was always a bit of quality about Banagher and it would be a shame to lose it. Anyway my piece this week is culled from the Birr bastion of unionism, the Chronicle. I know Trollope and Charlotte Bronte would have liked its sentiments but it would not sit so easy with the Sinn Féin men of more recent times.
Cuba Court, Banagher, late the Royal School and host for a night or two for Charlotte Bronte
From the Kings County Chronicle, 18 July 1918 Banagher, well known for its celebrated annual fair, held on the 15th, 16th and 17th of September, is in the Rynagh Parish, Garry Castle Barony, six miles north-west of Parsons town (Birr), 82, miles from Dublin, on the east bank of the Shannon, near the confluence of the Little Brosna, and just in the angle of three of the four provinces, being within Leinster, and divided by the Shannon from Connaught, while lower down the river, a little distance, is the juncture of the Brosna, on the other shore of which is Munster. It returned two MPs to the Irish Parliament from Charles 1 to 1800. It is mainly one long street stretching for nearly a mile from the top of the hill at the church to the bridge, near which is the old barrack and the railway terminus.
The Distillery What was one of the largest whiskey distilleries in Ireland was worked by a private company of a few gentlemen, the former and originating company having abandoned it as a failure. It was formerly a mill, but a limited liability company, about the year 1870, reconverted it. Owing to the capital being reduced by the building charges of about £70,000, the enterprise was closed after a few years, and so remained until, owing to the energetic efforts of the former manager, a new company was formed; and the enterprise was at once placed on a firm financial basis. In its first season, such was the fine quality, the distillery was obliged to continue working up to August. Unfortunately, however, this prosperous condition of things did not continue, and the place has since been almost idle, except for malting carried on by Messrs D. E. Williams, Ltd which firm, within the past few years, also started a cabinet factory in the premises. The distillery itself is a splendid pile, heavy sums, years ago, having been expended on buildings and plant.
Public Buildings The Roman Catholic Church is a fine structure, and a clock placed in the tower through the enterprise of a few. Mr. Patrick Hynes, an energetic inhabitant, taking the lead. Here is also an ancient endowed Royal School, but the Government having decided on discontinuing it, a Commission sat to consider, among other matters, the cause of its decline in the number of pupils. The school endowment is very ancient, dating back to the time of Elizabeth, and is on the foundation of the Royal Schools of Ireland. In its time the school sent forth into the world many eminent men, the late Sir William Wilde being one of its pupils.
The first agent of the Bank of Ireland was Mr. W. Scott, and through the energy of the Roman Catholics a fine convent was erected. Three miles off is the ancient historic town of Cloghan Castle. The town is inconveniently, though pleasantly, situated on a rather steep hill sloping to the Shannon. The ancient name was Beandcar, from the pointed eminence on which it is built. It was known as Fortfalk-land and Bannagh. St. Reynach, sister of St. Finian, who died in 563 founded a religious house here called Kill- Rignaighe, and gave her name to the parish. The site of the house is now a burial ground. Amongst its ruins there was a shaft of a stone cross erected in memory of Bishop O’Duffy, of Clonfert, who was killed by a fall from his horse in 1297. This cross was removed to Clonmacnoise, and it represents the Bishop on horseback bearing a crozier. Here the great Felin MacCoghlan was slain in 1539 by the sons of O’Madden after Mass on Sunday. The castle was rebuilt by Teige O’Carroll in spite of the opposition of the O’Maddens. But in 1584 they demolished it, lest it should come into possession of the English.
Fair day in Banagher about 1904
The Markets Sir John Mac Coghlan, in 1612, obtained a grant to hold a market here on Thursday, but it was afterwards changed to a Monday and is now held on Friday. It was constituted a corporate town by charter of Charles 1 is 1628, the corporation being styled. “The Sovereign, Burgeases and Free Commons of the Borough and Town of Bannacher alias, Banagher.” “The Sovereign” was appointed a justice of the peace, coroner, and a clerk of the market, and had an extended jurisdiction. These offices, as well as to send two members to parliament, lapsed at the Union
Banagher Besieged Banagher gave considerable trouble to the Birr garrison, and often sent out marauding parties who foraged for themselves pretty freely in the surrounding district. However, when Birr Castle surrendered to General Preston, the natives evacuated Banagher. Dr Warren describes what happened then in his words: “There being no opposition made to Preston, he sat down before Fort Falkland (Banagher), a place of strength enough to have held out against him longer then he could have stayed in that season of the year, and for want of provisions. But though those within were numerous, yet many of them were not serviceable, and they were much encouraged by a long and vain expectation of succour from the monastery which had entirely neglected them. It would have been impossible, indeed, that they should have done, had it not been for the relief, which was sent, then, from time to time, by Lord Clanricarde but as he was himself, then surrounded with too many difficulties to afford them a prospect of succour, and as Preston had granted an honourable capitulation to the garrison in Birr, the besieged were inclined to surrender to him, for fear of falling into worse hands. Therefore, the next day after he came up to Fort falkland, before any battery was raised. Lord Castleward, the Governor, capitulated and was to be conveyed safe, with all his people to the fort of Galway.” It seems this garrison was finally delivered at the castle of Athlone.
Sarsfield at Banagher “All the island called Enisbreary, alias Island MacCoghlan, in the barony of Garrycastle, and also the two ruinous castles of Banagher and Belanaley,” with “liberty of fishing in the Shannon, in the aforesaid barony” were about 1671 granted to John Blysse. A right to establish a ferry was also given, the annual rent for the lands being 10s and for the ferry 5s. As appears by Sarsfield’s operations that he repeatedly crossed a bridge here, the old bridge at Banagher must have been built before then, and the ferry discontinued. From Harris we learn that when Sarsfield attacked Birr in 1690, the English generals – Douglas, Kirk and Lanier – advanced, reliving Birr, and driving Sarsfield across the Shannon to Banagher. The attempt by the English to destroy the bridges was too dangerous, as the Irish were strongly posted on the Connaught side, besides defending the bridge with a castle and other works. The present bridge is on the site of the ancient one.”
The Armstrong Family At Mount Cartaret is the seat of a very old and universally respected family, the Armstrongs, of Scottish extraction. They have resided about Banagher for over two centuries. A mural tablet, dated 1680, records “Here lies the body of Gerald Armstrong.” On another is “Armstrong, four brothers, 1700.” Their first ancestor in Ireland was Thomas Armstrong, who came over in 1657. The present representative is Major T.P. St. G. Armstrong, J.P., and a constant resident with his family.
Anthony Trollope from a Spyt Cartoon in Vanity Fair, 5 Apr. 1873.
A Masonic Lodge, No. 306, was by warrant, dated 1758, from the Earl of Drogheda, G.M. of Ireland, founded in Banagher. [I read somewhere that Trollope was a member of this lodge and had great high jinks when the new bridge was opened. A big bill for the bottles but at least they paid for themselves.] Next time I get the OK to contribute to Offaly History I may do something on Raleen near Mount Bolus where I believe the last of the chiefs of my clan was located. But then I might recall Kieran Molloy of Clonmacnoise. Do any of you remember them when they looked the monastic site. Some of them were teachers there. I think Clonmacnoise has 150,000 visitors a year now at near €10 each and that cannot be bad. Good to see my old friends in Lukers getting a few visitors from it, not to mention Birr Castle.
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.
Supplement
p. 294. “(Leicester, Bt/Edb; Magan/IFR) In mid-C18, Clonearl was sold by Sir John Leicester to Arthur Magan, a County Westmeath landed magnate of old Irish descent who had married a rich wife. William Henry Magan, “The Magnificent” built a new and elegant cut-stone neo-Classical house here ca 1820, to the design of William Farrell. Of two storeys, it had a five bay front with a giant Ionic portico in antis…Clonearl was inherited 1840 by the yonger William Henry Magan, known as Wiliam Henry the Bad; he was wildly extravagant and his misdeeds ranged from seducing the married daughter of an Earl (he married her, but is alleged, probably unfairly, to have strangled her) to annoying Queen Victoria by making faced when, as a young cavalry officer, he was escorting her carriage. He was also blamed for causing the death of a local man, who was called in to amuse a stag party at Clonearl and accidentally set fire to his shirt, sustaining fatal burns. Clonearl was burnt 1846, supposedly as a result of one of William Henry the Bad’s drunken orgies; it was not rebuilt. The house features in Brid William Magan’s excellent book, Umma-More.”
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. 121. “A very fine cut stone two storey house built for W.H. Magan to the design of William Farrell c. 1817. Garden front with two storey Ionic portico in antis. Demolished.”
Ranges of stone outbuildings, built c.1750, set around courtyard. Multiple-bay single- and two-storey buildings with pitched and hipped slate roofs. Renovated east wing with replacement widows and doors. Square and segmental-headed openings to north west and south wings, with remains of groin-vaulted carriage arch beneath former clock tower to west range. Remains of Clonearl House, underground rooms and water pump located on the site.
Though in poor condition, these outbuildings retain evidence of some original design features that hint of the former splendour of Clonearl House. At present efforts are being made to restore the north wing.
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. 23. “[King/LGI 1958] An early C19 villa by Richard Morrison…Now demolished.”
Thought to be John King (d.1778) by Robert Home (1752-1834), Label on reverse reads He married Alice, daughter of Ross Mahon and of Jane,daughter of John Ussher courtesy of Whyte’s Sep 2013
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 KINGS WERE MAJOR LANDOWNERS IN THE KING’S COUNTY, WITH 10,242 ACRESThis family, and that of Sir Gilbert King, 1st Baronet, of Charlestown, County Roscommon, is one and the same, descended from
THE RT REV EDWARD KING (1577-1639), born at Stukeley, Huntingdonshire, was elected Fellow of Trinity College Dublin, 1593, two years after its foundation, and consecrated Lord Bishop of Elphin, 1611.
Bishop King was buried at Elphin, where he built a castle and acquired landed property in the neighbourhood.
His lordship married twice, and left sons and daughters, among them JOHN KING, of Boyle, County Roscommon, whose daughter, Anne, wedded Dominick French, of Dungar, or French Park, County Roscommon, and
JAMES KING (1610-87), of Charlestown, County Roscommon, High Sheriff of County Roscommon, 1657, MP for County Roscommon, 1657, who espoused Judith, daughter of Gilbert Rawson, and had issue,
Edward; GILBERT; Elizabeth; Martha; Susanna.
Mr King was succeeded by his younger son,
GILBERT KING JP MP (1658-1721), of Charlestown, High Sheriff of County Leitrim, 1717, who married Mary, daughter of Dominick French, of French Park, and granddaughter of John King, of Boyle, and had issue,
JOHN, his heir; Gilbert; Oliver (Rev).
Mr King was succeeded by his eldest son,
JOHN KING, of Charlestown, High Sheriff of County Sligo, 1711, County Leitrim, 1728, MP for Jamestown, 1721, who wedded firstly, in 1706, Elizabeth, daughter of Robert Shaw, of Newford, County Galway, and had issue,
Gilbert; Judith.
He married secondly, in 1721, Rebecca, daughter of John Digby, and grandson of Essex Digby, Lord Bishop of Dromore, who was son of Sir Robert Digby and Lettice, 1st Baroness Offaly, and had further issue,
JOHN; Digby; Jane.
Mr King died ca 1737, and was succeeded by his son,
JOHN KING, of Fermoyle, County Longford, High Sheriff of King’s County, 1782, the first of the family to live at Ballylin, who espoused firstly, in 1748, Alice, daughter of Ross Mahon, of Castlegar, County Galway; secondly, Frances Digby, and had issue,
John, of Ballylin, MP for Jamestown, b 1760; Gilbert, m Elizabeth, daughter of Joseph Henry, of Straffan, County Kildare; Jane, m Abraham Creighton, 1st Baron Erne; Rebecca.
Mr King’s younger daughter,
REBECCA KING, espoused her cousin, GILBERT KING, Major, 5th Dragoon Guards, son of Gilbert King, by Sarah, daughter of John French, of French Park, County Roscommon, who fought at the Battle of Quebec, 1759, and by him left (with a daughter, Harriet) a son and heir,
THE REV HENRY KING (1799-1857), of Ballylin, Ferbane, King’s County, who succeeded to Ballylin at the decease of his maternal uncle; married, in 1821, Harriett, youngest daughter of John Lloyd, of Gloster, King’s County, for many years MP for that county, and sister of the Countess of Rosse, and had issue,
JOHN GILBERT, his heir; Harriett, mother of HENRY LOUIS MAHON; Jane; Mary, m 5th Viscount Bangor; accidentally killed.
The Rev Henry King was succeeded by his son,
JOHN GILBERT KING JP DL (1822-1901), of Ballylin, High Sheriff of King’s County, 1852, MP for King’s County, 1865-8, who died unmarried and was succeeded by his nephew,
HENRY LOUIS MAHON JP DL (1860-1922), of Ballylin, High Sheriff of King’s County, 1903, eldest son of Ross Mahon, of Ladywell, by Harriett his wife, daughter of the Rev Henry King, of Ballylin.
He assumed, by royal licence, the name and arms of KING in lieu of his patronymic, MAHON.
Mr King wedded, in 1904, Winifred Harriette, only surviving daughter of William Somerset Ward, of Dublin, and had issue,
GILBERT MAHON, b 1905; Harriet Mary, b 1906; Winifred Alice, b 1909.
He was succeeded by his son,
MAJOR GILBERT MAHON KING, born in 1905, whose last known address was at Mullingar, County Westmeath.
BALLYLIN HOUSE, Ferbane, County Offaly, was a two-storey, early 19th century villa designed by Richard Morrison.
It had a three-bay entrance front, with a side elevation with one bay on either side of a central curved bow.
An advertisement in Faulkner’s Dublin Journal on April 2nd, 1757, offered part of Ballylin’s demesne lands, then in the possession of Lucy Armstrong, and consisting of 160 acres, to be let, along with the dwelling house, stabling for 16 horses, a large orchard and a walled garden.
It was purchased by John King about 1761, and so began a long association with the King family, which lasted until 1936, when the demesne was sold and it became an intensive farming operation.
The house was abandoned “and eventually unroofed to avoid rates”.
By 1947, the house was demolished and the stones were “dumped in amongst the foundations of the local power station”.
Before this sad end, however, the house had been painted by Mary Ward, the gifted youngest child of the Rev Henry King who had inherited the property in 1821.
His wife was Harriette Lloyd, sister of Alice Lloyd, mother of the astronomer 3rd Earl of Rosse.
Young Mary Ward was also interested in science and “shared the experience of building the Leviathan, the great telescope at Birr, between 1842 and 45”.
Mary Ward died abruptly in 1869, when she fell from Lord Rosse’s steam engine and was crushed.
Rossmore Park, County Monaghan, Gillman Collection, Vanishing Country Houses of Ireland by The Knight of Glin, David J. Griffin and Nicholas K. Robinson, published by The Irish Architectural Archive and The Irish Georgian Society, 1988.
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. 247. “(Westenra, Rossmore, B/PB) A C19 castle of great size and complexity; partly Tudor-Gothic, of 1827, by William Vitruvius Morrison; and partly Scottish Baronial, of 1858, by William Henry Lynn. The 1827 range, built for 2nd Lord Rossmore, dominated by a square tower and turret topped with crow-step battlements; and having a line of gables and oriels. Various small additions were made at one end, in order to enlarge the drawing room; according to the story, Lord Rossmore vied with Mr Shirley of Lough Fea, as to which of them could build a bigger room. The 1838 range dominated by a smaller and more massive tower with a polygonal turret and cupola, a balustraded parapet and other Scottish Baronial touches; also by a slender square tower with a spire. Eventually the combined ranges boasted of at least 117 windows, of 53 shapes and sizes. the three towers together produced a romantic silhouette, particularly as the castle was magnificently situated on a hilltop, overlooking a landscape of woods and lakes. In the later Victorian and Edwardian days, Rossmore was noted for its gaiety; the then (5th) Lord Rossmore, known as “Derry,” being one of the brighter sparks of the Prince of Wales’s set, and author of some lively memoirs called Things I can Tell. Post WWII, the castle became severely infested by dry rot and was abandoned by 6th Lord Rossmore in favour of Camla Vale. Now 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.
Architects: William Vitruvius Morrison / W.H. Lynn
Rossmore Park, County Monaghan, courtesy Archiseek.Rossmore Park, County Monaghan, courtesy Archiseek.
Also known as Rossmore Park, Rossmore Castle was a 19th century castle of great size and variety. Originally built in 1827 to the designs of William Vitruvius Morrison in Tudor Gothic, it was extended in 1858 by W.H. Lynn. The 1827 range was dominated by a square tower with turret and crow stepped battlements and a line of gables and oriel windows.
Lord Rossmore and the Shirleys of Lough Fea had competed for many years for the largest room in County Monaghan with the result that the drawing room at Rossmore was extended five times and resulted in the elongated area seen in the left of the photograph. Eventually the Castle had at least 117 windows of 53 different sizes and shapes and the three towers produced a romantic silhouette when viewed from the surrounding hills in the demense.
Rossmore Park, County Monaghan, courtesy Archiseek.
In the later years of the 19th century Rossmore was known for its gaiety with the 5th Lord Rossmore being a friend of the Prince of Wales. After the Second World War, dry rot forced the abandonment of the castle in favour of Camla Vale. Rossmore Castle has since been demolished.
THE BARONS ROSSMORE WERE MAJOR LANDOWNERS IN COUNTY MONAGHAN, WITH 14,839 ACRES
The family of CAIRNES of that ilk is of very ancient standing in Scotland. In 1363, DAVID II gave a renewal charter of the two Baronies of East and West Whitburn, Linlithgowshire, to WILLIAM DE CARNYS, and Duncan his son and heir.
This William had issue,
Duncan;
John;
William, father of JOHN, of whom presently;
Alexander.
The grandson,
JOHN CAIRNIS, of Cults, Aberdeen, son of William and heir of his uncle Alexander, was Custumar (customs officer) of Linlithgow, 1406-22, and Scutifer (shield-bearer) to the Earl of Douglas.
He died in 1456, leaving three sons, of whom the eldest,
JOHN CAIRNIS, of Cults and of Orchardton, Custumar of Linlithgow, 1449-56, served in the wars under JAMES II, and died ca 1493.
His son, or grandson,
WILLIAM CAIRNIS, of Orchardton, summoned as a minor Baron 1527, married Margaret, daughter of Sir Patrick Agnew, of Lochnaw, and died 1555, having had, with other issue,
William;
JOHN, of whom presently;
PETER;
HENRY.
The second son,
JOHN CAIRNIS, of Cults, Esquire to MARY Queen of Scots, wedded, in 1555, Margaret, daughter of Alexander McCulloch, of Killaster, and died in 1568, leaving issue, his second son,
JOHN CAIRNIS, of Cults, who sold most of the estates, espoused Margaret Hamilton, and died in 1603, leaving issue,
ALEXANDER CAIRNIS, of Blairboys, who sold the remainder of the lands of his family, settled in Ulster 1609, as general agent for the Scottish Undertakers in Donegal.
