Oak Park, (Painestown), Co Carlow
Bence-Jones, Mark. A Guide to Irish Country Houses (originally published as Burke’s Guide to Country Houses volume 1 Ireland by Burke’s Peerage Ltd. 1978); Revised edition 1988, Constable and Company Ltd, London.
p. 226. “(Bruen/IFR) A large early C19 classical mansion by William Vitruvius Morrison.
It has two storeys, the entrance front having a five-bay central block with a pedimented portico of four huge Ionic columns, prolonged by wings of the same height, at first set back behind short colonnades of coupled columns and then returning forwards with pedimented Wyatt windows in their ends. Rather dull and amorphous thriteen bay garden front, inadequately relieved by having four separate bays breaking forward wiht Wyatt windows, and bay a pair of somewhat paltry single-storey balustraded curved bows. Rich interior plasterwork in Morrison’s characteristic style. Hall with Ionic columns, free-standing, coupled and engaged; frieze of swags; ceiling of geometrical ribs. Damaged by fire ca1910 and afterwards restored; sold ca 1957; now an agricultural research centre.”
Detached five-bay two-storey Classical style country house, c. 1760, with ashlar façade, tetrastyle pedimented Ionic portico and balustraded parapet. Redesigned (externally and internally), c. 1832, with two-storey lateral wings and pavilion blocks added. Designed by the Morrisons. Tripartite windows added, c. 1876. Now in use as school. Group of detached outbuildings to site including two-storey cut stone stable complex, c. 1760, with blind arcade.
Remains of freestanding granite ashlar Greek Revival temple style mausoleum on a raised base, c. 1841, with Doric pilasters and lugged doorcases. Now in ruins. Designed by J. B. Keane.
Protected Structures of Ireland:
The mausoleum dates from circa 1841 and was never completed. It was designed by J.B.Keane, the Morrison’s assistant, and consists of a Greek-revival temple with massive, granite ashlar walls on a raised base. This possibly the largest mausoleum in Ireland. Designs for the mausoleum were exhibited in the Royal Hibernian academy in 1841. The mausoleum has been cleaned recently and is in good order.
Gateway, c. 1835, comprising Classical style triumphal arch with flanking paired giant Ionic columns on pedestals carrying blocked entablature and walled carriage turn to front. Designed by the Morrisons.
Record of Protected Structures:
Oak Park House, Oak Park Demesne, Oak Park.
Townland: Oakpark or Painestown.
An opulent neo-classical composition dating from circa 1832 designed by Sir Richard and William Vitruvius Morrison. Their work completely remodelled a house of circa 1760 and encased it in granite ashlar. The façade is of five bays and two storeys and has a magnificent, ionic portico, cornice and balustrade. The garden front has a pair of single-storey, balustraded bows. Laterally-placed wings, which are connected by colonnades of square-plan piers, were added by McCurdy and Mitchell between 1876 and 1879. Further alterations were carried out after a fire in 1902. The detailing on the house is superb with crisp, granite carving of the Morrison designs maintained by the remodelling in the 1870s when plate-glass sash windows were inserted.
Importance:
National, architectural, interior, social, artistic.
Record of Protected Structures:
Oak Park Walled Garden
And Buildings,
Oak Park Demesne,
Oak Park
The walled garden has a high, stone wall. One side of the wall is next to the avenue leading to the house. On the North side of the garden is a composition with two, gable-fronted buildings which have square-headed doorcases and sidelights on the ground floor and a pair of pointed windows with chamfered, granite dressings on the first floor. The first-floor windows cut a string course which marks the base of the gable. The walls are built of rubble-stone rendered with lime rendering and the roofs are of natural slate with granite coping to the front. The two buildings are linked by a single-storey section. The buildings probably date from the 1830s. This is a very interesting and unusual design which shows the architect engaged in a playful composition.
The Dairy,
Oak Park Demesne,
Carlow
An estate cottage, probably designed by the Morrisons, in tudor-gothic style. It is built of coursed-rubble granite with gables, bow-windows, stair’s turret and single-storey wing. The windows have granite mullions with chamfered dressings as does the square-headed doorcase. The stairs turret has a pointed, stone roof. The roof is covered with natural slate. The house has been closed up for some years
The Old Stable Block,
Oak Park Demesne,
Oak Park
A U-plan stable block with a seven-bay, two-storey façade having a three-bay, recessed centre, painted, smooth-rendered walls, carriage arches on the ground floor, a string-course at impost level and small windows on the first floor. The roof is hipped and covered with natural slates. The return walls have wide, blank arches with the string course running along at impost level so that the head of the arch is glazed and looks like a Diocletian window. The stables appear to date from circa 1820 and because of their sophisticated design could be by the Morrisons at a time that they were working in Borris.
