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: Paul of Paulville
p. 157. “The Penal Laws of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries were an all-embracing body of repressive legislation, enacted after the Catholic rebellion a few years earlier, to protect the ruling Anglo-Irish, who were constantly fearful that a French army would land somewhere in Ireland in a backdoor bid to regain the British throne for the Catholic King James II, who took refuge in France following his defeat by William III… While religious in tone, the essential success of the Penal Laws was in the economic and political oppression of the native majority, and the protection of the minority ruling class.”
“Deprived of the right to vote or to sit in Parliament, Catholic landowners who refused to conform to the Established Church, had to look around at election time for a candidate sympathetic to their plight. Accounts of the 1713 election in County carlow would suggest that they were not witout some influence, and the beneficiary in that election was Jeffrey Paul. It was an apparently unlikely alliance. Paul’s grandfather, Joshua Paul I of Paulsworth, County Durham, was an officer in Ireton’s dragoons during the Cromwellian invasion, and was rewarded with a grant of land at Ballyraggon, Co Kildare. Like other officers and soldiers, Paul would not have acquired a grant of land in County Carlow, one of four Irish counties reserved to reward Cromwellian backers in England, who had put up finance for the plantation in Ireland. Many of these were not interested in taking up their grants of land, enabling Joshua Paul and many others to buy these interests, which he did at Rathmore, Moyle and elsewhere. It was estimated that when the plantation of Ireland was over, Cromwell owed his soldiers £1.5 million, and a somewhat greater amount to his suppliers.
Joshua Paul had three sons: Jeffrey I inherited Ballyraggon and was father of Jeffrey II who entered politics; William Paul, whose only son was killed in a duel, settled at Moyle, County Carlow; and Joshua Paul II, established the family seat at Rathmore. Both Jeffrey I and Joshua II forfeited land as a result of their support for King James II, but before the court of claims in 1700, Jeffrey Paul proved his claim onland at Castletown Park, Ballycarney, Kyleballyhue and Staplestown. Joshua Paul’s widow, Mehatable, was also successful in her claim on land at Slyguff, Rath and Kilcruit, Co Carlow.
p. 158. In a three way contest in 1713, Sir Pierce Butler, a sitting MP, was returned, and the second seat was taken by Jeffrey Paul, who defeated Thomas Burdett, elected to parliament unopposed after the death in 1704 of sitting MP Sir Thomas Butler. Burdett of Garryhill Castle, a notorious bigot, and disliked by many of his fellow landlords, objected to the return of Jeffrey Paul, and petitioned to have him unseated on the groudns of “gross interference by papists during the election.”
If the claims made by Burdett in his petition were true, the Catholic landowners behaved with total disregard for the Penal Laws and with considerable success. Unfortunately, from the point of view of historical research, the petition was never dealt with because Burdett was elected the same year for the Borough of Carlow, and he did not pursue his claim for the county seat. As a result, the validity of his allegations were never tested.”
“In a written submission to the Committee of Privileges and Elections, Burdett claimed that freeholders, not entitled to vote, were given votes and that “he was duly elected by a considerable majority of the real and known freeholders of the county. Some Popish gentlemen of the county, Walter Bagenal, William Cooke, John Baggott, and several other Papists, without regard to the laws for preventing Papists breeding dissentions amongst Protestants at elections, have interfered in a zealous and most industrious manner, contrary to laws of the land and the rights of electinos.” He claimed the Catholic landowners campaigned on horseback, well-armed and in red coats with “several of their emissaries throught the field managing and seducing freeholders and by doing other illegal and unwarrantable acts to influence the elections against the petitioner in favour of Jeffrey Paul.”
By 1800, less than five percent of the land of Ireland was owned by Catholics. Among the biggest landowners in Co Carlow were the Bagenals, Kavanaghs and Eustaces. A dilemma for Catholic families was that they had to divide their land equally among their sons, and if one son turned Protestant, he could inherit the entire estate. In some cases, a pretence of religious conformity was used, while others transferred their land to a Protestant relative.
p. 159. Jeffrey Paul of Rathmore died in 1730, and was succeeded by his eldest surviving son, Christmas Paul, who built the family seat at Paulsville. He was returned as an MP for the City of Waterford. His eldest son, Joshua Paul, was created a baronet of Ireland in 1794, and when his son, Joshua Christmas Paul (1773-1842), the second baronet, died without an heir, the family name became extinct in County carlow. He left his estate to his nephew, Sir Robert J. Paul, who lived at Ballyglan, Co Waterford. The family had 1,400 acres in Co Carlow and 2900 in Wicklow…. P. 160. The property was eventually purchased from the Paul esate under the Wyndham Land Act of 1903. …
Myshall was built by Robert Cornwall, a native of Co Tyrone, who acquired land in Carlow during the latter part of the 18th century. The male line of the family died out with the last descendant leaving Myshall in 1915 and the house was burnt down in 1922 during the Civil War.
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: Cornwall-Brady of Myshall
p. 34: Constance Duguid, daughter of a wealthy English wine importer, met Inglis Brady of Myshall while on holidays, and they decided to marry. However, she was thrown from her horse and died before the wedding. Before she died, she expressed a wish to be buried in Myshall cemetery. Her parents John and Adelaide erected a statue of innocence in Sicilian marble over her grave.
p. 35. When her mother died, fifteen years later in 1903, she requested to be laid beside Constance. It was then that John Duguid decided to build a church in Myshall as a memorial of love to his wife and daughter. The church, enclosing the statue of innocence, was designed in a miniature style of Salisbury Cathedral, and during the ten years of construction, the cost was said to have run to nearly £30,000…. No expense was spared in building this architectural jewel…Adelaide Memorial Church of Christ the Redeemer, consecrated in 1913.”
p. 38, Inglis Brady then married Mary Louise Watson of Ballydarton on 14 Feb 1888, very soon after Constance Duguid died. The couple had one daughter, Mona, born 1890. Inglis died aged 37 in 1896, and his widow married Hon Ralph Bowyer Norton in 1899. His eldest brother , John Beauchamp Brady, died aged 30 in 1885 and another brother died in infancy. Inglis had two sisters, the youngest, Florence Clare died in 1898 and his eldest sister, Georgiana Elizabeth, who inherited Myshall Lodge, married Edmond Hartstonge-Weld of Rahinbawn, Co Carlow in 1882. They left Myshall in 1815, and the house, unoccupied at the time, was burned by the IRA in 1922.
Myshall Lodge was built by Robert Cornwall,, who acquired land in Co Carlow during the latter half of the 18th century, through his association with…. [p. 39/40 ripped out].
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: Doyne of St. Austin’s Abbey.
p. 89. Only three houses were torched by the IRA , and two of them had more to do with preventing unoccupied houses being used as bases by the Black and Tans, and later by the Free State Army, rather than any vindictiveness against landlords.
Two of the houses destroyed – St. Austin’s Abbey in Tullow, and Kellistown House – were owned by the Doyne family, while Myshall Lodge was the former seat of the Cornwall-Bradys. The houses in Tullow and Myshall had been unoccupied for several years before the outbrea, of the War of Independence, while Kellistown House was rented by the spinster Pack- Beresford sisters, Annette and Elizabeth. The burning of Kellistown, the only one of the three to be rebuilt, was the result of an attempt by the sisters to alert the RIC about the presence of an IRA unit resting up while on active service. The burned-out shell of St. Austin’s remains, while the ruin of Myshall Lodge was demolished.
19th century Italianate house added to an earlier house that then became the service wing for the new enlarged building. Destroyed by fire in 1927, and demolished.
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: K’Eogh of Kilbride
p. 138. “[In 1927] John Molyneux K’Eogh had decided to leave his mansion home, the family seat for nearly a century, to live in a more modest house nearby, and with their five year lease about to expire on Altamont, the Lecky-Watsons decided to rent Kilbride House. It was a move, however, with which John K’Eogh’s wife, Mary Butler, was unhappy; feelings, it appears, she had expressed with some force to her family, the Butlers of Mount Leinster Lodge. John and Mary were first cousins. A week before the fire, Cherry Butler told her friend, Daphne Hall-Dare, that she wished Kilbridge House was burned down. She got her wish.
In her memoirs, written half a century later, Isobel Lecky-Watson gave a vivid account of the fire ‘… never found out who had done it. It was definitely done maliciously, but by whom we never found out, though we had our suspicions.’
She writes that John K’Eogh was finding it difficult to maintain the family seat, and her husband Fielding decided to rent it. The owner of Altamont was determined to sell and they could not afford to buy it.
p. 141. “Kilbride House smouldered for three days, the Watsons returned to Isobel’s beloved Altamont, which they later bought, and following his wife’s death in 1938, John K’Eogh moved to the West of Ireland to live with a niece. The couple had no children, and he died, aged 72, in 1946. Fielding Lecky-Watson died in 1942, and Isobel was 101 when she died in 1983.”
“The K’Eoghs claim descent from Fergus, King of Ulster, grandson of Roderick the Great, monarch of Ireland. In the 15th century, the family of MacK’Eogh had extensive estates at Castletroy, in Limerick, which they lost as a result of their support for the Stuart cause. A descendant, John K’Eogh, purchased an estate at Loughlinstown (near Clondalkin), County Dublin, in the latter half of the 18C, and it was his son, George Rous K’Eogh, who purchased the leasehold interest on 2000 acres of the Baillie estate in Kilbride on 27 March 1827. He bought the freehold interest for £3700 in 1847.
p. 142. George Rous K’Eogh married Marianne Molyneux, daughter of General Sir Thomas Molyneux of Castledillon, Co Armagh. After acquiring the leasehold interest, he immediately initiated major improvements, including the addition of a large extension to the existing farm house, and a large-scale drainage scheme. Granite boulders removed from land provided the materials for both the house, the demesne wall, and the drainage.
After George Rous K’Eogh’s death in 1850, in Rotterdam, he was succeeded by his eldest son, John Henry K’Eogh, who was born in 1820. He was a Justice of the Peace, High Sheriff and a colonel in the Carlow Rifles. In the 1852 general election, K’Eogh was selected with John Ball as Nationalist candidates against sitting Tory MPs Henry Bruen III and William Bunbury McClintock-Bunbury of Moyle. Ball and Bruen narrowly won…. Colonel K’Eogh’s first wife, Louise Catherine Richards, died in 1863, and they had one son, who died aged 14, and three daughters. In 1869 he married her sister, Frances Richards, and they had three sons and three daughters. Col K’Eogh died at Kilbride in 1888 aged 68. Their eldest son, John Molyneux K’Eogh, who was 18 when his father died, was the last of the family to live at Kilbride.”
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.
p. 89. Only three houses were torched by the IRA , and two of them had more to do with preventing unoccupied houses being used as bases by the Black and Tans, and later by the Free State Army, rather than any vindictiveness against landlords.
Two of the houses destroyed – St. Austin’s Abbey in Tullow, and Kellistown House – were owned by the Doyne family, while Myshall Lodge was the former seat of the Cornwall-Bradys. The houses in Tullow and Myshall had been unoccupied for several years before the outbrea, of the War of Independence, while Kellistown House was rented by the spinster Pack- Beresford sisters, Annette and Elizabeth. The burning of Kellistown, the only one of the three to be rebuilt, was the result of an attempt by the sisters to alert the RIC about the presence of an IRA unit resting up while on active service. The burned-out shell of St. Austin’s remains, while the ruin of Myshall Lodge was demolished.
This extraordinarily well preserved Georgian residence dates to the mid-1800s and has been continuously occupied since it’s construction, with the exception of a brief period in the 1920s when, destroyed by fire, it was extensively renovated and restored to its original splendour. Formerly a Glebe House, the residence supports a two-storey-over-basement configuration, and is located at the end of a private avenue with beautiful views of the surrounding countryside. The majority of original features have been carefully preserved, with all maintenance works undertaken in the spirit of its period. The residence is set on c 5.6 acres, and surrounded by farm lands. The holding includes a comprehensive farmyard with a mix of traditional and contemporary farm out-buildings currently supporting a warehouse and distribution enterprise, in addition to a number of individual paddocks. With excellent access to the M9 motorway, Carlow town and all surrounding amenities, Newlands Cross on the edge of Dublin is a mere 55 mins away. Viewings are invited on a strictly appointment basis.
Accommodation
Entrance Hall Granite steps to Georgian Hall door with Fan Light above. Carpeted, with internal glass-panelled double reception doors. Return stairs to upper and lower levels. Arched window to rear. Library 5.49m x 4.95m. To front, off hall. Full height windows to front and side. Solid fuel fireplace. Carpets, curtains. Picture rail. Drawing Room 5.49m x 4.95m. To front, off hall. Full height windows to front and side. Solid fuel fireplace. Carpets, curtains. Connecting door to Dining Room. Dining Room 6.7m x 4.65m. To rear, off hall. Twin windows to side lawns. Solid fuel fireplace. Carpets and curtains. Pulley-operated dumb-waiter to kitchen below. Wash Room 1.88m x 1.63m. Carpets. Sink unit. Access to W.C.
W.C. 1.88m x 1.07m. Lower Hall 8.15m x 2.4m. Carpeted stairs from upper floor. Window to rear odd stair return. External door to side. Terracotta tiled floor. Bedroom 1 5.44m x 4.7m. Basement windows to front and side. Bathroom 2.4m x 1.83m. Off lower hall. Ceramic tiled floor. Toilet, sink and bath. Utility Room 4.7m x 2.92m. Terracotta tiled floor. Basement windows to side. Plumbing for utility machines. Doors to Kitchen, Office and Pantry. Office 3.45m x 2.4m. Off Utility. Pantry 2.3m x 1.6m. Off Utility Kitchen 6.7m x 4.7m. Basement windows to side. Tiled floor. Feature oil-fired Aga cooker. Fully fitted Antique Pine floor and wall units. Pulley-operated Dumb-Waiter to Dining Room above. Upper Floor Landing Carpets. Feature arched window from stair return. W.C. off. Bedroom 2 5.49m x 3.66m. Double room to front. Windows to front and side. Carpets and curtains. Bedroom 3 3.58m x 3.5m. Double room to front. Carpets and curtains. Bedroom 4 5.49m x 4.88m. Double room to front. Windows to front and side. Carpets and curtains. Shower Room 3.15m x 2.36m. Window to side. Shower cubicle. Sink unit. Bedroom 5 4.37m x 4.27m. Double room to rear. Windows to side and rear. Carpets and curtains.
Features
Oil fired Central Heating. Sash Windows. Broadband
BER Details
BER: F BER No: 105049712 Performance Indicator: 388.39
Directions
From Carlow Town, follow the N80 southbound, turning left at Walls Forge for Tullow (R725). Continue c. 1 mile, taking the next right turn for Rathoe (L1025). Proceed c. 4 miles, crossing the new M9 motorway. Proceed c 1km, passing a period home recessed from the road on the left, rounding a series of bends and then passing three new identical homes on the left, again recessed from the road. Turn left immediately after this field onto a private avenue. This property is located at the end of the avenue, on the left.
Detached three-bay two-storey over basement farmhouse with dormer attic, c. 1725. Renovated and extended to right, c. 1830, with door opening remodelled and interior remodelled. Group of detached outbuildings to site. Walled garden to site.
Record of Protected Structures:
Busherstown House, townland: Busherstown.
An early-18th century, three-bay, two-storey house over a basement dating from circa 1725 and remodelled about 1830. It has battered, rough-cast walls, gable ends, a round-headed doorcase with square-headed, granite dressings and lintel. The walls were rough-cast in recent years and the sash windows with two panels in each sash are recent replacements. The roof is high-pitched, with natural slates and end stacks. The house was extended on the right-hand side with a lean-to addition in the early 19th century. On the left-hand side is a wall with a very fine, early-18th century, limestone, carriage arch with beautifully-cut architraves. In front of the house is a walled garden with a small, 18th century summer house and a latrine
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.
p. 16. “The Newtons were a Lancashire family who settled in Ireland in 1688. The first three generations lived at Busherstown (Breens) before the Bennekerry seat was established by John Newton, who died in 1748. His eldest son, Bartholomew Newton, married Anne Bernard in 1767, through whom he acquired extensive property in Carlow town. It was their eldest son, Philip, who married Sarah Bagenal. The Bernards were a Laois family and the seat of the Carlow branch was at Strawhall, which was subsequently purchased by the Bruens.
Bennekerry Lodge, the home of the Doyle famil, was built by the Newtowns, whose land ownership in ht emiddle of the last century was just over 4000 acres.
p. 18. The last of the Bagenal family to live at Bennekerry House was Beauchamp Walter Bagenal, who spend his life in the Australian wine trade. It was his brother who lived at Bennekerry House from 1930-36, and then moved to South Africa. When Walter Bagenal died in 1952 without an heir, the representation of the family was vested in Hope Bagenal, the well-known London based acoustic architect who died in 1979. It was his father, Philip Bagenal, who wrote the family history of The Vicissitudes of an Anglo-Irish Family. The Bagenalstown property was left to Captain J.B. Blackett, a great-nephew. The present head of the family is John S. Bagenal whose career was in the Dept of Agriculturein Kenya, and who nowlives near Hertford in England.
Benekerry House, on 120 acres, was purchased in 1936 for £2000 by solicitor Samuel Roche and his wife, and was sold in the 1950s to Dan Morrissey, founder of the concrete products company to which he gave his name. The house is now owned by his son, Andrew Morrissey.”
Description: Detached three-bay two-storey over basement farmhouse with dormer attic, c.1725. Renovated and extended to right, c.1830, with door opening and interior remodelled. Group of detached outbuildings and a Walled garden to site.
Burton Hall, County Carlow, entrance front before removal of top floor. Victorian Photographs. 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. 50. “(Mainwaring-Burton/IFR) An important early C18 house, begun 1712. Of three storeys, nine bays…. Sold 1927 by W.F. Burton, demolished 1930.”
Burton Hall, County Carlow, garden front before removal of top floor. Victorian Photographs. 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:
“An important early eighteenth-century house begun in 1712. The house was originally three storeys, but the top floor was removed in the late nineteenth century before 1896. The house was sold by the Burton family in 1927 and the main block was demolished in 1930. A small wing remains.“
Record of Protected Structure:
Burton Hall House, Palatine. Townland: Burton Hall Demesne.
The present house is a wing of the original Burton Hall which fell into decay in the late 19th century and was demolished sometime around 1900. The surviving wing is a three-bay, single-storey building over a high basement and dates from circa 1730. It is built of granite ashlar with limestone raised coigns, base-mould, block and start dressings to the tall windows and a heavy cornice. The slated roof is hipped at the North end. The South end was linked to the original house. A further range was added behind the original wing and has simple details
Interest: regional, architectural, interior.
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: Burton of Burton Hall
p. 70. “Brothers Francis and Thomas Burton left England in 1610, and settled at Buncraggy, Co Clare. It was Thomas’s grandson, Benjamin Burton I, who established the family seat in County Carlow.
The earliest reference to the Burton name in Carlow, althoughnot necessarily related to the later arrivals, was in 1392, when King Richard II gave £20 towards the rebuilding of the town after it had been burned by the McMorrough-Kavanaghs and the O’Carrolls. Responsibility for distributing the money was given to William Burton and Thomas Taillour of Cathirlagh.
p. 71. The source of the Burton wealth, apart from their 4,500 acre estate, was banking – a business which, in common with several other Irish banks in the 18th century, eventually collapsed.”
In 1714, Samuel Burton, whose father founded the family bank, and his wife Anne, were invited to the Coronation of King George I in London… Mrs Burton was killed when she was caught under falling scaffolding erected to facilitate seating for guests. Married six years earlier the couple had three sons, Benjamin, Hughes and Samuel, and a daughter, Katherine.
Benjamin Burton I purchased Burton Hall,, originally Ballynakelly, and other land in County Carlow from trustees for the sale of forfeited estates in 1712. [p. 72] These were properties confiscated after the Williamite War and sold by the Crown during the reign of Queen Anne (1703-1713). The house at Burton Hall was completed in 1730, replacing an earlier house dating back to the middle of 16C. His son, Charles Burton, MP for Dublin for 11 years, and Lord Mayor in 1753, was created Baronet in 1758. It was his son Charles who remodelled Pollacton House about 1803, the original “Pollardstown House” having been built earlier. The Burtons were one of the most powerful political and financial dynasties during the first half of 18C. Between 1700 and 1770, eight Burtons held seats in Parliament for Carlow, Clare, Sligo and Dublin. Benjamin Burton I was MP for Dublin 1702-1723; his son Charles, and also his eldest son Samuel, whose wife was killed, was MP for Sligo in 1713 and for Dublin in 1727. His son Robert, wholived in Hacketsown, was MP for Carlow 1727-1760. The following two generations also held seats in Parliament.
It was Benjamin Burton I who founded the family bank in the early 1700s.. He died in 1728, and five years later in 1733, the bank was so heavily in debt that it was forced to stop payment. [p. 73] So serious was the collapse for investors that Parliament passed an act within weeks, vesting all the real and personal assets of the directors in trustees….
The collapse of the bank did not leave the Burtons in poverty. In his autobiography, Pole Cosby of Stradbally Hall referred to the marriage in 1731 of Charles Burton, afterwards created 1st Baronet, to Margaret Meredith (her brother married Cosby’s sister) “She had £1,500 to her fortune, more than he did at that time deserve, as most people thought, bu turned out very well, forhe, a merchant was a clever managing man, and is now very rich.” The Burton Hall family seat and 4,500 acres in County Carlow survived the downfall of the bank.”
The last member of the family to sit in Parliament for County Carlow was [p. 74] William Henry Burton, and whose father, Benjamin II, was a sitting MP for the county when he died in 1767. The seat was held by an in-law, John Hynde, for two years until 1769, when William Henry was returned and he was re-elected for every Parliament of Ireland until the Union, which he firmly opposed.”
p. 74. “While continuing to hold posts of High Sheriff, and Justices of the Peace, their political influence evaporated during the first half of 19C, and by 1864, their residential linkwiht Burton Hall had almost ceased. It wqs let out. The first tenants were the Moore family who leased the house for ten years, it ws then left afterwards to Charles J. Engledown, who left in 1901.
In 1927 William Fitzwilliam Burton died and the 1000 acre estate was purchased by the Irish Land Commission, and it was bought by Harman Herring Cooper, who demolished part of Burton Hall and used the salvaged materials to build a new house within the nearby walled garden. …
p. 75. By the 1920s the house, after being left unoccupied for long periods, was in a poor state of repair…. The baronetcy, created for Charles Burton of Pollacton in 1758, became extinct after five generations with the death, aged 80, in 1902, of Sir Charles William Cuffe Burton. …He left his property to his niece, Grace Ellen Burton, wife of Sir Francis Charles Edward Denys, Bart, who assumed the additional name of Burton, and her sister, Gertrude Mary Burton.