He died ca 1635, leaving issue, his eldest son,
JOHN CAIRNES, of Parsonstown, or Cecil, County Tyrone, MP for Augher, 1639-40, who married Jane, daughter of Dr James Miller, MD, of Monaghan, and had issue, with two daughters,
ALEXANDER CAIRNES (1665-1732), MP for Monaghan Borough, 1710-13, County Monaghan, 1713-14, 1715-27, Monaghan Borough, 1727-32, was created a baronet, in 1708, designated of Monaghan.
He wedded, 1697-8, Elizabeth, daughter of John Gould, of Hackney, and sister of Sir Nathaniel Gould, by whom he had issue,
William Henry, died unmarried;
MARY, of whom presently.
Sir Alexander died in 1732, when he was succeeded in the baronetcy by his brother, Sir Henry Cairnes, 2nd and last Baronet.
his only surviving child,
MARY CAIRNES, espoused firstly, in 1724, 7th Baron Blayney. He dsp 1732.
She married secondly, in 1734, Colonel John Murray, MP for Monaghan, and by him had issue,
Frances Cairnes, m 1st Earl of Clermont;
ELIZABETH, m (as below) General Rt Hon R Cuningham, 1st Baron Rossmore;
Anne; Mary; Harriet.
The Dowager Baroness Blayney died in 1790; her son-in-law was Robert, 1st Baron Rossmore.
Lineage of Westenra
THE WESTENRAS, descended from the family of VAN WASSENAER, of Wassenburg, were of great antiquity in Holland, and they bore the augmentation of the SEAHORSE, in reference to the valour of an ancestor who, during the Duke of Alba’s campaigns, was actively employed against the enemy, and undertook to swim across an arm of the sea with important intelligence to his besieged countrymen.
WARNER WESTENRA settled in Ireland during the reign of CHARLES II, and with his brothers, Derrick and Peter Westenra, became a free denizen of that kingdom, by act of parliament, in 1662.
In 1667, Colonel Grace sold the town and lands of “Clonlee, Brickanagh, and Lyagh” [sic], in the King’s County, to this Warner Westenra, merchant, of the city of Dublin.
He married Elizabeth Wyhrantz, and had issue,
HENRY, his successor; Elizabeth, m Rt Rev Simon Digby.
Mr Westenra died in 1676, and was succeeded by his son,
HENRY WESTENRA, who inherited likewise the estates of his cousin, Peter Westenra, MP for Athboy, 1692.
Mr Westenra wedded, in 1700, Eleanor, second daughter of Sir Joshua Allen, Knight, and sister of John, 1st Viscount Allen, by whom he had surviving issue,
WARNER, his successor; Henry; Peter; Elizabeth; Jane; Penelope.
He died in 1719, and was succeeded by his eldest son,
WARNER WESTENRA, MP for Maryborough, 1728-55, who espoused, in 1738, the Lady Hester Lambert, second daughter of Richard, 4th Earl of Cavan, and had issue,
HENRY, his successor; Richard; Joseph; Castilinna; Eleanor.
Mr Westenra was was succeeded by his eldest son,
HENRY WESTENRA, MP for Monaghan, 1818-26, Seneschal of the King’s Manors in Ireland, who married, in 1764, Harriet, daughter of Colonel John Murray MP, and had issue,
WARNER WILLIAM, his heir; Henry; Mary Frances; Harriet Hesther.
He was succeeded by his eldest son,
WARNER WILLIAM WESTENRA (1765-1842), of Rossmore Park, County Monaghan, who wedded firstly, in 1791, Mary Anne, second daughter of Charles Walsh, of Walsh Park, County Tipperary, and had issue,
HENRY ROBERT, his successor; Richard; John Craven; Charles; Marianne.
He espoused secondly, in 1819, Augusta, fourth daughter of of Francis, Lord Elcho, and sister of Francis, 7th Earl of Wemyss.
Mr Westenra succeeded to the barony of ROSSMORE on the decease of ROBERT CUNINGHAME, 1st Baron Rossmore, in 1801.
***********************
ROBERT CUNINGHAME (1726-1801), son of the late Colonel David Cuninghame, of Seabegs, Stirling, a General in the army, and Colonel, 5th Dragoons; MP for Tulske, 1751-60, for Armagh, 1761-8, for Monaghan, 1769-96, and for East Grinstead, 1788-9; was elevated to the peerage, in 1796, in the dignity of BARON ROSSMORE, of Rossmore Park; and having no issue by his wife, Elizabeth, daughter of John Murray, and co-heir of her mother Mary, Dowager Lady Blayney, sole heir of Sir Alexander Cairnes Bt, the patent of creation contained a reversionary clause conferring the Barony, at his lordship’s decease, upon the heirs male, at the time being, of two of her ladyship’s sisters successively; namely, Anne, the wife of the Rt Hon Theophilus Jones; and Harriet, the wife of Henry Westenra.
His lordship died in 1801, and the only son of Mrs Jones, Alexander Jones, having predeceased him, unmarried, the barony devolved upon Mrs Westenra’s eldest son, WARNER WILLIAM WESTENRA, 2nd Baron Rossmore.
The heir apparent is the present holder’s only son, the Hon Benedict William Westenra (b 1983).
ROSSMORE CASTLE, County Monaghan, was a very large and complex mansion, constructed on the outskirts of Monaghan town in Tudor-Gothic style in 1827 by the the 3rd Lord Rossmore, to the designs of William Vitruvius Morrison.
An extension was added in 1858 in Scottish-Baronial style, designed by William Henry Lynn.
A main feature of the original building was a large square tower and turret with crow-step battlements.
The extension also featured two towers, one with a polygonal turret and cupola, the other a smaller square tower with a spire.
The building underwent further smaller changes, a number of which were inspired by a competition which had developed over the years between Lord Rossmore and Mr Shirley of Lough Fea, as to which of them could claim to have the largest room in County Monaghan.
The remarkable consequence was that the drawing-room in Rossmore Castle was enlarged five times.
Eventually the combined changes and additions resulted in a building with three towers and over 117 windows in 53 different shapes and sizes.
After the 2nd World War, the house developed a severe case of dry rot, and the 6th Baron and his family were forced to leave the castle and take up residence in Camla Vale, a Georgian house owned by the family and situated within the estate grounds.
Oscar Wilde once said ‘to lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune, but to lose both looks like carelessness’. The same could be said of County Monaghan and its castles, for my first book I was developing two chapters about two wondrous architectural creations in Monaghan. However imagine my surprise to discover that absolutely nothing of these great buildings remain but a few steps, outbuildings and gate lodges. The first of these is Dartrey which was completed in the midst of the Great Irish Famine in 1847. It was originally designed to extend and incorporate a house from the 1770’s known as Dawson’s Grove, with the old and the new house being divided by a substantial wall. The house cost its owner, Richard Dawson, who later became the first Earl of Dartrey, £30,000. It was a vast Elizabethan Revival mansion and the architect chosen for these improvements was William Burn. The house had a very long facade with legions of mullioned windows, oriel windows, Tudor chimneys and curvilinear gables.
In March 1856, a fire is believed to have destroyed the original part of the house which would have been the Dawson’s Grove section. The fire broke out in the roof as a result of a defective chimney and completely destroyed the north-eastern wing. Furniture, pictures and statues were saved as numerous people fought to bring the fire under control. Rooms lost in this fire included the drawing room and her ladyship’s boudoir. The house was insured and the damaged section was replaced, as a result the house that now existed was a totally ‘new’ house that contained nothing of the original Dawson’s Grove.
A major change took place in the finances of this house and family in less than 100 years after its completion. The last owner of the house was Lady Edith Windham who was the daughter of the second Earl of Dartrey, Vesey Dawson. Vesey Dawson, the second Earl of Dartrey died in June 1920 after a long illness at Dartrey. He was born on the 22nd April 1842 and succeeded to the Earldom upon the death of his father in 1897. He married Julia daughter of Sir George Orby Wombwell in 1882 and had two daughters. During the First World War, he and Lady Dartey produced large amounts of vegetables in the gardens and terraces that surrounded the castle. He was succeeded to the title by his brother Hon Edward Stanley Dawson born in 1843. Lady Edith Windham, the grand daughter of the first Earl disposed of the house contents in 1937 with a four day sale which included a number of paintings by El Greco, Zoffany, Reubens and Coates. A broadcasting or speaker system was used so bidding could be heard in the different rooms of the house. Also included in the auction were 5,000 books from the library, it is un-imaginable that one house could contain so many books but these were all contained in one room. There auction created a bit of a stir in the antiques world as buyers travelled from Dublin, Northern Ireland and Great Britain with special buses put in place to ferry expectant bidders to and from the castle. Lady Edith had previously moved in to the Stewards Cottage and a number of years after the auction she then made arrangements to have the house demolished. Therefore the man that originally built the house was only separated from the lady who demolished the house, by only one generation. In March 1946, the demolition sale of the castle was advertised and consisted of 500 lots which included beams, flooring, rafters, moldings, skirting’s, the solid oak staircase, oak doors, window casings, brick, 5,000 slates, mantelpieces in white and cream marble. The sale handled by Samuel Brown, an auctioneer from Monaghan. Lady Edith claimed she had no option as the rates were too high and a buyer was not forth coming. A company from Dublin called Hammond Lane Foundry were engaged to carry out the destruction of this architectural masterpiece; however one imagines they were more interested in the lead in the roof than architectural salvage. The process of demolishing the family seat supposedly made Lady Edith a profit of £3,000 but one wonders if this figure could be considered a profit, when it cost her descendant ten times that amount to build the house in the first place.
One of the few elements that survive today and give some impression of the architectural splendour of the original house is the Dawson Mausoleum which recently underwent a spectacular restoration. The Mausoleum was built to commemorate Lady Anne Dawson who died in 1769 and contains a life sized marble sculpture of the deceased, her husband and son gathered around an urn that contained her ashes. The domed building that contained this sculpture was designed by the architect James Wyatt and was situated in the demesne that once surrounded Dartrey. Over the years the building became derelict and the sculpture was vandalised, with pieces of the statue being broken off and stolen. Now that the Mausoleum is restored a recent appeal has located the head of one of the statues in Dublin. However the hands, feet and angels wings still remain at large.
The second architectural jewel lost to the county of Monaghan was Rossmore Castle whose decline was hastened when it developed dry rot. This castle, as can be seen in the pictures, was something akin to a Walt Disney creation with its towers and turrets.
A succession of extensions in order to claim the title of the largest drawing room in Monaghan enlarged the floor area of the castle over the years. Rossmore Castle was a large Tudor Revival house built in 1827 to the design of William Viturvius Morrison for the second Lord Rossmore. In 1825, Richard Morrison was engaged in producing plans to rebuild the house then known as Cortolvin Hills for Lord Rossmore. In 1854, William Deane Butler produced plans for remodelling the house but these were not executed. The house was altered and enlarged 1858 to the design of William of William H. Lynn. Eventually the combined changes and additions resulted in a building with three towers and over 117 windows in 53 different shapes and sizes. One feature of the house was its drawing room which enlarged on a number of occasions due to Lord Rossmore competing with his neighbour Mr. Shirley of Lough Fea to have the largest room in the county. A competition Lord Rossmore eventually lost.
The early 1900’s the Rossmore’s seemed to have a run of bad luck. It was reported in August 1906, Lord Rossmore was ill in the castle and was confined to his room for the previous week. He had intended to go to his large, recently built, shooting lodge on his mountain. In April 1907, Lord and Lady Rossmore’s eldest son William was injured while mounting his pony near the castle. The pony bolted, William’s foot became entangled in the stirrups and he was dragged for some distance. He suffered a fractured skull and a broken leg. However a happy event was recorded in 1908 when the Duke of Connaught paid a visit to the castle. He again returned in 1909, where he stayed overnight and then travelled to Lord Rossmore’s mountain in Glasslough for grouse shooting. In the early part of the twentieth century Rossmore remained unoccupied for long periods as the fifth and sixth Barons decided to live in England which resulted in the uncontrolled spread of dry rot.
The Rossmore Family made a valiant attempt to brave the dry rot at Rossmore but when the mushrooms appeared on the drawing room ceiling it was hard to make any guests believe they were there for decorative purposes. The time came for them to abandon the castle for another family property when they had to ask their guests to wipe their feet on a disinfected mat so not to spread the spores of the dry rot. One wonders if it was the social embarrassment or the actual dry rot that led to the demolition of the house. In May 1946, contents of the castle advertised by Battersby & Co and that they had been removed to the Dower House, Camla, Rossmore Park. The auction which was to take place included antique furniture, Chippendale Mirrors, oil paintings statues, tapestries, china, carpet chandeliers and of course the obligatory billiards table. The oil paintings included works from Dutch, English, Flemish and Italian schools and comprised of portraits, battle scenes and landscapes. Now with the castle denuded of its contents, a demolition sale took place in September 1946 and lots included joist, rafters, bricks, slates, fireplaces, doors, windows, shutters, water tanks, bathroom fittings
The house remained unoccupied, was unroofed during the Second World War and finally demolished in 1975 and the grounds of the castle were sold to the Irish State in the 1960’s. The family moved to a nearby dower house called Camla Vale after the castle became uninhabitable due to the dry rot. The dry rot spores are believed to have traveled in the corks of the bottles from the wine cellar of the castle and as a result their new home also became infested. Today Rossmore is a public park with only a few elements such as the entrance steps and terraces of the castle surviving.
Dartrey House (formerly Dawson’s Grove), Co Monaghan
Dartrey, County Monaghan, garden front, 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.Portrait of Thomas Dawson (1725-1813), Lord Dartrey, 1st Viscount Cremorne, miniature, courtesy of National Gallery 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. 100. “(Dawson, Dartrey, E/PB1933) A large Elizabethan-Revival mansion by William Burn, built in 1846 to replace an earlier house of about 1770. This earlier house, described 1778 by Rev Daniel Beaufort…was of three storeys over basement, the entrance front was of seven bays…..The Elizabethan-Revival mansion which took the place of this house, built by Richard Dawson, 3rd Lord Cremorne and later 1st Earl of Dartrey, had long and somewhat monotonous elevations of curvilinear gables, mullioned windows and oriels, with, sporadically, a square turret and cupola. There were numerous Tudor chimneys, a generous application of strapwork and a two-tier terrace along the garden front with many yards of latticed balustrading.
“The quoins were partly curved.
.”.. The house overlooked Lough Dromore, where, on a wooded island, Thomas Dawson, 1st Lord Dartrey and afterwards Viscount Cremorne, built a domed mausoleum ca 1770 in memory of his first wife, Lady Anne, to the design of James Wyatt, containing a dramatic lifesized sculptural group, including an angel with outstretched wings, by Joseph Wilton. The Elizabethan-Revival mansion, after standing empty for some years, was demolished ca 1950; the mausoleum, which had become roofless, so that the monument was suffering from teh weather as well as from vandalism, was repaired by the Irish Georgian Society 1961.”
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.
Also known as Dawson Grove, Dartrey was built in 1846 and designed by William Burn as a large Elizabethan Revivial mansion to replace an earlier house on the site. Built for Richard Dawson, 3rd Lord Cremorne and later 1st Earl Dartry, it had very long façades with legions of mullioned windows, oriel windows, tudor chimneys and curvilinear gables relieved by square turrets with cupolas.
On the garden front (pictured) was a two level terrace facing onto Lough Dromore. On an island in the lake there was also a fine Mausoleum to the design of James Wyatt from around 1770 which was recently restored.
The house was demolished in the 1950s – after remaining empty for many years, the house was lent by the last owner to the RSPCA for a ball after which the County Council demanded rates for the house. All that remains of the estate are various gatehouses, the ruined Mausoleum and a fine stable block built around five sides of an octagon – built around 1850 to the design of William Burn.
THE EARLS OF DARTREY WERE MAJOR LANDOWNERS IN COUNTY MONAGHAN, WITH 17,732 ACRES
The family of DAWSON was originally from Spaldington, Yorkshire; whence, towards the close 0f ELIZABETH I’s reign, it removed to Ulster.
THOMAS DAWSON, who became, in the following reign, a burgess of Armagh, was grandfather of
JOHN DAWSON, who married into the family of Henry Ussher, Lord Archbishop of Armagh.
Archbishop Ussher was twice married: first about 1573, to Margaret, daughter of Thomas Eliot of Balrisk, County Meath; secondly, to Mary Smith, who survived him. His widow married John Jeeves, of Drogheda, Alderman, by whom she had issue, Anne Jeeves, who married (as his second wife), Walter Dawson in 1660, from which a considerable property in counties Armagh and Tyrone came to the Dawson family.
John Dawson was father of
WALTER DAWSON, of Armagh, who married firstly, Mary, daughter of Edward Dixie, and had issue,
WALTER, his heir; Thomas, ancestor of Catherine, Countess of Charleville; Edward; Margaret; Mary; Elizabeth.
He espoused secondly, in 1680, Anne, daughter of John Jeeves.
Mr Dawson died in 1704, and was succeeded by his elder son,
WALTER DAWSON, who wedded, in 1672, Frances, daughter of Richard Dawson (by which marriage the estate of Dawson Grove, County Monaghan, was conveyed to this family), and had issue,
RICHARD, his heir; Walter; John; Mary; Elizabeth.
Mr Dawson, an officer in Cromwell’s army, died in 1718, and was succeeded by his only surviving son,
RICHARD DAWSON (c1693-1766), of Dawson Grove, an eminent banker, alderman of the city of Dublin, MP for St Canice, 1727-60, Monaghan Borough, 1761-6 (great-grandson of John Dawson, of Armagh, who died intestate).
Alderman Dawson wedded, in 1723, Elizabeth, daughter of the Most Rev Dr John Vesey, Lord Archbishop of Tuam, and sister of Sir Thomas Vesey Bt, Lord Bishop of Ossory, and had issue,
John, died in 1742; THOMAS, his successor; Richard, of Ardee; Frances.
He was succeeded by his eldest surviving son,
THOMAS DAWSON (1725-1813), of Dawson Grove, who was elevated to the peerage, in 1770, in the dignity of Baron Dartrey, of Dawson’s Grove, County Monaghan; and advanced to a viscountcy, in 1778, as Viscount Cremorne, of Castle Dawson, County Monaghan.
His lordship married firstly, in 1754, the Lady Anne Fermor, youngest daughter of Thomas, 1st Earl of Pomfret, by whom he had a son and a daughter, both of whom died in adolescence.
He wedded secondly, in 1770, Philadelphia Hannah, daughter of Thomas Freame, of Philadelphia, by Margaretta, daughter of William Penn, the celebrated founder of that city, by whom he had another son and a daughter, who also died young.
His lordship, thus deprived of direct descendants, was created, in 1797, Baron Cremorne, with remainder to his nephew, Richard Dawson, and the heirs male of that gentleman.
Dying without an heir in 1813, the viscountcy expired, and the barony of Cremorne devolved upon his great-nephew,
RICHARD THOMAS DAWSON (1788-1827) as 2nd Baron (only son of Richard Dawson, MP for Monaghan), who espoused, in 1815, Anne Elizabeth Emily, third daughter of John Whaley, of Whaley Abbey, County Wicklow, and had issue,
RICHARD, his successor; Thomas Vesey.