Iron Bridge,
Oak Park Demesne,
Oak Park
A cast-iron, single-arch bridge with serpentine, entwined ornamentation, banded, granite piers and dating from circa 1835. It was designed by George Papworth. A very important iron bridge of unusual design.
Jimmy O’Toole, The Carlow Gentry: What will the neighbours say! Published by Jimmy O’Toole, Carlow, Ireland, 1993. Printed by Leinster Leader Ltd, Naas, Kildare.
Chapter: Bruen of Oak Park
p. 53 [p. 51-2 ripped out] :As a result of Captain Bruen’s objection to his daughter’s match, local rector Canon Ridgeway refused to marry the couple, who then eloped to England, but when they returned to Carlow some weeks later, still not married, Canon Ridgeway relented, ignored the Captain’s protests, and performed the wedding ceremony in 1939…. Now he was alone in Oak Park (formerly Painstown), a property first purchased in 1775, by Henry Bruen I, grandson of James Bruen of Tarvin, County Chester, who came to Ireland with the army of Oliver Cromwell, and was granted land at Abbeyboyle, County Roscommon. Henry came to Carlow after a career in the Quarter Master General’s office in the U.S. army, where he made his fortune. The story – embellished, no doubt, by political enemies of the family later – was that while responsible for supplying coffins, he had them designed with false bottoms, which facilitated recycling!
Whatever its source, Bruen certainly had a fortune, and during the last decade of the 1790s, he took full advantage of the forced sales of poart of the Bagenal, Whaley and Grogan estates in County Carlow. He bought 3,702 acres from Thomas “Buck” Whaley of Castletown, who had gambled away his fortune. …Land ownership meant political muscle and in 1790, Henry Bruen I was returned to parliament with William Burton of Burton Hall, in an uncontested election. … Sir Richard Butler, living at Garryhundon at the time, [p. 55] withdrew… in favour of Bruen…. Sir Richard had the “family seat” back within five years following the sudden death fo Colonel Bruen at his Dublin home in North Great George’s Street in 1795….
It was Henry Bruen II who was to put the Bruen stamp firmly on Carlow politics. He was at Harrow with George Gordon Byron, later the poet Lord Byron, and Robert Peel, with whom he would later run shoulders as fellow Tory MPs. Sir Robert was Home Secretary when Catholic Emancipation was granted, a Bill supported by Henry Bruen. He opposed the Tithe system, which he described a “badly devised and tending towards the production of much evil…” He was first elected, unopposed in 1812, at the age of 22 – the first of 13 elections in which he was involved over forty years. …Prior to the 1830s, party politics as we know them today did not exist, and when polling took place, the choice was between Tory candidates of varying political views. Where there were agreed candidates for the two county seats MPs were returned without a contest.
But politics were about to change dramatically in County Carlow – albeit for a relatively short period – following Catholic emancipation and the leadership of Daniel O’Connell. However, with the exception of two brief periods, Bruen survived the political trauma and turmoil of the 1930s, and held a seat continuously btween 1840 and his death in 1852… The campaign had been so intense in 1831, that Bruen and his running mate Horace Rochfort, withdrew the night before the poll.
But it was the election of 1841 that was to make Henry Bruen II a hero among Conservative voters throughout the country. He partnered Thomas Bunbury of Moyle, to defeat the high profile Daniel O’Connell (Jr), the son of the Liberator, and John Ashton Yates…Intimidation was an acceptable weapon. At a meeting in Carlow town, Daniel O’Connell Jr suggested the use of cribs or pens in churches where Catholic voters, who refused to come onto the Liberal side, [p. 56] could be corralled during mass, to underline their support for landlords. O’Connell could hardly have been unaware of the fact that such actions would lead to violence, and among Catholics at that. “Cooping” was another practice on both sides, where voters, for their own protection, were locked up dring thedays preceding polling to prevent them being intimidated, or physically attacked. Abduction too was practised to prevent voters getting to the polls.
On June 26th – five days before the election – more than 250 Catholic voters armed to a man, were under the protection of a squadron of cavalry at Borris House. Few of these abductions were reported to the police, suggesting most of them were of theirown free will, but whether it was out of fear of their landlord, and clan loyalty, in this case to the Kavanaghs, would be impossible to determine.