Sir Francis and Grace Ellen had one son, Charles Peter, and four daughters, and their eventually heir was their third daughter, Georgina Denys Burton,who did not marry. She was the last of the family to live at Pollacton House. Some years before her death she built a new house, and left the property to her nephew, Jasper Tubbs, who demolishedthe old house in the early 1970s. The newhouse was purchased by the present owner, John McLoughlin.
The Burton/Conyngham connection came in 1781, when Francis Pierpont Burton, a nephew of Benjamin Burton I, survived his maternal uncle Henry, 1st earl of Conyngham, now represented by Lord Henry Mount Charles of Slane Castle.”
Detached three-bay single-storey over basement granite built building, c. 1725, originally wing of larger house with carved stone dressings. Section of staircase and joinery incorporated into dwelling. Attached single-storey garage to right. Remainder of house demolished, c. 1930.
The Burton family of Burton Hall, county Carlow held land in the barony of Tirerrill, county Sligo. Samuel Burton of Burton Hall was Member of Parliament for the county in 1713. The head of the family in 1835 was William FitzWilliam Burton. In the 1860s property held by the Ramsay estate in the town of Sligo and the barony of Carbury was offered for sale in the Landed Estates Court. The particulars indicate that the original lease was between Cornet Francis Burton, of Burton Hall, and Laurence Vernon.
The Demesne of Burton hall lies across the Carlow-Kildare border, about half in each county for a total of 600 acres. The actual Burton Hall estate house which was completed in 1730 was well inside the county of Carlow south east of Burton hall Demesne and about a quarter of a mile south of the border of County Kildare. (This is based on a survey carried out by Carlow County Council in Dec 2004).
Map of Burton Hall Estate.
HYPERLINK “http://sites.rootsweb.com/~irlcar2/Burton_Hall_map.jpg”Incidentally, Burton Hall (now in ruins) is located about one and a quarter miles east of Duckett’s Grove estate house which is in the Demesne of Rainstown. Burton Hall gave its name to the townland of Burtonhall Demesne which is partly in Killerrig civil parish, partly in Urglin civil parish, (both in Carlow) and partly in Castledermot civil parish in Co Kildare.
Ther was indeed an estate with a fine mansion of three stories high, the history of which is told in the book entitled “The Carlow Gentry” by Jimmy O’Toole. I.S.B.N. 09522544 0 9. There is an engraving of the house and details of the Burton family history in the book. Very little remains of the house today.
A man by the name of Benjamin Burton 1st purchased the property which was originally know as Ballynakelly, and other land in County Carlow in 1712. These were properties confiscated after the Williamite War and sold by the Crown during the reign of Queen Ann (1703-1713).
Note from Carloman:
The entrance gate to the estate stands just outside the village of Palatine, North East of Carlow town within walking distance, there was a lovely straight driveway dipping down into a hollow before rising up to where the front door of the Mansion was . The Burtons also owned Pollacton House nearer to Carlow town. I remember the last of the Burton family to live in Carlow at Pollacton , Miss (Georgina) Denys, she drove herself in car which I think was a Wolseley with the front doors hinged at the rear only one of two in Carlow in the 1950s, a formidable lady by all accounts.
Source: ‘Carloman’ c2006
Burton Hall is mentioned in
“A Topographical Dictionary of Ireland, by Samuel Lewis. 1837″
see script below:
URGLIN, or RUTLAND, a parish, in the barony and county of CARLOW, and province of LEINSTER, 2 1/4 miles (E. N. E.) from Carlow, on the road from that town to Castledermot; containing 977 inhabitants. This parish comprises 3080 statute acres, as applotted under the tithe act, and valued at £2715 per annum: the greater part of the land is in small holdings, and the system of agriculture is improving.
The seats are Burton Hall, the residence of W. F. Burton, Esq., pleasantly situated on a rising ground in a finely planted demesne, approached by a long and wide avenue of trees; Rutland House, of — Mosse, Esq.; Rutland Lodge, of E. Burton, Esq.; Johnstown, of T. Elliott, Esq.; Benekerry Lodge, of E. Gorman, Esq.; Mount Sion, of B. Colclough, Esq; and Benekerry House, of Mrs. Newton.
At Palatinetown there is a constabulary station, and a fair is held there on the 26th of March. The living is a rectory, in the diocese of Leighlin, united in 1713 to the rectory of Grangeforth, and by act of council, in 1803, to the impropriate cure of Killerick, and in the patronage of the Bishop: the tithes amount to £250, and of the union to £542. 19. 2 3/4. The church is a neat plain building with a spire, erected in 1821 by aid of a loan of £700 from the late Board of First Fruits. In the R. C. divisions the parish is partly in the union or district of Tullow, and partly in that of Tinriland, and contains a chapel belonging to the latter division, situated at Benekerry. About 50 children are taught in a public school, and 110 in two private schools.
William Fitzwilliam Burton 1796 – 1844
William Fitzwilliam Burton, of Burton Hall, Carlow, Ireland. I think there were several Williams… NB
Burton Hall is 6 miles from Tullow, 4 miles from Carlow and 45 miles from Dublin.
LANDOWNERS IN WICKLOW 1876 Part 2: 4.
William Burton, address Burton Hall, Carlow, owned 32 acres. (in co. Wicklow) Stamford Mercury 1819 – Lincs.
Married on Friday the 17th Feb instant, at Lincoln (by the Rev. Edward Chaplin) Sir Richard Sutton, Bart of Norwood Park, Notts, to Mary Elizabeth eldest daughter of the late Benjamin Burton. esq., and sister of the present William Burton, Esq., of Burton Hall in the County of Carlow, and lately of Walcot Park near Stamford. County Carlow Landowners 1870’s: Sir Charles Burton, address Pollacton, Carlow, owned 381 acres. William F. Burton, address Burton Hill, owned 4,422 acres.
1913: Carlow: William Fitzwilliam Burton loses case over allegations that Charles J. Engledow, (who had leased Burton Hall from the late 1870s until 1901) had removed a valuable Gainsborough portrait of Lady Anna Ponsonby; the painting proved to be a fake.
1922 Carlow: Major William Mainwaring Burton & wife using Burton Hall as summer home.
1927 Ireland: Burton Hall purchased by Harman Herring Cooper, who demolished part of house in order to use salvaged materials to build a new house within nearby walled gardens – hoard of silver discovered in panelled alcove. 1000 acres of land purchased by Irish Land Commission.
The Information of Catherine Daly of Burton Hall, Carlow, the wife of Jeremiah Daly, Coachman to William Burton, Esquire, of Burton Hall, Carlow.
Sworn on the Holy Evangelists saith that on the night of Tuesday the 12th December 1815 Catherine Daly being in bed with her two children, a rap came to the Door with someone calling her by her name and requested she would get up and give them the loan of some candles to light over one McGrath who lived in the neighbourhood, claiming that McGrath had just died.
Catherine having no person in the house except for her two children objected to opening the Door at so late an hour of the night which she judged to be about twelve or one O’clock.
Catherine told them she had no candles and that she would not get up or open the Door when the persons outside insisted on this, Catherine ordered her Daughter, a little Girl to get up and open the Door.
Then three men entered and Called for the Candles which was handed to them by the Daughter.
They immediately struck up fire Light with the Candles, her Daughter saw their faces were covered and they were armed with pistols, she ran and told her mother that she believed they were Robbers and made an effort to get out to Alarm the neighbours, —–when she was stopped outside the Door by another man whose face was also covered together with a number of others who compelled her to return in again —- when the three men proceeded to the room where Catherine lay and Demanded her money.
Catherine handed them her pockets and said all the money she had was therein contained which amounted to about two shillings.
They then proceeded to Rifle the House and take amongst other things the following articles:-
Soap, Tobacco, Candles, Bread, Herrings, a table Cloth, night Gown, Seven Silver Tea Spoons, Copper Kettle, Brass Candlesticks, a pair of Shoes and pair of Pumps with Several other articles amounting in the whole as Catherine verily believes to the sum of two Guineas.
And further Saith she does not know any of the persons who so Robed her they being disguised by their faces being Covered as aforesaid.
Sworn before me this 30th day of December 1815, (signed) Henry Bunbury.
(signed) Cathy Daly
Jane Smyth 1805.
[Note added 2011. spelt as Smyth by the Magistrate, signed by Jane as Jane Smith.]
From the PPP.
The Information of Jane Smyth wife of James Smyth, Soldier in the City of Cork Regiment of Militia, taken before Henry Bunbury, Esquire, ~ appointed by our Lord, George the Third, King of Great Britain and Ireland, Defender of the Faith and so forth ~ as one of his Majestys Justices of the Peace for the County of Carlow.
Jane Smyth who being Duly Sworn on the Holy Evangelists and Saith, that on Monday the 21st Day of January 1805, Hannah Connelly of Burton Hall in Carlow left a parcel with Jane Smyth wrapped up in an old white dimity petticoat which contained one white muslin Gown and Petty Coat of the same material, one plaid Calico Gown, one old white Cotton Gown, one White dimity petticoat, one Brown steep Petticoat, two shifts, two white Handkerchiefs, one new Yellow silk handkerchief, one White Muslin Cloak, three pair of White Cotton Stockings, ten Caps, and one pair of Spanish Leather Shoes, which Bundle and Property Jane Smyth put under her Bed for Security.
Jane Smyth saith that in her absence from her lodgings the said Bundle Containing the aforesaid articles together with three pair of Cotton Stockings the property of Jane Smyth were feloniously Stolen from her said Lodgings on the Morning of Tuesday the twenty second Day of January 1805.
And further Saith not.
(signed) Jane Smith.
Sworn before me this 24th day of January 1805. (signed) Henry Bunbury.
THE BURTONS WERE MAJOR LANDOWNERS IN COUNTY CARLOW, WITH 5,964 ACRES
SIR EDWARD BURTON, Knight, of Longner, representative of the family, was with EDWARD IV, successful in fourteen set battles between the Houses of York and Lancaster; and for his great loyalty and services, he was made knight-bannaret, under the royal standard in the field, in 1460.
He was succeeded by his son,
SIR ROBERT BURTON, Knight, of Longner, who was knighted by EDWARD IV, in 1478.
This gentleman received a grant of arms from John Writhe, Norroy King of Arms, in the same year, and was father of
SIR EDWARD BURTON, Knight, of Longner, Master of the Robes to HENRY VII. who wedded Jocosa, daughter of Thomas Cressett, of Upton Cressett, Shropshire.
He died in 1524, leaving, with a younger son, Thomas, an elder son, his successor,
JOHN BURTON, of Longner, who married Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Poyner, of Boston, Shrophire, and had issue,
EDWARD, his successor; Jane; Eleanor; Ankekoka; Ann; Ankred; Mary.
Sir Edward died in 1543, and was succeeded by his only son,
EDWARD BURTON, of Longner, who wedded Ann, daughter and heir of Nicholas Madocks, of Wem and Coton, Shrophire, and had issue,
THOMAS, his heir (ancestor of BURTON of Longner); EDWARD, of whom we treat; Humphrey; Timothy; Mary; Dorothy; Katherine.
Mr Burton’s second son,
EDWARD BURTON, had issue, two sons, who both settled in Ireland in 1610,
Francis, dsp; THOMAS, of whom hereafter.
The younger son,
THOMAS BURTON, of Buncraggy, County Clare, whose will was proved in 1666, married Ann, daughter of _____ Shepherd, of Baycote, Herefordshire, and had issue (with two daughters), an only son,
SAMUEL BURTON, of Buncraggy, who married Margery Harris, and died in 1712, leaving issue,
Francis, of Buncraggy, MP; Charles; BENJAMIN, of whom hereafter; Dorothea.
The third son,
BENJAMIN BURTON, becoming an eminent banker in Dublin, was Lord Mayor of that city, 1706, and represented it in parliament, 1703-23.
He espoused, in 1686, Grace, elder daughter of Robert Stratford, of Belan, County Kildare, and had six sons, with as many daughters,
SAMUEL; Robert; Benjamin; Edward; Charles (Sir), MP for Dublin; cr a BARONET; Francis; Mary; Grace; Elizabeth; Lettice; Abigail; Jane.
The eldest son of Benjamin Burton, of Dublin,
SAMUEL BURTON, of Burton Hall, MP for Sligo, 1713, and for Dublin, 1727, High Sheriff of County Carlow, 1724, espoused firstly, in 1708, Anne, daughter of Charles Campbell, of Dublin, and by her (who was killed by the fall of a scaffold at the coronation of GEORGE I in 1714) had issue,
BENJAMIN, his heir; Hughes; Samuel; Katherine; Mary.
He was succeeded by his eldest son,
THE RT HON BENJAMIN BURTON, of Burton Hall, MP for Carlow County, 1761, a distinguished politician and statesman, who wedded, in 1734, the Lady Anne Ponsonby, daughter of Brabazon, 1st Earl of Bessborough, and had issue,
Benjamin, High Sheriff, 1760; MP for Sligo, 1757; d unm, 1763;
WILLIAM, succeeded to the estates;
Campbell;
Ponsonby;
Sarah; Anna.
His second but eldest surviving son,
WILLIAM HENRY BURTON (1739-1818), of Burton Hall, MP for Carlow County, 1768-1800, married, in 1765, Mary, only child of Henry Aston, County Wicklow, and had issue,
BENJAMIN, his heir;
William Henry;
Martha.
Mr Burton’s eldest son,
BENJAMIN BURTON, of Walcot House, Stamford, Lincolnshire, born in 1766, married and was father of
WILLIAM FITZWILLIAM BURTON JP (1796-1844), of Burton Hall, High Sheriff of County Carlow, 1822, who wedded twice and had a numerous family.
His eldest son,
WILLIAM FITZWILLIAM BURTON JP (1826-1909), of Burton Hall, High Sheriff of County Carlow, 1849, 4th Light Dragoons, married twice and was succeeded by his eldest son,
WILLIAM FITZWILLIAM BURTON (1849-1927), of Burton Hall, County Carlow, and Goltho Hall, Wragby, Lincolnshire, who married, in 1877, Georgiana Spencer, fourth daughter of Captain the Hon William Henry George Wellesley RN, and granddaughter of Henry, 1st Lord Cowley.
Mr Burton, High Sheriff of County Carlow, 1910, sold Gotho Hall in 1918.
His children assumed the additional surname of Mainwaring.
He was succeeded by his eldest son,
MAJOR WILLIAM MAINWARING-BURTON (1881-1964), of Marsham Lodge, Gerrard’s Cross, Buckinghamshire, who married and had issue.
BURTON HALL, near Carlow, County Carlow, a house of considerable significance, was begun in 1712.
It contained three storeys on a lofty plinth and nine bays, with a three-bay breakfront centre.
The doorway was rusticated, with many steps; bold quoins; a solid roof parapet.
A bow window was added to the garden front ca 1840, and the top storey was removed.
Burton Hall was sold by William Fitzwilliam Burton in 1927 (who died in the same year) and demolished five years later.
All that remains of Burton Hall’s former existence is a three-bay, single-storey (over basement) granite building, originally a wing of the house, with carved stone dressings.
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. 50. “(Vigors/IFR) A plain two storey 3 bay C18 house. Tripartite doorway with blocking.”
Record of Protected Structures:
Burgage House, Leighlinbridge. Townland: Burgage.
A mid-18th century, three-bay, two-storey house over a basement with rough-cast, battered walls, a round-headed, architraved doorcase with a timber fanlight, sidelights and original, raised and fielded panel door, windows with six panes in each sash and a hipped and sprocketed roof with natural slates and centrally placed stacks. A wing was added at the rear about 1800 making the house an L plan and adding two extra bays including a full-height bow which has wide windows with eight panes in each sash.
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: Vigors of Burgage
p. 187. “Born in April 1769, Arthur Wellesley enlisted as an Ensign in the British army when he was eighteen. He was elected a member of parliament for Trim in his native County Meath when he was 21, and by 1802 he was a Major-General on the brink of a period in his army career that would make him one of the world’s most famous military men. Nothing in that background or career to suggest why the man who would be remembered in history as the Duke of Wellington should need or bother with a home in Carlow town. The dark secret, was the birth of an illegitimate daughter to his mistress Jane Barnwall, in 1787. Historians still argue about Arthur’s own place of birth, with two schools of thought differing between Mornington House in Merrion Street, Dublin, and the family seat in Meath. Apparently, in later years, the Duke was not very proud of being born Irish, a memory perpetuated by his famous and much quoted phrase – “Had I been born in a stable, it would not have made me a horse,” and yet he was also quoted as saying he was inordinately proud of his Irish house, Erindale, in Carlow. In 1830, it was the home of Thomas Tench Vigors, and was later purchased by the Alexanders of Milford.
“During the early 1790s, Arthur Wellesley oversaw the dispersal of the family estates in Kildare and Meath on behalf of his elder brother Richard, 2nd Earl of Mornington, who, after the sale of Mornington House for £8,000 in 1791, had decided to completely distance himself from Ireland. The effect of the sale was to leave Arthur without a base in Ireland. In the many volumes written about him, no mention has ever been made about an illegitimate child. Richard, the father of a number if illegitimate children was more forthcoming about unmarried parenthood. Elizabeth Pakenham, in her book – Wellington, The years of the Sword – recalled that among the many financial matters dealt with by Arthur for his brother was “Lord Mornington’s nameless friend and her child. Arthur saw them when pay day approached in May, and wrote to (the agent) John Page’s son – [p. 188] ‘I have determined that I will not send the child to school until I return to town, which will be in about a month. Thank you for the money.’ Many years later, Richard is referred to having “appointed a young man named Richard Johnson, one of his illegitimate sons by an early affair, to be his private secretary when he became Lord Lieutenant (of Ireland) in 1821.”
The genealogical work relating to the affair between Arthur Wellesley and Jane Barnwall, a member of a Catholic aristocratic family with a seat in Trimleston, Co Meath, was carried out in the 1950s by Sister Ligouri Headen, a member of the Loreto Order, who died in Dublin in 1970 aged 93. In a written account of her family tree, she named the Honourable Miss Jane Barnwell (Barony of Trimleston, Co Meath) as her great grandmother, but pointedly the identity of her great grandfather is not mentioned. Six months before she died, however, the nun confirmed the affair between Arthur and Jane to her nephew William P. Headen, and the birth of a daughter Jane in 1787 – Sister Ligouri’s grandmother. It seems she was understandably reluctant to commit such a source of scandal and embarrassment to paper.”
When Jane Barnwall became pregnant – both were still teenagers – an arranged marriage was imperative, and a marriage partner was found in a member of the Hanlon family of Carlow, wealthy Catholic tenant farmers in the county. No record of the marriage has been found because of gaps in local parish registers for the period. The child was christened Jane Hanlon, and somewhat unusually for the time, she was educated at Winchester Convent, an elite Catholic boarding school in England.” [p. 189] Family sources suggest that Arthur Wellesley funded her education, and maintained a home in Carlow as a discreet meeting place for himself and his daughter.”
“Jane Hanlon married William O’Callaghan, a man eighteen years her senior, who was born the same year as her father. The O’Callaghans were wealthy general merchants in Tullow, and after living for a while in the town, they moved to Barn Cottage, on the Carlow Road. Their first child, William, was born on 24th July 1814, and his sponsors at baptism were Edward Hanlon and Rosanna O’Callaghan. A daughter, Jane, married Micheal Headon, whose son, William P. Headon, was Sister Ligoui’s father. Another of William and Jane’s daughters joined the Bridgine Order in Tullow, where she died in 1903. Jane O’Callaghan (nee Hanlon) died 1867, and she was interred in Grange Cemetery, where her late husband, aged 96, was buried two years earlier.
p. 190. “It is intriguing to consider if the shadow of his daughter stalked Wellington’s thoughts when he first propounded plans for Catholic Emancipation in 1825, and it was under his premiership in 1829 that the measure finally got British government approval, amid considerable opposition from King George IV and Tory MPs.
Arthur Wellesley was no doubt grateful to the many thousands of Irish officers and soldiers who contributed to eventual victory in the Peninsular War, and among them was Captain Nicholas Aylward Vigors, of the Foot Guards, who was severely wounded at the battle of Barossa on March 5th 1811.”
“Careers in the army, the colonial civil service, and the church predominated through the successive careers of the Vigors, from the arrival of the first of the family, Rev Louis Vigors, who settled in Cork, from Holloden, near Bridgerule in North Devon, about 1614. His grandson, Urban, was the first to settle in Co Carlow after his marriage to Bridget Tench, daughter of Allen Tench, of Staplestown, Co Carlow, who was granted large estates in Co Carlow and Wexford during the reign of Charles II (1661-1685). Urban Vigors’ estate in Old Leighlin was confiscated during the four year reign of James II, but his lands were restored during the reign of William III (1689-1702). His brother, Bartholomew Vigors, was appointed Bishop of Ferns and Leighlin in March 1691, and in his will,he left a farm and £300 to build a manse house in Leighlin – a wish not fulfilled because the house was built in Ferns. Though marriage, various generations of the family added surnames to their own – Tench, of Staplestown; Cliffe, of New Ross; Mercer, of Killinane, Wells and Aylward, of Shankill, Co Kilkenny. At the height of their power as landlords, the Vigors owned just over 4,200 acres of land in Old Leighlin and Wells parishes, with estates in Co Wexford and Tipperary. From their original house in Old Leighlin, they built and acquired houses at Burgage, Holloden (the former home of the Mulhallen family), Kilinane (Mercer’s), Erindale and Belmont, both near Carlow town.
p. 192. “After being injured in the Peninsular War, Nicholas Aylward Vigors returned to London where he pursued a scientific career and became the first secretary of the London Zoological Society. He remained in London until the death of his father in 1828, when he inherited the Carlow estate. With a renewed interest at home, Vigors entered politics, broke ranks with the majority of his fellow landlords represented by the Tories, and his success for the Liberals, against Francis Bruen in the Carlow Borough election of 1832, makred the beginning of one of the bitterest decades in parliamentary politics in Carlow. His election victory, and the success in the country of repeal candidate Walter Blackney and the liberal Sir John Milley Doyle, a year earlier, broke the stranglehold of Tory domination in the county and borough going back to 1695.