His lordship was succeeded by his elder son, RICHARD, 3rd Baron (1817-97), who wedded, in 1841, Augusta, second daughter of Edward Stanley, of Cross Hall, Lancashire, by his wife, the Lady Mary Maitland, second daughter of James, 8th Earl of Lauderdale.
His lordship was installed a Knight of St Patrick, 1855; a Lord-in-Waiting, 1857-66; Lord Lieutenant of County Monaghan, 1871-97.
He was advanced to an earldom, in 1866, in the dignity of EARL OF DARTREY.
By his wife he had issue,
VESEY, his successor; Edward Stanley (1843-1919); Richard Westland Westenra (1845-1914); ANTHONY LUCIUS, 3rd Earl; Mary Eleanor Anne.
His lordship was succeeded by his eldest son,
VESEY, 2nd Earl (1842-1920), MP for County Monaghan, 1865-68, High Sheriff of County Monaghan, 1878, who married, in 1882, Julia Georgiana Sarah, daughter of Sir George Ormby Wombwell Bt, and had issue,
Richard George, 1890-94; EDITH ANNE (1883-1974), of Dartrey House; Mary Augusta, 1887-1961.
His lordship died without surviving male issue, when the titles devolved upon his brother,
ANTHONY LUCIUS, 3rd Earl (1855-1933), who wedded, in 1878, Mary Frances, suo jure Baroness de Ros, only child of the 23rd Baron de Ros, and had issue,
Una Mary, Baroness de Ros;Maude Elizabeth; Eleanor Charlotte Augusta.
On the decease of the 3rd Earl, in 1933, the titles became extinct.
The Lady Edith Windham was the last member of the family to live at Dartrey.
The Dartrey Papers contain extensive historical information about the family.
The Earl of Dartrey possessed the following land during the Victorian era:-
DARTREY HOUSE, near Rockcorry, County Monaghan, was a large Elizabethan-Revival mansion by William Burn, built in 1846 to replace an earlier house, known as Dawson Grove, of ca 1770.
It was built for Richard Dawson, 3rd Baron Cremorne and later 1st Earl of Dartrey.
This noble and magnificent demesne is situated on the gorgeous chain of the Cootehill lakes, a few miles east-north-east of Cootehill.
It is separated from the neighbouring demesne of Bellamont forest, County Cavan, only by a narrow belt of one of the main lakes, Dromore Lough.
The mansion had long, monotonous elevations of curvilinear gables, mullioned windows and oriels, with, sporadically, a square turret and cupola.
There were numerous Tudor chimneys, a generous application of strapwork and a two-tier terrace along the garden front with many yards of latticed ballustrading.
The quoins were partly curved.
Dartrey House overlooked Lough Dromore where, on a wooded island (Black Island), the 1st Viscount Cremorne built a domed temple about 1770 in memory of his first wife, Lady Anne Dawson.
The sheer size of Dartrey House proved too much for the 20th-century financial resources of the family.
Most of its contents were sold by auction in 1937 and the entire building was demolished in 1946 by the Hammond Lane Foundry, Dublin, who paid £3,000 for the salvage – a dreadful return on the £30,000 it cost to build the great mansion.
Lady Edith, elder daughter of the 2nd Earl, was the last Dawson to live in Dartrey House, and it was she who was forced to make the decision to demolish it in 1946.
Now, only the magnificent site overlooking Lough Dromore is visible.
The red-brick stable block contemporary with the 1846 house survives, and was renovated by the Irish Georgian Society (presumably at about the same time as Lady Anne’s temple).
There is also a surviving farmyard, in ruinous condition, which seems to be contemporary with (or even earlier than) the early 1770s house.
The following description of the Dartrey Estate near Cootehill, County Monaghan, Ireland, was written in 1773 by the Reverend J Burrows, visiting tutor to the Dawson family:
A thousand acres of lake, three hundred of which flows within a few yards of the house, with hills on each side covered with the most beautiful delicious woods, bring all fairyland to one’s imagination. On the other side of the lake is a large island, wonderfully shaded on all its sides but with a bald pate of open ground on the top, giving a very pleasing and uncommon effect.
Beyond that are woods that lose themselves in the clouds. People who are not used to lakes cannot conceive into what delightful forms they throw themselves, and how much the little islands, here and there interspersed, which contain one or two trees, add to their beauty.
The Dartrey estate, originally known as Dawson Grove, was established by the Dawson family in the 17th century alongside Bellamont Forest, a demesne of similar size – over a thousand acres.
Richard Dawson, a banker and Dublin alderman, built the present (Church of Ireland) church on the Dartrey estate in 1729.
It was established in its own separate parish of Ematris soon after.
The Dawsons added a north gallery to the church in 1769, and much later the Corry family (from Rockcorry) added a south gallery, raised on arches to avoid desecrating the burial ground beneath it.
A fire caused serious damaged in 1811 leaving the church for a period without a roof.
The fine west tower was built in 1840, and the sanctuary apse in 1870.
With the demolition of the Dawson mansion in 1950, and their once thriving estate turned over to forestry, St John’s appears isolated.
However it shares services with St James’ church, Rockcorry some 2½ miles away, which the Dawsons built in 1855, and both churches continue well supported by the local farming community.
But the view from St John’s cemetery across Inner Lough, once described as “one of the best in Ireland”, is currently obscured by conifers.
The Northern Standard, Saturday, 8th March, 1856:-
FIRE AT DARTREY HOUSE
We regret to announce the breaking out of a destructive fire, on Saturday evening last, at Dartrey House, the magnificent residence of Lord Cremorne, in this county.
The fire is supposed to have originated in the flue of one of the rooms in the basement storeys, which broke out near the roof, and before effective aid could be procured, had enveloped the entire of the upper storey of the north-eastern wing of the building.
The existence of the fire was first observed about six o’clock, by Mr. Little, Lord Cremorne’s steward, who hastened with a number of his labourers to render all the assistance within their power.
Mr. Little’s exertions up to the final subduing of the fire were unremitting.
Captain Boyle, of Tanagh, and the Rev. T. A. Robinson, were immediately on the ground, and aided materially in checking the fire, which, however, raged with a great fury until the arrival of the fire engines from Monaghan.
Previous to the arrival of the engines, the exertions of those present were directed to cutting off the communication between what is termed the Old and New House, a strong wall dividing the two portions of the house.
At a few minutes past seven in the evening, a messenger from Dartrey arrived at Mr. McCoy’s, of Monaghan, in whose care the town engine is; fortunately, all Mr McCoy’s staff were about his concern, it being pay night, and were consequently available for immediate work.
Four horses from Campbell’s posting establishment were immediately harnessed to the engine, and it started for Dartrey, where it arrived at nine o’clock.
In the meantime, Mr. McCoy sent a requisition for the Ordnance engine, to the officer commanding the detachment of Militia stationed here.
This engine was placed on a float, and, with a pair of horses from the Canal Stores, proceeded to Dartrey, where it arrived in time to do efficient service, under the directions of Sergeant Crooks, of the Monaghan Regiment, whose exertions elicited the commendation of every person present.
Nothing could exceed his intrepidity and cool daring ; indeed, at one moment it was supposed he had fallen a victim, a large beam having fallen just where he had been standing a second before. A. A. Murray Ker, Esq., Lord Cremorne’s agent, was in Monaghan when intelligence of the fire arrived; he immediately started for Dartrey, where he remained until a late hour on Sunday evening; by his presence and individual exertions he animated the energies of the very many who aided in extinguishing the fire.
Amongst those present who worked with hearty good will were – and certainly first on the list – the Rev. T. A. Robinson, Captain Boyle, Wm. Murray, Esq., Richard Mayne, Esq., (this gentleman, we regret to say, was severely hurt by an accident), Rev. John Wolfe, Subinspectors Kirwan and Fortesque; a number of young gentlemen from Cootehill and Monaghan were also most effectual aids.
We do not know the names of the Cootehill gentlemen or we would gladly give them. Amongst those from Monaghan we noticed Messrs. Watkins, Lewers, and Campbell.
The Constabulary from the surrounding stations to a man exerted themselves in a most praiseworthy manner, both by individual exertion and protection of property.
Amongst the most exertive and daring of them was one named Kinsella, from Cootehill station.
The costly furniture, pictures, and mirrors were all saved, with the exception of such injuries as their removal caused.
On learning the existence of the fire, our own chief anxiety was as to the safety of an exquisite group of statuary, “Cupid and Psyche”, which stood in the vestibule of the Grand Staircase; – this beautiful piece of art, though in extreme danger, escaped with but the fracture of one of the arms of the descending figure; the injury is not material, and can be remedied.
The portion of the building entirely destroyed consists of Lord and Lady Cremorne’s private apartments, Drawing-room, and her ladyship’s Boudoir, both of which were magnificent apartments; the cut stone walls seem safe; all the apartments over the east point are destroyed; the Grand Hall, Billiard-room, and Drawing-room are safe, as is also the entire of the basement storey.
The fire continued smouldering and occasionally to blaze out up to five or six o’clock on Sunday evening.
The assurance on the house was heavy, and will more than cover the estimated damages; but much depends on the decision architects arrive at as to the state of the outer walls.
It is, on the whole, surprising that the damage done is not of much greater extent, when the means of overcoming it were so distant.
The tenantry in the neighbourhood all assembled on Tuesday with carts and horses, and cleared away all the debris of the fire, before the arrival of Lord and Lady Cremorne.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE NORTHERN STANDARD
Sir, Allow me, through your paper, to render Lord Cremorne’s grateful thanks to all those who used such strenuous exertions in checking the conflagration at his Lordship’s beautiful mansion on last Saturday night.
The Assurance Companies concerned have every reason to be thankful, (and indeed have already expressed themselves to that effect), to the assembled multitude who lent their best exertions towards arresting the progress of the flames, and saving such a large amount of property.
It would be impossible to personally thank each and all of those I saw distinguishing themselves, for their name was “Legion”.
The constabulary were early on the ground from Rockcorry, and very shortly after from Cootehill, Drum, and Newbliss, and were most efficient and steady.
The fire engines from Monaghan arrived in quite the brigade style, and certainly deserve especial consideration.
The Corporation engine, under the direction of Mr. McCoy and his very active and intelligent workmen, and the Barrack engine, managed by Sergeant Crooks, who most creditably kept up the character of his regiment by his cool and daring conduct.
The tenantry to a man worked with a will. I could name hundreds who were towards morning nearly – and often quite – exhausted and faint.
Nothing could exceed the care taken of the furniture, pictures, and mirrors, in their removal, and wonderfully little damage has been done.
I am happy to say that the Assurances cover the loss and damage to both building and furniture – and again thanking most sincerely those who so kindly gave their valuable aid in time of need.
I remain, your obedient servant, A A Murray Ker, Newbliss.
Henry Skeath has sent me interesting information with regard to Dartrey:
I have attached an article (above) from The Northern Standard about a serious fire at Dartrey House in 1856 just ten years after the place was built.
Two good articles on Dartrey appeared in recent editions of the Clogher Record.
In 2004 June Brown detailed the rise and fall of the estate. June was friendly with Lady Edith, the last of the family at Dartrey, and keeps in touch with her descendants.
The 2009 edition contains a well-researched article by June’s granddaughter, Victoria Baird, about Lady Augusta wife of the 1st Earl of Dartrey.
Lady Augusta endowed St. James’s in Rockcorry where a photograph of her still hangs.
St. John’s Church is affectionately known as St. John’s in the Wood.
The Dawson gallery contains a fireplace for the comfort of the family.
In 1996 St. John’s celebrated 275 years of worship and the Rev. J. T. Merry, rector, produced a short history of the parish.
The Dartrey Heritage Group is undertaking wonderful refurbishment work on the mausoleum which was designed by James Wyatt.
The building has been stabilised and a new domed roof erected.
The Rev. Daniel Beaufort visited in 1780 and noted that the sculptural group within, by Joseph Wilton, had cost £1,000.
The quarterly bulletin of the Irish Georgian Society for Jan-Mar 1961includes an article on it.
Wilton’s work suffered at the hands of vandals but there are ambitious plans for restoration.
In 2008 the Heritage Group completed the restoration of a 60-foot column, also designed by James Wyatt, erected in 1807 to the memory of Richard Dawson who was elected to five successive Parliaments.
It stands prominently along the main road.
The 1846 stable block, five sides of an octagon, restored by the Irish Georgian Society in 1961, has been allowed to fall into disrepair again in recent years.
Of Dartrey House, hardly a vestige remains.
Parts of the basement can be seen and the once-graceful terraces on the garden front can still be traced.
It was once one of the finest estates in Ireland.
London residence ~ 30 Curzon Street.
First published in September, 2011. Dartrey arms courtesy of European Heraldry.
The Parliamentary Gazetteer of Ireland tells us that County Monaghan is an inland county, in the centre of the south of the historic province of Ulster.
It is bounded, on the north, by Tyrone; on the east, by Armagh; and on the west, by Cavan and Fermanagh.
“A noble and magnificent demesne, the property of the Viscount Cremorne [later Earl of Dartrey], on the southern margin of the barony of Dartrey, is situated on the gorgeous chain of the Cootehill lakes, 1½ miles from Cootehill; and is separated from the rival demesne of Bellamont Forest in County Cavan, only by the narrow belt of one of the main lakes called Dromore.”
“From the contiguity of Dawson Grove and Bellamont Forest, and the beautiful natural lakes which in many places form their line of demarcation, they may be said in various instances to reflect each other.”
“Separately they are splendid residences; conjointly they form a rich combination of many of the elements of landscape.”
On Saturday afternoon four of us met Noel Carney, of Dartrey Heritage Association, who took us to see Dartrey demesne, former seat of the extinct Earls of Dartrey.
This was my first visit to Dartrey, once a very large estate comprising almost 18,000 acres, with extensive boundary walls and picturesque gate lodges (there were eight in total) carrying on interminably.
We stopped off en route at the main entrance lodge of ca1847, fully restored, extended, and inhabited, once incorporating the estate post office.
This lodge is made of ashlar stone, with a Tudor-style entrance surmounted by a blank shield.
Several hundred yards further along the main public road we turned into another driveway, which eventually led us to the “new” stable block, a large, impressive, grand affair comprising five sides in red brick.
This derelict stable block was constructed in the 1840s to replace an older block.
The standard of craftsmanship by masons was remarkable, as Noel pointed out to us.
The bricks were made in situ, and even straw marks could be seen on the ones that had dried on the ground.
The New Stable Block is not in a good state, although it’s not beyond redemption for another purpose, such as apartments or business premises, or units.
It was practically ruinous several decades ago, and today at least it’s in better condition than that.
There used to be a large clock encased in a circular stone feature in the middle of the block, though it has disappeared.
A short distance further on we stopped off at the original, or “Old” stable block of, it is thought, the 1770s.
It, like its younger sibling, is privately owned and closed off.
THEREAFTER we drove through overgrown estate tracks to the Island Bridge, also known as the Iron Bridge, which connects the estate to Black Island.
This is a single-arch bridge, erected in the 1840s, which leads to the glorious mausoleum or temple dedicated to the Lady Anne Dawson.
The skill of the blacksmiths and stonemasons can be admired on this little bridge, with its superbly carved stone abutments and wrought-iron handrails.
When we crossed the bridge we caught a glimpse of the remains of the great mansion house of Dartrey. All that’s left of it today is the basement and rubble.
Dartrey House (or Castle) was demolished in 1946, because the last member of the Dawsons to live there, Lady Edith, simply couldn’t afford to maintain it, and couldn’t find a buyer.
From the edge of the lake, not far from the Iron Bridge, we could see the site of Dartrey House (or Castle), a very large mansion which was built in 1846.
The Dartrey Estate lies in County Monaghan, though straddles the neighbouring county of Cavan.
Dartey: Basement Cellar (Image: Henry Skeath, 2002)
All that remains of the house are the ruins of the basement and cellars, so it’s almost invisible at ground level from a distance.
Dartrey: Basement Cellar (Image: Henry Skeath, 2002)
The Land Acts deprived great estates like Dartrey and Lough Fea of their income and, when the 2nd Earl of Dartrey died in 1920, without a male heir, the estate was inherited by his eldest daughter, Lady Edith.
Dartrey: Ruins (Image: Henry Skeath, 2002)
Crippled by the immense cost of maintaining Dartrey, its outbuildings, gate lodges, stable block, and everything else, Lady Edith decided initially to sell the contents of the house.
A four-day auction of the contents, including thousands of books from the library, and valuable old-master paintings, was held in 1937.
Lady Edith Windham (1883-1974) couldn’t afford the exorbitant rates bills, and found it impossible to find a buyer for the house, so made the decision to salvage what she could of it, including the slates, staircases, and doors, wooden casings etc, before Dartrey House was finally demolished in 1946.
By this stage Lady Edith was living in the former land steward’s house, not far from the big house itself.
The Dawson family of County Monaghan came from Yorkshire to Ireland during the reign of Elizabeth I, Thomas Dawson becoming a Burgess of Armagh. Subsequently Richard Dawson, a Cromwellian cornet of horse, assembled the nucleus of the family’s estate in the 1650s and 1660s through the acquisition of thirty-one townlands, based around a property called Dawson’s Grove on the banks of a chain of lakes separating counties Cavan and Monaghan. Richard Dawson’s only child, a daughter named Frances, married her cousin Walter Dawson. Their son Richard was an Alderman of Dublin, an MP for County Kilkenny and the owner of a family bank. He further expanded the estates both in County Monaghan and elsewhere. With his wife Elizabeth, daughter of John Vesey, Archbishop of Tuam, he had four children, their third son being Thomas Dawson born in 1725. After coming into his inheritance the latter built a new house at Dawson’s Grove in the early 1770s and also bought and redeveloped a residence in London, Cremorne House, Chelsea where the garden designer Nathaniel Richmond was commissioned to lay out the grounds (although the house is long gone, this is now the site of Cremorne Gardens, just down river from Battersea Bridge). In May 1770 Thomas Dawson was created Baron Dartrey of Dawson’s Grove, and in June 1785 Viscount Cremorne.
In August 1754 Thomas Dawson married Lady Anne Fermor, youngest daughter of the first Earl of Pomfret, with whom he had two children before she died in March 1769. Her husband’s grief was considerable, but not so great as to prevent his marrying just over a year later Philadelphia Hannah Freame. She was the granddaughter of William Penn, whose family owned land in County Cork but who is better known as the founder of Pennsylvania. By his second marriage to Hannah Callowhill William Penn had eight children one of whom, Thomas Penn, married Lady Juliana Fermor, eldest daughter of Lord Pomfret. This explains how Thomas Dawson should have met his second wife Philadelphia, whose mother Margaret Freame, was another of William Penn’s children. In other words, he married his first wife’s niece. And, as her name indicates, she was born in the city of Philadelphia in 1740.