The Liberals kept their captured voters in a disused brewery in Kilkenny where they were looked after by the local liberal organisation, the Kilkenny Citizens Club. Atone stage, there were 120 voters in the brewery, consuming enormous quantities of food, and being entertained by the teetotal bands. A Tory pamphlet entitled “The Reign of Terror in Carlow” reported that on Juen 27th “A boatload of voters was brought along the canal from Leighlibridge to Bagenalstown. The teetotal band at Leighlinbridge played sacred music to drown the groans of the imprisoned electors in the lumberboat. The miserable electors were tied, guarded by armed men, and commanded by two priests, Fr Murphy and Fr Mahon.”
p. 57….Bruen called the Catholics ‘savages’ during a parliamentary debate. The liberal Leinster Reformer attacked the St. Mullins voters – mostly tenants and supporters of Kavanagh’s – proclaiming “thre are some vile traitors for lucre among he wretched serfs of Lady Harriet Kavanagh, or rather the wretched serfs of Doyne (Charles “Silky” Doyne), for hie is lord and master.” Onn the eve of the election , the St. Mullins voters were lodged at Strawhall House, where they were visited by O’Connell in a last ditch effort to persuade them to change sides – he did not succeed.”
“The clergy in most parishes, lad by Bishop James Doyle, threw their considerable weight behind the Liberal cause, and it was because of this support that Daniel O’Connell could advocate the use of cribs in churches as a form of punishment…a crib was erected in Tinryland church for what were termed “the black sheep who voted Tory.”…
On the same Sunday, James Prendergast, whose brother voted Tory, was turned out of Clonegal church…children were turned out of school due to parents votes… Immediately after the election, unprecendented persecution of Bruenite voters commenced, according to P.J. Kavanagh… Andrew Marshall, a Bruen tenant,, was beaten by a mob at the Royal Oak, and in Hacketstown, Brian Kelly, who was rescued from a mob before the election, was stoned afterwards by a mob of thirty. In Leighlinbridge, William Bergin was attacked by 300 people because he voted Tory.
P.J. Kavanagh claims there was no proof of any landlord vengeance having taken place after the election…
p. 59. Henry III (1828-1912) was back in the House of Commons in 1857, and held his seat until 1880, whe, with Arthur McMurrough-Kavanagh, both sitting MPs, they were heavily defeated by Home Rule candidates E.D. Gray and D.H. MacFarlane. That election was a key bench mark… it ended the stranglehold of landlords on the national political system in Ireland.”
Just as the influence of the Bruens had grown both economically and politically over the years from 1775, so too did their mansionhome at Oak Park. The present house is the result of four periods of enlargement and remodelling carried out between 1797 and 1902. 22 years after he arrived, Henry I …decorated the house previously occupied by the Cookes. In 1832, Henry II commissioned William Morrison to remodel the house, and in 1876 builder Samuel Bolton signed a contract for a major extension, which took three years to complete… in 1902, the house was gutted by fire, and when the outbreak was brought under control eight hours later, all that remained intact was the north wing. Head housemaid Lucy Fleming, who raised the alarm, said she was awakened by what appeared to be the noise of intruders – suggesting that the fire may have been deliberate…. The house was rebuilt under the supervision of architect William Mitchell, who was responsible for extensive interior re-design work. The family moved to the dower house at Strawhall during the rebuilding.
p. 60. After WWI, sometimes as many as 6-8 planes would land in thefield, army officers coming to Oak Park from Dubil for a party.
In 1922 Henry Bruen IV leased the deer park to Carlow golf club and an 18 hole course was developed.
http://www.igp-web.com/Carlow/oak_park.htm
Oak Park House in Carlow town is probably the finest 18th/19th Century house in south east Ireland. The house itself is of huge architectural and historical significance. There are 700 acres of woodland and open pasture including a lake.
The history of Oak Park (once known as Painestown) has been known since 1775 when the park was in the possession of the Bruen family, until the death of Arthur Bruen in 1954. In 1960 it was sold to the Irish Land Commission and opened the National Teagasc Tillage Research Centre there. Farmers from the west of Ireland bought small pieces of land to farm, thanks to loans. So every year the farmers had to pay back the Land Commission a sum on the size of their holding.