…Key election issues were the abolition of tithes (taxes paid to Protestant clergy), the repeal of the Union with Britain, an extension of the franchise (only tenants with a land valuation of £10 and over had the vote), and a secret ballot. Extra police and military had to be drafted in to deal with the abduction of voters, intimidation on both sides and post-election violence….p. 193. Typical “outrages” as the Tory media labelled them, included the burning of farm buildings, people being attacked outside churches, animals killed and injured. .. On the other side, the dilemma for the tenants was the threat of eviction, the weapon of the landlords, used ruthlessly by some, but not all.”
“When the fresh election was called, Vigors and Alexander Raphael, a Roman Catholic of Jewish extraction and a man of great wealth, were nominated by the Liberals…The Liberal candidates won…[p. 194] Once again the election result was appealed, and the Liberals were unseated in favour of Bruen and Kavanagh. Catholic votes who supported their landlords were terrified [to leave their homes], shopkeepers were warned not to serve then, while labourers and tradesmen were warned that they risked their lives if they took employment from them.”
[Vigors won in the 1837 byelection, and won in general election six months later.]
p. 196. … His two half brothers pursued full-time military and civil service careers. Col Joshua Allen Vigors (1805), General Horatio Nelson Trafalgar Vigors (1807-1864), and Charles Henry Vigors.
Their cousin, John Cliffe Vigors (1814-1881) … enjoyed gambling – a pastime that was to cost him most of the Burgage estate… He was succeeded by his nephew Thomas Mercer Cliffe Vigors, whose son and heir, Edward Cliffe Vigors, held the post of examiner of standing orders in both houses of parliament in London.
His sister, Eileen Esmee Vigors, married Rev Arthur Evelyn Ward, Canon of Rochester, in 1909, and it was their son, Stephen Ward, who was a key figure in the Profumo scandal.
Edward Cliffe Vigors and his wife Mary Selena, who were responsible for developing the lawns and the rock garden in the grounds by the river Barrow, had no children, and the last of the family to reside at Burgage was his nephew, Terence Cliffe Vigors, who sold the property in 1978 and moved to live in England. … The last Vigors link with Holloden was Mrs Faith O’Grady, whose mother Esther Alice Vigors, only daughter of Col Philip Doyne Vigors, married Standish de Courcy O’Grady in June 1911. The house has been unoccupied since Miss O’Grady’s death in 1980.”
Until 1978 this was the main estate of the Vigors Family in County Carlow. The Vigors Family came to the area in the mid 17th century. Nicholas Aylward Vigors, FRS was the first secretary of the London Zoological Society. Now owned by the Connolly Family. The property stood mainly in Burgage Demesne, with a strip on the west side in Farranafreney.
Detached three-bay two-storey over part-raised basement house with dormer attic, c. 1765, with round-headed door opening having block-and-start doorcase. Extended to rear, c. 1800, with bow added. Interior retains lugged architraves, timber panelled doors, cornices and timber staircases.
Spectemur Agendo – Let Us Be Judged By Our Actions
The Vigors family of County Carlow originated in Holloden near Bridgerule on the border between Cornwall and north Devon. Educated at Oxford, the Rev. Louis Vigors was one of hundreds of people from Devon to move to southern Ireland during the early Stuart period, following in the path of the Devonian explorer and whiskey drinker, Sir Walter Raleigh.[1]
Louis’s son Urban Vigors was chaplain to Lord Broghill, whose father Richard Boyle, the Great Earl of Cork, famously arrived in Ireland from Canterbury aged 16 with sixpence in his pocket and fetched up as the richest man in Ireland.[2] Lord Broghill’s brother Robert Boyle is hailed as the father of modern chemistry. The Rev. Urban Vigors also married into the Boyle family.
During the reign of Charles II (1660-1685), the Vigors were granted estates in Co. Carlow, including Old Leighlin and, it is thought, the townland of Clorusk (or Clorouske) near Royal Oak, where Holloden now stands.[3] Urban Vigors, son of the Rev. Urban Vigors and Mary Boyle, was attainted by James II’s Parliament and lost his lands. However, he was restored to his estates by William III and Queen Mary, for whom he served as Commissioner for County Carlow and also as High Sheriff of Co. Carlow. and is recalled by a floor monument dated 1718 in the church at Old Leighlin; the church has 32 memorials to the Vigors family in total. He moved to Old Leighlin after his marriage to Bridget Tench, the daughter of Allen Tench of Staplestown, Co. Carlow, who came to Ireland from Cheshire about 1645. Curiously the Bunbury and Bruen families also originated in that part of the world. Urban’s brother Bartholomew (1643- 1721) succeeded Dr. Narcissus Marsh to become Bishop of Leighlin and Ferns in 1691. (The family fortunes peaked with over 4,200 acres in Carlow.)
Urban and Bridget’s eldest son Richard Vigors of Old Leighlin was a cogent in Captain Pierce Butler’s Dragoons in 1702, and served as High Sheriff of County Carlow in 1714. He had no issue by his first wife but his second wife Jane Cliffe - the youngest daughter of John Cliffe, Oliver Cromwell’s secretary of war – gave Richard three sons and a daughter before his death in 1723. His second son John Vigors was born in 1709 and ultimately succeeded to Old Leighlin. A Freeman of Ross, John was married in 1781 to Anne Alyward, eldest daughter of Nicholas Aylward of Shankhill Castle, Paulstown, County Kilkenny. They had three sons and two daughters.
Nicholas Aylward Vigors (1755-1828), their second son, served with the 29th Regiment during the American War of Independence as a young man. He was 21 when his father died in 1776, leaving him Old Leiglin. He was married firstly in 1781 to Catherine Richards, with whom he had a son Nicholas Aylward Vigors junior, and four daughters. In 1803, a year after Catherine’s death, he was married secondly to Mary (Jane) Browne, with whom he had five more sons and a daughter, the eldest being Thomas Tench Vigors, who would later inherit Erindale. Their other sons included Joshua (who commanded a party of infantry who stormed Delhi during the Indian Mutiny); Charles (who was killed in a horsefall during the Garrison Steeplechase in Dublin in 1844) and the memorably named Horatio Nelson Trafalgar Vigors (who didn’t join the Navy but became a General and a Governor General of St Helena).
On 19 March 1807, a baptism record for Nicholas and Mary’s third son, Horatio Nelson Trafalgar Vigors, includes the words ‘of Erindale’ in brackets but this may have been added later. The name is also in brackets after the baptism of their daughter Dorothea Elizabeth Vigors in April 1809. Erindale is more confidently states as their address by 20 December 1811 when their son John Urbanus Vigors was baptised. (Journal of the Association for the Preservation of Memorials of the Dead in Ireland (1895), p. 28, 29 and 31)
The elder N.A. Vigors was clearly keen to set up his firstborn son, N.A. Vigors junior, who, born in 1785, attained his majority in 1806. N.A. Vigors senior was living at Erindale by January 1812, when he signed a ‘Protestant petition‘, addressed to both Houses of Parliament in London, ‘in favour of persons professing the Roman Catholic religion.’ N.A. Vigors junior was recorded on the same petition as living at Old Leighlin. As such, it seems likely Erindale was constructed between 1806 and 1812. When Sarah Steele published ‘Eva, an historical poem’ in 1816, Mrs Vigors of Erindale was listed as a subscriber.
N. A. Vigors junior, aka Captain Nicholas Aylward Vigors, served under Wellington in the Peninsula Wars and was wounded at Barossa. He later became first secretary to the London Zoological Society. In 1828, having inherited his Carlow estate, he threw himself behind the cause of Catholic Emancipation, successfully defeating the Tories (dominant in Carlow since 1695) and serving as Liberal MP for the county until his death in 1840 put the Tories back in charge.
The following story was originally in the Carlow Morning Post and Saunders News-Letter (23 November). This version appeared in The Statesman (London) on Friday 23 November 1821:
‘On Tuesday night, a beautiful and valuable Devon Calf, the property of N, A. Vigors, Esq. of Erindale, near this town, was taken off the pasture field, and brought to a grotto near the house, where having been killed, by some one or more ruffians, they left the carcass behind, carrying away only the skin. We are totally at a loss to account for such conduct, for if there is one gentleman in the vicinity of Carlow, entitled to the unqualified esteem of the public, Captain Vigors is that man! This gentleman has expended several thousand pounds on his demesne, which he has literally thrown open to the public ; and during the summer months the inhabitants of this town have every accommodation they can wish for, whenever they may be disposed to recreate themselves in the beautiful scenery and improvements of Erindale: yet the liberal proprietor, whose heart and hand was ever open to relieve his fellow-creature–is not secure, as it appears, from outrage.
Thomas Tench Vigors (1804-1850) was living at Erindale from at least 1836 until his death, at Erindale, on 20 February 1850. Shearman’s Directory of 1839 lists him at Erindale with his wife Jane Murphy (nee Rudkin) (c1799-1879 in Boulange, France). Jane was previously married to Patrick Murphy and was the daughter of Gilbert Rudkin of Wells (between The Royal Oak and Paulstown), connected to Rudkin’s Mill of Bagenalstown.
By 1852 Jocelyn Thomas was leasing Erindale from Jane Vigors. Captain Henry Rudkin Vigors, Carlow Rifles, only son of Thomas Tench Vigors, seems to have sold it on in 1864. (Carlow Post, 25 June 1864). In about 1883, Erindale was rented by Arthur McClintock and his wife Susan, who later settled at Rathvinden by Leighlinbridge.
There was a theory that Erindale House was once owned by the Duke of Wellington but this seems unlikely. James Grogan wondered if someone had simply got muddled between Nelson and Wellington. The Iron Duke certainly had Irish connections. Sir Ulysses des Burgh, his aide de camp & assistant military secretary, was married in Carlow in 1815 to Maria, only daughter of the late Walter Bagenal, Esq. who represented County Carlow in several Parliaments. Moreover, Wellington also had an illegitimate daughter, Jane Hanlon / O’Hanlon of Grangemore, Tullow, County Carlow, born circa 1787 through a teenage romance with Alicia Eustace (1773-1860), second daughter of Lieutenant-General Charles Eustace of Robertstown, County Kildare. Being considered spoiled goods, poor Alicia was married off in1797, aged 24, as second wife to the 80-year-old Lord Trimleston. A contemporary report said the occasion caused much ‘mirth’. (Could Grangemore be a mispelling of Castlemore, which was a Eustace house outside Tullow?)
THE BURGAGE & HOLLODEN LINE
Captain Thomas Vigors, a younger son of Urban and Bridget, served in the Black Horse and, by his second marriage to Elizabeth Mercer, was father to the Rev. Edward Vigors, who was born in 1747.[4] The Rev Edward was Perpetual Curate of Old Leighlin, Co. Carlow from 1774 to 1783, during which time he built Burgage House. Prior to this he lived at the Lodge (Eastwood House), Bagenalstown, but in April 1770, he signed a renewable lease (at the yearly rent of £106) for all the lands of Lodge and the Demesne of Bagenalstown to his kinsman Richard Mercer, including the river-side Corn Mill, founded in 1708 and formerly run by Owen Murphy. [5] In 1781 he became Rector of Shankill, Co. Kilkenny. The Rev. Edward died aged 51 in 1797 and was buried in Old Leighlin; his widow Mary (nee Low of Westmeath) died in 1827 and was also buried in Old Leighlin. They had three children, the Rev Thomas Mercer Vigors, and two daughters, Elizabeth and Maria.[6]
On his death in 1797, the Rev Edward Vigors was succeeded at Burgage by his only son, the Rev. Thomas Mercer Vigors (1775-1850). Educated at Trinity College Dublin, Thomas became Perpetual Curate of Old Leighlin until 1815 when he was appointed Rector of Rathasbeck, Queen’s County (Laois). He was later promoted to Powerstown, which he held until his death on the 7th April, 1850. His wife Anne Cliffe was a daughter of the Rev. John Cliffe of New Ross Co. Wexford.
The fortunes of the Vigors of Burgage plummeted when Thomas Mercer Cliffe Vigors bet it all on a horse in the 1887 Derby called The Baron who lost. When Thomas was caught in bed with a maid by his wife, he tried to win her back with the line: ‘If one is going to appreciate Chateau Lafitte, my dear, one must occasionally have a glass of vin ordinaire.’ Eileen Esme Vigors of the Burgage family was mother to Stephen Ward, a key figure in the Profumo scandal which rocked MacMillan’s government in 1963. See Stephen Ward (The Crown) connection to Vigors.
***
‘Colonel Vigors is well known in the antiquarian world as an energetic and enthusiastic antiquarian, and a courteous and cultivated gentleman.’ Londonderry Sentinel – Saturday 6 September 1890
Colonel Philip Doyne Vigors (1825-1903) of Holloden, the seventh and youngest son of the Rev. Thomas Mercer Vigors, was a military man, antiquarian and explorer. In September 1848, he set off for Australia as a subaltern in the 11th Foot on the three-masted convict ship, the Pestonjee Bomanjee, carrying 298 female Irish prisoners; it took 146 days to reach Sydney. In 1851 he managed to join in the Gold Rush in New South Wales, scooping some gold and ore from the Turon River that was later displayed in the drawing-room at Holloden; the wedding ring he gave his wife was made with some of this gold.[8] He then spent four months cruising around the islands around Australia and New Zealand, including Fiji, the Solomon Islands and the New Hebrides; to his collection he added the arm-bone of a girl eaten by cannibals for stealing a coconut. He subsequently served in India and Burma, gathering more items during visits to Java and the Spice Islands.
He returned to Ireland in 1880, moved to Holloden and became a Poor Law Guardian.[9] He was also co-opted onto the County Council. In 1888 he founded the Association for the Preservation of the Memorials of the Dead to record many faded tombstones in cemeteries, working closely with Lord Walter FitzGerald. He was vice president of the ‘Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland’. Among the prize possessions to pass through his hands at Holloden were the Clontarf Chalice, an elk head found at Browne’s Hill, the rosary beads owned by the luckless Spaniard at the heart of the father-son Lynch murder trial in Galway, and the brass blunderbuss reputedly used by Freney the Robber. The walls were also lined with trophies, clocks and weapons, while his library included over 200 books.
In 1894 he was serving as High Sheriff for County Carlow when a notice appeared in newspapers across Ireland announcing that he had been found ‘dead in his bed’ at Holloden on 12 June. He swiftly penned a note to the editor, denying this ‘wicked and most unjustifiable report.’ He lived on until 1903 when, aged 78, he did indeed pass away at Holloden. His body was laid to rest in the family vault in the Old Leighlin Cathedral where a fine black oak Episcopal Throne (which had belonged to Bishop Vigors in 1691) was later erected to his memory by his widow and daughter.[10]
In 1882 Colonel Vigors married Margaret Woodhead of (Brighton?), Sussex, who died in October 1922. Their only child, Esther, was born at Holloden on 16 June 1884. The 1911 Census records the inhabitants of Holloden as Margaret Vigors (aged 58) and her daughter Esther Alice Vigors (aged 26) along with a staff of 3 – Julia Purcell, cook, aged 46, Annie Doyle, parlour maid, aged 22 and Sarah Cane, maid, aged 19.
On 7 June 1911, Esther was married in Leighlin Cathedral to Major Standish de Courcy O’Grady, of the Royal Army Medical Corps, a grandson of The O’Grady and cousin of Standish O’Grady, the Gaelic Revival man. There were five bridesmaids, Stamer O’Grady was best man and the road from Royal Oak to the Holloden Gate was decorated with arches of flowers erected by the villagers. Mrs Vigors hosted an after-party for 200 guests at Holloden, with a wedding breakfast on the lawn.[12]
Lieutenant Colonel Standish De Courcy O’ Grady, CMG, DSO, had the unhappy distinction of being the highest ranking officer from this area of Ireland to die in the Great War. Although the death of the 48-year-old Medical Officer did not take place until 23 December 1920, it was deemed inevitable that he would contact one of the deadly disease so prevalent due to the war. He was buried at the Pieta Military Cemetery in Malta.[13]
His widow Esther died in 1970 aged 86, having had three children - Gerald (1912-1993, who became ‘The O’Grady’), Philip (born 1916), and Faith O’Grady (1913-1980). Faith lived at Holloden and farmed the land until her death in January 1980 after which the house was abandoned. The considerable Vigors library was also sold in 1985, along with much of the furniture, clocks, art and the elk head. Harry O’Grady inherited Holloden and sold the house with 131 acres in 1986, when he was about eighteen years old. A man was apparently planning to quarry the land before the Walsh’s bought it as a base for the excellent Wash’s Whiskey and Hot Irishman.
In 1956-1959, Wilfred Thesiger is said to have written part of his travelogue masterpiece, ‘Arabian Sands’, in a room “at the end of a long corridor” at Holloden whilst staying with his cousin Faith O’Grady. Thesiger’s mother was Kathleen Mary Vigors, a daughter of the bold Thomas Mercer Cliffe Vigors.
With thanks to James Grogan, John Headon, Alma Brophy & others.
FURTHER READING
‘The Vigors Family of Burgage, Leighlinbridge’ (Carloviana, 2011, p. 93-102) by
Victor Connolly of Burgage includes a useful family tree and comprehensive details of the Holloden branch as well as Thesiger, Stephen Ward, Tim Vigors, etc., via the Carlow Historical & Archaeological Society.
FOOTNOTES
[1] The Rev. Louis Vigors arrived in Cork circa 1615. He had been ordained on the 5th of November 1603 by the Bishop of Exeter. In Ireland he was beneficed in the Diocese of Ross where he became Treasurer of the Cathedral in 1631. He died in Devonshire in 1642, as did his widow in 1651. Myles Kavanagh, ‘Eastwood House and the Moneybeg Demesne’, Carloviana 2016, p. 20.
[2] During the English Civil War, Lord Broghill was one of Oliver Cromwell’s closest allies but he was also a natural born survivor. The moment Cromwell died, Broghill realized the game was up and he sent an invite to Charles II to reclaim his throne. Such resourcefulness earned him the gratitude of the new monarch who showered him with gold and titles.
Urban Vigors was beneficed 1634-37 in the Diocese of Cork and Ross, and in 1645 was Chaplain to the 1st Earl of Ossory. He married circa 1635 Catherine Boyle sister of Richard Boyle, Bishop of Ferns (1667–1683) and Roger Boyle Bishop of Clogher (1672-1687). They had a son called Urban.
[3] They also had estates and houses in Derryfore and Rathevan, Queen’s County (Laois) and Ballybar and Corries Co. Carlow (1729) and Seldon, Devonshire (1725).
[4] Urban and Bridget’s second son Thomas Vigors was born c.1685. Thomas was Captain in the Legion Regiment, “The Black Horse” and was Justice of the Peace for Queen’s County (Laois) and High Sheriff in 1714. Captain Thomas married twice, first to Margaret a widow and they had issue of three children Urban, Bartholomew, and Lucy. His second marriage was to Elizabeth Mercer, daughter of Edward Mercer of Knockballystine Co. Carlow and they had issue of three children Richard, the Rev. Edward and Elizabeth.
[5] Born in 1747, the Rev. Edward Vigors graduated with a B.A. in Trinity College Dublin in 1767 and married Mary Low of Lissoy, Co. West- meath, daughter of Edward Low and Elizabeth Nelligan (daughter of the Rev. Maurice Nelligan) in December 1773.
[6] Elizabeth died unmarried on 30 July, 1828 and was buried at Old Leighlin. Maria married the Rev. George Alcock, died in 1854 and is also buried at Old Leighlin
[8] A journal PDV kept of his time in Australia was apparently sold by Christie’s.
[9] I located an article in the Freeman’s Journal of 16 June 1880 relating to the purchase of an estate in Cloughrouske (Clorusk), which was held in trust for Philip D Vigors. I believe this is the purchase of Malcomville and the beginning of it being the seat of the Vigors family. This ties in with a 1958 article in the Kilkenny People in which his daughter, Esther O’Grady, states the house was called Malcomville before her father purchased it on his return to Ireland in 1880.
[10] Dublin Daily Express, 11 April 1906, p. 2.
[12] Dublin Daily Express, 10 June 1911. Richard Sheehan, ‘Fashionable County Carlow Wedding’, Bagenalstown Yearbook 2010, p. 51.
[13] John Kenna, ‘Leighlin Men who Died in the Great War’, Carloviana 2001, p. 88.
Browne’s Hill, County Carlow photograph courtesy of Irish Times 30th July 2020 Browne’s Hill, County Carlow photograph courtesy of National Inventory.
Browne’s Hill House, Chapelstown, Co Carlow
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. 48 “(Browne-Clayton/IFR) A distinguished mid-C18 house of three storeys over a basement, faced in very regular granite ashlar; built 1763 for Robert Browne, to the design of an architect named Peters. 6 bay entrance front, with two bay pedimented breakfront. Partly enclosed pedimented Doric porch, with coupled columns at both sides. Shouldered window surrounds. Solid roof parapet; balustraded area parapet. Curved entrance hall with mutule cornice and frieze of swags, and pedimented Doric doorcase, shaped to the curve, with fluted half-columns. Staircase hall decorated with plasterwork foliage; wooden stairs with turned balusters and carved ends to treads. Drawing room with ceiling of rococo plasterwork incorporating birds in high relief, in the manner of Robert West. Octagon bedroom. Some alterations carried out in 1842, probably to the design of Thomas Alfred Cobden. Magnificent triumphal arch at entrance to demesne, with pediment, pilasters, volutes and rusticated wicket-gates, surmounted by lions; now removed to Lyons, Co Kildare. Browne’s Hill was sold by Lt-Col W.P. Browne-Clayton 1951.”
Browne’s Hill County Carlow (1) photograph courtesy of Irish Times 30th July 2020 Browne’s Hill County Carlow (1) photograph courtesy of Irish Times 30th July 2020 Browne’s Hill County Carlow (1) photograph courtesy of Irish Times 30th July 2020
Detached six-bay three-storey over basement neo-Classical country house, built 1763, with granite ashlar façade having pedimented central breakfront and full-height canted bay to rear. Renovated and extended to rear, c. 1842, with pedimented projecting Doric porch and balustrade added.
Browne’s Hill, County Carlow photograph courtesy of National Inventory.Browne’s Hill, County Carlow photograph courtesy of National Inventory.Browne’s Hill, County Carlow photograph courtesy of National Inventory.
Detached seven-bay two-storey stable complex, c. 1842, on a quadrangular plan with cut stone façade having central breakfront and gabled advanced end bays.
Browne’s Hill, County Carlow photograph courtesy of National Inventory.