Philadelphia Freame’s marriage to Thomas Dawson was marked by the building of a house for the Dartrey estate’s agent, Charles Mayne, which was then given the name Freame Mount. Lady Anne Fermor, however, was commemorated in a more original fashion with the construction of a mausoleum which stands in the middle of Black Island on raised ground facing the former site of Dawson’s Grove. Based on a surviving elevation for the west front which shows the inspiration of the Pantheon in Rome, the design of the Dartrey Mausoleum has been attributed to James Wyatt, making it the English architect’s first commission in Ireland and contemporaneous with Wyatt’s Pantheon, the famous assembly rooms on London’s Oxford Street. The building in Monaghan is a tall, square block built of locally-fired red brick raised on a limestone plinth. The exterior, featuring a sequence of blind windows and oculi, is relieved on the western front (which would have been visible from Dawson’s Grove) by a shallow tetrastyle portico with four pilasters (note their unusual fluted capitals) beneath a pedimented entablature. Above this cube rises a dome, its open centre providing the only light for the interior which would have been even more dramatic when viewed on nights with a full moon.
In August 1774 the Dublin Hibernian Journal reported, ‘A few days ago was landed in Dublin a beautiful Marble Monument done by Joseph Wilton, Esq., of Portland Street, London, which Lord Dartrey is to erect in a Temple at his seat in Co. Monaghan, to the memory of his late wife, Lady Anne Dawson, daughter of the late Earl of Pomfret.’ The London-born Wilton, a founder-member of the Royal Academy, had in 1764 been appointed ‘Sculptor to his Majesty’ by George III. His funerary monument in the Dartrey Mausoleum, for which he was paid 1,000 guineas, is the only commission he received in Ireland; during the same period he also sculpted a bust of Thomas Dawson, now in the Yale Center for British Art. Like that piece, Wilton’s work inside the mausoleum is carved in Carrara marble and was installed against the eastern wall above a plain altar. A plaque recalls both Lady Anne, described as possessing ‘all the external Advantages which contribute to form a shining Distinction on Earth’, and the couple’s prematurely deceased daughter Henrietta Anne ‘who lived long enough to justify all the fairest Hopes of a Mother.’ To one side of a large funerary urn are the lifesize figures of Lady Anne’s grieving husband and their young son clinging to his father in both terror and sorrow; the pair of them gaze up at the hovering form of an interceding angel. It is a remarkably theatrical piece of work, and must have been especially effective when seen by moonlight.
The subsequent fortunes of the Dartrey Mausoleum have been mixed. At some date in the 19th century, the dome was taken, or fell, down and replaced with a shallow slated pyramidal roof, and the brick walls plastered. The last member of the Dawson family to live at Dartrey, Lady Edith Windham, eldest child of the second Earl of Dartrey, sold the estate in 1946 to the Irish Forestry Commission (now Coillte) which continues to own the land on which the mausoleum stands. Dawson’s Grove, rebuilt in the 1840s as Dartrey Castle, was demolished and the view across to Black Island obscured by dense planting of evergreen woodland. Meanwhile the mausoleum was left to languish and although the Irish Georgian Society undertook some repairs in the 1960s, the building succumbed to decay, its roof was lost and the sculptural group – as can be seen in photographs above – seriously vandalised. Such might have remained the case, had it not been for the energy, imagination and commitment of a local group, the Dartrey Heritage Association which over the past decade has steadily worked to ensure the restoration of this outstanding monument. Securing funding from a variety of sources, including the local County Council, the Heritage Council and once more the Irish Georgian Society, together with monies raised by other means, the DHA has now almost completed this project. The building is once more intact and with a domed roof, and inside the sculptural group has been repaired with missing sections scrupulously replaced. The entire project is a wonderful testament to what can be achievied by a local voluntary body with sufficient determination and persistence, and ought to serve as an example for others throughout the country. Above all the restoration of the Dartrey Mausoleum shows that nothing is beyond salvation, provided the will is there.
In the late 18th century, Thomas Dawson, Viscount Cremorne, passed responsibility for his Irish estate Dawson’s Grove, County Monaghan to his heir and nephew, Richard Dawson. To the dismay of his uncle, Richard – who served as a local MP in the Irish parliament – proved to be something of a radical and in 1799 consistently voted against the Act of Union. In the event, he died eight years later (predeceasing Lord Cremorne) after which he was remembered as being ‘the most active in promoting improvements, the most useful and the most popular man this country ever knew.’ As evidence, in the aftermath of his death, a fifty-eight foot high limestone Doric column surmounted by a funerary urn was erected on the edge of the Dawson’s Grove demesne. The arms of the Dawson family appear on two sides of the monument’s square base plinth and the following inscription on the other two sides: ‘This column was erected by the free and independent electors of the county of Monaghan to perpetuate the memory of Richard Dawson Esq., who was unanimously returned by them to five successive parliaments. He died their faithful representative on 3 September 1807, aged 44 years.’ The column, its design attributed to James Wyatt, has been restored in recent years. Dawson’s Grove was eventually inherited by Richard Dawson’s son, another Richard, who in 1813 became Baron Cremorne.
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.
93. “(Hamilton/LGI1912) A restrained and dignified early C19 Classical house of the school of Francis Johnston…. Now 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. 119. …built for Dacre Hamilton. Demolished but the stables remain.
Cornacassa House, County Monaghan, courtesy Archiseek.
A dignified smaller classical house with a lower service wing. Described in Lewis as “Cornacassa, of Dacre Hamilton, Esq., pleasantly situated in a highly cultivated and well-planted demesne”. In the 1870s, the Hamiltons owned over 7,300 acres in Co. Monaghan. A large sale of the library contents was held in 1922. Demolished.
Cornacassa House, County Monaghan, photograph courtesy of National Inventory.
Detached five-bay house, built c.1800, having two-storey front (north-west) elevation and three-storey rear elevation. Formerly part of Cornecassa House. Hipped slate roof, with rendered chimneystacks, and replacement rainwater goods. Snecked limestone walls with tooled sandstone block-and-start quoins. Square-headed window openings throughout, having tooled sandstone surrounds, tooled stone sills and replacement uPVC windows. Square-headed door openings to front and north-east elevations, with tooled sandstone surrounds and replacement timber and uPVC doors, front having over-lights. Front doorways open onto concrete paving bridging basement area, with rendered parapets. Coursed rubble limestone boundary wall with limestone coping to north-west of house, surrounding former walled garden.
Appraisal
Built c.1800 for Dacre Hamilton, Cornecassa House was subsequently partly demolished. Despite the loss of the main house what remains is architecturally interesting. The good-quality masonry with tooled details formalises this interesting split-level building. The demesne also incorporated an impressive walled gardens and a range of outbuildings, some of which can still be seen.
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. 90. “(Brownlow/IFR) A two storey late C18 house of five bays between two semi-circular bows. …Sold 1920 by Col G.J. Brownlow, afterwards 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.
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. “(Lucas, sub Lucas-Scudamore/LG-1972) A house built 1836, replacing an earlier house which may have incorporated a castle built 1591. The 1836 house consisted of a four storey tower with corner bartizans copied from the O’Neill tower at Ardgonnel, Co Armagh, and a three storey block of rubble faced with cement in what was intended to be Elizabethan or Jacobean style. Entrance front of three bays between two three sided bows and one bay on either side of them; curvilinear battlement-gables along roofline; two storey slightly projecting porch with corbelled oriel over doorway. Windows with cross mullions; hood mouldings over them in two lower storeys; bold string-courses. Not quite regular fourbay side elevation. Large square tower with square corner bartizans rising from behind the house. Tall, Tudor-style chimneys. Burnt 1920.”
In Blake, Tarquin. Abandoned Mansions of Ireland II: More Portraits of Forgotten Stately Homes. Collins Press, Cork, 2012.
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.
Castle Shane, County Monaghan, photograph courtesy of National Inventory.
Originally a medieval house on the site was constructed in 1591, this Elizabethan or Jacobean style house was built in 1836 for the Lucas Scudamores. Castleshane consisted of a four storey tower with corner bartizans and a main 3 story block, but was burned in 1920 and very little remains.
Described in Burke’s ‘A visitation of the seats and arms of the noblemen and gentlemen of Great Britain and Ireland’: “In 1836 the original edifice was pulled down, when it was replaced by a new building of moderate size, consisting of a small tower four stories high, and of a manor-house adjoining. The tower was copied from a larger one at Ardgonnel, in the county of Armagh, built by the 0’Neills ; the house is in the style, called Elizabethan, but more properly (in this case) that of James the First. The whole, with its annexed offices, presents an imposing appearance from the mail-coach road, which passes through the demesne, leading from Castle Blayney to Monaghan. It is, however, to be regretted that a work, correct in its design, should not have been executed in more durable materials than rubble-stone coated with cement.”
The house had 3 centre bays with 3 sided bays to each side with mullioned windows, curvilinear gables and tall tudor chimneys. All that remains is part of a three storey bay window and gable end – the rest having been demolished. There is also a much extended gatelodge and an unusual bell-cote in the walled garden.
In Blake, Tarquin. Abandoned Mansions of Ireland II: More Portraits of Forgotten Stately Homes. Collins Press, Cork, 2012.
THE LUCASES WERE MAJOR LANDOWNERS IN COUNTY MONAGHAN, WITH 9,955 ACRES
THOMAS LUCAS, of Saxham, Suffolk, secretary to Jasper Tudor, Duke of Bedford, Solicitor to HENRY VIII, married Elizabeth, daughter of R Kemys, of Raglan, Wales, and had issue,
Jasper, of Saxham; HENRY, of whom presently; John; Lettice; Anne.
The second son,
HENRY LUCAS, wedded firstly, Mary, daughter of Edward Grene, of Bury St Edmunds, and had by her nine sons and two daughters.
He espoused secondly, Alice, daughter of Simon Bradock, of Horam, Suffolk, and had further issue, FRANCIS, Henry, Thomas, and Martha.
FRANCIS LUCAS, of Hollinger, near Bury St Edmunds, married Anne, daughter of _____ Munings, of Monk’s Ely, Suffolk, and was father of
FRANCIS LUCAS, of Elmsett and Grunsborrow, Suffolk, who wedded Matilda, daughter of Thomas Munings, of Monk’s Ely, and had two sons,
Thomas, of Colchester; FRANCIS, of whom hereafter.
The younger son,
FRANCIS LUCAS, Cornet in the army, the first of Castle Shane, whose will was proved in 1657, wedded Mary Poyntz, and had issue,
FRANCIS; William; Richard; Charles; Lucy.
Mr Lucas was succeeded by his eldest son,
FRANCIS LUCAS (1646-1705), of Castle Shane, High Sheriff of County Monaghan, 1673, who had issue, by Mary his wife, three sons and three daughters, namely,
FRANCIS, his heir; EDWARD, successor to his brother; Robert; Anne; Lucy; Jane.
The eldest son,
FRANCIS LUCAS (1669-1746), of Castle Shane, High Sheriff of County Monaghan, 1703, MP Monaghan Borough, 1713-46, died unmarried, and was succeeded by his brother,
EDWARD LUCAS, of Castle Shane, High Sheriff of County Monaghan, 1709, who married firstly, in 1696, Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Smyth, of Drumcree, County Westmeath, and had issue,
THOMAS, predeceased his son EDWARD; Francis; Mary; Anne; Jane.
He wedded secondly, in 1723, Abigail, widow of the Rev William Brooke, and daughter of Thomas Handcock, of Twyford, County Westmeath.
Mr Lucas died in 1756, and was succeeded by his grandson,
EDWARD LUCAS (1720-71), of Castle Shane, MP for Monaghan, 1761-75, High Sheriff of County Monaghan, 1752, who wedded Elizabeth, daughter of Francis Savage, of Ardkeen, and had issue,
Francis, dsp; Edward; Thomas; CHARLES, of whom presently; William; Robert, Lt-Col in the army; Edward (Rev); Mary; Alice; Abigail; Elizabeth; Hester.
The eldest surviving son,
CHARLES LUCAS (1757-96), of Castle Shane, High Sheriff of County Monaghan, 1795, Barrister, wedded firstly, in 1786, Sarah, daughter of Sir James Hamilton, Knight, of Monaghan; and secondly, Louisa, daughter of Charles Avatt, of Mount Louise.
By the former he left at his decease an only child and successor,
THE RT HON EDWARD LUCAS JP DL (1787-1871), of Castle Shane, High Sheriff of County Monaghan, 1818, MP for County Monaghan, 1834-41, Privy Counsellor, 1845, who espoused, in 1812, Anne, second daughter of William Ruxton, of Ardee House, County Louth, MP for Ardee, and had issue,
Francis, died unmarried 1846; EDWARD WILLIAM, his heir; Fitzherbert Dacre, father of EDWARD SCUDAMORE; Charles Pierrepoint; Gould Arthur; Catherine Anne; Anna Isabella; Isabella Florinda.
Mr Lucas was succeeded by his son,
EDWARD WILLIAM LUCAS JP DL (1819-74), of Castle Shane, Lieutenant, 88th Regiment, who was succeeded by his nephew,
EDWARD SCUDAMORE LUCAS-SCUDAMORE JP DL (1853-1917), of Castle Shane, and Kentchurch Court, Hereford, High Sheriff of County Monaghan, 1879, Honorary Colonel, 4th Battalion, the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry, who assumed by royal licence, in 1900, the additional surname and arms of SCUDAMORE.
Mr Lucas-Scudamore espoused, in 1900, Sybil Frances, youngest daughter of Colonel George Webber CB, and had issue,
JOHN HARFORD STANHOPE; Geraldine Clara, b 1903.
The only son and heir,
JOHN HARFORD STANHOPE LUCAS-SCUDAMORE (1902-75), of Kentchurch Court, married, in 1947, the Lady Evelyn Scudamore-Stanhope, daughter of Edward, 12th Earl of Chesterfield, and had issue,
JOHN EDWARD STANHOPE LUCAS-SCUDAMORE, of Kentchurch Court.
Charles David Lucas (1834-1914), whose family once lived at Druminargle House, Scarva, County Armagh, was the most valorous member of the Lucas family.
Druminargle is now a guest-house.
CASTLE SHANE HOUSE, near the village of Castleshane, County Monaghan, replaced an earlier dwelling.
The original house on the site was constructed in 1591.
The Elizabethan or Jacobean style house was built in 1836 for the Lucas family.
Castle Shane comprised a four-storey tower with corner bartizans and a main three-storey block.
The house had three centre bays with three-sided bays to each side with mullioned windows, curvilinear gables and tall Tudor chimneys.
The house was burnt in 1920 and all that remains is part of a three-storey bay window and gable end, the rest having been demolished.
There is also a much extended gate lodge and an unusual bell-cote in the walled garden.
The former demesne is now mostly gone and belongs largely to the Irish forestry commission.
Williamston, County Meath, entrance front c. 1975, photograph: William Garner, 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.
“(Garnett/LGI1912) An impressive three storey nine bay late C18 house, with an elevation almost identical to that of the nearby Rockfield, except that, here, there is no breakfront; it can safely be assumed that the two houses are by the same architect. Ground floor treated as a basement, with channelling; Doric porch; pediment over central first floor window.”
Detached nine-bay three-storey house over basement, built
c.1770, 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.
p. 115. “A very fine three storey cut stone house originally of five bays but extended to nine in the early 19C in the same style. The original house was built c. 1760-70. In 1814 the seat of John Otway. For many years unoccupied.”
Williamstown, County Meath, photograph courtesy of National Inventory.
Detached nine-bay three-storey house over basement, built c.1770, now derelict. Hipped slate roof with ashlar chimneystacks and parapet. Channelled limestone to entrance level, with string courses between floor and with ashlar limestone to basement and upper floors. Carved limestone dressings to window openings with timber sash windows. Carved limestone doorcase, flanked by Doric columns with entablature and pediment above. Pedimented window over porch.
Appraisal
This country house is of apparent architectural form and detailing. The form of the building is articulated by the masonry dressings, such as the channelled limestone to the entrance level and the string courses. The imposing carved pedimented Doric porch adds artistic interest to the façade. Though now in poor condition, this building retains many interesting features and materials, such as the timber sash windows and slate roof.
Williamstown, County Meath, photograph courtesy of National Inventory.Williamstown, County Meath, photograph courtesy of National Inventory.Williamstown, County Meath, photograph courtesy of National Inventory.Williamstown, County Meath, photograph courtesy of National Inventory.Williamstown, County Meath, photograph courtesy of National Inventory.Williamstown, County Meath, photograph courtesy of National Inventory.
Many thanks to Peadar O’Colmain for this excellent research and write up:
Williamstown House in County Meath was built around 1770 as a home for the Cuffe family.
The Cuffe Family originated in Somerset, England. Originally they had a manor house at Rowlands, between Taunton and Yeovil which still stands today with a Great Hall, about 25-foot high, with mullioned windows and plasterwork dating from the reign of Queen Elizabeth the First.
The family have a long history in Ireland from the time when Captain John Cuffe adventured to Ireland in 1561 during the Elizabethan age.
The “Gentleman’s Magazine and Historical Chronicle, July to December 1811” describes for us; “At Williamstown Co. Meath, the right honourable and Reverend Hamilton Cuffe and uncle of the present earl of Desart and Rector of Drumcondra and Athboy.” He appears in “Kells United Parishes” in 1803. Reverend Hamilton Cuffe, his two children, John and Lucy and his wife, we are told convincingly is called “Mrs Cuffe”. He would later have three more daughters, Nicola, Dorothea and Isabella. The son, John Otway Cuffe of Williamsown House Co Meath died on March 15th 1833.
The house was built in a Palladian style and set on 280 acres. It was originally a three story house over basement with just five bays. It had a hipped-slate roof, carved limestone doorcase with Doric columns and an entablature with a pediment above and a pedimented window over the porch.
The house was modified around 1830 with two more bays being added to either side giving the house the nine-bay frontal appearance that we see today. The stonework is ashlar limestone and the four newer bays match the original structure perfectly. Williamstown House was once in a Parkland setting but this is now all farmland.
It was the first house in Kells to have electricity.
The house was later owned by the Garnett family who also altered the building. John Garnett was at one time the Bishop of Clogher. Originally an English family they were extremely wealthy, owning property in Dublin. They had residences in Athcarne Castle, Kells, Summerseat and Williamstown House.
A Rev George Garnett died in 1856 and left the place to his eldest son, William Stawell Garnett (born 1838). Rev George Garnett is also listed as having owned 304 acres at Knockglass, Crossmolina, Co. Mayo. During and after the Great Famine many of the Garnett family left Ireland and moved to The United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Fiji. Some of them also moved back to England.
The next owners of Williamstown were the Dyas family, owners of the Athboy Lodge Stables. The “Genealogy library reference book” for the 1870s lists a Mr. Nathaniel H. Dyas, of Athboy Lodge, Athboy, as owning 1,231 acres.
Mr Henry Mortimer Dyas was the owner of the horse “Manifesto”, the first horse to win the Aintree Grand National twice (1897 and 1899). The “Manifesto” restaurant at Aintree Racecourse is still called after him. Henry Mortimer Dyas was the subject of a 1913 Court Case in which the jury found against him to the tune of £ 482.00 for assaulting a barmaid Mrs Sarah Ann Williams with whom he had been living. The Judge, Mr Justice Wright desccribed him as a “peculiar man, lax in morality”. The “Commission of the Peace in Ireland ” in 1887 describes him as a “land agent and grazier”. He died on August 25th. 1915. Aged 57 years and is commemorated with an inscription in St Columba’s Church, Kells. Erected by his wife Hilda.