The Bruen Family purchased Oak Park, formerly known as Painestown around the year 1775. In 1832, Henry Bruen commissioned William Vitruvius Morrison to redesign the house. It is remodelled in the classical style and retains the existing house as its central component. The front façade features a two-storey Ionic portico set on a pedestal. Today Oak Park House and demesne is the property of Teagasc – the agricultural research body. It has recently become the administrative headquarters for Teagasc.
Stable complex, built c1765, comprising two-storey cut stone building with round-headed blind arches and three-bay gable-fronted buildings opposite. Renovated, c1985, with openings remodelled.
The Mausoleum
The Mausoleum is a large structure located in the woods, approximately 500 metres north-west of Oak Park House. It was designed in 1841 by the architect John B. Keane in the style of a Greek Peripteral Temple. Keane was initially a draughtsman with the Morrisons and probably got the commission because of this. The exact purpose for its construction is unknown but it is possible that Henry Bruen II commissioned it as a memento of his victory over Daniel O‟ Connell Jnr. In the Westminster election of 1841. The Temple was never completed and it was later used as a Mausoleum. The last two Henry Bruens and their wives are buried in the Mausoleum.
The Graveyard and Church are located in the Farmyard about 400 metres south of Oak Park House. The origin of the small ruined Church is uncertain. It is most likely that some stage it was used as a private Chapel for early Coke (or Cooke) landlords who were Catholic. An engraved stone slab with the date 1670 was found during a clean-up but according to some experts there are indications that part of the ruins date to an earlier period. Two table-tombs within the ruins contain the remains of some of the Coke who owned Oak Park.
The Arch, Oak Park, designed by William Vitruvius Morrison which is at the entrance to Oak Park House and demesne. It remains to this day a magnificent example of a Triumphal Arch. The arch is flanked by paired Ionic columns on the front elevation with Doric columns on the back flank of the Arch. The columns are raised on pedestals. Both sides of the Arch carry a full entablature. On the approach from the Carlow side, is a carriage turn surrounded by a high granite wall.
Revealing the story of Oak Park House
By Suzanne Render
This item was previously published in the Nationalist 10th March 2000.
ONE NEVER fails but to be impressed by the grandeur and splendour of Oak Park House. Imposing itself on the landscape amid hundreds of the country’s most fertile agricultural acres, its reputation as a centre for agricultural research is unrivalled.
But what of the origins of Oak Park House?
Continuing in its series of fascinating lectures, the Old Carlow Society will host an evening devoted to Oak Park House and lands on March 15 at 8pm.
The lecture will be given by Paddy Comeford, a retired station manager at Oak Park who will discuss the building itself, the families that live there and the house’s progression from the seat of a landlord’s family to a modern research centre run by Teagasc. An interesting aspect of the lecture is that it will be held in
Oak Park House itself, thus adding atmosphere to the occasion.
Having worked in Oak Park House from 1961 to 1998, Paddy’s interest in the building’s rich history quickly developed. Over the years he has extensively researched the families who lived in the house and the development of the estate which originally consisted of approx. 1600 acres.
Paddy will guide those who attend the lecture through the history of Oak Park House, first lived in by the Cooke family and from 1775 onwards five generations of the family of Henry Bruen.
The original Oak Park property purchased by the first Bruen consisted of 6000 acres, by 1843 this had increased to 21,000 acres.
Paddy will reveal that when the last Henry Bruen died in 1954 he left the property to his first cousin Francis Bruen, a move zealously contested legally by his daughter.
A court case ordered everything to be sold and the proceeds divided evenly between both parties, thus leading to the end of Oak Park House at a residence.
At the auction the land was purchased by Brownshill Farms which a number of years later was taken over by the Land Commission. In the division that followed, An Foras Taluntais purchased the building. In subsequent years An Foras Taluntais joined with Acot to form Teagasc.
Today the exterior of Oak Park House remains the same as when it was occupied by the Bruens. The inside, however, has changed substantially, with most of the upstairs converted into offices and laboratories.
Source: The Nationalist 10th March 2000. & Michael Purcell
http://lordbelmontinnorthernireland.blogspot.com/2015/04/oak-park.html
THE BRUENS WERE THE LARGEST LANDOWNERS IN COUNTY CARLOW, WITH 16,477 ACRES
JAMES BRUEN, said to have been of Tarvin, Cheshire, went to Ireland in Cromwell’s Army and settled at Abbeyboyle, County Roscommon.
He was administrator to his brother, Henry Bruen, of Dublin, in 1700.
His son,
MOSES BRUEN, of Boyle, County Roscommon, purchased land and property in counties Carlow and Wexford from the Beaucamp, Grogan and Whaley families.