Detached three-bay single-storey neo-Classical gate lodge, c. 1842, with diastyle pedimented projecting Doric portico, blocked entablature and corner pilasters.
Browne’s Hill, County Carlow photograph courtesy of National Inventory.
Record of Protected Structures:
Browneshill House, townland: Kernanstown
An important, classical house built in 1763 with a six-bay, three-storey façade over a deep basement. The façade is of granite ashlar with a two-bay, pedimented breakfront with raised coigns to the breakfont and the ends of the façade and other walls finished with lime rendering. The rear façade has a full-height, half-hexagon bow. The windows on the façade have granite, lugged architraves while those on the other fronts have plain block and start granite dressings. All windows have small paned sashes which appear to be original. The hipped roof is obscured by a high parapet resting on a heavy cornice. An enclosed porch was added to the house in 1842 and has a wide pediment supported by a hexastyle, Tuscan Doric portico with full entablature. The porch is flanked by a granite balustrade round the basement area. The interior has its original decoration including a superb, rococo, decorative-plaster ceiling and full-height, open-well staircase
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: Browne of Browne’s Hill
p. 41. Browne’s Hill House and its 600 acres had been sold to the Harold partnership by Lieut Col William Patrick Browne-Clayton and his wife Janet, who moved to live at Cashel House, in Connemara, with their son Robert Bruce and daughter Magdalene.”
p. 42 of Jimmy O’Toole:
“Labelled the “Carlow Land War” by the media, its leader was Kathleen Brady of Bennekerry, the daughter of a neighbouring small farmer [neighbour to Myshall Lodge], who was one of the founders of the local land club. The writer Brendan Behan called her the Joan of Arc of the small farmers fight for land in County Carlow, and the land club had an even more important literary ally in another radical of the period, Peader O’Donnell… as a result the Harold syndicate sold Browne Hill House to the Land Commission.”
p. 44. The first of the family to settle in Ireland in 1654 was Robert Browne, from Wickham in Buckinghamshire, who served with Colonel Henry Prittie’s Regiment during the Civil War in England. He died in Carlow in 1677. His great grandson, Robert Browne II (1729-1816), completed the building of Browne’s Hill house in 1763, a year after he married Eleannor Morres, daughter of a Dublin MP. They had four sons and two daughters. The second son, Lieut General Robert Browne III married Henrietta Clayton, only daughter and heir of Sir Richard Clayton of Lancashire in 1803, and he added the name Clayton following the death of his father-in-law in 1829. It was sixty years later before a Browne’s Hill heir added the Clayton name.”
“William Browne (1763-1840) inherited Browne’s Hill after his father’s death in 1816, and he was an MP for Portarlington – the only member of the family ever to hold a seat in Parliament. It was after his wife, Lady Charlotte Bourke, daughter of the Earl of Mayo, who was Archbishop of Tuam, that Charlotte Street in Carlow is named. His son, Robert Clayton Browne, contested the election in 1852, against MP John Sadlier, but was defeated. Sadlier tended towards the liberal side in politics…”
p. 47 “Prior to the death of his father, Robert Clayton Browne lived at Viewmount, a short distance from the family seat and one time home of Sir Edward Crosbie, Bart, whose controversial execution during the 1798 Rebellion would remain a subject of bitter debate years afterwards…p. 48. Viewmount House was built in 1750 and was demolished about 1860. All that now remains in ruins are some stables and outbuildings.”
“The Browne-Claytons were one of County Carlow’s most decorated military families William Browne-Clayton (1835-1907) , who assumed the additional name of Clayton in 1889, and his wife Caroline, whom he married in 1867, had three sons and nine daughters. Their son William died 1897 in battle. … The eldest of the family, Bridadier-General Robert Browne-Clayton (1870-1939) married an Australian bride, Mary Magdalene Wienholt..”
Paddy Rossmore. Photographs. Edited by Robert O’Byrne. The Lilliput Press, Dublin 7, 2019.
p. 10. “In spring 1961 the Irish Georgian Society’s Bulletin warned readers that a house called Browne’s Hill in County Carlow was due for imminent demolition unless a buyer could be found; the house on just five acres (the Land Commission having taken and distributed all the rest) was being offered for £2500. … The architect is known simply as “Peters”: this may be the gardener and landscape architect Matthew Peters who was then working in Ireland. The superlative entrance gates of Browne’s Hill, for which an unsigned and undated drawing survives, are attributed to the same person and thought to be of the same period. Taking the form of a triumphal arch, they feature a carriage opening flanked by Doric pilasters with Gibbsian postern gates on either side on each of which sits a lion. …Following intervention by the Irish Georgian Society, Browne’s Hill survived, and was converted into flats. The magnificent entrance to the estate was acquired by University College Dublin, dismantled and erected at Lyons, Co Kildare, which was then owned by that institution.”
Browne’s Hill mansion occupies the site of an ancient religious establishment called St. Kieran’s Abbey. The Browne family moved from Essex and quickly became one of the most influential families in County Carlow. Built in 1763, Browne’s Hill is one of the few surviving Georgian mansions in the county and should thus be considered as a work of considerable historical value. It was probably designed by the Georgian landscape architect, Matthew Peters.
This fine house originally comprised a detached six-bay three-storey over-basement structure, built in the Neo-Classical style with a granite ashlar façade. the house ‘quickly became the flagship seat in the county and the property which all others tried to emulate or outbuild’. It was renovated by Thomas Cobden in the 1830s, with a pedimented central breakfront on the front and a full-height canted bay extended to the rear. The park wall and nearby house at Viewmount were built using material from the original quondam abbey, while the high wall around the estate was built as part of a Famine Relief project in the 1840s.
Note from Michael Purcell
Unfortunately much of the Browne and Browne-Clayton archives have been lost or destroyed, meaning much of the family history may be lost forever. In the present archive is a letter from the family’s Dublin based solicitor, dating to the 1880s, in which he apologizes for the fact that his cellar has flooded with the result that certain boxes of Browne deeds and papers had been damaged beyond recognition.
A number of papers were burned shortly before the family left Browne’s Hill in the1950s. When Frank Tully, the present owner of Browne’s Hill House, moved in during the late 1950s, he found wine in the cellars, oil paintings on the walls and a large pile of Browne-Clayton family documents in one of the rooms. Some documents relating to land in the area were duly framed.
The remaining documents were removed by the builder and destroyed. Following the death of the Carlow solicitor Hugh O’Donnell in the 1960s, one witness recalled seeing a young man burning all the papers and deeds relating to O’Donnell’s clients, including the Browne-Claytons. This same witness points out that we are thus extremely lucky that there is anything left of the Browne-Clayton papers at all.
Source: Michael Purcell
Robert Browne of Browneshill
Robert Browne from Wickham in Buckinghamshire, came to Ireland in 1650 and settled at Browneshill, townland of Kernanstown (property of Wall family prior to 1641 rebellion).
On 24 December, 1674 Charles II granted a new Charter to Carlow. Robert Browne was appointed the first modern Sovereign of the Borough. He had been the last Portreeve under the old Charter of James Ist. He died in 1677.
John Browne (Son) married Mary Jennings of Kilkee Castle, Co. Kildare.
William Browne their (Son) married Elizabeth Clayton Kildare. He died in 1772.
Robert Browne II (1729 – 1816) succeeded his father William. He married Eleanor Morris, Dublin.
William Browne (1763 – 1840) (Son) was M.P. for Portarlington – only family member to hold a seat in Parliament. It was following his wife’s death Lady Charlotte Bourke in 1806 that Charlotte St. was named.
Robert Clayton Browne (Son) (1799 – 1888) contested Carlow Borough Election in 1852 was defeated.
William Browne Clayton (Son) (1835-1907) Assumed the additional name Clayton by Royal Licence in 1889 (had been adopted previously). On 10th January 1867, he married Caroline Barton, fifth daughter of John Watson Barton, DL, JP, of Stapleton Park near Pontefract. Yorkshire. England.
Robert Browne Clayton (1870 – 1939) Brigadier General Married Mary Magdalene Wienholt (Australian).
William Patrick Browne Clayton (Son) (Colonel) (1906 – 1971) sold the estate to G. W. Harold in 1951 and went to live in Connemara.
On 23rd October 1935 he was married at St Margaret’s, Westminster, to Janet Maitland Bruce Jardine.
The last house on the corner of Browne Street and Charlotte Street (now a car park) was the Town House of the Brownes. The buildings halfway up Charlotte Street were their stables and coach houses.
William Clayton Browne-Clayton
Carlow Sentinel.
Saturday, October 9th, 1897.
Lieutenant William Clayton Browne-Clayton Killed In Action.
On Saturday last a feeling of profound sorrow was caused not only in this town and county but throughout every portion of her Majesty’s wide dominions by the sad intelligence that some British officers had been killed in action at the North-Western frontier in India, including a gallant young Carlowman, Lieutenant William Clayton Browne-Clayton, second son of William Clayton Browne-Clayton, Esquire, D.L., of Browne’s Hill, Carlow.
Very meagre particulars of the engagement have as yet been received, but it is probable that it was a hand-to-hand encounter, and it is certain that our young county man was in the forefront of the fight when cut down in the prime of youth, and when apparently a brilliant career was before him.
By early post on Saturday a letter was received from him from the seat of war, written in excellent spirits, and it was not until some members of the family reached the Carlow railway station, with the intention of proceeding to Dublin by early train, that they learned the sad news through the morning papers.
By every section of the community sorrow and sympathy find deep expression, and during the day the Church bell was tolled in honour of the dead.
The gallant young officer, whose death is everywhere mourned, had only been in the army a little over two years, having entered the Royal West Kent Regiment on May 29th, 1895.
[note added 2010 by Michael Purcell].
The following account of the battle during which William Browne-Clayton was killed was compiled by Philip Wilson, transcribed by Grace Bunbury.
In September 1897 Lieutenant Colonel J.L. O’ Bryen commanded the 31st Punjabis in the Expedition to Bajour and took part in various operations until he fell whilst gallantly leading it in the storming of the heights were the villages of Agrah and Gat are situated in the Mamund Valley on the 30th September 1897.
Winston Churchill in his book The Malakand Field Force invites the reader to examine the legitimacy of village-burning. A camp of a British Brigade, moving at the order of the Indian Government and under the acquiescence of the people of the United Kingdom, is attacked at night.
Several valuable and expensive officers, soldiers and transport animals are killed and wounded. The assailants retire to the hills. Thither it is impossible to follow them. They cannot be caught. They cannot be punished.
Only one remedy remains; their property must be destroyed. Their villages are made hostages for their good behaviour.
On the 29th September over a dozen villages in the plains of the Mamund Valley were destroyed, without a single loss of life. However on the 30th September events took a totally different course Brigadier General Jeffrey’s 2nd Brigade attacked the fortified villages of Agrah and Gat.
These two villages occupied the strongest strategical position of any yet seen, perched on the lower slope of a steep and rugged hill, and mutually supporting each other they were protected on either side by high rocky boulders, great rocks lay tossed about, interspersed with these were huts or narrow cultivated terraces, covered with crops, and rising one above the other by great steps of ten to twelve feet.
Both villages had to be occupied at the same time and this compelled the Brigade to attack on a broader front in full view of the enemy, whose drums could be heard as they manned the rocky heights, their red flags plainly visible to the advancing army.
The Guides Cavalry on the left advanced as far as the scrub would allow them drawing fire from isolated skirmishers. The Guides Infantry was ordered to clear the spur to the left; the 31st Punjab Infantry supported by the 38th Dogras, the centre ridge between the two villages, while the Royal West Kent Regiment was meant to advance straight up the hill on the right of the Guides.
The fighting was at very close quarters and it soon became apparent that there were insufficient troops to undertake the task. A gap opened in consequence, between the Guides and Royal West Kents and this enabled the enemy to get round the left flank of the Royal West Kents, while the 31st Punjab Infantry was also turned by the enveloping enemy on the right.
The Royal West Kents eventually forced their way into the village of Agrah and encountered stiff enemy resistance in strongly occupied sangers. Under heavy enemy fire the Bengal Sappers and Miners commenced to destroy the village with explosives.
Meanwhile on the right flank the 31st Punjab Infantry commanded by Lieut. Colonel O’Bryen were exposed to severe fire from a rocky ridge on their flank. Their attack was directed against a great mass of boulders tenaciously held by the enemy. The two advance companies being hotly engaged at less than 100 yards, experiencing cross fire from their right flank.
Lieut Colonel O’Bryen moved swiftly from point to point directing the fire and animating his men who were devoted to him. As the enemy marksmen’s bullets struck the ground everywhere around his prominent figure he continued to live a charmed life.
‘Two companies of the 38th Dogras’ came up to clear their right. The gunfire, though accurate, could not shift the tribesmen from their cover. So Lieut Colonel O’Bryen of the Punjabis ordered a charge.
As O’Bryen rose to lead the 31st Punjabis in the charge towards their objective he was mortally wounded and was then carried to the rear. The casualty roll for the 31st (Punjab) Regiment of Bengal Infantry confirms he died of gun shot wounds to the abdomen.
Brigadier Jeffreys ordered the 7th Battery to engage the enemy from 600 yards to cover the withdrawal of the 2nd Brigade. The shells screamed over the heads of the Royal West Kents who were now clear of the hills retiring towards the guns. As the guns of the 7th Battery continued to fire, white puffs could be seen as the shells burst along the crest of the ridge, tearing up the ground adding great clouds of dust, whilst flames and smoke continued to rise from the burning village.
At length the withdrawal was complete and the 2nd Brigade returned to its camp five miles down the valley ..?.. job almost done. The Village of Agrah was well and truly destroyed whilst the village of Ghat had been severely shelled.
On hearing the news General Sir Bindon Blood proceeded to Inyat Kila with sizeable reinforcements. He arrived on the 2nd October giving orders for fourteen 12 pounder guns to arrive in time for a determined two Brigade strong attack on Agrah and Gat which was scheduled for the 5th October. As the British Army poured into the Mamund Valley, the tribesmen sued for peace on the 4th October.
After the action on the 30th September Lieut Colonel McCrae 45th Sikhs was sent up to command the 31st Punjab Infantry and Winston Churchill was attached as a temporary measure to the 31st Punjab Infantry to fill the vacancy arising from Lieut. E.B. Peacock receiving gun shots wounds to the thigh in the action on the 30th September. The total casualties for the day being 61 of which 8 being officer casualties: Lieut Colonel O’Bryen (killed) 2nd Lieut W.C. Browne-Clayton of the Royal West Kents (killed ) with a further six Officers of the Royal West Kents being wounded that day at Agrah.
Source: Michael Purcell & Turtle Bunbury website
Prayers for Lieutenant William Browne-Clayton.
[Sermon preached in St. Mary’s Church, Carlow, on Sunday, 3rd October 1897, extracted from Dean John Finlay’s notes 24 years later, in 1921, at the age of 80 years, Dean Finlay, one time Dean of Leighlin, was himself murdered by the Irish Republican Army following a raid on his home. G.B.]
Rev. Dean John Finlay delivered the following address on the death of 24 year old Lieutenant William Clayton Browne-Clayton, who was born at Browne’s Hill House in 1873 and was killed in Afghanistan in September 1897.
A feeling of sorrow I know pervades this congregation to-day for the Browne-Clayton family – which has been plunged into grief by the loss of one of its members.
Oh! — how hard it is for a father and a mother, how hard it is for the brothers and sisters to think of a young life full of health and strength and hope being taken so suddenly.
The anxious watching, day by day, for news, and then when it comes with its burden of sorrow, the hearts of the waiting ones are wrung with grief –such grief as only those who suffer can know its depth.
He fell doing his duty.
You, my brethren, I know do sorrow this day with those that sorrow – you give them your heartful sympathy ; but, brethren, stop not here.
Give them also your prayers that God may comfort and strengthen them; and when we kneel and use the words:
“We humbly beseech Thee of Thy goodness, O Lord, to comfort and succour all them who in this transitory life are in trouble, sorrow, need, sickness, or any other adversity”: and we also bless The Holy name for all Thy servants departed this life in Thy Faith, and fear.
When we use these words , I say, let us think of those who sorrow to-day, and let us commit them to God’s care.
We are all one in Christ.
We are all bound to feel for one another, and to pray for one another.
May a feeling of closer union take possession of our hearts to-day, that Christ may dwell in our hearts by faith, that we being rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye may be filled with all the fullness of God.
And then out of that fullness may we give the sympathy that softens sorrow, and the prayer which will comfort those who mourn, with the comfort which comes from the Father of us all.
Source: Michael Purcell & PPP
Captain Robert Bruce Browne-Clayton 1940-2014.
By Michael Purcell.
The death on the 19th of January 2014, following a short illness, of Capt. Robert Bruce Browne-Clayton, terminated the last link with a Carlow gentry family whose connection with the area stretched back to the mid-17th century. Robert spent his early years at Browne’s Hill House, Carlow.
His ancestor Robert Browne settled in Carlow town in 1650, having come as an officer in Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army and was a witness to the surrender of Carlow Castle in July of that year.
In the years that followed Robert Browne purchased land throughout Carlow.
By the 1700s the family owned nearly all of what is now Graiguecullen and Sleaty as well as large tracts of land in Carlow, Dublin and several other counties.
For generations they held positions such as, Keeper of the Rolls, High Sheriff and Deputy Lord Lieutenant for the county and were often called upon to act as Magistrates, Justice’s of the Peace and settlers of disputes.
The family were regarded as fair landlords. During the Famine they provided employment by building the massive high wall stretching for miles around the Browne’s Hill estate.
In recognition of the high regard the family were held in, it is recalled today by family members, and confirmed by local research, that in the 1920s during “the troubles” in Ireland, President Éamon de Valera issued a direct order that Browne’s Hill House should not be raided or damaged by the Irish Republican Army.
Robert Browne-Clayton, better known as Robbie, was born on 25th April 1940, the only son of Lieutenant Colonel William Browne-Clayton and Janet Jardine.
He received his early education at home and in the Browne-Clayton Memorial School in Barrack Street, the school was founded and funded by his grandfather Brigadier General Robert Browne-Clayton, DSO GOC.
His maternal grandfather was Brigadier General James Bruce Jardine, CMG DSO DL. From this side of the family Robbie was a direct descendant of James Bruce, the famous 18th century Abyssinian explorer, who was credited with finding the source of the Nile.
At a young age Robbie was sent to Frilsham House boarding school near Reading and later to Loretto School, Muselborough in Scotland. Travelling on his own by ferry, train and bus he became, in his own words, “a seasoned traveller by the age of nine”!
He completed his education and military training at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst.
Following in the family tradition of service in the British Army he was commissioned in 1960 as an officer in the Royal Green Jackets.
In August 1961 on the night the Berlin Wall was erected he was in command of a British force stationed nearby in the old Reichstag building. He witnessed the Soviets shooting down civilians attempting to flee. With his platoon on full battle alert he contacted the Allied command post for orders, only to be told that if his men fired one shot in retaliation it would lead to the outbreak of World War Three. Not wishing to be recorded in history as the man responsible for firing-up such a catastrophe, Robbie reluctantly ordered his men to stand down.
During his posting in Berlin his platoon was placed on security duty at Spandau Prison, there Robert often engaged in conversation with Albert Speer and Rudolf Hess as they tended to the little gardens they had established on the prison grounds. Robert told me that he found Hess to be talkative and friendly but he found Speer to be reserved and not so friendly.
He later served in British Guyana, Malaya and Borneo. He retired from the army in 1968,
After leaving the army he studied at The Royal Agricultural College and after graduating was appointed as agricultural adviser to the Conservative Research Department.
When the Conservatives won the general election in 1979, Robbie was appointed by Margaret Thatcher as consultant to her Government on Agricultural, Fisheries, Food, Forestry and Countryside policies. Robbie’s friendship with Mrs Thatcher continued following her resignation as prime minister.
In his youth he was sponsored to become a member of one of the great City Livery Companies, Merchant Taylor. In the 1970s he was made a Freeman of the City of London.
As a result of his years “in” Politics he held several Political and Public Affairs positions after leaving the Conservatives until he retired :- Director, Economic & Public Affairs at the Building Employers Confederation. Director General, The National Home Improvement Council. Director of External Affairs, Federation of Master Builders. General Secretary (Chief Executive), the Chamber of Coal Traders. Chief Executive Officer, IFA Promotions Ltd. as well as serving in the Financial Services Industry in London.
He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
In 2007 I advised Robbie that he should donate the Browne-Clayton estate papers and family documents to the archives in Carlow County Library. He agreed to do so and later that year travelled to Carlow from his home in Devon bringing with him a large collection of documents dating from 1640s to the 1900s.
Among the documents are parchments signed by the Earl of Thomond and the Earl of Ormonde, memorials, deeds, indentures, estate records and details on the little known Carlow Orphan Society and the Carlow Cowkeepers Association.
Speaking of his donation to the library, Carlow County Librarian Josephine Coyne stated, “we owe a debt of gratitude to Mr Browne-Clayton for depositing his papers in the Carlow Archives, they have proved to be an invaluable asset for historians and for students researching Irish history. The collection is also a superb utility for genealogical research”.
During his visit to Carlow he was delighted to meet up with his cherished childhood nanny Bridie Fleming, the last time they met Robbie was aged nine, they chatted about old-times and shared happy memories of Browne’s Hill and the days they spent there. He made his first visit in over 60 years to Browne’s Hill House courtesy of the present owners Frank and Patty Tully, where he recalled many fond memories of growing up in a place he dearly loved.
Robbie often humorously recalled that he had inherited, but never used or availed of, the title of Prince which had passed down from Major General Robert Browne who was, in 1794, created a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire by Pope Pius V1 in recognition of his role as a commander in the 12th Light Dragoons.
Throughout Robbie’s life his great interests apart from his family were fishing, hunting, Classical music and all sports. He was a member of the KRRC Celer et Audax Club and the RGJ Officers Club/Regimental Association.
In 1969, in a ceremony performed by the Bishop of Tuam, the Right Reverend Arthur Butler, MBE, Robbie married Jane Evelyn Butler in Christchurch Cathedral, Dublin. They lived for a time in Dublin before moving to live in England. At the time of his death he was living with his family in Devon.
He is survived by his wife Jane, his son, Benedict, daughter, Clare, grandchildren, Corisande, Thomas, Charlie, Esmonde, Celeste and Sophie, sister, Magda Dunlop, nephews and nieces.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The following is extracted from Eulogy delivered at St. Peter’s Church, Lamerton by Major Carol James Gurney, — a fellow officer and a former member of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen at Arms to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth.
