Noan, County Tipperary – Irish Historic Houses

Noan, Thurles, Co Tipperary

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. 226. “Taylor/LGI1912; Armitage/IFR) A two storey five bay late-Georgian house. Doorway with large fanlight above 4 engaged Doric columns of stone.”

https://www.buildingsofireland.ie/buildings-search/building/22205409/noan-house-noan-tipperary-south

Detached five-bay two-storey country house, built c. 1810, having slightly projecting central breakfront, to front of multiple-bay three-storey earlier block with four-bay three-storey earliest possibly seventeenth-century block at right angles to latter and having one-bay two-storey lean-to addition and further multiple-bay two-storey block at right angles to four-bay block. Hipped slate roof to front block with overhanging sheeted eaves. Pitched slate roofs to earlier blocks, slate cat slide roof to lean-to addition. Rendered chimneys throughout, earliest block having stout stack. Painted rendered walls, with moulded rendered eaves course to front block. Square-headed openings throughout with timber sliding sash windows and tooled limestone sills. Front block has six-over-six pane to first floor, nine-over-six pane to ground floor and tripartite to gables. Six-over-six pane to rear blocks, with three-over-three pane to top floor of earliest block. Entrance comprising round-headed opening with elaborate beaded cobweb fanlight, timber panelled double doors with flanking Doric pilasters having fluted frieze and ashlar limestone entablature, two-over-two pane flanking timber sidelights, accessed by flight of limestone steps. Courtyard of fine outbuildings to south and gates and gate lodge to north.

Appraisal

The form and structure of this house is typical of classically inspired Georgian buildings, with its regular façade and rhythmically spaced bays. The breakfront gives the house a central focus whilst adding further interest to the façade. The overhanging eaves gives the house an air of grandeur and emphasises the horizontal, whilst the diminishing windows accentuate the vertical thrust. The house is especially notable for its highly ornate doorway with skilfully carved limestone steps. The decorative spoked fanlight with delicate beading has an unusually broad span which is balanced by the finely carved Doric pilasters and fluted entablature. The multi-period nature of this house makes it a building of considerable historic and archaeological as well as architectural interest. Detached five-bay two-storey country house, built c. 1810, having slightly projecting central breakfront, to front of multiple-bay three-storey earlier block with four-bay three-storey earliest possibly seventeenth-century block at right angles to latter and having one-bay two-storey lean-to addition and further multiple-bay two-storey block at right angles to four-bay block. Hipped slate roof to front block with overhanging sheeted eaves. Pitched slate roofs to earlier blocks, slate cat slide roof to lean-to addition. Rendered chimneys throughout, earliest block having stout stack. Painted rendered walls, with moulded rendered eaves course to front block. Square-headed openings throughout with timber sliding sash windows and tooled limestone sills. Front block has six-over-six pane to first floor, nine-over-six pane to ground floor and tripartite to gables. Six-over-six pane to rear blocks, with three-over-three pane to top floor of earliest block. Entrance comprising round-headed opening with elaborate beaded cobweb fanlight, timber panelled double doors with flanking Doric pilasters having fluted frieze and ashlar limestone entablature, two-over-two pane flanking timber sidelights, accessed by flight of limestone steps. Courtyard of fine outbuildings to south and gates and gate lodge to north.

http://landedestates.nuigalway.ie/LandedEstates/jsp/property-list.jsp?letter=N

Originally the home of the Taylor family, Wilson refers to Noan as the seat of Godfrey Taylor in 1786. It was occupied by Natt. Taylor in 1814 and recorded by Lewis as the seat of the Taylor family. In 1840 the Ordnance Survey Name Books refer to Mary Phelps as the proprietor of Noan House. By the mid 19th century it was occupied by the representatives of John Bagwell and held in fee. The buildings were valued at almost £30. The sale rental of 1853 records James Chadwick as tenant on a seven year lease. A lithograph of the house is included. Occupied by Dr Armitage in the 1870s who owned over 2,000 acres in the county. It is still extant and occupied.

https://landedfamilies.blogspot.com/search/label/Tipperary?updated-max=2015-09-13T14:49:00%2B01:00&max-results=20&start=6&by-date=false

Armitage of Farnley Hall and Noan House

During the 18th century, James Armitage (1730-1803) built a substantial fortune as a wool merchant in Leeds. He lived most of his life at Hunslet, in the suburbs of the city, but by the 1790s he was looking round for a country estate. He considered several properties, and was outbid for an estate in the North Riding, before settling on the acquisition of Farnley Hall, south-west of Leeds (not to be confused with Farnley Hall near Otley, home of the Fawkes family) for which he paid £49,500 in 1799. The house was then a modest but relatively recent building of the 1750s, and James seems not to have made any changes before he died in 1803. He was succeeded by his son, Edward Armitage (1764-1829), who apparently built a large and much grander new south range onto the house, and in 1806, when this was completed, he sold his house in South Parade, Leeds and moved in. Edward was no doubt also responsible for landscaping the existing park in the first years of his ownership.