Thereafter, the family settled at Oak Park, County Carlow, and Coolbawn, County Wexford.
This Moses, who died in 1757, left issue,
Moses;
HENRY, of Oak Park;
Bridget; Mary; Elinor Catherine; Margaret; Elizabeth.
The second son,
COLONEL HENRY BRUEN MP (1741-95), of Oak Park, MP for Jamestown, 1783-90, County Carlow, 1790-95, removed, about 1775, to estates which he purchased in County Carlow.
He married, in 1787, Harriette Dorothea, daughter of Francis Knox, of Rappa Castle, County Mayo, and had issue,
HENRY, his heir;
John, of Coolbawn;
Francis, of Coolbawn;
Maria; Margaret; Harriett.
The son and heir,
COLONEL HENRY BRUEN (1789-1852), of Oak Park, and Coolbawn, County Wexford, married, in 1822, Anne Wandesforde, daughter of Thomas Kavanagh MP, of Borris House, County Carlow, by Lady Elizabeth his wife, daughter of John, 17th Earl of Ormonde, and had issue,
HENRY, of Oak Park;
Elizabeth; Harriet; Anne.
Colonel Bruen was succeeded by his only son,
THE RT HON HENRY BRUEN JP DL (1828-1912), of Oak Park and Coolbawn, MP for Carlow, 1857-80, High Sheriff of County Carlow, 1853, Privy Counsellor, who married, in 1854, Mary Margaret, third daughter of Colonel Edward M Conolly MP, of Castletown, County Kildare, and had issue,
HENRY, his heir;
Edward Francis, Captain RN;
John Richard;
Arthur Thomas;
Charles;
Katherine Anne; Mary Susan; Elizabeth; Eleanor; Helen; Grace.
Mr Bruen was succeeded by his eldest son,
HENRY BRUEN (1856-1927), of Oak Park, and Coolbawn, Lieutenant, Royal Artillery, High Sheriff of County Carlow, 1886, Wexford, 1909, who wedded, in 1886, Agnes Mary, youngest daughter of the Rt Hon Arthur M Kavanagh, of Borris, County Carlow, and had issue,
HENRY ARTHUR BRUEN (1887-1954), of Oak Park, Captain, 15th Hussars, who wedded, in 1913, Jane Catherine Gladys, daughter of Arthur George Florence McClintock, and had issue,
GLADYS PATRICIA BREUN (1914-), of Oak Park, who married, in 1939, Mervyn Anthony Arthur Rudyerd Boyse, son of Major Henry Thomas Arthur Shapland Hunt Boyse. They had four sons.
She lived in 1976 at Maryvale, Church Road, Ballybrack, County Dublin.
OAK PARK, near Carlow town, is a large Victorian classical house by W V Morrison.
It has two storeys, the entrance front having a five-bay central block with a pedimented portico of four huge Ionic columns.
The main block is prolonged by wings of the same height, initially set back though returning forwards with Wyatt windows at their ends.
The garden front of thirteen bays is duller in appearance.
The interior has splendid plasterwork in the style of Morrison; while the Hall boasts giant, free-standing Ionic columns.
Part of the former Oak Park estate, once the home of the Bruen Family, from 1775 to 1957, is now the 127 acre Oak Park Forest Park.
The Oak Park demesne was bought by Colonel Henry Bruen in 1775, after making his fortune in the American Army.
He was the grandson of James Bruen, of Tarvin, Cheshire, who came to Ireland with Oliver Cromwell and received land at Abbeyboyle, County Roscommon.
The Bruens intermarried with the County Mayo families, Knox of Rappa and Ruttledge of Bloomfield.
HMS Drake, the wreck of which lies at Church Bay, Rathlin Island, was torpedoed in 1917. One of her Captains was Edward Bruen, son of the MP. He was Captain when the ship was flagship on the Australian station circa 1912/13.
The Senior Naval Officer in Australia at the time was Admiral King-Hall (Admiral Sir George Fowler King-Hall KCB CVO) who had a very strong Ulster connection. Captain Edward Bruen RN was married to Olga Ker, one of the Montalto and Portavo family.
Captain Bruen later went on to command HMS Bellerophon at the Battle of Jutland.
The Bruen estate was mainly in the counties of Carlow and Wexford where they had houses at Oakpark in Carlow and at Coolbawn, Enniscorthy.
Francis Bruen was married to Catherine Anne Nugent, daughter of the Earl of Westmeath.