We come together today with Robbie’s family to remember him to and to thank God for a good life and to support, his wife Jane and children Ben and Clare.
Born in Scotland in 1940, early in the war, in the border country where his mother came from, his father being away in the war. After the war the family moved back to Ireland to the family estate at Browne’s Hill in Carlow.
In County Carlow and later when the family moved to Connemara, in the far west, was where Robbie grew up and where he developed his love of the countryside and learnt to fish and shoot, sports that remained his passion throughout his life.
I am told he swum under water to learn where the salmon lay and several times when hunting shot a left and right snipe etc.
He attended Loretto School in Scotland where he excelled at swimming, tennis, rugger and music.
He was a good friend to me for over 50 years, originally as soldiers together, then when he lived in London and latterly when he and Jane moved to Devon.
I first met Robert at Colchester at the end of 1963. That summer, at very short notice the Regiment was sent to British Guyana to calm the riots.
While in Guyana we somehow managed a week’s leave and spent it together in Barbados where we stayed in a very scruffy little hotel. Each day Robbie managed to charm us in to the grandest beach hotels, where we spent most of our days, returning at night to our down-market hotel rooms.
He always had charm, style and elegance that won over every person he came in contact with.
Then we were both posted for two years to the Junior Leaders Training Regiment– a school for 16/17 year-olds. That was a lot of fun with much sport. Robbie was on the adventure training side; climbing, sailing, canoeing and potholing mostly out in the wilds of Wales.
Then back to the Regiment in Penang with six monthly postings in Borneo, another interesting and enjoyable post.
Then back to Germany where Robbie is still fondly remembered for organising a magnificent dance in the officer’s mess with the best dance band and food available in a divided Berlin. He arranged an aeroplane to fly out girls from the UK for the event and managed to keep them all under control, one of them is with us in this church today.
I make no apology for dwelling on this time of his life — it moulded him for the rest of his life — it was when I knew him most closely — and when many of his friendships were made, evidenced by the number of brother officers here today.
Robbie retired from the army in 1968 after eight happy and eventful years.
He returned to Ireland and there did the best thing he ever did — he met and married Jane in 1969.
They moved to London and lived for 30 years in their lovely house backing on to Greenwich Park. Ben and Clare grew up there and from where Robbie had a number of interesting jobs.
But before that in the mid 1970s he bravely enrolled in a two year course at The Royal Agricultural College Cirencester by then a mature student in his mid thirties.
A very interesting job followed– with the Conservative Party in opposition, at the Research Department working on Agricultural policy. He much enjoyed his eight years there and maintained his links for that time and his interest in agricultural affairs.
There was a cultural side to Robbie’s life, well known to his earlier soldiers – he loved Classical music – he liked and understood good pictures and art – he was a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts and a Merchant Taylor, one of the great City Livery Companies and a Freeman of the City of London.
In 2001 he retired and moved down to Horsebridge in Devon overlooking the Tamar River where he spent many happy hours trying to catch its elusive salmon.
Robbie loved the English and Irish countryside but he and Jane also loved the sun and enjoyed visiting his little place in Egypt.
He was fond of his Irish background and visited there as often as time allowed. He kept in touch with friends from the different phases of his life, not least his Regimental friends.
He was a wonderful and caring grandfather, not just generous but loving and genuinely interested in their achievements.
He revelled in the successes and lives of his children and family, above all he enjoyed and appreciated the love and support of Jane through thick and thin.
Personally I shall remember him as a staunch friend, an enthusiastic sporty companion, a true countryman, a charming, cultured, elegant and kind gentleman.
Bless you Robbie and thank you for your friendship.
Browne’s Hill mansion occupies the site of an ancient religious establishment called St. Kieran’s Abbey. The Browne family moved from Essex and quickly became one of the most influential families in County Carlow. Built in 1763, Browne’s Hill is one of the few surviving Georgian mansions in the county and should thus be considered as a work of considerable historical value. This fine house originally comprised a detached six-bay three-storey over-basement structure, built in the Neo-Classical style with a granite ashlar façade. the house ‘quickly became the flagship seat in the county and the property which all others tried to emulate or outbuild’. (It was renovated by Thomas Cobden in the 1830s, with a pedimented central breakfront on the front and a full-height canted bay extended to the rear. The park wall and nearby house at Viewmount were built using material from the original quondam abbey, while the high wall around the estate was built as part of a Famine Relief project in the 1840s. [1a]
In October 2009, the Department of Manuscripts in the National Library of Ireland stumbled upon several boxes of maps, drafts, surveys and correspondence relating to the Browne-Clayton family, which had been acquired by the NLI in 1982.
The Browne’s of Carlow originally came from the West Country of England with Cromwell in August 1649.
Robert Browne, second son of Sir William Browne of Abbas Roding in Essex, is said to have come to Ireland with Cromwell. He married Jane Feltham of Gray’s Inn, London and died on 10 Feb 1677. [1b]
His eldest son, John Browne of Carlow was married circa 1680 to Mary, daughter of Robert Jennings of Kilkea Castle, Co. Kildare. As late as 1717-1723, Benjamin Burton’s leases of Feltham’s concerns listed John Browne as lesse of three properties in Carlow Town.
John’s younger brother was Robert Browne of Tullow Street, Carlow. In 1675, King Charles II granted a new charter to the borough of Catherlough, in which His Majesty appointed Robert to be Sovereign; he was succeeded by Edward Reynolds. An account of this Robert’s early days in Carlow found by Michael Purcell among the family papers reads: ‘When King James II came to the throne of England in 1685, Mr Browne suffered great hardships and loss, his house was occupied by his enemies and his family imprisoned. His land and stock sequestered and plundered and still worse might have happened only for the intervention of a worthy and respectable Roman Catholic gentleman of the name of Allen from Pollerton near Carlow town. Upon their release Robert built a roomy Mansion close to the Tullow Gate in Carlow town’. The “roomy Mansion” referred to is now Lennon’s Pub and adjoining house, (120/121 Tullow Street, Carlow).
Another reference to him provide by Friend of Carlow from the Browne-Clayton Papers refers to a Round Tower which stood on the east of the present church ruins at Killeshin up until 1734. In the Browne-Clayton papers of 1704, it is recorded by Robert Browne that ‘on Monday at 3 o’clock in the afternoon the 8th day of March 1703 the 105 foot high Steeple Tower of Killeshin was undermined and flung down by Mr Bambrick who was employed by Captain Wolseley in three days work. There were two Inscriptions on the doorway of the Tower Steeple the rubbings are attached and require translation by scholars.’ (Alas, the attachments have gone missing in action).
WILLIAM BROWNE (C. 1684 – 1772)
In the parish applotment of Carlow town from 1744, William is listed as a resident of the north side of Tullow Street in Carlow Town while a Major Browne is registered, alongside Philip Bernard, on the east side of Burrin Street.
William married Elizabeth, daughter of Rev John Clayton, Dean of Kildare and Derry, and sister of the learned Robert Clayton, Bishop of Clogher and Dean of Derry. She was said to be a kinswoman of the Clayton baronets of Adlington Hall, Lancaster, with whom the Browne family later married.[2]
Their firstborn son John died unmarried on 23 April 1765. Their second son Robert succeeded and is dealt with anon.
As to their four daughters: (1) Juliana (1744-1787) who wasmarried twice, 1, in 1762, to Thomas Cooper of Benekerry and Newtown, and 2, in 1776, Captain James Fitzmaurice (1735-1813). One of Captain Fitzmaurice’s younger sisters Gertrude married Thomas Bunbury Lenon, a grandson of Benjamin Bunbury II of Killerig, Carlow. For more on the Fitzmaurice link, see here. With thanks to Catherine FitzMaurice, Bandon Genealogy. (2) Anne was married on 20 July 1758 to the Rt Rev Thomas Bernard, DD, Bishop of Limerick; (3) Catherine married the Rev Abraham Symes, DD; (4) Mary married Peter Gale of Ashfield, Queen’s County.
THE CONSTRUCTION OF BROWNE’S HILL, 1763
The Brownes purchased land adjoining Carlow in the 1650s. Over a century later, Browne’s Hill House was apparently built in 1763, after a design by Mr Peters, probably in celebration of Robert Browne’s marriage to Eleanor Morres the year before. [1a, 1c] Together with its neighbouring mansion of Viewmount to the east, the house occupied the site of an ancient quondam abbey dedicated to St. Kieran. During the suppression of the monasteries, this property was granted to one of the forbears of the Earl of Thomond. Three towers of this monastic pile were still standing in the 1760s, but these remains were later used as building materials for both Viewmount House and the park wall at Browne’s Hill. (Parliamentary Gazeteer of Ireland, 1845). One of the most majestic megalithic remains in Europe is to be found in the vicinity – the Browne’s Hill Dolmen. Its 103 ton granite table stone is believed to be the biggest of its kind in the world.
The house was built for John Browne’s son and heir, William Browne of Browne’s Hill, Co Carlow. I visited the property with my parents and David Ashmore of Sotheby’s in August 2020. The front facade is instantly gorgeous; the Victorian backside is a little too busy for me, and oddly institutional, with windows galore and not quite the right proportion. There is a fabulous wide moat around the back, with rooms for coal and timber carved deep into the earth beneath the back lawn. As my father observed, the structures were so well constructed that they seem to have lasted with little or no attention. They were after all built in the time of the Seven Years War in an age when people still felt much empathy for their fallen House of Stuart and the Jacobites.
The stable yard is fabulous, reminiscent to my untrained eye of James Gandon’s yard at Carriglass in County Longford. The buildings are in good nick, including the interconnected lofts where Robbie and Magda used to roller skate from one end to the other. I was particularly impressed by a cool room that I think must have been for storing apples – a cold, hallowed sanctuary of marble beneath an octagon roof. One side of the yard houses five separate carriage houses while the rooms opposite appear to have been for the family’s hunters, including what seems to be quarters for a broodmare and her offspring. Parts of the farm were carved up by the Land Commission are distributed among neighbouring farmers, as was the old walled garden, but there are still a couple of fields adjacent, perhaps 50 acres or more. Some of the beech and lime trees are fabulous. My parents, members of the Tree Society, observed that they were curiously narrow while my father suggested that the hat-trick of Scots Pines somehow indicated a support for Jacobites, although that doesn’t quite tally with what I know of the Browne’s in the period of 1688-1745. There is also a charming folly-like game larder close to the house.
ROBERT BROWNE (D. 1816)
Robert Browne succeeded to Browne’s Hill on the death of his father in 1772. Ten years earlier, on 27th March 1762, he married Eleanor, daughter of Richard Morres, MP, barrister-at-law (see de Montmorency). At some point he seems to have purchased a site in modern day Graigecullen from the Earl of Thomond which later became the site of Father Fitzgerald’s Graig Chapel. He was the man who leased Viewmount to Sir Edward Crosbie in 1792 and he appears to have turned his back on Lady Crosbie when she sent her agent to him for help during Sir Edward’s court martial. He died in January 1816, leaving four sons – William (see below), Robert (see below), Colonel Redmond Browne who died unmarried and the Rev John Browne – and two daughters, Elizabeth and Anne, who both died unmarried.
MAJOR BROWNE, PRINCE OF THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE
Robert and Eleanor Browne’s second son was Lieutenant General Robert Browne Clayton (d. 1845), a distinguished officer who commanded His Majesty’s 12th Regiment of Light Dragoons. In 1794, while still a Major, he was stationed with the regiment near Rome. During this time he received an audience with Pope Pius VI. He was accompanied by fellow officers Captain Head and Lieut. the Hon Pierce Butler. The Pope ceremonially placed a Dragoon helmet on Browne’s head expressing ‘his gratitude to the British nation, his earnest desire for its welfare’ and concluding with a prayer that truth and religion might triumph over injustice and infidelity.
The Pope made Robert a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, a title that has passed down to the present head of the family, Robert Browne Clayton. A painting of this ceremony hangs in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. It was painted by James Northcote RA, a pupil Sir Joshua Reynolds, and entitled ‘The Presentation of British Officers to Pope Pius VI’.[3].The painting is said to hang in the Army Museum in Chelsea in London while a copy is at Sandhurst. The 8th/12th Royal Lancers used it as their Christmas card some years ago.
THE EGYPTIAN CAMPAIGN
He served during the Egyptian campaign of 1801, including the actions of the 8th, 13th and 21st March. As such he was on the scene when the British commanding officer Sir Ralph Abercromby was fatally wounded at Alexandria. He also served in the costly and unsuccessful Walcherën campaign in 1809 and was present at the siege of Flushing.
SUCCESSION TO ADLINGTON HALL
On 1st December 1803, he married Henrietta Clayton, only daughter and eventual heiress of the essayist Sir Richard Clayton, 1st Bart, of Adlington, Lancashire, Recorder of Wigan and sometime Constable of Lancaster Castle. Her brother was Major Sir Robert Clayton, 2nd and last Baronet.[4] When Sir Richard died at the Consul in Nantes in April 1828, it was the General who succeeded to the classical brick mansion of Adlington Hall. He was also given the Carrigbyrne estate in County Wexford where the Browne-Clayton memorial stands today.
Sir Richard’s brother Robert succeeded to the Clayton baronetcy but died without male heir in 1839, whereupon the title became extinct. The General’s succession to Adlington was completed on 6th April 1829 – less than two weeks after the Catholic Relief Act was passed by Parliament – when he assumed the additional surname and arms of Clayton by Royal License.
CARLOW POLITICS
During the turbulent political days of the 1830s he was a prominent magistrate and Conservative representative in Carlow affairs. In 1839 he became embroiled in a heated debate with Daniel O’Connell over the case of a Colonel Verner, a Protestant magistrate from Armagh apparently dismissed from his post for raising a toast to the Battle of the Diamond, an ancient fray in which Protestants had beaten Catholics.
HIS NEW SPECTACLES
By February 1841 the name of ‘General Browne-Clayton’ had become well-known among those early Victorian readers of The Times. In an advertisement on page 7 of the March 9th edition he said he was ‘desirous to express the comfort and advantage he [had] derived at his advanced age of 78 years, and after two years trial, from the use of Messrs. S and B Solomon’s newly invented spectacles’. This ‘valuable invention fully merits the patronage they have received of the Royal Family and so many individuals of high distinction, as well as the numerous scientific and eminent medical practitioners’.[5] This testimonial continued to run in The Times until long after his death in March 1845. By September 1841, Major General Sir Hoard Elphinstone was begging to say the very same of these excellent spectacles. Solomon’s also offered an ‘Invisible Voice Conductor” which would provide ‘immediate relief to old standing extreme cases of deafness’.
THE BROWNE CLAYTON MONUMENT
Whether it was land rents or a handsome pay-check from Solomon’s is unclear but, by the autumn of 1841, he had sufficient money to pay the ‘several thousand pounds’ required to complete the Browne Clayton Monument. It stands today on the Browne’s old estate at Carrigadaggan Hill, Carrigbyrne, Co. Wexford, just off the N.25. The 94 feet tall Corinthian column was designed in 1839 by Thomas Cobden, famous for redesigning Browne’s Hill House, as well as the gothic Cathedral in Carlow Town and Ducketts Grove near Tullow, Co. Carlow. The builder was James Johnston of Carlow. It was made of the finest cut Mount Leinster granite. Nine uniformed dragoons are standing around with the figure that is probably the architect, in frock coat and top hat concentrating on a drawing board.
The London Times declared it ‘one of the most chaste and classic ornaments of which the country can now boast’.[6] They later described it as ‘worth a dozen of the wretched abortion now in course of erection at Charing Cross’.[7] The monument is considered particularly significant as it is the only internally accessible Corinthian Column in existence The monument was designed as a tribute to the General’s commanding officer, General Sir Ralph Abercromby, who died heroically on 28th March 1801 in the conquest of Egypt during the Napoleonic Wars. (The local name for it is reputedly ’Browne’s Nonsense’ as legend has it that Browne originally built it in memory of his son – thought to be killed in battle but who turned up alive and well shortly after completion of the pillar).
The column is modelled on the celebrated Pompey’s Pillar near Alexandria (AD296), which General Browne-Clayton first saw the very day Abercrombie received his mortal wound. Pompey’s Pillar was a popular classical landmark of the day, and the Irish version proved equally so upon completion. In his will, General Browne-Clayton stipulated details for an indefinite military ritual to be performed at the column. Every year, at sunrise on the 21st March (the day on which General Menon attacked the British encampment before Alexandria), the tri-coloured French flag was to be hoisted on the top of the column. At 10 o’clock this was to be lowered and replaced by the British flag which will remain until sunset. The General further stipulated that on 28th March, the flag be hoisted at half-mast in honour of Sir Ralph who, mortally wounded by a spent ball on the 21st, died on board HMS Foudroyant on the 28th. Abercromby’s debarkation of the troops in Egypt, in the face of strenuous opposition, is ranked among the most daring and brilliant exploits in British military history.
Today the column stands as a beautiful cultural landmark rather than a memorial to the Empire and an eccentric general. Disaster struck when the Browne Clayton Column was hit by alightning bolt on 29th December 1994. Several huge stones were dislodged from the capital and the upper third of the shaft, and two large sections of masonry on each side were also pushed apart. This left a dramatic jagged opening about 5 metres high and 1 metre wide. The column was meticulously restored by the Wexford Monument Trust Ltd (a hybrid of Wexford County Council, the World Monument Fund in Britain, and An Taisce) with a topping out ceremony in October 2004.[8]
DEATH OF THE GENERAL
The General was a keen scientist to the end, attending sittings with the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Manchester in June 1842. He died at Adlington Hall on 10th March 1845. His widow Henrietta died at Clifton, Gloucestershire on 8th September 1858.[9]
THE LANAUZE AFFAIR
Aside from his directions for the Browne-Clayton Monument, the General’s will was a somewhat messy business. He had entrusted some £9000 of government stock to a broker by name of Henry Lanauze with strict instructions on how it was to be exchanged for other stock. In November 1847, Lanauze was brought before the courts to answer a charge that he had unlawfully converted and used that sum ‘to his own use’.[10]
RICHARD BROWNE CLAYTON (1807 – 1886)
General Browne-Clayton left a son, Richard, and a daughter, Eleanor. The latter married the Rev James Daubney and died at the Albany Villas in Brighton in 1896.[11] Richard Browne Clayton, DL, JP (1807–1886) lived at Adlington Hall, Chorley, Lancashire, and Carigbyrne, Co. Wexford. He graduated with a BA from Oxford on April 16th 1828 and an MA on May 2nd 1832. On 5th January 1830 he married Catherine Jane Dobson (d. 1889), only daughter of the Rev. J. Dobson. These two only children were to experience great pain in the summer of 1856 with the death of their only son, Harrow-educated Robert John Browne Clayton in the Crimean War. An officer with the 34th Regiment, he was badly wounded during the assault on the Redan on 18th June 1855 and died in the camp on July 12th at the age of 20. [12] A copy of Robert’s his bible survives, inscribed by his mother Catherine with the words: ‘This belonged to my son Robert Browne Clayton. It is all I have to remind me of him.’
THE BROWNE-CLAYTON DAUGHTERS
On 29 July 1859, Richard and Catherine’s eldest daughter Henrietta (1831–1884) was married at St James’s Paddington to Robert Thomas Carew, DL (d. 20 Jan 1886) of Ballinamona Park, Co Waterford.[13]
Their second daughter Katherine Annette (d. 1909) was married on 16th April 1857 to Colonel Philip Savage Alcock, JP,(d. 20 May 1886) of Park House, Co. Wexford, third son of Harry Alcock and the heiress Margaret Savage.
A third daughter Emma Jane died unmarried in Crowborough, Sussex, in May 1929, leaving an unsettled estate of over £40,000.[14]
The fourth and youngest daughter Mary Edith was married at Christ Church, Cheltenham, on 15th January 1885 to Major Thomas Edwards Harman, DL, JP, Queen’s Regt, of Palace, New Ross, County Wexford. Palace appears to have been pulled down afterwards. Mary Edith inherited Carrigbyrne/ Carrygbyrne outside New Ross on her father’s death in 1886. The Harmans had one son Thomas Harman (who died playing Polo for his regiment in 1913) and one daughter, Catherine ( Kitty) Harman. Kitty Harman‘s children were Frances Ross (mother to Tom Bell of Ramsley Lodge, Dartmoor, who contacted me in May 2017 and April 2018) and Thomas Clayton Ross (who married Honora McSwiney, a daughter of the Marquis MacSwiney of Mashanaglass, near Macroom, Co. Cork, and is father to Charles, Harman and Catriona Ross).
WILLIAM BROWNE (1763-1840)
The General’s elder brother William Browne (1763 – 1840) was hailed by The Times as ‘admittedly one of the best landlords on Ireland’.[15] Born in January 1763, he was 53 years old when he succeeded his father Robert at Browne’s Hill in 1816. It may be that he lived at Viewmount until then. A JP and magistrate, he served as High Sheriff of Carlow in 1794 and was later Lord Lieutenant for the county as well as MP for the former Huguenot stronghold of Portarlington. In the 1830s, Thomas Cobden carried out some alterations and additions to the house.
I think, but am not certain, that this included the portico, with its wonderful carved heads and six mighty granite columns, an extraordinary feat of workmanship by (I imagine) anonymous stonemasons of another age. The stucco plaster work within the three main reception rooms is also exceptional.
Cobden also designed the cathedral in Carlow and Duckett’s Grove, as well as the Abercromby monument. This work was recorded in a painting which he exhibited at the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1842, the year of his death. William Browne’s brother subsequently commissioned Cobden to design the Corinthian column at Carrigbyrne.
William’s first wife was Lady Charlotte Bourke, daughter of the 3rd Earl of Mayo,Archbishop of Tuam. She bore him two sons – Robert, their heir, and Captain Joseph Deane Browne, Carabiniers, (who married Miss Thursby and died on 1st January 1878) – and four daughters. Captain Joseph Deane Browne’s will was found during a house clean in January 2019.
The eldest daughter Elizabeth was married on 31st January 1814 to Sir Joseph Denny Wheeler-Cuffe, 1st Bt, (d. 9 May 1853) of Leyrath, Co. Kilkenny, and died 15 Jan 1871 leaving issue.
The second daughter Eleanor Mary married on 5th May 1840, as his second wife, William Fitzwilliam Burton, JP, of Burton Hall, Co. Carlow; he died just four years later on 15th Nov 1844 and she died, without surviving issue on 5th December 1870.