On leaving Williamstown they willed the house to a Miss Julietta Marie Emily “Judy” McCormick of ‘Shandon’, Monkstown, Co. Dublin. This may have been her single and her married name.
She Married Samuel Smith McCormick J.P. They had eight children including a son, John Hugh Gardner McCormick (born 4 April 1886) who was killed in the the First World War on Oct. 19th. 1914.
There was a Brass Lectern in St Columba’s Church of Ireland in Kells with an inscription saying;
“Sine Timore” “To the Glory of God and in loving memory of John Hugh Gardiner Mc.Cormick of Williamstown, Co. Meath. Captain, Royal Warwick Regt. He was mortally wounded in action. Oct. 19th. 1914, and died the same night at a Convent Hospital in German hands at Menin. Aged 28 years.” “Fear God and keep his Commandments”. The lectern is now Dalkey Church in Dublin.
“Sine Temore” is a latin phrase meaning “without fear”
John Hugh was single and left his estate to his father. He is commemorated on Panel 8 of the British War Memorial at Menin Gate, Ypres (now Ieper), Belgium, and the Great War Memorial, Monkstown Church of Ireland, Co. Dublin.
His mother Julietta McCormick herself died on July 30th 1951 and is buried in grave 1290 in Mount Jerome cemetery in Dublin.
Miss McCormack had a maid and friend called Rosie Guerin who then remained living in the lodge of Williamstown House until she passed away in 1997. Her daughter, Anne was born and reared in Williamstown House.
From the sixties or seventies onwards Williamstown House has been abandoned and today is a ruin.
Thanks to Peadar O’Colmain for this great write up.
Williamstown House is located near Kells. Williamstown is a large late Georgian mansion three storeys over basement. The two last bays were added to the each side in 1858 by George Garnett. Bence-Jones described Williamstown as an ‘impressive three storey late eighteenth century house’. Its elevation is almost the same as nearby Rockfield which suggests that the two houses had the same architect. Near the house is a three stage tower erected about 1800. There is a courtyard of outbuildings and estate worker’s cottages dating from about 1780. A pigeon house stood south of the house. The remains of Dulane church and graveyard are to the west of the house. Local man, Liam McNiffe, has written the story of the house in ‘A history of Williamstown, Kells.’
William Williams received lands from Thomas Taylor in 1670 and it was from this family that the townland received its name. In 1766 the lands moved from the Williams family when Esther Williams married Rev. Hamilton Cuffe of Dublin. This couple probably erected Williamstown House in the 1770s. By 1811 the Rev. Cuffe had died and it would appear that the family had left Williamstown by this date. The estate, which was heavily mortgaged, was sold in 1827 to pay off debts.
The mansion house, garden, orchard and demesne lands were sold to Sarah Garnett for £9200. Sarah was a spinster from Kells. The Garnett family were established at Summerseat. Sarah left her lands at Wiliamstown to her first cousin, Rev. George Charles Garnett. In 1837 Williamstown was the residence of Rev. George Garnett. Rev. George Garnett married Margaret Wade of Bachelor’s Lodge. Their eldest son, Hamlet, lived at Teltown while their second son, George, inherited Williamstown George Garnett and his wife had two sons. William Stawell who succeeded to the estate in 1856 and Charles who became a clergyman. In 1862 William erected Williamstown lodge, later re-named Zephyr Lodge probably as a dower house for his widowed mother, Catherine. William was High Sheriff of Meath in 1864. He married Sally Garnett of Teltown.
William added two extra extensions on each side of the house and a pedimented porch in 1858. In the 1876 William Stawell Garnett held 3014 acres in county Meath. The Garnett family left Williamstown by 1881 and the house and lodge were left vacant for a long period. William Stawell died suddenly while on a visit to Kells in October 1898. Williamstown was occupied for a while by the Dyas family. Dr. Thomas Sparrow was living in the house in 1901.
In 1912 John McCormick of Monkstown, Dublin purchased Williamstown House and 127 acres. He was a member of the family which owned Tedcastles and McCormick, major Dublin firms. In August 1914 John joined up and three weeks later was reported missing. John Mc.Cormick was mortally wounded in action on 19 October 1914, and died the same night at a Convent Hospital in German hands at Menin, aged 28 years. Following interviewing a number of soldiers the family eventually accepted that he was dead. Six months later his brother Jim was also killed in the war. Their sister Rose made her home at Williamstown House and lived there until her death in 1972. The travelling actor, A’new McMaster and his family stayed at Williamstown House while on their tours around Ireland. The house was so big that Rose could only live in part of the ground floor and another family lived in the basement. Rose was a member of the Methodist Church. Williamstown House was left vacant following the death of Rose McCormick. It was unoccupied for a considerable period and became derelict.
Trimleston Castle (Tremblestown, Trimlestown), Kildalkey, Co Meath
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.
as in Lord Belmont…”…Here lived 12th Lord Trimlestown, a celebrated figure in mid-C18 Ireland; he kept a large eagle chained up by the front door and he had a magnificent coach which had been presented to him by Mashal Saxe; for, as a Catholic, he had spent much of his life abroad, where he had acquired skill in medicine, so that he would treat the poor of the neighbourhood gratuitously; he also treated a fashionable lady for the vapours by getting four assistants to threaten her with rods in a darkened room. In time, the castle had a fine formal garden… Early in C19, the castle was adorned with what a contemporary described as “ornamental towers, an embattled parapet and other marks of the style which prevailed in the latter part of the sixteenth century.” soon afterwards, however, it was abandoned by the family, and fell into ruin.”
Record of Protected Structures:
Tremblestown Castle, townland: Tremblestown, town: Trim
Medieval towerhouse with18thC house added, and 19thC
crennelations – barnwell mausoleum, a plain single cell with
some simple slabs to the north in a field.
In Blake, Tarquin. Abandoned Mansions of Ireland II: More Portraits of Forgotten Stately Homes. Collins Press, Cork, 2012.
The Landed Gentry and Aristocracy: County Meath. Volume 1. Art Kavanagh, 2005.
Barnewall of Trimlestown, p. 19.
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. 115. “An 18C house incorporating a tower house. The building was further altered in the early 19C. Now a ruin.”
THE BARONS TRIMLESTOWN OWNED 3,025 ACRES OF LAND IN COUNTY MEATH
This family, whose surname was anciently written De Barneval and Barnewall, deduces its lineage from remote antiquity, and claims, among its earliest progenitors, personages of the most eminent renown. It is the parent stock whence the noble houses of BARNEWALLand TRIMLESTOWN branched.
The name of its patriarch is to be found, with the other companions in arms of WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR, in the roll of Battle Abbey. In Ireland, the Barnewalls came under the denomination of “Strongbowians“, having established themselves there in 1172, under the banner of Richard de Clare, 2nd Earl of Pembroke, commonly called Strongbow.
SIR MICHAEL DE BERNEVAL, Knight, the first settler, joined the English expedition, with three armed ships, and effected a descent upon Berehaven, County Cork, previous to the landing of his chief, the Earl of Pembroke, in the province of Leinster.
Sir Michael is mentioned in the records at the Tower of London as one of the leading captains in the enterprise; and in the reigns of HENRY II and RICHARD I, he was lord, by tenure, of Berehaven and Bantry.
From this gallant and successful soldier we pass to
SIR ULPHRAM DE BERNEVAL, Knight, the tenth in descent, first possessor of Crickstown Castle and estate, and the founder of what was termed the “Crickstown Branch” of the family.
The great-grandson of this Sir Ulphram,
NICHOLAS DE BERNEVALL (fourth of the same Christian name), married a daughter of the Lord Furnivall, and left three sons,
Christopher (Sir), father of 1st Baron Trimlestown; John, ancestor of the Barons Kingsland; Barnaby (Sir), an eminent lawyer.
The eldest son,
SIR CHRISTOPHER BARNEWALL (c1400-46), as the name began to be spelt, succeeded to the patrimonial estate of Crickstown; and was, in 1445 and 1446, Vice-Treasurer of Ireland and Lord Chief Justice of Ireland.
He married Matilda, daughter of Sir _____ Drake, of Drakerath, and had two sons, of whom the younger,
SIR ROBERT BARNEWALL, Knight, was elevated to the peerage by EDWARD IV, in 1461, in the dignity of BARON TRIMLESTOWN, of Trimlestown, County Meath.
“The next patent of creation that occurs” said the historian, William Lynch, in his work on Feudal Dignities, “is one of considerable importance, as being the first grant (in Ireland) of any description of peerage conveying, by express words, the dignity of a baron of parliament.”
The patent was dated in the second year of EDWARD IV’s reign, and thereby the King ordained and constituted Sir Robert Barnewall, Knight, for his good services to His Majesty’s father when in Ireland, as essendum unum baronum parliamenti nostri infra terram nostram prædictam, to hold to him and the heirs male of his body lawfully begotten, and to be called by the name of Domini et Baronis de Trymleteston, etc;
And also that the said Sir Robert should be one of his, the King’s, Council within the said land during his life, with the fee of £10 yearly, payable out of the fee-farm of Salmon Leap and Chapelizod etc.
His lordship wedded firstly, Elizabeth Broune, by whom he acquired a considerable estate, and had two sons,
CHRISTOPHER (Sir), his heir; Thomas.
He espoused secondly, Anne, daughter of Sir Thomas Plunkett, but had no other issue.
His lordship was succeeded at his decease in 1470 by his elder son,
CHRISTOPHER, 2nd Baron; who obtained a pardon for his participation in the treason of Lambert Simnel.
His lordship married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Thomas Plunkett, of Rathmore, and had issue,
JOHN, his heir; Robert; Ismay; a daughter; Alison.
His lordship died ca 1513, and was succeeded by his eldest son,
JOHN, 3rd Baron (1470-1538), an eminent judge and politician, who wedded no less than four times, and was succeeded at his decease by the only son of his first wife, Janet, daughter of John Bellew, of Bellewstown,
PATRICK, 4th Baron, who espoused Catherine, daughter of Richard Taylor, of Swords, County Dublin, and widow of Richard Delahyde, Recorder of Drogheda.
His lordship died in 1562, and was succeeded by his eldest son,
ROBERT, 5th Baron, who married Anne, only daughter of Alderman Richard Fyan, Mayor of Dublin; but dying issueless, in 1573, the barony devolved upon his brother,
PETER, 6th Baron. This nobleman dying in 1598, was succeeded by his only son, by Catherine, daughter of the Hon Sir Christopher Nugent, and granddaughter of Richard, 11th Baron Delvin,
ROBERT, 7th Baron (c1574-1639), who wedded Genet, daughter of Thomas Talbot, of Dardistown, County Meath, by whom he had issue,
Christopher, father of MATTHIAS, 8th Baron; John; Patrick; Richard; Matthew; Mary; Catherine; Ismay.
His lordship had a memorable dispute with the Lord Dunsany regarding precedency, which was decided in favour of Lord Trimlestown by the Privy Council in 1634.
He was succeeded by his grandson,
MATTHIAS, 8th Baron (1614-67), eldest son of the Hon Christopher Barnewall, by Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Edward FitzGerald, Knight.
This nobleman serving against the usurper CROMWELL was excepted from pardon for life, and had his estates sequestered; but surviving the season of rebellion and rapacity, he regained a considerable portion of his lands.
His lordship espoused, in 1641, Jane, daughter of Nicholas, 1st Viscount Netterville, and was succeeded by his only surviving son,
ROBERT, 9th Baron, who married Margaret, daughter of Sir John Dungan Bt, and niece of William, Earl of Limerick, by whom he had two sons and five daughters,
His lordship sat in JAMES II’s parliament in 1689, and dying in June that year, was succeeded by his eldest son,
MATTHIAS, 10th Baron, who had a commission in the 1st Troop of King James’s guards under the Duke of Berwick, and fell in action against the Germans in 1692, when the barony devolved upon his brother,
JOHN, 11th Baron (1672-1746). The 10th Baron having been attainted by WILLIAM III, that monarch granted the family estates to Henry Sydney, 1st Earl of Romney; but those estates were subsequently recovered at law, and were enjoyed by the house of Trimlestown.
His lordship wedded Mary, only daughter of Sir John Barnewall, Knight, second son of Sir Patrick Barnewall Bt, of Crickstown, by whom he six sons and four daughters,
ROBERT, 12th Baron (c1704-79); who lived for many years in France, and pursued the study of medicine with great success.
After his return to Ireland he resided at Trimlestown, and gratuitously and freely communicated his advice to all who applied for it.
His lordship was succeeded at his decease by his eldest surviving son,
THOMAS, 13th Baron, a Knight of Malta, who conformed to the established church, and had a confirmation of the dignity (which, although adopted, was unacknowledged from the time of CROMWELL), in 1795.
His lordship dying unmarried, the title reverted to his cousin,
NICHOLAS, 14th Baron (1726-1813), who espoused firstly, in 1768, Martha Henrietta, only daughter of Monsieur Joseph D’Aquin, president of the parliament of Toulouse, by whom he had issue,
JOHN THOMAS, his heir; Rosalia.
He married secondly, in 1797, Alicia, second daughter of Major-General Charles Eustace.
His lordship was succeeded by his son,
JOHN THOMAS, 15th Baron (1773-1839), who wedded, in 1794, Maria Theresa, daughter of Richard Kirwan, of Gregg, County Galway, and had issue,
THOMAS; Martha Henrietta.
His lordship was succeeded by his son,
THOMAS, 16th Baron (1796-1879), who espoused, in 1836, Margaret Randalina, eldest daughter of Philip Roche, of Donore, County Kildare, and had issue,
THOMAS, died in infancy; Anna Maria Louisa.
His lordship died without surviving male issue, when the barony became dormant.
In 1891, however, the peerage was was claimed by
CHRISTOPHER PATRICK MARY, de jure 17th Baron (1846-91), a descendant of the Hon Patrick Barnewall, second son of the 7th Baron.
The 17th Baron died before he had fully established his claim; but in 1893, his younger brother,
CHARLES ALOYSIUS, 18th Baron (1861-1937), was confirmed in the title by the Committee for Privileges of the House of Lords.
His lordship married, in 1889, Margaret Theresa, daughter of Richard John Stephens, of Brisbane, Australia, and had issue,
Reginald Nicholas Francis (1897-1918), killed in action; CHARLES ALOYSIUS, of whom presently; Ivy Esmay; Marcella Hilda Charlotte; Letitia Anne Margaret; Geraldine Christia Marjory.
He wedded secondly, in 1907, Mabel Florence, daughter of William Robert Shuff, of Torquay, Devon; and thirdly, in 1930, Josephine Francesca, fourth but second surviving daughter of the Rt Hon Sir Christopher John Nixon Bt, of Roebuck Grove, Milltown, County Dublin.
His lordship was succeeded by his second son,
CHARLES ALOYSIUS, 19th Baron (1899-1990), who espoused, in 1926, Muriel, only child of Edward Oskar Schneider, of Mansfield Lodge, Manchester, and had issue,
ANTHONY EDWARD, 20th Baron; RAYMOND CHARLES, 21st Baron; Diane.
He married secondly, in 1952, Freda Kathleen, daughter of Alfred Allen Atkins, of Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire.
His lordship was succeeded by his eldest son,
ANTHONY EDWARD, 20th Baron (1928-97), who wedded firstly, in 1963, Lorna Margaret Marion, daughter of Charles Douglas Ramsay; and secondly, in 1977, Mary Wonderly, eldest daughter of Judge Thomas Francis McAllister, of Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA.
His lordship died without issue, when the honours devolved upon his brother,
RAYMOND CHARLES, 21st Baron, born in 1930, of Chiddingfold, Surrey.
There is no obvious heir presumptive to the Barony of Trimlestown.
An heir presumptive may be found amongst the descendants, if any, of Thomas Barnewall, of Bloomsbury, London, a cousin of the 17th and 18th Barons Trimlestown.
TURVEY HOUSE, Donabate, County Dublin, was a late 17th century mansion comprising two storeys below a gabled attic storey.
The upper storey has three distinctive lunette windows added between 1725-50.
The house has nine bays and lofty, narrow windows grouped in threes.
This was once the seat of the extinct Viscounts Barnewall (of Kingsland); though subsequently it passed to a kinsman, the 13th Baron Trimlestown.
TRIMLESTOWN CASTLE, Kildalkey, County Meath, is a medieval tower-house with an 18th century house attached.
In the 19th century, the castle was adorned with ornamental towers, an embattled parapet, and other marks of the style which prevailed in the latter part of the 16th century.
Shortly afterwards, however, the family abandoned the castle and it became ruinous.
First published in December, 2015. Trimlestown arms courtesy of European Heraldry.
The ruins of Trimblestown Castle stand to the west of Trim on the banks of the Trimblestown River. The Castle was erected by the Barnwall’s, Barons Trimleston. The place is also known by variations of the name: Tremblestown also Tremleston, Trimlestown and Trimleston.
Hugh de Lacy may have erected a motte at Trimblestown and there is a large mound to one side of the castle but this has also been identified as a tumulus from earlier times. A village may have grown up around the castle, an extensive field system exists surrounding the castle.
In 1461 Robert Barnewall was created Baron Trimleston by Edward IV. The family were very active in affairs of state and also in defending the Pale against attack from the Irish. The second Baron, Christopher, was implicated in the Lambert Simnel affair but received a pardon in 1488. His son, John, the third Baron, served as Lord Chancellor of Ireland from 1534 until his death in 1538. In 1597 Hugh O’Neill defeated the government forces, led by Barnewall, Lord Trimleston, at the battle of Tyrrell’s pass in Westmeath. Barnewall’s son was taken prisoner.
Mathias, Lord Trimleston, was one of the Old English lords of the Pale who met on the Hill of Tara in 1642 and was then outlawed by the English authorities. Mathias was sentenced to be transplanted to Connacht by Cromwell in October 1653 but managed to delay it until 1655 and was granted 1462 acres belonging to the Frenchs of Monivea, Co. Galway. The Barnewalls share the same family motto with the French family: Malo mori quam foederi, I would rather die than be dishonoured. In 1647 General Jones took the castle for the English forces. Trimleston regained Trimblestown and lands in Meath and Dublin after the Restoration and also managed to hold onto lands in Connacht. Matthias died at Monivea in 1667 and was buried in Kilconnel Abbey.
Matthias, the next baron, supported James II and his estate and title were forfeited. The next barons took the title but were not recognised as they were Roman Catholics.
Robert Barnewall, the 12th Baron was educated in France and was noted for his medicinal skills which he used to treat local residents.
There is a Barnwall County in South Carolina. This may be named after a member of the Trimblestown Barnewalls. Colonel John Barnwall acquired the nickname ‘Tuscarora Jack’ following a successful expedition against the Tuscarora Indians to North Carolina in 1711-1712. Barnwell County was called Winton County until 1785 when it was re-named in honour of John Barnwell, a Revolutionary War hero. Robert W. Barnwall, a descendant, was to the forefront of the foundation of the Confederate states of America.
The lands amounting to 681 acres were in the possession of the Hon. Anna Barnewall in 1925 when it was taken over by the Land Commission. As the only daughter of the 16th Baron she married Robert Elliot of Scotland. Her burial site is in the Scottish highlands and there a stained glass window in the church commemorates her: “A kinder hearted and most utterly unselfish woman never lived.”