Although brought up to be a wool merchant like his father, Edward withdrew from his partnership with Neriah and Joseph Gomersall in 1804 and devoted himself to farming and agricultural improvement. He became a Vice-President of the Wharfedale Agricultural Society and won several prizes at the Society’s shows for his livestock. He also fought a constant battle with poachers on his estate, which being so close to a large city was especially vulnerable. In 1829, at the relatively young age of 65, Edward died suddenly while visiting his eldest son, who was then living at Breckenborough Place near Thirsk. By his will, he left his estate to his widow, Sarah Armitage (1768-1847) for life, and gave her power to determine how it should be apportioned between their four surviving sons. Until 1843 she let Farnley Hall to her husband’s nephew, John William Rhodes, and when she died she established an unusual arrangement by which her four sons were tenants in common of the Farnley estate. 

In 1844 the four brothers, who appear to have recovered possession of the Hall in that year, came together as partners in the Farnley Iron Works to exploit the coal, iron and fireclay resources found on the estate; the iron ore found on their property was thought to be some of the highest quality in the country. It was probably James Armitage (1793-1872) and his brother William (1798-1883), who after their mother’s death occupied Farnley Hall, who were the active partners in the firm. John Leathley Armitage (1792-1870) and Edward Armitage (1796-1878) were partners in the Cheltenham & Gloucestershire Bank from 1836 and lived in Cheltenham. The Farnley Iron Works expanded rapidly and from 1850 they family developed a new village to house their workers at New Farnley. The Armitages saw themselves as having the paternalistic responsibilities of rural gentry to all the inhabitants of their estate. They supported the establishment of a new national school in 1845 and built their own factory school in 1850 when the growth of New Farnley expanded the population. This had a cricket club, a reading room and library, a penny savings bank and a sickness and burial society associated with it. The family thus made a conscious effort to create a thriving community at Farnley.

…
During the years when Farnley Hall was let in the 1830s and 1840s, James Armitage (1793-1872) lived abroad, first in France and later in Germany. His children were educated on the Continent, and his eldest son, Edward Armitage (1817-96) attended the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and became an artist, finding recognition in the respected genre of history painting.

He returned to England in 1848 and became a Royal Academician in 1872. He married a fellow-artist, and the couple set up a slightly unconventional household in St John’s Wood; they had no children but adopted several old ladies who came to live in their household and were known as ‘Armitage’s mothers’. Edward’s younger brother, Thomas Rhodes Armitage (1824-90), was educated at the Sorbonne in Paris and later graduated from Kings College, London as a doctor of medicine. After working in field hospitals in the Crimea in the 1850s, he returned home and established a fashionable West End practice in London, but by 1866 his sight had deteriorated to the point where he could no longer continue to work in the profession. He devoted the rest of his life to improving the lot of the blind and partially sighted, promoting the adoption of Braille and the provision of employment opportunities (including piano tuning) for the blind, and founding the Royal National College for the Blind, which he supported for many years with his own money. His wife, Harriet Black, brought him the Noan estate in Co. Tipperary, and the couple divided their time between London and Noan. Of their three children, the elder son, Walter Stanley Armitage (1860-1902) became a doctor like his father, and the daughter, Alice Stanley Armitage (1869-1949) continued her father’s work as a promoter and supporter of charities for the blind, but it was the younger son, Frederick Rhodes Armitage (1867-1952) who inherited the Noan estate and farmed there throughout the troubled years of the early 20th century. Although obliged to part with his tenanted lands in 1922 under the land reforms of the Irish government, much of the estate was always kept in hand, and Noan remained a viable estate throughout the 20th century. In 1952, both of his surviving sons having been killed in the Second World War, it passed to his unmarried daughter, Doris Mary Rhodes Armitage (1900-79), who continued to live at Noan with her spinster sister until her death, when the estate was sold….

Noan House:

A complex house, with an elegant white stuccoed five bay, two-storey front range built in about 1810, presumably for Nathaniel Taylor, with an older three-storey range behind and parallel to it, and a yet older four bay, three-storey range at right-angles to the latter. The front range has sash windows, a hipped slate roof with broad overhanging eaves, and a fine central doorcase with an elaborate cobweb fanlight. The oldest part of the house could date from the 17th century, but has few remaining original features as the fenestration has all been renewed in the early 19th century.

The grounds were landscaped in the early 19th century, and the planting broadly survives, although the layout has been somewhat simplified. The estate was expanded in the 19th century, and in 1876 amounted to some 2,019 acres; this was reduced again by the sale of the tenanted farms in 1922.

Descent: Granted 1666 to Nathaniel Taylor (1611-75); to son, Robert Taylor; to son, Lovelace Taylor (d. 1760); to son, Nathaniel Taylor (d. 1775); to brother, Godfrey Taylor (1723-99); to son Edward Taylor (d. 1801); to son, Nathaniel Taylor (d. 1828); to sister, Anne, wife of John Bagwell (later Taylor) of Kilmore; sold by Incumbered Estates Court 1853 to Stanley Black; to daughter, Harriet (d. 1901), wife of Thomas Rhodes Armitage (1824-90); to son, Frederick Rhodes Armitage (1867-1952); to daughter, Doris Mary Rhodes Armitage (1900-79); sold after her death to Eddie Grant…sold c.2010 to Mr. Hanley.

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