The third daughter Charlotte was married in 1835 to William Brownlow, DL, JP, of Knapton House, Queen’s County, eldest son of the Rev Francis Brownlow, Rector of Upper Comber, Co Derry; they had issue before his death on 18th July 1881.
The fourth and youngest daughter Annette was married on 10th May 1826 to the Ven Hon Henry Scott Stopford (d. 28 Oct 1881), Archdeacon of Leighlin, fifth son of the Earl of Courtown, KP, and died without issue on 27th March 1842.
Lady Charlotte Browne died in 1806.
WILLIAM & THE NORBURY CONNECTION
On 8th March 1813, William was married secondly to Lady Leitita Toler, second daughter of the 1st Earl of Norbury, aka ‘The Hanging Judge’. As Chief Justice of Ireland during the early 19th century, Lord Norbury was infamous for the number of men he condemned to the gallows, including the Finnegan Gang from Rathvilly who attacked the Rev Trench en route to raid Benjamin Bunbury‘s house in 1822. An anecdote survives of how Lord Norbury was addressing the jury in one such case when his voice was drowned out by the sound of an irate ass. “What noise is that?” he inquired angrily. ‘Merely an echo of the Court, my lord‘, was the defending barristers risqué reply. But Norbury could be quick too. At dinner one day, his host told him he had shot 31 hares that morning. ‘I don’t doubt it‘, replied his lordship, ‘but you must have fired at a wig’. The Hanging Judge died peacefully in July 1831.
In January 1839, just days before the Night of the Big Wind struck, his grandson – Lady Letitia Browne’s nephew – the 3rd Earl of Norbury was assassinated in Durrow, County Offaly, in retaliation for the proposed clearing of tenants to make way for a deer park. Indeed, it was during the Big Wind that the Browne’s Hill estate, like so many in Ireland, was decimated of its tree population.
William Browne died on 1st April 1840 aged 77. Lady Letitia gave him a further three sons and a daughter.
We know nothing of the eldest son John Toler Browne save that he appears in the 1881 census at the Croydon home of his brother Hector Graham Browne and is identified as a lunatic and unmarried.
The second son was Captain (William) Raymond Browne, 7th Fusiliers who died in 1907. He was married, firstly, in London in 1859 to Olivia Elizabeth Cathery Depree (b.1833) and soon after emigrated to New Zealand. Olivia died in Croydon in 1884. Two years later, Raymond Browne was married secondly in 1886 to Adelaide Anne Villiers Perry (1837-1912).
His children by his first marriage to Olivia Depree were all born in Christchurch, New Zealand, namely:
1) Letitia Grace (1861-1937). She was married at St Peter’s, Eaton-square, in November 1887 to the cricket-loving cotton magnate Sir Henry Hornby, 1st Bart. (In 1883, she was presented to the Queen by her aunt, Gertrude Browne[16]).
2) Frances Mary (1862-1862)
3) Redmond Toler (1863-1937) who successfullly petitioned Pope Pius X and was granted the title of Count which had originally been granted to Robert Browne-Clayton who died in 1845. Redmond?s will states he was commonly known as Count Clayton. He resided at La Punta Cervara, near Genoa.
4) Olivia Caroline (1864-1865)
5) William Dealtry (1868-1951) who was married in 1907 in New Zealand to Evelyn Agnes Scherff.
6) Lina Beatrice (1872-1906).
7) Letitia Grace (d. 1937)
The third and youngest son (Hector) Graham Browne was married in 1878 to Gertrude Sophia, eldest daughter of John Horrocks Ainsworth of Moss Bank, Lancashire. He lived in Croydon at time of 1881 census. (With thanks to Graeme Stanton).
As to William and Lady Letitia’s daughter Grace Isabella, she was usefully married on 26th June 1852 to Richard Godfrey Bosanquet (d. 15 May 1875) of Benham Park, Berkshire, younger son of Jacob Bosanquet, a director of the East India Company, of Broxbournebury, Herts, but died without issue.
ROBERT CLAYTON BROWNE (1799 – 1888)
Upon his death in 1840, William was succeeded by his eldest son Robert Clayton Browne (1799–1888), then aged 41. Educated at Eton, Robert was an important magistrate in Carlow, being variously DL, JP and High Sheriff in 1859. The house was renovated in about 1842, with a pedimented central breakfront on the front and a full-height canted bay extended to the rear. During the Great Famine, aided by grant money, he employed some 400 men to build the high wall and gates around the Browne’s Hill estate, feeding them and their families from the gardens. He stood for the Conservatives of the Carlow borough in the 1852 election but was defeated by John Sadlier.
On 28th October 1834 he married Harriette Augusta (d Jan 1898), third daughter of Hans Hamilton, MP, of Sheephill, Co. Dublin. (see Holmpatrick). Details of their children and grandchildren will be found below. I thank Michael Purcell for transcribing this record of their Golden Wedding from the Carlow Sentinel of 1st October 1884:
CELEBRATION OF A GOLDEN WEDDING. On Tuesday afternoon, the 28th October, Mr and Mrs Clayton Browne entertained at Browne’s Hill a large party of their friends and relations on the occasion of the celebration of their Golden Wedding. They received numerous handsome presents, amongst them a gold cup, presented by their four children and twenty-one grandchildren. They also received an address from the Select Vestry of the Parish of Carlow. The following received invitations, most of whom were present to offer their congratulations in person :- The Marquis and Marchioness of Kildare, Lord and Lady Rathdonnell, the Hon. Edward and Mrs Stopford, the Hon. Hugh and Lady Mary Boscawen, Sir Thomas and Lady Butler and Miss Butler, the Dowager Lady Butler and Miss C. Butler, Sir Charles and Lady Burton, the Hon Mrs Clements, Sir Clement and Lady Wolseley, the Right Hon Henry . Mrs Bruen, Mr Henry and the Misses Bruen ; Mr and the Hon Mrs Rochfort, Mrs and Mrs Kavanagh, Mrs W. Kavanagh and Mrs Meredith, Mrs Pack-Beresford and family, Mr and Mrs Clayton Browne and family, Miss G. Langrishe, the Dean of Leighlin and Mrs and Miss King and Miss A. Newton, Mrs Thomas, Mr and Mrs Jocelyn Thomas, Mr and Mrs Duckett, Mrs Lecky and Miss Watson, Mr, Mrs and Miss Watson ; Mrs Gray and Miss Watson, Mr Newton and Miss Newton, Mount Leinster ; Mr and Mrs Steuart Duckett, Mr, Mrs Bagenal, and Miss Hall-Dare ; Mr and Mrs Alexander, Major and Mrs Hutchinson, Mr and Mrs George Alexander and Mr S Alexander, Major and Mrs Tanner, Mr and Mrs Charles Duckett, Mr and Mrs Fred Lecky, and Mr R. Lecky, Mr and Mrs Rupert Lecky , Mr, Mrs and Miss Newton, Mr and the Misses Hore, Mr and Mrs Arthur and the Misses Fitzmaurice, Mr William and Mr and Mrs Edward Fitzmaurice, and Mrs Clarke, the Ven. Archdeacon and Mrs Jameson, Mr and Mrs William Fitzmaurice, Laurel Lodge ; Mr and Mrs Fitzmaurice, Fruit Hill, ; Dr and Mrs Ireland, Major and Mrs and the Misses Bloomfield, Mr and Mrs H. Cooper, Mr and Mrs Hall-Dare, Captain and Mrs Persse, Colonel and Mrs Vigors, Mr and Mrs Alcock, Rev J. and Mrs Dillon, Mr and Mrs Standish Roche, Mr, Mrs and the Misses Eustace, Castlemore, Mr and Mrs Eustace, Newstown ; Mr and Mrs Ponsonby, Mr and Mrs Hone, Very Rev. W.E. and Miss Ryan, Mrs Rawson, Mr and Mrs Cornwall Brady , Rev. C. and Mrs Bellingham, Mr and Mrs Borrer, Mr and Miss Cooper, Mr and Mrs Stuart, Mr and Mrs Lecky-Pike, Dr and Mrs Newell, Mr C. Butler, Mr J. Mrs and Miss Butler, and Miss Owen, Mrs Vesey, Rev. J. and Mrs Finlay, the Rev. T. and Mrs Philips.
Robert Clayton Browne died on 22nd July 1888 leaving three sons and a daughter.
COLONEL CHARLES HENRY CLAYTON (1836 – 1889)
Robert and Harriett’s second son Colonel Charles Henry Clayton (1836 – 1889) died unmarried in April 1889, less than a year after his father. Born in 1836, he entered the 97th Regiment in 1854, became a captain in 1857, a major in 1872, a lieutenant-colonel in 1878, and retired as a colonel in1882. He served with his regiment in the Crimean campaign, where he was wounded. He was mentioned in despatches, and received a medal with clasp, also the Sardinian and Turkish medals and the 5th class of the Medijidieh. He later served in the Indian Mutiny where was again wounded and received a medal and clasp. He commanded the regiment with the Natal field force during the Transvaal campaign in 1881 and from 1885 until his death commanded the 23rd Regimental District. He was created a CB in 1886. He died at the depot in Wrexham from pleuro-pneumonia aged 53. [17]
ROBERT CLAYTON BROWNE (1839-1906)
Robert Clayton Browne (1839–1906), Robert and Harriett’s third son, died unmarried. My thanks to Michael Purcell for transcribing this obituary fom the Pat Purcell Papers which appeared in the Carlow Sentinel in December 1906.
Death of Robert Clayton Browne, Esquire. With deep regret we announce the death of Mr Robert Clayton Browne, which occurred on Friday 14th December 1906, at his temporary residence, Green Ville, near this town. The deceased gentleman, who was unmarried, was born 3rd May, 1838, and was the third and youngest son of the late Robert Clayton Browne, Esquire, D.L., of Browne’s Hill, Carlow, by Harriette-Agusta, third daughter of the late Hans Hamilton, Esquire, Lord of the Manor of Carlow, and for many years Member of Parliament for County Dublin. Owing to delicate health Robert did not at any time take an active part in the public affairs of his native county, but was a zealous and earnest friend of every philanthropic and charitable movement, and a generous supporter of the Church of Ireland at and after its disestablishment. Kind hearted and generous in disposition he enjoyed the love and esteem of a large circle of relatives and friends by whom, as well as by the general community, his death, which occurred after a long illness, borne with patient resignation, is deeply deplored. On Tuesday the interment took place in the family burial ground in Killeshin. The remains were enclosed in a suite of lead-lined coffins, were brought into Carlow Church, where the first portion of the solemn burial service was read by the Very Rev. Dean Finlay and the Ven. Archdeacon Hatchell. After the special Lesson, the Hymn “Lead Gently Light” was sung, and as the coffin was borne out of the church, the Dead March was played. The chief mourners were Mr William Browne-Clayton, D.L., brother ; Major Browne-Clayton, Mr D.R. Pack-Beresford, D.L., Mr Reynell Pack-Beresford and Mr Hugh Pack-Beresford, nephews.
ANNETTE CAROLINE BROWNE
Robert and Harriett’s daughter Annette Caroline Browne was married in the parish church of Carlow on 12th February 1863 to fellow Carlovian Denis William Pack-Beresford, DL, JP, MP, of Fenagh. The Ven Henry Scott Stopford, Archdeacon of Leighlin, officiated.[18] Pack-Beresford was the second son of Sir Denis Pack, a much decorated military general, and in 1854 had succeeded to the estates of the first and last Viscount Beresford (an illegitimate son of the Marquis of Waterford, for which he assumed the additional surname and arms of Beresford. Denis died on 28th December 1881 and Annette on 11 Feb 1892, leaving seven sons and two daughters; the late ‘Commander Beresford’ of Fenagh was their grandson.
[Following the death in 1986 of Commander Pack-Beresford, his son Denis Raymond Pack-Beresford sold the estate and family papers by public auction. Their whereabouts is presently unknown].
WILLIAM BROWNE (1835 – 1907)
Robert and Harriette’s eldest son William succeeded to Browne’s Hill on the death of Robert on 22nd July 1888. Educated at Eton and Oxford University, William was only 24 years old when he filled the seat of High Sheriff for Carlow in 1859. Like his father he was also a JP and DL. In 1889 he assumed by Royal Licence the additional surname of Clayton.
On 10th January 1867 (the year of the Fenian Rising), he married Caroline Barton, fifth daughter of John Watson Barton, DL, JP, of Stapleton Park near Pontefract, a cousin of the Bartons of Saxby Hall. In May 1867 he was presented to Queen Victoria by the Marquis of Drogheda at a Levee held in St James’s Palace.[19] The Marchioness of Drogheda introduced Caroline to the mourning monarch the following month.[20]
In December 1867 the couple were listed as subscribers to the Palestine Exploration Fund which sought to unearth the Temple.[21] In 1876, William was commended in The Times for of a school on his estate ‘where children of the poor are taught cookery very successfully’.[22] In 1881, Caroline was noted as a £10 subscriber to the Association for the Relief of Ladies in Distress through Non-Payment of rent in Ireland’.[23]
He died on 13th January 1907. Here his obituary, transcribed by Michael Purcell in April 2013, which was published in ‘The Carlow Sentinel’ in March 1907.
Death of Mr William Browne Clayton J.P., D.L. With sincere regret, shared by the entire community, we record the death, after a brief illness, of Mr William Browne-Clayton, which occurred on Sunday last, at his residence, Browne’s Hill, Carlow, in his 72nd year. For some time past the deceased gentleman was not in robust health, but up to within a fortnight of his demise he discharged his various private and magisterial duties, when he was seized with an acute attack of influenza, which developed into heart trouble, to which he succumbed, despite the unremitting care of his medical adviser, Dr Kidd. The sad event , which was unexpected, and cast a gloom over the locality, is intensified by the fact that little more than three weeks previously he was chief mourner at the funeral of his younger and only surviving brother, Mr Robert Clayton Browne, whose death was recorded in our issue of the 22nd February. Mr Browne-Clayton was the eldest son of the late Mr Robert Clayton Brown of Browne’s Hill, by Harriette- Agusta, third daughter of the late Hans Hamilton, for many years M.P. for County Dublin. He was born 20th November, 1835, and was descended from the family of Browne, seated in Essex since 1422, a branch of which settled in Carlow about 1654. He married on the 10th January, 1867, Caroline, daughter of the late Mr John Watson Barton, of Staplestown Park, Yorkshire, who with two surviving sons and nine daughters mourn the loss of a devoted husband and a fond father. In all the other relations of life – as a resident and popular landed proprietor, an impartial magistrate, an efficient member of the several local public bodies, he won the esteem of all sections of the community. As a churchman he took an active part in its reconstruction, and rendered valuable service as a member of the Diocesan Synod and Council, and was a liberal contributor to its funds, as well as a warm supporter of its various charities. As a mark of respect to his memory as one of the oldest magistrates of the county and sympathy with his family in their bereavement, the Carlow Petty Sessions Court was adjourned on Monday. He is succeeded by his eldest son, Major Browne-Clayton. THE FUNERAL. The Funeral took place on Wednesday from Browne’s Hill, and was attended by a large concourse, which included representatives of the principal county families and townspeople generally. The remains were encased in a suite of lead-lined coffins, the outer one of polished oak, bearing the inscription “William Browne-Clayton, died 13th January 1907, aged 71 years.” It was borne to and from the hearse by employees on the estate. As a mournful procession passed through Carlow all the business houses along the route were closed as a testimony to the esteem in which the deceased gentleman was held. The remains were brought into Carlow Church where the first portion of the solemn funeral service was performed by the Very Rev. Dean Finlay (representing the Right Rev Bishop of the Diocese, who was unable to attend owing to a previous important engagement), the Ven Archdeacon Hatchell, and the Rev A.A. Markham, of St Jude’s, Liverpool, nephew of the deceased. The service included the singing of the Hymn “Lead kindly Light”, and as the coffin was borne into and from the church the Funeral March was played. The procession then proceeded to the Killeshin Cemetery, where interment took place in a brick-lined grave, Dean Finlay conducting the grave-side service. The following were the chief mourners :- Major Browne-Clayton (son), Mr T.H.B.Ruttledge, D.L.; Mr Pease, Colonel Johnston, Captain Hall, (sons-in-law), Mr D. R. Pack-Beresford, D.L.; Captain Pack-Beresford, Mr Reynell Pack-Beresford, Mr Hugh Pack-Beresford, Mr Philip Hope and Rev A.A.Markham (nephews). Several beautiful wreaths were sent, and a massive floral cross, from the family of the deceased, which was interred with the coffin. The funeral arrangements were carried out by Mr Edwin Boake, Carlow.
After William’s death, his widow Caroline settled at Dunkeld, Portmarnock, Co. Dublin. She died on 24th September 1916. They had three Eton-educated sons and nine daughters. The eldest son Robert Clayton Browne is dealt with shortly.
‘An Important Land Case.- Browne Clayton of Browne’s Hill, Carlow, sued Joseph, Patrick, Ellen, and Catherine Kinsella for possession of lands in Carlow and Chaplestown[?], with £500 profits of same during the time they were withheld. Justice O’Brien advised a settlement, and it was accepted. Browne to get possession, without cost of law suit; the Kinsellas to be paid for all improvements made by them or their predecessors and allowed the value of the crops received by the landlord.’ - The Irish World, 22 March 1890.
2ND LT WILLIAM CLAYTON BROWNE (1873 – 1897)
The second son 2nd Lieutenant William Clayton Browne was born on 29th July 1873 and educated at Eton. In October 1892, he was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant with the 3rd Battalion of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers.
He was serving with the (Queen’s Own) Royal West Kent Regiment during the Malakand Field Force expedition in north-west India (or at Agrah Malakan in Afghanistan?) when killed on 30th September 1897, aged 24. The Times printed a telegram sent from the Viceroy on October 1st which explained: ‘[General] Jeffrey’s brigade encountered enemy in force at Agrah and Gat village. Enemy made considerable resistance and troops, being hotly engaged at close quarters, suffered some loss. Agrah finally burnt, and Gat partly burnt’. 2nd Lt William Clayton Browne and Lt-Col O’Bryen, 31st Bengal Infantry, were among the dead. [24] Winston Churchill, his friend, wept when he saw William’s corpse which, as he wrote to his mother Lady Randolph Churchill, was, “literally cut to pieces on a stretcher. Their friendship is the subject of a book called ‘Churchill’s First War’, as well as a short radio play aired by the BBC.
LT-CMDR LIONEL DENIS BROWNE (1874 -1946)
The third son, Lt-Cmdr Lionel Denis Browne (1874 – 1946) served with the Royal Navy Reserve. On 4th April 1914 he married Winifred, daughter of the Rev. John Bell, MA, Vicar of Pyrton Hill, Watlington, Oxon. Winifred died at the Okanagan Mission in British Columbia in June 1938.[25] Lionel died in the same Mission on December 29th 1946 aged 72.[26]
Their son Robert Denis was born at Pyrton Hall in 1917, served in the Second World War as a Lieutenant with Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry and settled in Kelowna, British Columbia, with his Canadian born wife Patricia Acland.[27] They had three children – Patrick (born 13 March 1947), Peter Shane (born 21 May 1949) and Jeanne Madeline (b. 19 August 1953).
Their daughter Zoe settled in Montreal where she was a well known medical and scientific journalist with the Montreal Star. She married Jacques Louis Bieler, Bsc, youngest son of Professor Charles Bieler of McGill University’s Theological College, and had issue a son Brian (born 1949) and daughter Zoe (born 1950) who both appear to have pursued intellectual careers. An account of Zoe’s early years and first visit to Browne’s Hill can be found in Women on the Verge of Home (2005), p. 116, by Bilinda Straight and Ruth Behar.
THE NINE DAUGHTERS OF WILLIAM AND CAROLINE BROWNE-CLAYTON
Mary Caroline was born on 13th Nov 1867. She was married on 6 Oct 1898, as his second wife, to Thomas Henry Bruen Ruttledge, DL, only son of Robert Ruttledge Esq ofBloomfield, Co. Mayo. The marriage took place at Staplestown Church in Carlow with the Bishop of Ossory and the Dean of Leighlin officiating.[28] He died 23 Sept 1917. By this marriage there were two sons,Major Robert Francis Ruttledge, MC (a noted huntsman, ornithologist and founder of the Saltee Bird Observatory in Co Wexford) and William (a respected entomologist and falconer). Mary died on 27 Feb 1955.
Annette (Constance) was born on 20 Dec 1868. She was married in Whonnock, BC, Canada on 20th May 1913 to Robert Harris, son of Edward C Harris of Bryn Towy, Carmarthen. The Gosport-educated Robert left the security of Whonnock on the outbreak of the war, enlisting in the Public School Battalion of the Middlesex Regiment. In March 1915 he obtained his commission in the Duke of Wellington’ Regiment (in the service of which regiment his late brother-in-law Horace Johnston had died). He went out to Gallipoli with the drafts in September and served during the evacuation of the Peninsula. He was killed in action in France on September 28th 1915, seven weeks after Horace was killed. Annette died on 15 Feb 1948.
Margaret (Frances) was born on 30th June 1871. She later lived at 4 Saville Court of Brompton Square, London. She died unmarried on 22nd July 1938.
Florence (Hope) was born on 15 Aug 1872. She was married on 28 April 1904 to Lt Col Horace James Johnston, DSO, younger son of Francis Johnston of Dunsdale, Westerham, Kent. On August 26th 1915, Horace’s mother published a request in The Times for ‘any information concerning Colonel HJ Johnston, DSO, 8th Duke of Wellington’ Regiment (West Riding Regiment)’. She noted that he had been ‘reported missing in the Dardanelles between August 7 and 11’.[29] Alas it transpired that he had been killed in action at Gallipoli on 11th August 1915. She lived in Sloane Square. She died suddenly at her home in Abinger Common, Dorking, on 18 Oct 1939. They left issue.
Kathleen (Louise Octavia) was born on 20th October 1875. She died unmarried in Winchester on 15th April 1961 and was buried in St Michael’s Church.
Madeleine (Emma) was born on 28th November 1876 and died unmarried on 19th June 1953.
Lucy Victoria was born on 3rd March 1878. On 12th December 1901 she married Claud Edward Pease, JP, subsequently director of Barclay’s Bank. He was the youngest son of Arthur Peaseof Hummersknott, Darlington, and Cliff House, Marske-by-the-Sea, Yorkshire. Lucy was awarded the OBE in 1918. He died on 22nd March 1952 and she died 10 months later on 3rd February 1853. They left issue; see Pease in Burke’s Peerage).