The 20th Baron Trimleston died at the age of 69 in 1997 and his successor is his brother, Raymond Barnewell, a dairy farmer who lives in England, but he has no children to succeed to the title.
Trimblestown Castle was a three-storey tower-house erected in the fifteenth century possibly by the first Baron Trimleston. There is a loft above the ground floor with a barrel vault above that. High up on the tower wall is a plaque commemorating the marriage of the sixth baron to Katherine Nugent, daughter of Lord Delvin. In the mid-18th century the 12th Lord Trimleston attached a new three-storey house at the north of the tower-house. This has a fine bow projection in the east wall. Early in the 19th century the house was decorated with crenellations and ornamental turrets in the style of the late 16th century. In the early 1800s the castle was abandoned by the family. The castle was in ruins by the 1840s and the demesne was being farmed by a Mr. Allen. The noted horse trainer, Frank Barbour, erected stables and a house at Trimblestown about 1915.
To the north of the castle is an old graveyard in which is located a small stone-built chapel containing the 1680 tomb of Margaret, wife of the ninth Baron Trimleston. This chapel was recently restored by a local committee.
This poetic gravestone is from Trimblestown.
Beneath this stone Silvester lies,
Whose ashes mingles with the Blighs,
He passed through life unstained with pride,
We wept and lamented when he did
His sons whose youth he ne’er neglected
In gratitude his stone erected.
The Landed Gentry and Aristocracy: County Meath. Volume 1. Art Kavanagh, 2005.
Trimlestown Castle, County Meath, photograph by Robert O’Byrne.
Baron Trimlestown is one of the oldest titles in Ireland, created in 1461 for Sir Robert Barnewall. The family were of Norman origin, their name originally de Berneval (from the small seaside town of Berneval-le-Grand, where Oscar Wilde stayed following his release from Reading Gaol in June 1897). Having first moved to England, following the Battle of Hastings in 1066, they followed Richard de Clare to Ireland, the first to do so, Sir Michael de Berneval, landing in Cork in 1172. Rising to power in the Pale, they were responsible for building Drimnagh Castle, now in a suburb of Dublin, and then gradually acquired substantial land holdings in County Meath. Here in Trimblestown, a few miles west of the town of Trim, they erected a mighty castle, probably in the 15th century and perhaps around the time that the title of baron was granted to Sir Robert Barnewall.
Trimlestown Castle, County Meath, photograph by Robert O’Byrne.
Trimlestown Castle, County Meath, photograph by Robert O’Byrne.
Trimlestown Castle, County Meath, photograph by Robert O’Byrne.
Trimlestown Castle, County Meath, photograph by Robert O’Byrne.
Trimlestown Castle, County Meath, photograph by Robert O’Byrne.
The core of Trimblestown Castle is late mediaeval, rising three storeys and with a massive square tower in the south-west corner. The main block is some 114 feet long and 40 feet wide, internally dominated by a two-storey vaulted great hall that faces towards the river Trimlestown: the exterior of this side is marked by massive corner buttresses. On the south-east side of the tower there is (or perhaps was) a shield bearing the arms of the Barnewall and Nugent families – the two had intermarried – but whether it remains in place is impossible to tell due to vegetation covering much of the walls. Considerable alterations to the building were undertaken in the 18th and 19th centuries, when a large addition was made on the northern section of the site. It is likely that at this time towers similar to those on the river front were demolished and a modern house built, the most notable feature of this being a large bow-front with views to the east. Similarities with the work undertaken during the same period at Louth Castle (see Saintly Connections, August 28th 2017) have led to suggestions that Richard Johnston might have been the architect responsible in both instances. This may have happened around 1797 when the 14th Lord Trimlestown, then aged 70, married a woman less than a third of his age: the suggestion is that she got a new house in return for an old husband. Soon afterwards, her husband also inherited Turvey, County Dublin from a distant cousin and in due course the family moved there, leaving Trimblestown Castle to slip into decay.
Trimlestown Castle, County Meath, photograph by Robert O’Byrne.
Trimlestown Castle, County Meath, photograph by Robert O’Byrne.
Trimlestown Castle, County Meath, photograph by Robert O’Byrne.
Trimlestown Castle, County Meath, photograph by Robert O’Byrne.
Trimlestown Castle, County Meath, photograph by Robert O’Byrne.
For much of the 18th century, although the Barnewalls held onto the greater part of their lands, they were unable to use the title Baron Trimlestown. Their problems had begun in the 1640s when Matthias, eighth Lord Trimlestown, had supported the royalist cause, deprived of his estates by Cromwell and banished to County Galway. Following the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, he regained the greater part of his original property, but remained true to the Roman Catholic faith, as did his son Robert who sat in James II’s parliament in 1689. The next couple of heirs, because of their support for the Jacobite cause and their loyalty to Catholicism, were not allowed to use the old title. They lived in France and it was only in 1746 that Robert Barnewall (who claimed the title of twelfth Lord Trimlestown) returned to Ireland and took up residence in the old castle. It is likely to have been during his lifetime (he died in 1779) that the building was first modernised. As an ardent supporter of the Catholic cause, it must have been a blow to him when his heir Thomas conformed to the Established Church (thereby reversing the government attainder and allowing him to be acknowledged after his father’s death as the 13th Lord Trimlestown). Thereafter one generation succeeded another, although more than once the title had to go to a cousin as there was no direct heir. However while there is still a Lord Trimlestown – the 21st – he has no known heirs. It seems likely that after more than 550 years one of Ireland’s oldest peerages will go the same way as the castle from which its name was derived, and fall out of use.
Trimlestown Castle, County Meath, photograph by Robert O’Byrne.
he Barnewall family has its roots deep in the soup of myth and legend that is the genealogy of medieval Britain and Ireland. It is said that ‘Le Sieur de Barneville’ hailed from Brittany and was one of the companions of William the Conqueror when he invaded England in 1066, but neither this name nor its many variants (de Barneville; de Barneval, Barnewill, Barnwell etc) seem to occur in Domesday Book. A century later, some members of the family were granted lands in Ireland and settled there, only to be slain by the native Irish. The sole survivor was Hugh (or Ulphran) de Barneville, who was away studying law in England. He is said to have made a fresh start with a grant of lands from King John at Drymnagh and Tyrenure in the Vale of Dublin which his descendants retained until the early 17th century. By the 14th century, they also owned Crickstown in Co. Meath, and Sir Christopher de Barneval (fl. 1386), with whom the genealogy below begins, was seated there. Many of the early generations of the family were both knights involved in military service and lawyers, and from the time the earliest records begin in the 15th century they were receiving their legal training at the inns of court in London. This metropolitan experience and the sophistication it bred meant that they were in demand as administrators and judges back in Ireland. Sir Christopher Barnewall (d. 1446), who was probably trained in London, was appointed a Serjeant-at-Law in Ireland in 1408, King’s Serjeant in 1420, and went on to be Chief Justice of Kings Bench from 1435 and Lord Treasurer of Ireland from 1437. He had two recorded sons, the elder of whom, Sir Nicholas Barnewall (d. c.1465), was Chief Justice of King’s Bench, 1457-63 and inherited Crickstown, and the younger of whom, Sir Robert Barnewall (d. c.1471), pursued a military career in the service of the Duke of York and was raised to the peerage as Baron Trimleston (later usually spelled Trimlestown) in 1461. Sir Nicholas’ descendants continued to hold Crickstown into the 17th century, and a cadet branch of the family became Viscounts Barnewall of Kingsland in 1646.
For the moment, however, I want to stay with Sir Robert Barnewall (d. c.1471), 1st Baron Trimlestown, and his descendants. Sir Robert himself married the heiress of the Le Brun family, who brought him a significant property in Co. Meath, including Trimlestown itself, where he seems to have erected the castle of which parts stand today, albeit in a ruinous condition. His property descended to his eldest son, Sir Christopher Barnewall (d. by 1513), 2nd Baron Trimlestown, who was involved in the Yorkist conspiracy to pass off Lambert Simnel as one of the murdered Princes in the Tower. He can only have been peripherally involved, however, for he was pardoned for his part in the affair and went on to see important military service under King Henry VII’s Lord Deputy in Ireland, the Earl of Kildare. His two sons, John Barnewall (1470-1538), 3rd Baron Trimlestown, and Robert Barnewall (d. by 1547), were both trained as lawyers in London, but it was the elder brother, John, who had the most distinguished career, ending up as Lord High Treasurer and finally as Lord Chancellor of Ireland, roles in which his duties seem to have been as much military as judicial.
The 3rd Baron’s eldest son, Patrick Barnewell (d. c.1462), 4th Baron Trimlestown, sat in the Parliament of 1541 which acknowledged Henry VIII as King of Ireland and at the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign was ‘a ready and willing nobleman in the Queen’s service’. The divisive question of the age was, of course, the breakaway of the English Crown from the Roman Catholic Church, and the attendant dissolution of the monasteries. In England, these measures commanded majority though not universal support, but in Ireland the picture was very different. We do not really know what the personal views of the 4th and 5th Barons were on religion: they probably espoused the government’s position in public and kept to the traditional ways in private. That was at first a tenable position, but Sir Peter Barnewall (c.1540-98), 6th Baron Trimlestown, found it much more difficult to sustain and by the time of the Spanish Armada in 1588 he was recognised as a Catholic and suspected of communication with the enemy. His son, Robert Barnewall (c.1574-1639), 7th Baron Trimlestown, was loyal to the Crown, but could not refrain from protesting about the increasingly severe restrictions on Catholics, and by 1615 he was regarded as ‘a busy and violent recusant’. His grandson, Mathias Barnewall (c.1614-67), 8th Baron Trimlestown, was one of the leaders of the 1641 Catholic uprising, and was outlawed and deprived of his estates in 1642, and in 1653 exiled to County Galway. Although he recovered part of his property at the Restoration (and his son recovered more in 1667), it was all lost again by the 10th Baron, who was Colonel of a Jacobite regiment after the Battle of the Boyne. For being in arms against William III he was attainted in April 1691 and forfeited his peerage and estates. After the Treaty of Limerick, he followed James II into exile in France, where he joined the Irish Brigade and was killed at the Battle of Roumont in September 1692. His son, John Barnewall (1672-1746), was just too young to have been involved in any fighting, and although there can be little doubt that he was enthusiastic about the Jacobite cause, he managed to recover his father’s estates by July 1695. His attempts to reverse the attainder and recover the peerage were unsuccessful, however, and indeed it was asserted that the outlawry of the 8th Baron in 1642, which had never been reversed, had also had the effect of suspending the peerage. Despite the outlawry and the attainder, however, the title continued to be widely used by and about John and his successors in the 18th century in all but the most official documents.
Although the de jure 11th Baron recovered possession of his estates, there seems little doubt that he divided his time between Ireland and France, and his sons made their careers on the continent. His eldest son and heir, Robert Barnewall (c.1704-79), de jure 12th Baron Trimlestown, studied medicine and botany in France and returned to Ireland on his father’s death with a considerable reputation as a physician: skills which he made available to his Irish neighbours, whether gentle or poor. In later life he became an active advocate for the civil rights of his fellow-Catholics, and in the 1770s he was responsible for drafting a form of oath of allegiance which was acceptable to both the Government and to Irish Catholics. This opened up careers in the army to the Catholic population, and laid the foundation for further measures for Catholic relief which took place after his death. It must therefore have been something of an embarrassment to one so prominent in the Catholic cause that his two sons chose to conform to the Protestant religion. Robert was succeeded by the youngest son of his first marriage, Thomas Barnewall (c.1739-96), who lived in France until the French Revolution took place. In 1790 he left his French property in the hands of an attorney (from whom it was seized by the French state in 1793) and returned to Ireland. It was now more than a century since the attainder on the title of Baron Trimlestown, and with the incumbent a Protestant, the Government seems to have made no difficulty about reversing the attainder on the title, which was done in 1795, after which he was summoned to the Irish House of Lords as 13th Baron Trimlestown. He died the following year, and the revived title passed to his nephew, Nicholas Barnewall (1726-1813), 14th Baron Trimlestown. He had been brought up near Toulouse in France, where he was a leading Freemason, and acquired through his marriage the Chateau Lamirolles, where he lived until the French Revolution. His wife having died in 1782, he then moved to England, where he seems to have lived in Bath until he inherited the Irish estates and peerage from his uncle. In 1797 he married for a second time, taking as his wife a young Irishwoman a third of his age, and this would seem to have been the occasion for a major building campaign at Trimlestown Castle to turn it into a modern house. In 1800, however, Nicholas inherited the extensive estates of his distant kinsman, the 5th Viscount Barnewall of Kingsland, which included Turvey House, and soon afterwards Trimlestown seems to have been abandoned, perhaps with his alterations incomplete.
The combination of the estates of the two most prominent branches of the Barnewall family made the 14th Baron quite rich, and he did his best to ensure that the estates and the title would remain together by entering into a new settlement in 1812 which entailed the property on his own male heirs, but with remainder to his cousin Richard Barnewall (c.1744-1826) and his heirs, who would inherit the title if his own heirs died out first. This was the basis on which the estates followed the title on the death of the 16th Baron in 1879. At the same time as drawing up the settlement, he made a new will, which made such generous provision for his widow that his son, a child of his first marriage, John Thomas Barnewall (1773-1839), 15th Baron Trimlestown – who was exactly the same age as his stepmother – went to law in an attempt to get the will set aside on grounds of undue influence. The feud expanded into a separate dispute about the payment of her jointure. Although he ultimately lost both cases, he strung matters out so that judgement was not given until 1833 and the dowager Lady Trimlestown is said to have received no benefit until 1847, by which time she had been widowed for a second time. The 15th Baron was probably responsible for remodelling Turvey House at some point after 1813, but he also seems to have had houses in London (a town house on the Grosvenor estate), Paris and Naples (Palazzo Calabritti), with a mistress in each place. They were the principal recipients of his personal wealth, for he had fallen out with his only son and daughter-in-law, who received only the entailed property. This may explain why the very comfortable finances of the 14th and 15th Barons did not continue. Thomas Barnewall (1796-1879), 16th Baron Trimlestown, leased out Turvey House and gave up the lease on his father’s London house (which the Marquess of Westminster demolished in order to build the colonnaded forecourt of Grosvenor House). He took instead a smaller house on the Grosvenor estate in Park Lane, which he remodelled in 1853. Since the 16th Baron had no surviving sons, on his death in 1879 the entailed family estates passed to a distant kinsman, Christopher Patrick Mary Barnewall (1846-91), who was the great-great-great-great-great-great grandson of the 7th Baron, who had died in 1639. With such a very distant connection, it was obviously difficult to conclusively prove his right to the peerage, and a claim was not submitted to the Committee of Privileges of the House of Lords until 1891. A decision had still not been made when Christopher died in 1893, but his brother Charles Aloysius Barnewall (1861-1937) was soon afterwards confirmed as 18th Baron Trimlestown (Christopher being counted as the 17th Baron). Once again, no personal wealth accompanied the title and entailed estates, and since the new Lord Trimlestown’s family had been gentlemen farmers in County Meath for many generations, he was very much the archetypal improverished Irish peer. He sold Turvey House, which had been tenanted for many years, in about 1902. In 1907 he inherited, perhaps unexpectedly, Bloomsbury House in County Meath, but after living there briefly in the years around the First World War, that too was sold in 1920. As an aside, it may be noted that in 1930, the young John Betjeman became rather obsessed by the combination of ancient lineage and complete obscurity which was represented most notably by Lord Trimlestown, and sought him out at Bloomsbury, only to find that he had sold the place a decade before.
Despite the sales, Lord Trimlestown still owned more than 6,000 acres at his death in 1937. His heir was his son, Charles Aloysius Barnewall (1899-1990), 19th Baron Trimlestown, who farmed in Devon, and it is not clear when any remaining Irish property was sold. The 19th Baron left two sons, who succeeded in turn to the title. The present peer, Raymond Charles Barnewall (b. 1930), 21st Baron Trimlestown, also farmed in Devon until his retirement and now lives in Surrey. He is unmarried and there is no known heir to the peerage, which will become dormant on his death. It seems entirely possible that there is a legitimate heir amongst the many descendants who must exist of the earlier barons, but the chances of any of them being able to prove that they have the senior claim seem much more remote.
To return to the early period of the Barnewall family, the second son of Sir Christopher Barnewall (fl. 1386) was John Barnewall (fl. 1426) of Frankestown (Co. Meath). His son, Sir Richard Barnewall settled at Fieldston in the parish of Clonmethan (Co. Dublin), which was inherited in due course by his grandson, Sir Patrick Barnewall (d. 1552). Sir Patrick, like his contemporaries in the Trimlestown branch of the family, was trained as a lawyer in London, at Grays Inn, and became a serjeant-at-law in Ireland, King’s Serjeant and Solicitor General, 1534-50, and finally Master of the Rolls in Ireland, 1550-52. He was responsible for securing the establishment of an inn of court in Dublin (King’s Inns) in 1538, and was also an MP in the Irish parliament. Although he initially opposed the dissolution of the monasteries, he was granted the sites and lands of Gracedieu Priory in Co. Dublin and Knocktopher Abbey in Co. Kilkenny, as well as leases of some of the lands of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin in the parishes of Swords and Clonmethan where his other lands lay. This generous greasing of the wheels of the Reformation overcame his scruples and laid the foundations of his descendants’ prosperity. His son and heir, Sir Christopher Barnewall (1522-75), was, however, a man of stronger principles, and although not so quixotic as to disclaim his inheritance of monastic lands, he emerged as a steadfast opponent of the Protestant administration, who was willing to shelter the priest and future martyr, Edmund Campion, for a few days in 1569. In 1556 he was granted the Turvey estate at Donabate, on which he built Turvey House, reputedly using stone from Gracedieu Priory. Turvey House became the principal seat of his descendants for several hundred years. His eldest surviving son and heir, Sir Patrick Barnewall (c.1558-1622) was also a committed Catholic and an even more outspoken critic of the Government’s religious policy – as a result of which he spent short periods in prison or under house arrest on several occasions – but he balanced this with a personal loyalty to successive monarchs and marriage ties with the Protestant hierarchy that offered him some protection.
Sir Patrick was succeeded at Turvey House by his son, Sir Nicholas Barnewall (1592-1663), who at the outbreak of the Rebellion of 1641 had a commission to raise such troops as he could muster for the defence of County Dublin. This must have severely tested his loyalties, since many of his friends and relatives joined the rebels (his kinsman Lord Trimlestown and his son-in-law, Lord Gormanston were among the leaders), and perhaps to avoid testing his loyalty too far he was allowed to travel to London, and later to settle in Wales, where his mother’s family had lands. Despite his disagreements with the Government, he remained strongly Royalist, and in 1642, when the Civil War broke out in England, his son Patrick became a commander in the Royalist army. In 1644 he returned to Ireland, where he continued to keep out of politics as much as possible, and in 1646 he was rewarded for his masterly inactivity by being raised to the peerage as Viscount Barnewall of Kingsland (which was often, though incorrectly, abbreviated to Viscount Kingsland). Although in the 1650s he was charged with complicity in a plot against the Lord Protector, briefly imprisoned, and his estates in the Pale sequestered, he recovered Turvey House in 1658 and the rest at the Restoration.