Three townlands in the barony of Athenry were offered for sale in the Landed Estates court in 1866.
All this land gave the Bruen family political power and, in 1790, Henry Bruen was returned to Parliament, winning the seat of a neighbouring family, the Butlers.
However, the Butlers reclaimed their seat five years later with the sudden death of the Colonel in December, 1795.
This allowed his son, also called Henry, to assume control of the estate.
The Bruen estate in County Galway amounted to over 700 acres in the 1870s but was part of an estate of almost 25,000 acres in total.
Manuscripts in the Irish Genealogical Office would suggest that the family held lands at Boyle, County Roscommon, in the 18th century.
These lands seem to have been at the centre of a legal case between the Bruen family and Richard St George.
Henry Bruen attended Harrow School alongside the poet Lord Byron and Robert Peel, with whom he would later serve as a Conservative MP.
Peel was Home Secretary at the time of Catholic Emancipation, a Bill which Henry Bruen supported.
Bruen quickly amassed the land surrounding Oak Park.
In 1841, a survey of every Bruen farm revealed that the family’s estates in County Carlow covered 20,089 acres.
In the 1841 election, Henry defeated the Liberal candidate, Daniel O’Connell, Jnr., son of “The Liberator”.
However, the Bruen hold on the seat lapsed with the death of Henry in 1852; but his son, also confusingly called Henry, returned to the House of Commons in 1857 and held his seat until 1880, which marked the end of the family’s 90-year history of political involvement over three generations.
The current mansion house at Oak Park is the result of four periods of expansion and remodelling carried out between 1797 and 1902.
Twenty-two years after he arrived, Henry employed Michael Boylan to redecorate the house.
In 1832, the second Henry Bruen commissioned William Morrison to re-model the house and in 1876 Samuel Bolton, a builder, signed a contract for a major extension, which took three years to complete.
However, on 22nd February, 1902, the house was gutted by fire.
After eight hours of fighting the blaze, all that remained was the north wing. Fortunately, a large number of paintings, furniture and books were saved by the workers.
The house was rebuilt under the supervision of William Mitchell.
The last male Bruen, the fifth Henry, died in 1954.
By then, the estate had reduced in size to a relatively small 1,500 acres.
He left nothing to his estranged daughter Gladys, who had several years earlier married Prince Milo of Montenegro.
The remainder of the estate was bequeathed to a cousin in England, minus a weekly income for life of £6 to his daughter, Patricia.
In 1957, the estate was purchased at auction for £50,555 by Brownes Hill Estates, who already owned the nearby estate in which a Norfolk farmer was principal partner.
However, within three years the property was back on the market after fierce protest from smaller farmers in opposition to the purchase by the Norfolk farmer.
The estate was bought by the Irish Land Commission for £68,000, and seven hundred acres were divided up among small holders, while the house and the remaining land were taken over as a research centre for the Irish Agricultural Institute (Teagasc).
The last member of the Bruen family to be buried in the family’s private burial ground at the Mausoleum was Gladys, the estranged wife of Henry (d 1969).
The Beauties of Ireland, Being Original Delineations, Topographical, Historical, and Biographical, of Each County – James Norris Brewer
“…The family of Coke was seated at Paynestown through many generations. Thomas Coke, Esq. dying without legitimate male issue, his estates passed to the late Earl of Kenmare, by whom this place was sold to the father of the present owner.”
https://theirishaesthete.com/2020/10/03/oak-park-2/
“The façade of Oak Park, County Carlow, designed by William Vitruvius Morrison in the early 1830s for Colonel Henry Bruen. The building incorporates an earlier house and was originally a grand villa, of two storeys and five bays, one on either side of the giant tetrastyle portico. The latter, featuring four Ionic columns with wreaths in the frieze above, is almost identical to that at Ballyfin, County Laois and can also be seen at Barons Court, County Tyrone and Mount Stewart, County Down, on all of which buildings the Morrisons, father and son, worked. Oak Park was greatly extended in the 1870s and also extensively restored after a fire in 1902, but some of the original interior decoration survives, notably in the entrance hall and the former library. The last of the Bruen family to live in the house died in 1954; some time earlier his wife had run away with an impoverished Montenegran prince, Milo Petrovic-Njegos. After various legal disputes and changes of ownership had occurred, Oak Park and several hundred acres was acquired by the Irish State; today it serves as the headquarters of Teagasc, the Agriculture and Food Development Authority.“
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Irish Historic Houses 