Julia (Harriet Vere) was born on 29th April 1881. On 10th January 1914 she married at St. Anne’s in Dublin to (later Lt Col) Coote Hely-Hutchinson, OBE, Royal Fusiliers. The Primate of Ireland performed the ceremony. Julia was given away by her brother Major Browne-Clayton. Richard Tottenham was best man while Julia’s sister Madeleine and Noelle Hely-Hutchinson were bridesmaids. She wore white satin charneusse trimmed with old Carrickmacross lace. A veil of similar lace covering a wreath of orange blossom and myrtle was in her hair. The reception was held in the Shelbourne Hotel, after which the new Colonel and Mrs HH left for London.[30] Coote was the eldest son of John Hely-Hutchinson, DL, JP, of Seafield, Donabate, Co. Dublin. He died n 30th September 1930 and she died on 10th June 1948, leaving issue. (See Donoughmore in Burke’s Peerage).
Caroline Zoe was born on 16th December 1882. On 14th December 1905, the 23 year old youngest daughter married Captain Hubert Chase Hall, 5th Fusiliers, only son of Major Henry Hallof Denbie, Lockerbie, Dumfrieshire. He died on 27th March 1947. She died 17th September 1957.
BRIG-GEN ROBERT BROWNE-CLAYTON, DSO (1870 – 1939)
William and Caroline Browne-Clayton’s eldest son and heir Brig-Gen Robert Browne-Clayton was born on 24th February 1870, making him the third eldest of the twelve children. Educated at Wellington he joined the army soon after school.
On April 18th 1890, The Times announced that he had been promoted from 2nd Lieutenant to Lieutenant with the 3rd Battalion of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers.Tom Connolly, who would perish in the Boer War, was gazetted 2nd Lieutenant the same day. Having passed his military exams, he awaited a vacancy in the cavalry. It came in December 1890 when he transferred to be a 2nd Lieutenant with the 5th (Royal Irish) Lancers. [Burke’s erroneously claim he was in command of the 5th Lancers by 1890]. He was promoted to lieutenant in September 1894.
In 1900 he was made Adjutant of his regiment, retaining that office during the South African War (1899-1902), in which he was three times mentioned in despatches and made Brevet Major and hon Brig-Gen. He was awarded the Order of the White Eagle of Serbia (3rd class) with crossed swords. In February 1903 he was presented to His Majesty King Edward VII at a Levee held in Buckingham Palace by Lt Gen WGD Massy, CB.
On 25th November 1905, The Carlow Sentinel gave the following account (which was gallantly transcribed in 2013 by Michael Purcell’s team at the Pat Purcell Papers).
FASHIONABLE WEDDING. The marriage of Captain and Brevet Major R. Brown-Clayton, 5th Royal Irish Lancers, eldest son of William Browne-Clayton, of Browne’s Hill, Carlow, with Miss Magda Wienholt, youngest daughter of the late Edward Weinholt, of Jondaryan, Queensland, was celebrated at St Mary’s Abbots, Kensington, on the 19th of November, the officiating clergy being the Rev. A.A.Markham ( cousin of the bridegroom ), and the clergy of St Mary’s Abbots. The bride was given away by her cousin, Mr Rowland Malony, and wore a gown of ivory satin, draped with duchesse lace, and a brocade train softened with lace and chiffon. Her tuille veil fell over a tiara of orange blossoms, She carried a bouquet of white exoties, myrtle, white heather, and lily of the valley. Miss Brenda Wienholt, sister of the bride, acted as bridesmaid, and wore a dress of heliotrope crepe de chine, with hat of the same shade. Her bouquet was of mauve orchids, harmonising with her toilet, which, with an enamel and diamond brooch in the form of the regimental badge, was the gift of the bridegroom. Capt. Willcox, a brother officer of the bridegroom, was best man. The interesting ceremony took place at 2.30pm. The bride was met at the door by the choir and proceeded up the aisle singing the hymn ” O Perfect Love, all human thought transcending”. While the register was being signed the choir sang the hymn, ” Fight the good fight with all thy might”. The service was fully choral. The church was beautifully decorated with palms and white flowers. The reception was held afterwards at the Royal Palace Hotel, and subsequently the bride and bridegroom left for Ireland.
Carlow Sentinel (courtesy of the Pat Purcell Papers). December 1905. HOME-COMING OF MAJOR BROWNE-CLAYTON AND BRIDE. On Monday last Major Browne-Clayton, 5th Lancers, brought home his bride. This was made an occasion of great rejoicings amongst the tenants and employees of Browne’s Hill, many of the townspeople joining in. The Staplestown Road was splendidly decorated with flags and arches, bearing words of welcome. On arriving at the front gate, which was beautifully and artistically decorated under the supervision of Mr Bell ( steward ), the carriage was met by a large crowd of enthusiastic friends, and was drawn up the hill by many willing hands, while a fire of twenty-one guns from a small piece of ordnance, in charge of ex-Sergt Clifden, Royal Artillery, announced the approach of the procession. In the afternoon the employees and tenants were entertained at dinner, and in the evening a numerous gathering from the neighbourhood assembled round a bonfire, and the proceedings terminated by a band from Carlow playing varied selections.
On 22nd May 1909, Robert retired from the army in the rank of major. He was 39. His retirement did not completely curtail his military activity, however. He remained as an officer in the Special Reserve, serving with the South Irish Horse. He was a noted polo player between 1906 and 1909, lining out for the 5th Lancers when they crushed the Irish Guards 7-1 in the 1906 Inter-regimental tournament at Aldershot.[31] He also played for Carlow in the Irish Open Cup 1909 and County Cups of 1912 and 1913. He also played for Ireland in the Patriotic Cup in August 1909 but The Times rather meanly wrote him off as having been ‘quite outclassed from start to finish’. The Major was Field Master of the Carlow Hunt before the First World War at a time when Mr Grogan and Colonel Williams were joint-Masters.
‘An Agreement made the 23rd day of March 1914. Between Major Robert Browne-Clayton of Browne’s Hill, Carlow of the One Part and Patrick Brennan of Chaff Street, Graigue of the Other Part whereby the Said Major R. Browne-Clayton agrees to let and the said Patrick Brennan agrees to take the forge Situate on Castlecomer road now in his possession together with the yard and premises now adjoining and formerly in possession of William Curran, as a tenant from Year to Year at the Yearly rent of Two Pounds Twelve shillings to be paid by two Half Yearly installments of £1-6 shillings each on the 1st day of March and 1st day of September in each year. And the said Patrick Brennan agrees to keep the said premises in clean and Sanitary Order. And it is further agreed that Six months Notice in writing from either Gale days ie 1st March or 1st September in any year on behalf of either the contracting parties to the Agreement shall be sufficient to determine the tenancy hereby created. Signed by the Said Major R. Browne-Clayton and Patrick Brennan in the presence of Charles Johnson, 3 Athy Street, Carlow. 23rd March 1914.’ Transcribed by Michael Purcell, 2009.
In July 1915 he was appointed Commanding Officer of the 16th Battalion Cheshire Regiment, one of the Bantam battalions raised by the Birkenhead MP Sir Alfred Bigland. The 16th Cheshires were deployed to France in January 1916 as part of 105th Brigade, 35th Division. Browne-Clayton was awarded the DSO for his part in the fighting at Trones Wood in July 1916. He was promoted GOC 59th Brigade, 20th (Light) Division on 14 October. 20th Division took part in no more operations on the Somme after 8 October and was comparatively little employed in the first half of 1917. Browne-Clayton remained in command until 26 August 1917 when he was replaced a few days after the battle of Langemarck.
During the War of Independence and later during the Civil War in Ireland, Eamon De Valera gave instruction that neither the Browne family nor their property were to be harmed. In December 1927, the Free State Government of Ireland appointed him to a Special Committee investigating the alleged grievances of ex-British servicemen in the Irish Free State. Their report, issued in February 1929, concluded that there were indeed some grievances but that these should be leveled against the British government rather than the Free State government. [32] The General was re-elected as a Ratepayer in Carlow and, in November 1928, the council paid tribute to him for the keen and practical interest he took in the administration of the county council and the county board of health.
In later life he looked after his herd of prize shorthorns, selling them at the annual Horse Show in Dublin. In June 1938, he attended the 5th Lancers annual dinner at the Cavalry Club. He died at Browne’s Hill on March 5th 1939 aged 69.
On 16th November 1905 he married an Australian girl, Mary Magdalene, third daughter of Edward Wienholt of Jondaryan, Queensland. (‘My sister Magda and I were terrified of her’, recalls Robert Browne-Clayton, ‘with her booming voice in the hunting field. If we overtook her on our pony, she would yell at us to stop and we would be roundly admonished, particularly if we had taken a fence before her. She died in agony from cancer, refusing any medication as she was a Christian Scientist.’
Two years later, in 1907, he succeeded his father at Browne’s Hill. She died at Pimperne, Blandford, on 20th July 1932 and was cremated in Woking. He died on 3rd March 1939, leaving Browne’s Hill to his only son, William. Robert and Mary’s only daughter Annette Mary was born on 28th April 1908 and married in the Holy Trinity Church at Sloane Street, on 21st April 1933, to The Times polo correspondent Colonel Sir Andrew Marshall Horsbrugh-Porter, 3rd Bart, DSO and bar. The H-Ps lived at Chipping Norton, Oxon, and had issue.
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The Nationalist, 31st January, 1920. (PPP) Letter to the Editor. Browne’s Hill, Carlow. 27th January, 1920. Sir—I see by your last week’s issue that I was shown as elected as a Unionist member of the Carlow Urban District Council. I beg to point out that I stood as representative of the Comrades of the Great War, an organisation, which is strictly non-political. —- Yours faithfully, Robert Browne-Clayton, Browne’s Hill House. —————————————————————————————-
The Nationalist, 7th Feb. 1920. (PPP) “CARLOW UNIONISM IN THE QUICKSANDS” Letter to the Editor. Sir—-In your issue of last week Lieutenant Colonel Browne-Clayton repudiated the publication of his name as a Unionist in connection with the recent Carlow Urban Elections. He says he stands as a “representative of the Comrades of the Great War” and for the life of me I cannot understand why such an association can be interested in local municipal life. Why did not the gallant Colonel issue an election address stating what he was proposing to represent. Is County Carlow Unionism in the Quicksands ?— Yours truly, UNIONIST.
Memories of Mr. H. Boake. 1950., courtesy of Michael Purcell.
“Usually the manager of a National school was the Parish Priest or Rector but in the case of the Rutland National School, Mrs Browne-Clayton, wife of Brigadier Browne-Clayton of Browne’s Hill was the manager. (She was also the manager of the Barrack Street National School in Carlow town.). She did her duty well, visiting the school regularly, and seeing to our wants. She walked in without knocking as was her right. We stood up somewhat falling over ourselves, so sudden was her entry. She made a bee-line for the teacher’s chair beside the open fire, and if the teacher happened to be sitting in it, she had to be out of it quickly, otherwise Mrs Browne-Clayton would probably have ended up on her lap. She listened to the teaching for a while, and then stood up suddenly, tall and gaunt and dark, beside our rather diminutive teacher, said a few words to her, and then with a swish of tweeds made for the door, we again having to be upstanding again. It was woe betide the pupil nearest the door who had not caught the glare from teacher to get the door open in time. A copy of the “Christian Science Monitor” was left on the chair. Mrs. Browne-Clayton belonged to this sect. We all owed a debt to Mrs Browne-Clayton. She kept the school in repair and kept a roaring fire going in the school room for about 20 to 25 pupils, all at her own expense. She provided the highlight of the year too, the Christmas Tree party. The tree stood in the corner decorated and lit and laden . We had never seen anything like it before. The presents were mostly in a large box over which the Rector stood guard over while we feasted on everything sweet, sticky and curranty. Eventually we saw the great moment was coming near and we made a last effort to stuff down another bun, before Mrs Browne-Clayton reached into the box In the ensuing silence she called out a name. Half paralysed with fright and excitement the owner of the name advanced. All sorts of things came out of that box, all good valuable presents. The girls maybe were wishing for dolls, but there was one sort of present looked forward to by the boys. The older boys always got Barber pen knives. They were best quality and razor sharp. The speculation was “would I be regarded as old enough and would I get one ?” Eventually I did, and likewise some others. At the end of the Christmas Tree Party the Rector wold call for three cheers for Mrs Browne-Clayton. Our Christmas was made. Over 50 years later I still have that Barber pen knife.
LT COL WILLIAM PATRICK BROWNE-CLAYTON (1906 – 1971)
Lt Col William Patrick Browne-Clayton (1906 – 1971) was 33 years old when, in March 1939, he succeeded his father at Browne’s Hill. Educated at Wellington and Sandhurst, he served with the12th Royal Lancers from 1926 through World War Two until 1947. He was a keen huntsman, point-to-pointer and polo player. He played on the 12th Lancers team with his brother-in-law Andrew Marshall Horsbrugh-Porter when they reached the semi-finals of the Ranelagh Cup in 1936 and when they won the Subalterns Gold Cup in 1937. He owned some useful steeplechasers, Sweet Peach and Isric who raced at courses such as Northampton, Birmingham and Sandown Park before the Second World War.
On 23rd October 1935 he was married at St Margaret’s, Westminster, to Janet Maitland Bruce Jardine. It is said he felt obliged to marry her after he shot her eye out during a shooting accident. Charles Spencer, 12th Royal Lancers, was best man. The honeymoon was spent in the west of Ireland. Janet was the elder daughter of Brig-Gen James Bruce Jardine, CMG, DSO, DL, 5th Royal Irish Lancers, of Chesterknowes, Selkirk, Roxburghshire (see Burke’s LG 1952). One of her ancestors was James Bruce (1730-1794), the Scotsman who discovered the source of the Blue Nile in 1770 and who was described by Dr. Livingston as the greatest travellor of them all.
Colonel Browne-Clayton died on 3rd September 1971. His widow lived at The Coach House, 6 Vesey Place, Dun Laoghaire, Dublin, before moving to Wandsworth in London where she died in 2002.
In 1937, William and Janet had a daughter Magdalene Jardine. She was followed by a son Robert, born in 1940. A second daughter was born in Edinburgh on March 2nd 1942 but sadly did not survive.[33] William was reported wounded in August 1942.[34] By 1946, Janet was advertising in The Times for a young Governess to look after her son and daughter.[35]
THE SALE OF BROWNE’S HILL
The legal papers that were handed over to Michael Purcell show that William had hoped to establish an equestrian centre at Browne’s Hill. However, Janet was less keen.
In 1951, Lt Col Browne-Clayton was obliged to place the 700 acre estate up for sale. The Land Acts had reduced the families’ wealth considerably, and they also at some point lost money with Lloyd’s of London. Pressure from Janet intensified after a row with the local priest about grounds in Bennekerry - the school, perhaps – and an accusation that Willliam had reneged on a commitment. William decided to leave Carlow. An English syndicate headed up by Norfolk grain farmer WH Harold purchased the estate for in excess of £70,000. [The newspapers suggest it was GW Harrold or AE Harrold … Mick Purcell has him as W.H.Harold, along with his brother and another business partner as purchasers.] In 1957, the syndicate acquired the 1,500 acre Bruen estate at Oak Park, following Henry Bruen’s controversial disinheritance of his only daughter Patricia. Many in Carlow resented Harold’s purchase, believing the two farms should have been acquired by the Land Commission and divided amongst local farmers. Harold resisted until one morning he opened a letter bearing an Irish postmark which contained a single bullet.
Shortly afterwards, the Browne’s Hill Estates syndicate negotiated a deal with the Land Commission. Browne’s Hill House was put up for sale on 4 ½ acres by auctioneer William Mulhall with an asking price of £2,500. For several weeks, the best price offered was £1,800 from a Dublin buyer, Thomas Stafford, whose interest was in salvage value after demolition.
In 1961, the April-June issue of the Irish Georgian Society’s Bulletin advised readers that Browne’s Hill ‘is to be demolished if a buyer does not come forward within the next month.’ The house was on sale by William Mulhall, Auctioneer and Valuer, for £2500, with five acres. The author Anita Leslie and Eoin ‘The Pope’ O’Mahony led the IGS campaign to save the house, especially when it became apparent that the Longford firm who had lately stripped an important Palladian house at Dalyston in County Galway, were homing in on Browne’s Hill. Baronness Simone de Bastard was among those said to have expressed an interest. For more on the Irish Georgian Society’s role, see The Irish Aesthete blog. Fortunately a number of last minute bids were placed, and the eventual buyer in June 1961 was local travel agent Frank Tully. (Local lore is that the price paid was £1200). The house and its beautiful stable yard went on the market in the summer of 2020.
The original entrance gates to Browne’s Hill, which took the form of a splendid triumphal arch, were removed, purchased by University College Dublin and erected at the entrance to the Lyons estate in County Kildare. Lyons was then owned by the college and was later home to the late Tony Ryan of Guinness Peat Aviation / Ryanair. The gates can still be seen there at the entrance to the now-private house.
By 1958, the Browne-Claytons were living at Cashel House in Connemara, the same landscape in which their daughter Magda would find her husband. William died in Dublin on 3rd September 1971. Janet died in 2002.
My father adds: ‘For many years Browne’s Hill was the location for the Carlow Agricultural Show, which I remember attending. After the estate was sold the Carlow Agricultural Society declined and the nearby Tullow Show took on the role of county show. Oak Park subsequently became the major research centre for the Agricultural Institute, which eventually morphed into Teagasc.’
ROBERT BROWNE-CLAYTON (1940-2014)
Robert Bruce Browne-Clayton was born on 25th April 1940 and educated at Loretto in Scotland and Sandhurst. He served as a Captain in the Royal Green Jackets, retiring in 1968. He was subsequently Agricultural, Fisheries, Food, Forestry and Countryside adviser to Margaret Thatcher and her Government, as well as CEO to various Trade Associations including the Coal Industry, Building Industry and Financial Services Industry. On 1st March 1969 he was married in Christchurch Cathedral, Dublin, by the Bishop of Tuam (Arthur Butler), to Jane (Eveline Reine) Butler. She was a daughter of Eric Peter Butler of The Close, Blagdon, near Bristol. They have issue a son, Benedict John (b. 11 March 1970) and daughter Clare Louise (b. 20 Nov 1973). In 2007, Robert presented Carlow County Library with a collection of over 3,000 documents dating from 1640s to 1900s, relating to the Browne-Clayton Estate in Carlow. Robert passed away in 2014, aged 73.
MAGDA DUNLOP
Robert’s elder sister Magda Dunlop (nee Browne Clayton) is the author of the useful history of ‘Browne’s Hill 1763 – 1951’ upon which some of this text is based. She was born on 16th June 1937 and educated at Lawnside, Great Malvern and the Froebel Educational Institute in Roehampton. On 19th September 1959 she was married in Chelsea to the late Captain Brian WH Dunlop, 17th/21st Lancers, younger son of the late Canon Douglas Lyall Chandlee Dunlop of Kilcummin Rectory, Oughterard, Co Galway.
Brian was a grandson of Henry Wallace Dunlop, the engineer who built the original Lansdowne Road stadium. Born in Mumbai, India, Dunlop was a son of the deputy superintendent of the Bombay Water Police. A champion sprinter and speed walker, he founded the Lansdowne Rugby Football Club in 1872. He rented an 8.5-acre plot just east of this station on which he constructed three football pitches, a 400-seat grandstand and a 586-yard cinder track for running, as well as grounds for cricket, croquet and archery. At the time of its demolition in 2007, Dunlop’s stadium was the oldest international rugby ground in continuous use in the world, having hosted its first match in 1878. The Aviva Stadium opened in 2010.
Brian’s aunt Sheila Cathcart Dunlop (1919–2007), MBE, married Michael Morris, 3rd Baron Killanin, president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) from 1972-80. Lord Killanin made his name as a journalist in the 1930s before serving in Normandy during the Second World War. He later co-founded An Taisce (Ireland’s National Trust) and produced several movies for the film directors John Ford and Brian Desmond Hurst. Having taken office as president of the IOC just after the Munich massacre, he subsequently appointed the first women to the IOC and oversaw China’s return to the Olympics. Their four children include the racehorse trainer Mouser Morris and the producer Red Morris (whose films include the 2021 Netflicks film, ‘The Dig’).
Brian and Magda had issue two sons, Julian Pilkington (b. 1961), Dominic Patrick (b. 1969, aka the photographer/author Nic Dunlop), and a daughter Lindsay Janet (b. 1963).
APPENDIX
In 1824, a mineralogy report noted: ‘A few days ago there was taken up at Browne’s Hill, Carlow, the estate of Wm Browne esq, part of a stone in which was found the following combination – siliceous limestone, pearl spar, carbonate of lime, quartz crystal and hepatic iron pyrites; forming one of the most curious specimens we have seen in the compass of less than three inches square. The quartz crystals are common at Browne’s Hill, but not in company with the pearl spar or iron pyrites. They are, we believe, generally found distinct in the carbonate of lime and are of a very superior quality of the Irish diamond’. New Monthly Magazine (1824), by Henry Colburn, Thomas Campbell, William Harrison Ainsworth, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Theodore Edward Hook, Thomas Hood.
ARMS QUARTERLY
1st and 4th, gu, a chevron between three lions’ gambs erect and erased arg, a border arg on a chief arg an eagle displayed sa, armed and crowned or (for BROWNE); 2nd and 3rd arg, a cross engrailed sa between four totteaux (CLAYTON).
With thanks to Magda Dunlop, Michael Purcell, Nic Dunlop, Ivor Bowe, the late Robert Browne-Clayton, Graeme Stanton,Bill Webster, Michael Brennan, the Carlow Rootsweb, Tim Edwards, Avice-Claire McGovern and others.
FOOTNOTES
[1a] ‘The Country House And Its Demesne In County Carlow‘, by R.Timothy Campbell and Stephen A. Royle, from Carlow History and Society (Irish County History and Society Series, 2008), edited by Dr. Thomas McGrath.
[1b] Will dated 10 Feb 1677, pr 27 May 1678
[1c] The reference to Mr Peters comes from JN Brewer, Beauties of Ireland(1826) II, p. 9. The Irish Architectural Archive propose that this could refer to the gardener and landscape architect Matthew Peters who is said to have been born in Belfast in 1711. He was brought up in England by his uncle William Love, who was head gardener to the first Viscount Cobham at Stowe. He came to Ireland in about 1742 and opened a seedsman’s business in Capel Street, Dublin. He also designed and laid out gardens and estates, as he advertised in Faulkner’s Journal 11-14 October 1746 and December 1748. He was consulted about the building of the stove and walks at Marino, Co. Dublin and is said to have been employed by the Irish government to improve the navigation of lakes and rivers. Peters was a member of the Dublin Society and the author of a number of works on agriculture, published in the 1770s, by which time he was living at Freshwater on the Isle of Wight. He married twice. By his first wife he was the father of the painter Matthew William Peters (1741-1814).