When the 1st Viscount died in 1663 he was succeeded by his eldest surviving son, Henry Barnewall (c.1627-88), 2nd Viscount Barnewall of Kingsland, who seems to have been less politically engaged than his father. However his son, Nicholas Barnewall (1668-1725), the 3rd Viscount, was inevitably caught up in the events of 1688-91. As a strong Royalist and a Catholic, it is hardly surprising that he took his seat in James II’s Parliament of 1689, or that he was later an officer in the Jacobite army. He was outlawed for his offences, but under the terms of the Treaty of Limerick in 1691 the outlawry was reversed and he was allowed to return to his estates. He may have spent some time in France at the exiled Court of James II, but the evidence for this is sparse. All that is known for certain is that his wife spent sometime at St. Germain with her mother, then Duchess of Tyrconnel, and that his elder son, Henry Benedict Barnewall (1709-74) had the Cardinal Duke of York as a godfather, which may imply that the baptism took place in France. Henry Benedict, who succeeded as 4th Viscount while still a minor in 1725, became a leading Irish freemason. He was married, but had no issue, so at his death in 1774 his title and property descended to his nephew, George Barnewall (1758-1800), 5th Viscount. He had been brought up in London as a Protestant, and he was therefore eligible to take up his seat in the Irish House of Lords, which he did in 1787. However, at some point in the 1790s, when several of his kinsmen were scrambling to get out of France, he moved there for reasons which are now obscure. One version of events says that he was confined in a lunatic asylum there, but his will, written shortly before his death, was proved without demur, so this is unlikely.
What happened to the peerage after 1800 is the stuff of romantic legend. The 5th Viscount having no sons or other obvious heirs, the viscountcy became dormant on his death. A young and uncouth Dublin waiter called Matthew Barnewall (d. 1834) believed himself to be descended from the Hon. Francis Barnewall (c.1629-97), a younger son of the 1st Viscount, and in the 1790s, hearing a false report that the 5th Viscount had died in France, he ‘mustered a strong force of the employees of the taverns and the market… and with that formidable army, proceeded forthwith to Turvey… of which he took instant possession. There he cut down timber, lighted bonfires, and for some short time indulged in the exercise of rude hospitality to the companions who had escorted him’, before Lord Trimlestown, who was acting either as guardian or attorney of the 5th Viscount, applied to the court of Chancery and secured his ejection and committal to Newgate Prison on charges of contempt. There he came to the attention of a solicitor called Hitchcock, who became convinced that he boy might really be heir to the peerage, and set about proving it at his own expense, which he was eventually able to do to the satisfaction of the Committee of Privileges of the House of Lords, and the dormancy was ended in Matthew’s favour in 1814. The estates had, however, been bequeathed by the 5th Viscount to Lord Trimlestown, so the peerage was rather an empty honour, although a state pension of £500 a year was granted to the 6th Viscount for life. The 6th Viscount was thrice married, but had no surviving sons, so on his death in 1834 the peerage again became dormant. It was quickly claimed by one Capt Thomas Barnewall, whose petition to the House of Lords was never adjudicated on, but modern scholarship suggests that it was ill-founded, in that his claim that his great-grandfather. Col James Barnewall, was the sixth son of the 1st Viscount Barnewall was incorrect; he was in fact the second husband of the 1st Viscount’s daughter, Mabel, Countess of Fingall. So in 1834 the title became extinct. There continued, however, to be a Lady Kingsland as late as 1890, for the 6th Viscount’s widow survived him for many years. Having been left very little by her husband, she was defrauded of the little she did have by her own brother, and subsequently lived a life of absolute penury in a single room in a tumble-down lodging house in Lambeth, where she and her daughter subsisted on what they earned sewing shirts as piecework, and occasional parish relief. She came to public attention in 1878, when belatedly she made an application to the Universal Benefit Society for financial assistance, and with this help, she was able to live out her last years in slightly more genteel poverty.
The last branch of the family to be explored is that settled at Bloomsbury (Co. Meath). Joseph Barnewall (1781-1852), who rented Bloomsbury from 1829 and bought the freehold in 1835, was the youngest son of Richard Barnewall (c.1744-1826), on whom the 14th Baron Trimlestown had settled his estates in default of his own heirs. Since there is no evidence that he pursued a career he presumably inherited a sufficient sum from his father or through his marriage to make the purchase. Bloomsbury was not a large house at the time, but his elder son, Richard Barnewall (1821-66) doubled its size in 1858. He had no children, so on his early death it passed to his brother, Thomas Barnewall (1825-98), who died unmarried and left it to his sister, Katherine Barnewall (c.1824-1907). Having no close relatives, she chose to leave the property to her distant kinsman, the 18th Baron Trimlestown, who as we have seen was impoverished and obliged to sell off parts of the estate. He occupied Bloomsbury for a time but sold it in about 1920.
The major branch of the family which I have not considered in this post was the senior line, who were established at Crickston (Co. Meath) in the 15th-17th centuries. I have traced their descent below only in so far as is necessary to show the relationship between Barons Trimlestown and the Viscounts Barnewall of Kingsland, who were a cadet branch of the Crickston family. In the 1620s, the latter acquired a baronetcy, and they may have built a new fortified house at Crickston, although if so it was destroyed a few years later during the Civil War. Although their baronetcy is still in existence, the current baronet lives in Australia, and the descent of the honour was early separated from significant landed possessions in Ireland. I cannot see that any of the holders of the title have possessed a country house that would qualify them for detailed study here, but if anyone knows differently I should be very pleased to hear from them.
Trimlestown Castle, Co Meath (aka Trimblestown Castle)
The massive and imposing ruins of the late medieval castle built by the Barnewalls in the 15th century stand on the east bank of the Trimlestown River, some three miles west of Trim. The walls still rise for a full three storeys, with a big south-west corner tower and battlemented wall-heads that give it a romantic silhouette. The castle forms a block 114 feet long and 40 feet wide at the southern end, where the tower stands, but narrows to a fraction of that at the north end. Ivy now covers a shield on the tower said to have borne the arms of the Barnewall and Nugent families, which may suggest that the tower was an addition of the time of the 6th Lord Trimlestown (d. 1598), who married Katherine Nugent. Internally the building is dominated by a two-storey vaulted great hall of 52 ft by 17 ft, that faces towards the river and is marked by massive tapering buttresses, though this is now partially filled with the rubble of collapsed walls. The floors above the vault seem to have had timber floors, and little is therefore left of them. The corner tower is also barrel-vaulted at first-floor level.
The medieval and 16th century castle was evidently damaged in the Civil War, and although the family recovered possession of it fairly quickly, little was done by way of improvements until the 18th century. In 1686, the 9th Baron told his son that he had made ‘considerable improvements’, but this seems to have meant that he had put the castle into repair, for he went on that there was now ‘only a good house wanting’, and suggesting that ‘some little building or improvements’ could be made ‘without incommoding yourself or the fortune I leave you’. But whatever the 10th Baron’s intentions in this matter, they were frustrated by his attainder in 1691 and death the following year. It seems probable that improvements had been made by 1753, when Richard Pococke visited. He described the great avenue leading to the house and church from the Trim road, and says the house is ‘built [on]to an ancient Castle, that was mostly destroyed in Olivers time’, before waxing lyrical about the botanical curiosities which Robert Barnewall (the 12th Baron Trimlestown) had imported.
Trimlestown Castle: an early 19th century engraving showing the east front as altered c.1800. It had probably already been abandoned by this date.
Further changes were made to the northern end of the site in about 1790-1800, either by the 13th Baron, who returned to England in 1790 and died in 1796, or after the second marriage in 1797 of his nephew, the 14th Baron. It appears that until then another square tower stood at the north-east corner, creating a Z-plan layout like that of some 16th century Scottish castles. This north-east tower was demolished in about 1800 to allow the creation of a new east front, the main feature of which is a three-storey bow, with three windows on each floor and miniature battlements at the top. Similarities with work undertaken at Louth Castle around the same time have led to the suggestion that Richard Johnston might have been the architect responsible in both instances, but there is no documentary evidence for this. In 1800, Lord Trimlestown inherited Turvey House in Co. Dublin, and in due course the family moved there, leaving Trimlestown Castle to slip into decay.
It was evidently still habitable in about 1840, when it was fully roofed and there were a kitchen garden and orchards around the house, but in 1849 Sir William Wilde called it ‘forsaken and neglected, a perfect ruin’. Shortly afterwards, a Dublin merchant called Fagan (perhaps the same man as rented Turvey House) rented the place and attempted to arrest the decay by putting on a new roof, enabling his successor – a farming tenant – to occupy the building. The new roof can only have been partial, however, for by the 1860s the northern end was roofless and all trace of polite grounds had disappeared. By 1915, the demesne was part of a successful stud, owned by Frank Barbour, who built a new house and stables nearby.
Descent: Christopher Browne/Le Brun; to daughter Elizabeth, wife of Sir Robert Barnewall (d. c.1471), 1st Baron Trimlestown; to son, Christopher Barnewall (d. by 1513), 2nd Baron Trimlestown; to son, Sir John Barnewall (d. 1538), 3rd Baron Trimlestown; to son, Patrick Barnewall (d. c.1562), 4th Baron Trimlestown; to son, Sir Robert Barnewall (d. 1573), 5th Baron Trimlestown; to brother, Sir Peter Barnewall (d. 1598), 6th Baron Trimlestown; to son, Robert Barnewall (d. 1639), 7th Baron Trimlestown; to grandson, Matthias Barnewall (c.1614-67), 8th Baron Trimlestown; to son, Robert Barnewall (c.1640-87), 9th Baron Trimlestown; to son, Matthias Barnewall (c.1670-92), 10th Baron Trimlestown, who was attainted; seized by Crown and granted to Henry Sydney (1641-1704), 1st Earl of Romney, but returned in 1695 to John Barnewall (1672-1746), de jure 11th Baron Trimlestown; to son, Robert Barnewall (c.1705-79), de jure 12th Baron Trimlestown; to son, Thomas Barnewall (c.1739-96), 13th Baron Trimlestown; to cousin, Nicholas Barnewall (1726-1813), 14th Baron Trimlestown; to son, John Thomas Barnewall (1773-1839), 15th Baron Trimlestown; to son, Thomas Barnewall (1796-1879), 16th Baron Trimlestown; to kinsman, Christopher Patrick Mary Barnewall (1846-91), 17th Baron Trimlestown; to brother, Charles Aloysius Barnewall (1861-1937), 18th Baron Trimlestown, who sold it before 1915 to Frank Barbour.
Barnewall family of Trimlestown, Barons Trimlestown
Barnewall, Sir Christopher (d. 1446), kt. Son of Sir Christopher de Barneval (fl. 1386) [for whom see below, under Barnewall of Turvey House, Viscounts Barnewall of Kingsland] and his wife Eleanor, daughter of Sir Nicholas Rochford of Rathcoffie (Co. Kildare) and Kilbride (Co. Meath). Serjeant-at-law in Ireland, 1408 and King’s Serjeant, 1420-34; a justice of Kings Bench, 1434-46 (Chief Justice, 1435-37, 1437-46). Deputy Lord Treasurer of Ireland, 1430-35 and Lord Treasurer, 1437-46. He married Matilda Drake, daughter and heiress of the last feudal lord of Drakestown and Drakerath, and had issue: (1) Sir Nicholas Barnewall (d. c.1465); Treasurer of the Liberty of Trim, 1436-43; Chief Justice of Kings Bench, 1457-63; knighted 1460; married Ismay (who m2, Sir Robert Bold and died about 1478), daughter and heiress of Sir Robert Serjeant of Castleknock (Co. Dublin) and had issue three sons [from whom descended the Barnewalls of Crickstown and of Dunbrow]; living in 1465 but probably died soon afterwards; (2) Sir Robert Barnewall (d. c.1471), kt. and 1st Baron Trimlestown (q.v.). He inherited Crickstown Castle (Co. Meath) from his father. He died about the beginning of October 1446. His wife’s date of death is unknown.
Barnewall, Sir Robert (d. c.1471), kt., 1st Baron Trimlestown. Younger son of Sir Christopher Barnewall (d. 1446) of Crickstown and his wife Matilda Drake. He was knighted in about 1449 while on campaign with the Duke of York, and was made an Irish Privy Councillor for life and raised to the peerage as Baron Trimlestown, 4 March 1461. It is the earliest Irish peerage to have been created by patent (earlier peerages had been created only by writ of summons). He married* Anne alias Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of Christopher Browne (or Le Brun) of Roebuck (Co. Dublin) and had issue including: (1) Christopher Barnewall (d. by 1513), 2nd Baron Trimlestown (q.v.); (2) Hon. Thomas Barnewall, of Irishtown; married Elizabeth Cardiff and had issue one daughter (who married Sir Bartholomew Dill of Riverston). Through his marriage he inherited a half-share in the lordship of Athboy (Co. Meath), including the manor of Trimlestown, where he settled. He died about 1471/2. His wife’s date of death is unknown. * Lodge’s Peerage of Ireland says he married 2nd, Anne, daughter of Sir Thomas Plunkett, but this seems unlikely as she would have been his great-great-niece.
Barnewall, Sir Christopher (d. by 1513), 2nd Baron Trimlestown. Son of Sir Robert Barnewall (d. c.1471), 1st Baron Trimlestown, and his first wife, Anne or Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of Christopher Browne of Roebuck (Co. Dublin). He was studying law in London in 1460 and succeeded his father as 2nd Baron, c.1471. He may have been knighted before that, but no record of his knighthood has been found. He was lucky to be one of the eight Irish peers pardoned for his involvement in the Yorkist conspiracy of 1488, in which Lambert Simnel impersonated one of the Princes in the Tower, and was obliged to take the oath of allegiance before the King’s envoy in July 1488. He sat in the Irish Parliament in 1491 and 1493 and fought under the Lord Deputy, the Earl of Kildare, at the Battle of Knockdoe in 1504. He married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Thomas Plunkett of Rathmore, and had issue including: (1) John Barnewall (1470-1538), 3rd Baron Trimlestown (q.v.); (2) Hon. Robert Barnewall (d. by 1547); educated at Grays Inn (admitted before 1520); lessee of the Kings Inn, Dublin, 1541; ancestor of the Barnewalls of Roestown (Co. Meath), which estate he acquired through his first marriage to Johanna Rowe, by whom he had three sons and two daughters; he married 2nd, Elizabeth (who m2, James Bathe), daughter of John Talbot of Dardiston, and had further issue four sons and six daughters; died before 1547; (3) Hon. Ismay Barnewall; married William Bathe of Rathseigh; (4) A daughter; married John Netterville of Dowth, a justice of the King’s Bench; (5) Hon. Alison Barnewall; married Sir Roger Barnewall (b. c.1472), kt. [for whom see below, under Barnewall of Turvey House, Viscounts Barnewall of Kingsland] and had issue. He inherited Trimlestown from his father in about 1471. He died between 1504 and 1513. On a roadside cross about 4 miles south of Drogheda Archbishop Octavian of Armagh promised an indulgence of thirty days to those performing an Our Father and a Hail Mary for the souls of him and his wife. His wife was also dead by June 1513.
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Nicholas Barnewall (1726-1813), 14th Baron Trimlestown
Barnewall, Nicholas (1726-1813), 14th Baron Trimlestown. Elder son of Richard Barnewall (fl. 1726-68) and his wife Frances, daughter of Nicholas Barnewall, 3rd Viscount Barnewall of Kingsland, born 29 June 1726. He was a leading figure in freemasonry in Toulouse until he fled to England from the French Revolution in about 1790. He succeeded his cousin as 14th Baron, 24/29 December 1796. In 1799 he was President of the Bath Harmonic Society and presumably then living in that city. He married 1st, 1 November 1768, Maria Henrietta (c.1730-82), only daughter of Joseph d’Auguin, President of the Parliament of Toulouse (France), and 2nd, 8 August 1797, Alicia (1773-1860), second daughter of Lt-Gen. Charles Eustace of Robertstown (Co. Kildare), and had issue: (1.1) Richard Barnewall (b. 1770), born August 1770; died in infancy; (1.2) Hon. Rosalie Barnewall (c.1771-1864), born about 1771; married, 3 December 1795, Peter, Count D’Alton (d. 1851) of Grenanstown (Co. Tipperary), and had issue two sons and one daughter; died in Florence (Italy), 2 February 1864; (1.3) John Thomas Barnewall (1773-1839), 15th Baron Trimlestown (q.v.). After his marriage, he lived at the Chateau Lamirolles, Verdun-sur-Garonne until the French Revolution, when he fled to England, and he subsequently divided his time between England and Ireland. He inherited Turvey House and the Barnewall estates at Roebuck (Co. Dublin) and in Galway and Offaly on the death of the 5th Viscount Barnewall of Kingsland in 1800, and entailed these estates on his male heirs in 1812. He fitted up one room in Roebuck Castle as a theatre before 1795, but sold the castle soon after 1800. In London he had a town house in Portland Place by 1810. He died 17 April 1813. His will, which made extensive provision for his widow, was proved in Dublin in 1813 but contested by his son, and although a compromise was agreed in 1833 she did not actually receive anything until 1847! His first wife died in May 1782. His widow married 2nd, 24 July 1814 at Donabate (Co. Dublin), Lt-Gen. Sir Evan Lloyd (1768-1846) of Ferney Hall (Shrops.) and had issue one son and two daughters; she died at Stanton Lacy House (Shrops.), 25 November 1860.
Barnewall, John Thomas (1773-1839), 15th Baron Trimlestown. Only surviving son of Nicholas Barnewall (1726-1813), 14th Baron Trimlestown, and his first wife, Maria Henrietta, only daughter of Joseph d’Auguin of Toulouse (France), born in France, 29 January 1773. Member of the Royal Irish Academy. In 1812 The Globe noted that he had ‘distinguished himself by some eloquent and impressive addresses’ at popular assemblies in support of Catholic emancipation. He succeeded his father as 15th Baron, 17 April 1813, but was aggrieved by the terms of his will, which he felt made an unreasonably generous provision for his stepmother. He accordingly tried to have the will overturned on the grounds of her undue influence, and the matter was not finally settled until shortly before his death; he was also at law with his stepmother in a dispute over the arrangements for the payment of her jointure, which was not settled until 1843. He seems also, from the terms of his will, to have fallen out with his son and daughter-in-law, who received no share of his personal effects. He married, 16 January 1793, Maria Theresa (d. 1824), daughter of the Irish scientist and eccentric, Richard Kirwan of Cregg Castle (Co. Galway), and had issue: (1) Thomas Barnewall (1796-1879), 16th Baron Trimlestown (q.v.); (2) Hon. Martha Henrietta Barnewall (1800-36), baptised at Bath RC Church, 28 July 1800; died unmarried in Bath, 10 April 1836. After the death of his wife he apparently solaced himself with mistresses: his ‘dear friend’ Eugenia Ponti who lived with him in Naples (to whom he left 50,000 francs*), ‘Heloisa Goury Widow Parry’ in London, who was one of his principal legatees, and Caroline, Marquise de Bailliet in Paris (to whom he left 40,000 francs*). He inherited Turvey House from his father in 1813. He had a house in London, adjoining Grosvenor House, which was purchased after his death by the Marquess of Westminster and demolished to allow the enlargement of Grosvenor House. He seems also to have had a house in Paris, the contents of which were dispersed to friends and relatives by his will, and at the time of his death he was living at the Palazzo Calabritti in Naples. He died in Naples (Italy), 7 October 1839; his will was proved 18 February 1840. His wife died 10 September or 12 October 1824. * 50,000 fr. was about £2,000 and 40,000 fr. about £1,600 at the then prevailing rate of exchange.
Barnewall, Thomas (1796-1879), 16th Baron Trimlestown. Only son of John Thomas Barnewall (1773-1839), 15th Baron Trimlestown, and his wife Maria Theresa, daughter of Richard Kirwan of Cregg (Co. Galway), born 14 April 1796. High Sheriff of Co. Dublin, 1830. He succeeded his father as 16th Baron, 7 October 1839, and continued his father’s legal dispute with his grandfather’s widow until judgement was finally given against him in 1843. He was a founder member of the Society for Irishmen in London, 1844, and in 1848 was one of the few Catholic gentry to join the nationalist Irish Confederacy. He married, 3 November 1836 at Twickenham (Middx), Margaret Randalina (d. 1872), daughter of Philip Roche, and had issue: (1) A son (b. & d. 1837), born 22 August 1837; died in infancy, 27 August 1837; (2) Hon. Anna Maria Louisa Barnewall (1839-1914), born 8 May 1839; married, 4 June 1868, Robert Henry Elliot DL (1837-1914) of Clifton Park (Roxburghs.) and Ballybrittas (Co. Offaly), and had issue one son; died at sea on S.S. Arabia, 16 April 1914 and was buried at Linton (Roxburghs.); her will was confirmed 27 January 1915 (estate £1,475). He inherited Turvey House from his father in 1839, but leased it out. His gave up the lease on his father’s London town house in exchange for what is now 129 Park Lane, which he remodelled in 1853 to the designs of Thomas Cundy II (for the Grosvenor estate) and George Legg (for Lord Trimlestown). He died 4 August 1879 and was buried at Linton; his will was proved 6 September 1879 (effects in England under £80,000; in Ireland, £6,518). His wife died at Ryde (Isle of Wight), 4 September 1872; administration of her goods was granted 17 December 1872 (effects under £9,000).
Barnewall, Hon. Patrick (b. c.1600). Second son of Robert Barnewall (c.1574-1639), 7th Baron Trimlestown, and his wife Genet, daughter of Thomas Talbot of Dardistown (Co. Meath), born in or shortly before 1600. He married 1st, Katherine, daughter of Robert Barnewall of Bremore (Co. Dublin) and 2nd, Katherine, daughter of Mathew King of Co. Kildare, and had issue: (1.1) Christopher Barnewall (fl. 1670) (q.v.). His date of death is unknown. His first wife’s date of death is unknown. His second wife’s date of death is unknown.
Barnewall, Christopher (fl. 1670). Only recorded son of the Hon. Patrick Barnewall (fl. 1600) and his first wife, Katherine, daughter of Robert Barnewall of Bremore (Co. Dublin). He married 1st, [forename unknown], daughter of Gerald Nangle of Kildalkey (Co. Meath), and 2nd, 1670, Jane, daughter of Edward Tuite of Trimlestown, and had issue including: (1.1) Richard Barnewall (d. 1718) (q.v.); (1.2) Patrick Barnewall; died without issue; (1.3) Garrett Barnewall; (1.4) Peter Barnewall. He lived at Woodtown (Co. Meath). His date of death is unknown. His wife’s date of death is unknown.
Barnewall, Richard (d. 1718). Eldest son of Christopher Barnewall and his wife, [forename unknown], daughter of Gerald Nangle of Kildalkey (Co. Meath). He married 1st, Aminett, sister of James Barnewall of Bremore (Co. Dublin) and widow of James Caddell, and 2nd, 3 March 1712, Bridget (d. 1755), daughter of Henry Piers of Ballydrimney (Co. Meath), and had issue: (1.1) Elizabeth Barnewall; married Henry Plunkett; (2.1) Christopher Barnewall (b. 1715) (q.v.); (2.2) Anne Barnewall (d. 1740); died unmarried. He lived at Clonylogan. He died in February 1717/8. His first wife died before 1712. His widow married 2nd, 1723, Robert Barnewall (b. 1702) of Moyrath (Co. Meath), son of Bartholomew Barnewall of Ballyhost (Co. Westmeath) and had further issue one son; she died in 1755.
Barnewall, Christopher (b. 1715). Only son of Richard Barnewall (d. 1718) and his second wife, Bridget, daughter of Henry Piers of Ballydrimney (Co. Meath), born 1715. He married Cecilia, daughter of Matthew Dowdall of Clone (Co. Meath) and had issue: (1) Richard Barnewall (c.1744-1827) (q.v.); (2) Anne Barnewall; married, 13 October 1777, Columbus Drake (1750-1806) of Roristown (Co. Meath), elder son of Patrick Drake of Drakerath (Co. Meath), and had issue two sons and three daughters. He lived at Fyanstown. His date of death is unknown. His wife’s date of death is unknown.
Barnewall, Richard (c.1744-1826). Only son of Christopher Barnewall (b. 1715) and his wife Cecilia, daughter of Matthew Dowdall of Clone (Co. Meath), born about 1744. In 1812, the 14th Baron settled the Turvey House estate on him and his descendants so that it continued to accompany the Trimlestown peerage. He married, 1764. Katherine (d. 1823?), daughter of George Byrne of Seatown, Dundalk (Co. Louth) and had issue: (1) Christopher Barnewall (1765-1849) (q.v.); (2) Patrick Barnewall (c.1773-1854); lived at Causestown; married Barbara (d. 1862), daughter of Thomas Everard of Randalstown (Co. Meath) but had no issue; died at Dalkey (Co. Dublin), 4 August 1854; (3) Joseph Barnewall (1781-1852) [for whom see below, Barnewall of Bloomsbury]; (4) Cecilia Barnewall; married 1st, John Connolly of New Haggard (Co. Meath) and 2nd, Charles Nangle (c.1786-1847) of New Haggard and Kildalkey, son of Walter Nangle, who died bankrupt. He lived at Fyanstown. He died aged 82 at Greenanstown (Co. Meath) in June 1826. His wife is said to have died in 1823.
Barnewall, Christopher (1765-1849). Eldest son of Richard Barnewall (c.1744-1826) and his wife Katherine, daughter of George Byrne of Seatown, Dundalk (Co. Louth), born 3 September 1765. He married, November 1793, Anne (1772-1819?), daughter of Charles Aylmer of Painstown, and had issue including: (1) Esmay Mary Catherine Barnewall (1794-1879), born October 1794; married, 29 September 1836 at Ardbraccan (Co. Meath), Sir Aylmer John Barnewall (1789-1838), 9th bt., of Greenanstown (Co. Meath), and had issue one son; died in London, 5 March 1879, and was buried at Kensal Green Cemetery; (2) Charles Barnewall (c.1800-73) (q.v.); (3) Cecilia Barnewall (c.1801-82); died unmarried aged 80 in Dublin, 3 January 1882; (4) Anne Barnewall (b. c.1803), born about 1803; died unmarried and possibly young; (5) Jane Barnewall (c.1804-81); died unmarried, 20 January 1881; (6) Richard Barnewall (c.1806-89), born about 1806; died 11 March 1889; (7) Mary Barnewall (b. c.1808), born about 1808; died unmarried and possibly young. He lived at Meadstown (Co. Meath), where he was a tenant in 1805 but may have purchased the freehold when it was sold in that year. He died in Dublin aged 84 on 14 August 1849. His wife is said to have died 14 August 1819.
Barnewall, Charles (c.1800-73). Elder son of Christopher Barnewall (c.1775-1849) and his wife Anne, daughter of Charles Aylmer of Painstown, born about 1800. JP for Co. Meath. In 1836 he was a member of the provisional committee promoting the Dublin & Drogheda Railway. Throughout his life, he was a locally prominent leader of the Catholic causes and campaigns, including those for the repeal of the Union, opposition to tithes and securing the rights of Catholic tenants. He married 1st, Katherine, daughter of John Connolly of New Haggard (Co. Meath) and 2nd, 9 October 1844 at St Michan’s RC Church, Dublin, Letitia (c.1825-86), daughter of Gerald Aylmer of Lyons, and had issue: (2.1) Hon. Katherine Barnewall (1845-1928); a nun at Wicklow as Sister Mary Dominic; granted the rank of a baron’s daughter, 2 August 1893; died 15 July 1928; (2.2) Christopher Patrick Mary Barnewall (1846-91), de jure 17th Baron Trimlestown (q.v.); (2.3) Hon. Anna Maria Barnewall (1848-1930), baptised 8 October 1848 at Templenoe (Co. Kerry); granted the rank of a baron’s daughter, 2 August 1893; died unmarried, 10 November 1930; will proved 13 January 1931 (estate £548); (2.4) Hon. Esmay (aka Esmina) Barbara Mary Barnewall (1850-1910), baptised at St Michael’s RC church, Kingstown, Dublin, 30 May 1850; granted the rank of a baron’s daughter, 2 August 1893; married, 21 November 1883 at St Andrew RC Church, Dublin, Nicholas Francis Haly Coppinger (1831-1905) of Monkstown (Co. Dublin) and had issue one son and one daughter; committed suicide, 6 April 1910; administration of goods (with will annexed) granted 27 April 1910 (estate £2,474); (2.5) Hon. Mary Jane Barnewall (1851-1919), baptised at St Michael’s RC church, Kingstown, Dublin, 11 September 1851; a sister of Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Lismore, New South Wales (Australia) as Sister Berchmans; granted the rank of a baron’s daughter, 2 August 1893; died 18 August 1919; (2.6) Hon. Helen Cecilia Mary Barnewall (1853-1936), baptised at St Michael’s RC church, Kingstown, Dublin, 22 November 1853; granted the rank of a baron’s daughter, 2 August 1893; died unmarried, 14 October 1936; will proved 19 December 1936 (estate £6,201); (2.7) Hon. Letitia Fanny Barnewall (1855-1933), born 12 February and baptised at St Michael’s RC church, Kingstown, Dublin, 18 February 1855; a sister of Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Lismore, New South Wales as Sister Ignatius; granted the rank of a baron’s daughter, 2 August 1893; died 31 January 1933; (2.8) Gerald Aylmer Barnewall (1856-71), born 8 May and baptised at St Michael’s RC church, Kingstown, Dublin, 13 May 1856; died young, 2 July 1871; (2.9) Hon. Angelina Barnewall (b. 1857), baptised at St Michael’s RC church, Kingstown, Dublin, 7 October 1857; a Sister of Mercy at Arklow (Co. Wicklow); granted the rank of a baron’s daughter, 2 August 1893; death not traced; (2.10) Hon. Cecilia Mary Barnewall (1859-1908), baptised at St Michael’s RC church, Kingstown, Dublin, 6 May 1859; granted the rank of a baron’s daughter, 2 August 1893; married, 5 October 1907, Maj. Henry Chamney CMG, son of Rev. Joseph Chamney DD of Ard Ronan (Co. Louth); died without issue at Rustenberg, Transvaal (South Africa), 11 July 1908; will proved 17 April 1909 (estate £635); (2.11) Hon. Marcella Mary Barnewall (1862-1930), born 10 October and baptised at Dalkey (Co. Dublin), 16 October 1862; granted the rank of a baron’s daughter, 2 August 1893; died unmarried, 29 October 1930; will proved 12 December 1930 (estate £1,234); (2.12) Charles Aloysius Barnewall (1861-1937), 18th Baron Trimlestown (q.v.); (2.13) Hon. Margaret Barnewall (1864-1916), born at Athboy (Co. Meath), 31 January 1864; granted the rank of a baron’s daughter, 2 August 1893; married, 19 January 1899 at St Andrew RC Church, Dublin, Bertrand Thomas Lambert (who m2, 12 June 1923 Julia More-O’Ferrell), son of Ambrose Lambert, but had no issue; died 17 July 1916; will proved 5 September 1916 (estate £287). He lived at Meadstown and had a house at 72 Eccles St., Dublin. He died in Dublin, 2 May 1873; administration of his goods was granted 9 February 1881 (effects under £200). His widow died 3 March 1886.
Barnewall, Christopher Patrick Mary (1846-91), de jure 17th Baron Trimlestown. Eldest son of Charles Barnewall (d. 1873) of Meadstown and his second wife Letitia, daughter of Gerald Aylmer of Lyons, born 6 October 1846. He succeeded his distant cousin as 17th Baron, 4 August 1879, but did not seek to prove his title to the peerage until 1889 and died before the process was completed. He was unmarried and without issue. He inherited Turvey House from the 16th Baron in 1879, but the property was let throughout his tenure. He died 10 September 1891; his will was proved 29 October 1891 (estate £2,202).
Barnewall, Charles Aloysius (1861-1937), 18th Baron Trimlestown. Third son of Charles Barnewall (d. 1873) of Meadstown and his second wife Letitia, daughter of Gerald Aylmer of Lyons, born 14 May and baptised at St Michael’s RC church, Kingstown, Dublin, 17 May 1861. As a young man he travelled extensively, but after his brother’s death he returned from Australia to Ireland. His elder brother having died in 1891 without establishing his right to the peerage, he proved his claim in 1893 and succeeded as 18th Baron. DL for Co. Dublin. He was a director of the Old Bushmills Distillery Company (resigned 1898). He married 1st, 26 October 1889, Margaret Theresa (c.1869-1901), daughter of Richard John Stephens of Brisbane, Queensland (Australia), 2nd, 10 December 1907, Mabel Florence (d. 1914), daughter of William Robert Shuff of Torquay (Devon), and 3rd, 12 August 1930 at Christ Church, Eltham (Kent), Josephine Francesca (d. 1945), daughter of Rt. Hon. Sir Christopher John Nixon, 1st bt., Vice-Chancellor of the National University of Ireland, and had issue: (1.1) Hon. Ivy Esmay Myee Barnewall (1890-1971), born 14 September 1890; married 1st, 30 April 1917, John Radcliff (d. 1953) of Nigerian civil service, eldest son of George Edward Radcliff JP of Wilmount, Kells (Co. Meath) and had issue one son (killed in action in Second World War); married 2nd, 30 April 1956, John Kidd (d. 1958), son of Thomas Kidd of Linares (Spain); said to have died in 1971, possibly in Cape Town (South Africa); (1.2) Hon. Marcella Hilda Charlotte Barnewall (1893-1965), born 29 June 1893; married, 4 July 1917, Maj. Charles Bathurst MC (d. 1942), son of Lancelot Bathurst, but had no issue; died 11 September 1965; (1.3) Hon. Letitia Anne Margaret Barnewall (1895-1938), born 23 September 1895; married, 11 June 1919 at Corpus Christi RC church, Maiden Lane, London, Lt-Col. Cuthbert Hanson Townsend (1872-1956) of Ewell (Surrey), son of Vice-Adm. Samuel Philip Townsend, and had issue one son; died 2 May 1938; will proved 12 July 1938 (estate £2,645); (1.4) Hon. Reginald Nicholas Francis Mary Barnewall (1897-1918), born 24 September 1897; an officer in the Leinster Regiment (Capt.) in First World War; died unmarried in the lifetime of his father when he died of wounds received in action, 24 March 1918; buried at Bronfay Farm Military Cemetery, Bray-sur-Somme (France); administration of goods granted 19 July 1918 (estate £1,908); (1.5) Charles Aloysius Barnewall (1899-1990), 19th Baron Trimestown (q.v.); (1.6) Hon. Geraldine Christina Marjory Barnewall (1900-02), born 14 June 1900; died young, 23 June 1902. He inherited Turvey House, which was tenanted, from his father in 1891, but sold it in c.1902. In 1907 he inherited Bloomsbury House from his distant cousin, Katherine Barnewall (c.1824-1907), but he sold it in about 1920. He lived at Loughlinstown (Co. Dublin) and in London, and is said to have still owned 6,000 acres in Ireland at the time of his death. He died 26 January 1937 and was buried at Mortlake (Surrey), 3 February 1937. His first wife died 9 January 1901. His second wife died 16 March 1914; her will was proved 25 April 1914 (estate £1,234 in England and £1,427 in Ireland). His widow died 15 June 1945; her will was proved 11 January 1946 (estate £9,452).
Barnewall, Charles Aloysius (1899-1990), 19th Baron Trimlestown. Second but eldest surviving son of Charles Aloysius Barnewall (1861-1937), 18th Baron Trimlestown, and his first wife Margaret Theresa, daughter of Richard John Stephens of Brisbane, Queensland (Australia), born 2 June 1899. Educated at Ampleforth. He served as an officer in the Irish Guards (2nd Lt.) in the First World War. He succeeded his father as 19th Baron, 26 January 1937. He married 1st, 16 June 1926, Muriel (1894-1937), only child of Edward Oskar Schneider of Mansfield Lodge, Whalley Range, Manchester, and 2nd, 7 May 1952, Freda Kathleen (1911-87), daughter of Alfred Allan Watkins of Ross-on-Wye (Herefs), and had issue: (1.1) Anthony Edward Barnewall (1928-97), 20th Baron Trimlestown, born 2 February 1928; educated at Ampleforth; served in the Irish Guards, 1946-48, and was a naval architect, 1949-53; sales executive with P&O Shipping Company, 1965-74; succeeded his father as 20th Baron, 9 October 1990; lived at Boxford (Suffk) and later at Grand Rapids, Michigan (USA); married 1st, 30 September 1963 (div. 1973), Lorna Margaret Marion (1934-88), daughter of Charles Douglas Ramsey and 2nd, 14 May 1977, Mary Wonderly (1925-2006), elder daughter of Judge Thomas Francis McAllister of Grand Rapids, Michigan and formerly wife of Frederick Reese Brown (1915-2007), but had no issue; died 21 August 1997; (1.2) Hon. Diana Barnewall (b. 1929), born 13 October 1929; lived at Farnham (Surrey) and later at Rogate (Sussex); married, 30 October 1954 at the Brompton Oratory, London, Anthony Gerard Astley Birtwhistle (b. 1928), youngest son of James Astley Birtwhistle of Hoghton (Lancs) and Wroxham (Oxon), and had issue four daughters; (1.3) Raymond Charles Barnewall (b. 1930), 21st Baron Trimlestown (q.v.), born 29 December 1930; educated at Ampleforth; undertook National Service in Northern Ireland, 1949-51; dairy farmer at Dartington (Devon) until retirement; succeeded his elder brother as 21st Baron, 21 August 1997; is unmarried and without issue and has no heir to the peerage. He lived at Epsom (Surrey) and subsequently at Dartington (Devon) and Chiddingfold (Surrey). He died 9 October 1990; will proved 14 November 1990 (estate under £115,000). His first wife died 22 June 1937; her will was proved 13 August 1937 (estate £229). His second wife died 5 May 1987; her will was proved 18 September 1987 (estate under £70,000).
Irish Historic Houses 