However, Romilly Turton, a direct descendant, wrote to me in June 2014, stating that the concept of Mathew Peters being the architect was ‘highly speculative. She writes: ‘Peters, of course, was never an architect. I also doubt if he could have produced a plan for such a large house. Moreover, he kept a copy of his survey plans for the Navigation Board. So I am quite certain he would have kept a plan of Browne Hill had he been responsible for one, but none has ever been mentioned. However, he might have produced a plan for the garden! ‘.
See: Irish Architectural Archive. See also A. Young, Tour in Ireland() I, 87; J.B. Burke, Visitation of Seats and Arms 2nd ser. (1855) II, 202-3; Georgian Society Records (1909-13), V, 81.
[2] Burke’s Extinct & Dormant Baronetcies
[3] Presented by Richard C Browne Clayton Esq. See British Miscellany, 1865.
[4] Burke’s Extinct & Dormant Baronetcies
[5] The Times, Tuesday, Mar 09, 1841; pg. 7; Issue 17613; col E
[6] The Times, Wednesday, Oct 13, 1841; pg. 6; Issue 17800; col D
[7] The Times, Wednesday, Apr 20, 1842; pg. 15; Issue 17962; col F
[9] The Annual Register: World Events, Edmund Burke. (1859).
[10] The Queen v Lanauze, Nov 19 & 22 1847, Reports of Cases in Criminal Law Argued and Determined in All the Courts in England and Ireland, Edward William Cox, published by J. Crockford, Law Times Office, 1848
[11] The Times, Thursday, Mar 07, 1895; pg. 1; Issue 34518; col A
[12] The Gentleman’s Magazine (1855); The Times, Saturday, Jul 19, 1856; pg. 9; Issue 22424; col E
[13] The Annual Register of World Events A Review of the Year (1859).
[14] The Times, Wednesday, Aug 21, 1929; pg. 15; Issue 45287; col C
[15] The Times, Friday, May 21, 1852; pg. 8; Issue 21121; col B
[16] The Times, Tuesday, May 22, 1883; pg. 8; Issue 30826; col A
[17] Obituaries, The Times, Wednesday, Apr 17, 1889; pg. 7; Issue 32675; col B
[18] The Times, Monday, Feb 16, 1863; pg. 1; Issue 24483; col A
[19] The Times, Thursday, May 30, 1867; pg. 11; Issue 25824; col C
[20] The Times, Monday, Jun 17, 1867; pg. 9; Issue 25839; col C
[21] The Times, Monday, Dec 02, 1867; pg. 6; Issue 25983; col C
[22] The Times, Monday, Nov 06, 1876; pg. 4; Issue 28779; col D
[23] The Times, Tuesday, Dec 13, 1881; pg. 8; Issue 30376; col B
[24] The Indian Frontier Risings. Further Fighting. The Times, Saturday, Oct 02, 1897; pg. 5; Issue 35324; col A
Carlow Sentinel. Saturday, October 9th, 1897. LIEUTENANT WILLIAM CLAYTON BROWNE-CLAYTON KILLED IN ACTION. On Saturday last a feeling of profound sorrow was caused not only in this town and county but throughout every portion of her Majesty’s wide dominions by the sad intelligence that some British officers had been killed in action at the North-Western frontier in India, including a gallant young Carlowman, Lieutenant William Clayton Browne-Clayton, second son of William Clayton Browne-Clayton, Esquire, D.L., of Browne’s Hill, Carlow. Very meagre particulars of the engagement have as yet been received, but it is probable that it was a hand-to-hand encounter, and it is certain that our young county man was in the forefront of the fight when cut down in the prime of youth, and when apparently a brilliant career was before him. By early post on Saturday a letter was received from him from the seat of war, written in excellent spirits, and it was not until some members of the family reached the Carlow railway station, with the intention of proceeding to Dublin by early train, that they learned the sad news through the morning papers. By every section of the community sorrow and sympathy find deep expression, and during the day the Church bell was tolled in honour of the dead. The gallant young officer, whose death is everywhere mourned, had only been in the army a little over two years, having entered the Royal West Kent Regiment on May 29th, 1895.
[Note added 2010 by Michael Purcell:
The following account of the battle during which William Browne-Clayton was killed was compiled by Philip Wilson, transcribed by Grace Bunbury. In September 1897 Lieutenant Colonel J.L. O’ Bryen commanded the 31st Punjabis in the Expedition to Bajour and took part in various operations until he fell whilst gallantly leading it in the storming of the heights were the villages of Agrah and Gat are situated in the Mamund Valley on the 30th September 1897. Winston Churchill in his book The Malakand Field Force invites the reader to examine the legitimacy of village-burning. ‘A camp of a British Brigade, moving at the order of the Indian Government and under the acquiescence of the people of the United Kingdom, is attacked at night. Several valuable and expensive officers, soldiers and transport animals are killed and wounded. The assailants retire to the hills. Thither it is impossible to follow them. They cannot be caught. They cannot be punished. Only one remedy remains – their property must be destroyed. Their villages are made hostages for their good behaviour.’
On the 29th September over a dozen villages in the plains of the Mamund Valley were destroyed, without a single loss of life. However on the 30th September events took a totally different course Brigadier General Jeffreys’ 2nd Brigade attacked the fortified villages of Agrah and Gat. These two villages occupied the strongest strategical position of any yet seen, perched on the lower slope of a steep and rugged hill, and mutually supporting each other they were protected on either side by high rocky boulders, great rocks lay tossed about, interspersed with these were huts or narrow cultivated terraces, covered with crops, and rising one above the other by great steps of ten to twelve feet. Both villages had to be occupied at the same time and this compelled the Brigade to attack on a broader front in full view of the enemy, whose drums could be heard as they manned the rocky heights, their red flags plainly visible to the advancing army.
The Guides Cavalry on the left advanced as far as the scrub would allow them drawing fire from isolated skirmishers. The Guides Infantry was ordered to clear the spur to the left; the 31st Punjab Infantry supported by the 38th Dogras, the centre ridge between the two villages, while the Royal West Kent Regiment was meant to advance straight up the hill on the right of the Guides. The fighting was at very close quarters and it soon became apparent that there were insufficient troops to undertake the task. A gap opened in consequence, between the Guides and Royal West Kents and this enabled the enemy to get round the left flank of the Royal West Kents, while the 31st Punjab Infantry was also turned by the enveloping enemy on the right.
The Royal West Kents eventually forced their way into the village of Agrah and encountered stiff enemy resistance in strongly occupied sangers. Under heavy enemy fire the Bengal Sappers and Miners commenced to destroy the village with explosives. Meanwhile on the right flank the 31st Punjab Infantry commanded by Lieut. Colonel O’Bryen were exposed to severe fire from a rocky ridge on their flank. Their attack was directed against a great mass of boulders tenaciously held by the enemy. The two advance companies being hotly engaged at less than 100 yards, experiencing cross fire from their right flank.
Lieut Colonel O’Bryen moved swiftly from point to point directing the fire and animating his men who were devoted to him. As the enemy marksmen’s bullets struck the ground everywhere around his prominent figure he continued to live a charmed life. ‘Two companies of the 38th Dogras’ came up to clear their right. The gunfire, though accurate, could not shift the tribesmen from their cover. So Lieut Colonel O’Bryen of the Punjabis ordered a charge. As O’Bryen rose to lead the 31st Punjabis in the charge towards their objective he was mortally wounded and was then carried to the rear. The casualty roll for the 31st (Punjab) Regiment of Bengal Infantry confirms he died of gun shot wounds to the abdomen.
Brigadier Jeffreys ordered the 7th Battery to engage the enemy from 600 yards to cover the withdrawal of the 2nd Brigade. The shells screamed over the heads of the Royal West Kents who were now clear of the hills retiring towards the guns. As the guns of the 7th Battery continued to fire, white puffs could be seen as the shells burst along the crest of the ridge, tearing up the ground adding great clouds of dust, whilst flames and smoke continued to rise from the burning village.
At length the withdrawal was complete and the 2nd Brigade returned to its camp five miles down the valley – job almost done. The Village of Agrah was well and truly destroyed whilst the village of Ghat had been severely shelled.
On hearing the news General Sir Bindon Blood proceeded to Inyat Kila with sizeable reinforcements. He arrived on the 2nd October giving orders for fourteen 12 pounder guns to arrive in time for a determined two Brigade strong attack on Agrah and Gat which was scheduled for the 5th October. As the British Army poured into the Mamund Valley – the tribesmen sued for peace on the 4th October.
After the action on the 30th September Lieut Colonel McCrae 45th Sikhs was sent up to command the 31st Punjab Infantry and Winston Churchill was attached as a temporary measure to the 31st Punjab Infantry to fill the vacancy arising from Lieut. E.B. Peacock receiving gun shots wounds to the thigh in the action on the 30th September. The total casualties for the day being 61 of which 8 being officer casualties: Lieut Colonel O’Bryen (killed), 2nd Lieut W.C. Browne-Clayton of the Royal West Kents (killed ) with a further six Officers of the Royal West Kents being wounded that day at Agrah.
And here, once again courtesy of Michael Purcell, is part of the sermon preached in St. Mary’s Church, Carlow, on Sunday, 3rd October 1897, extracted from the notes of John Finlay, Dean of Leighlin at ths time:
A feeling of sorrow I know pervades this congregation to-day for the Browne-Clayton family — which has been plunged into grief by the loss of one of its members. Oh ! – how hard it is for a father and a mother, how hard it is for the brothers and sisters to think of a young life full of health and strength and hope being taken so suddenly. The anxious watching, day by day, for news, and then when it comes with its burden of sorrow, the hearts of the waiting ones are wrung with grief — such grief as only those who suffer can know its depth. He fell doing his duty. You, my brethren, I know do sorrow this day with those that sorrow — you give them your heartful sympathy ; but, brethren, stop not here. Give them also your prayers that God may comfort and strengthen them ; and when we kneel and use the words :” We humbly beseech Thee of Thy goodness, O Lord, to comfort and succour all them who in this transitory life are in trouble, sorrow, need, sickness, or any other adversity” : and we also bless The Holy name for all Thy servants departed this life in Thy Faith, and fear. When we use these words , I say, let us think of those who sorrow to-day, and let us commit them to God’s care. We are all one in Christ. We are all bound to feel for one another, and to pray for one another. May a feeling of closer union take possession of our hearts to-day, that Christ may dwell in our hearts by faith, that we being rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye may be filled with all the fullness of God. And then out of that fullness may we give the sympathy that softens sorrow, and the prayer which will comfort those who mourn, with the comfort which comes from the Father of us all.
[25] The Times, Tuesday, Jun 28, 1938; pg. 1; Issue 48032; col B
[26] The Times, Friday, Jan 03, 1947; pg. 1; Issue 50649:; col A
[27] Their eldest son Patrick Robert Browne was born in 1947 and educated at Notre Dame University, BC. Their second son Peter was born in 1949, married Mary Law of Vancouver and lived in British Columbia.
[28] The Times, Monday, Oct 10, 1898; pg. 1; Issue 35643; col A
[29] The Times, Thursday, Aug 26, 1915; pg. 9; Issue 40943; col B
[30] The Times, Tuesday, Jan 13, 1914; pg. 11; Issue 40419; col B
[31] The Times, Monday, Jun 11, 1906; pg. 6; Issue 38043; col D
[32] The Times, Friday, Feb 01, 1929; pg. 9; Issue 45116; col E
[33] The Times, Thursday, Mar 05, 1942; pg. 1; Issue 49176; col A
[34] The Times, Thursday, Aug 13, 1942; pg. 8; Issue 49313; col C
[35] The Times, Friday, Mar 15, 1946; pg. 10; Issue 50401; col D
….
In 1951, Lt Col Browne-Clayton was obliged to place the 700 acre estate up for sale. The Land Acts had reduced the families’ wealth considerably and obliged them to leave Carlow. An English syndicate headed up by Norfolk grain farmer WH Harold purchased the estate for in excess of £70,000. In 1957, the syndicate acquired the 1,500 acre Bruen estate at Oak Park, following Henry Bruen’s controversial disinheritance of his only daughter Patricia. Many in Carlow resented Harold’s purchase, believing the two farms should have been acquired by the Land Commission and divided amongst local farmers. Harold resisted until one morning he opened a letter bearing an Irish postmark which contained a single bullet.
Shortly afterwards, the Browne’s Hill Estates syndicate negotiated a deal with the Land Commission. Browne’s Hill House was put up for sale on 4 ½ acres by auctioneer William Mulhall with an asking price of £2,500. For several weeks, the best price offered was £1,800 from a Dublin buyer, Thomas Stafford, whose interest was in salvage value after demolition. Fortunately a number of last minute bids were placed, and the eventual buyer was local travel agent Frank Tully. It has remained his family home ever since.
The entrance gates to Browne’s Hill were removed, purchased by University College Dublin and erected at the entrance to the Lyons estate, then owned by the college and later home to the late Tony Ryan of Guinness Peat Aviation / Ryanair.
By 1958, the Browne-Claytons were living at Cashel House in Connemara, the same landscape in which their daughter Magda would find her husband. William died in Dublin on 3rd September 1971. Janet died in 2002.
Browne Clayton of Browne’s Hill, Co. Carlow
Motto: Fortiter et fideliter.
I penned the following account of Browne’s Hill for the Irish Times on 30 July 2020. I include it here now as an introduction before moving on to the rest of my findings to date. I have not yet researched this family in the depth they merit.
For most people in Carlow, the name Browne’s Hill is synonymous with the mighty dolmen that stands just outside the town. The Browne’s Hill Dolmen, which boasts one of the largest capstones in Europe, is named after a townland which, in turn, takes its name from the Brownes, the family who lived here from 1763 through until the 1950s.
As one of the few surviving Georgian mansions in County Carlow, Browne’s Hill is a building of considerable historical value. The handsome mansion occupies the site of an ancient abbey that was granted to the Browne family from Essex in the 17th century.
The family descend from Sir William Browne of Abbas Roding, Essex, whose second son Robert came to Ireland as an officer with Oliver Cromwell’s army in the 1640s. His son, another Robert, was appointed Sovereign of Carlow by King Charles II and narrowly avoided a grizzly death during the Williamite wars.
By 1700, the Brownes were one of the most powerful dynasties in Carlow, owning property in both the town and county, as well as extensive lands in Dublin, Kildare and elsewhere.
Browne’s Hill House was built in 1763 for William Browne, after a design by a Mr Peters. It originally comprised a detached six-bay three-storey over-basement structure, built in the Neo-Classical style with a granite ashlar façade. The house was instantly the envy and the inspiration for other gentlemen in the vicinity as the penchant for building Georgian mansions cranked up several notches.
At the time of its completion, three towers of the ancient abbey at Browne’s Hill were still standing. These were later either pulled down or fell naturally; some of the stone was reused for the park wall.
Within the house itself, generation upon generation of Brownes came and went, picking up the additional surname of Clayton along the way. They invariably served as magistrates for Carlow, frequently in the capacity of high sheriff or deputy lieutenant. Some were churchmen but most were of a military bent.
Among the most prominent was General Robert Browne Clayton, who was made a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire by Pope Pius VI. His greatest legacy was the 94 feet tall Corinthian column that he erected on his Carrigbyrne estate in County Wexford. Restored by the Irish Georgian Society, the column honours his commander, Sir Ralph Abercromby, mortally wounded while leading British forces in Egypt during the Napoleonic Wars.
In 1842, another Robert succeeded to Browne’s Hill and commissioned the architect Thomas Cobden to redesign the house, with a pedimented central breakfront and a full-height canted bay to the rear. With the onset of the Great Hunger, Robert employed some 400 men to build five-miles of high stone wall around the estate.
Two generations later, there was sorrow for the family when William Browne was killed in hand-to-hand fighting in Afghanistan in 1897. Prior to his death, he had become friendly with a young journalist reporting on the war by name of Winston Churchill. The future prime minister wept when he saw William Browne-Clayton’s lacerated body laid out on a stretcher.
William’s brother Robert inherited Browne’s Hill in 1907 and made his mark as a polo player in the Edwardian age. His wife Magda Weinholt was the daughter of a 300,000-acre sheep grazier from Australia.
The Carlow Sentinel reported on the ‘great rejoicings’ at Browne’s Hill when the newlyweds came home. ‘On arriving at the front gate, which was beautifully and artistically decorated, the carriage was met by a large crowd of enthusiastic friends, and was drawn up the hill by many willing hands, while a fire of twenty-one guns … announced the approach of the procession.’
Magda made a robust impression as manager of the national school at nearby Benekerry, as one of the pupils recalled: ‘She walked in without knocking as was her right. We stood up somewhat falling over ourselves, so sudden was her entry. She made a bee-line for the teacher’s chair beside the open fire, and if the teacher happened to be sitting in it, she had to be out of it quickly, otherwise Mrs Browne-Clayton would probably have ended up on her lap. She listened to the teaching for a while, and then stood up suddenly, tall and gaunt and dark … and with a swish of tweeds made for the door.’
Éamon de Valera reputedly gave instruction that neither the family nor their house were to be harmed during the Civil War. Robert, who had risen to the rank of brigadier in the First World War, was also onside with Cosgrave’s government who appointed him to a Special Committee investigating grievances by ex-British servicemen in the Irish Free State.
He was succeeded in 1939 by his only son William, a keen huntsman, point-to-pointer and polo player. William’s wife Janet descended from James Bruce, the Scotsman who discovered the source of the Blue Nile in 1770.
William had dreamed of establishing an equestrian centre at Browne’s Hill but, under pressure from Janet, as well as bitter dispute with the local priest, he put the 700-acre estate up for sale in 1951.
William and Janet’s son Robbie, who died in 2014, was a British officer stationed in Berlin at the time the Berlin Wall was erected. He went on to be an Agricultural, Fisheries, Food, Forestry and Countryside adviser to Margaret Thatcher.
Robbie’s older sister Magda Dunlop is the last surviving member of the Browne family to have lived in the house. She is mother to Nic Dunlop, the photographer/author who tracked down Comrade Duch, Pol Pot’s chief executioner in Cambodia. Duch was subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment for his war crimes and died in September 2020.
In 1953, Browne’s Hill House was purchased for in excess of £70,000 by an English syndicate headed up by Norfolk grain farmer G.W. Harrold, who hosted the Carlow Agricultural Show on the grounds. The syndicate also acquired the nearby 1,500-acre estate at Oak Park. There was considerable resentment by those felt that the two estates should have been acquired by the Land Commission and divided amongst local farmers. One morning Harrold opened a letter, bearing an Irish postmark, which contained a single bullet.
Shortly afterwards, the syndicate negotiated a deal with the Land Commission. Browne’s Hill House was put up for sale on 4 ½ acres with an asking price of £2,500. For several weeks, the best price offered was £1,800 from a Dublin buyer whose interest was in its salvage value after demolition. Fortunately, a number of last-minute bids were placed, and the eventual buyer was local travel agent Frank Tully and his wife Patty. They maintained Browne’s Hill as family home through until Frank’s death in 2018. As of July 2020, it went on sale via Ireland Sotheby’s International Realty and Dawson’s.
The entrance gates to Browne’s Hill were removed, purchased by University College Dublin and erected at the entrance to the Lyons estate, then owned by the college and later home to the late Tony Ryan of Guinness Peat Aviation / Ryanair.
In 1961, the April-June issue of the Irish Georgian Society’s Bulletin advised readers that a house in County Carlow called Browne’s Hill ‘is to be demolished if a buyer does not come forward within the next month. Situated in a large park with fine timber, Browne’s Hill is in first-rate structural repair and would make a lovely, easily run family home. Although it is on top of a hill with panoramic views, it is not remote, the town of Carlow being only 1 ½ miles away, and Dublin 50 miles. The house was built in 1763 by an architect named Peters for Robert Browne, in whose family it remained until recently. The three reception rooms have rich plaster ceilings and the original mantlepieces, the front hall is paved with black and white squares, and the kitchen (with Aga) is on the ground floor. The grand staircase leads up to ten bedrooms of various sizes, he principal one being octagonal with windows facing in three directions. There are two bathrooms, three lavatories, oil fired central heating and E.S.B. main electricity. The courtyard comprises 15 stables, garages, loose boxes, dairy and groom’s house with excellent living accommodation, approximately 5,000 square feet of lofting, all in good condition. For permission to view, apply to – William Mulhall, Auctioneer and Valuer, 60 Dublin St., Carlow. Price £2,500 with five acres. A further 68 acres is available, if required, £7,000.’
Browne’s Hill was occupied by successive generations of the same family until 1951 when William Browne-Clayton offered the house for sale with 700 acres. Two years later an English syndicate purchased the estate, along with another nearby, the 1,500 acre Oak Park. These purchases were not well-received locally, farmers in the area believing the land ought to have been divided up among them by the Land Commission. Eventually in 1961 the syndicate, faced with growing hostility, negotiated a deal with the commission, whereby the estate underwent division and the house with its immediate five acres were put on the market with an asking price of £2,500. It was at this point that the Irish Georgian Society placed a notice in its bulletin warning supporters that unless a sympathetic buyer could be found – and soon – the house would be demolished. This news understandably caused alarm among those who were fighting to ensure the survival of the country’s steadily diminishing architectural heritage. Among them was author Anita Leslie, then dividing her time between her own family home, Castle Leslie in County Monaghan, and Oranmore Castle, County Galway, a property she had bought with her husband Bill King. Anita Leslie was also battling to save Dalyston, an important mid-18th century house that had just been sold to a County Longford firm that specialized in stripping old buildings of all saleable assets. Seeing Dalyston unroofed and gradually picked bare, she was determined the same fate should not befall Browne’s Hill and embarked on a campaign to save the property. For a time, she thought it might perhaps be bought by one of her friends, such as the wealthy Simone, Baronne de Bastard who had just spent huge sums restoring the 17th century château de Hautefort in the Dordogne, but it seems Mme de Bastard did not care to purchase a house in the Irish countryside.
As June 1961 drew to a close, the fate of Browne’s Hill seemed sealed: it was destined to be demolished since the best purchase offer had come from the same company that had stripped and unroofed Dalyston. But then the Land Commission, in a rare gesture of sympathy, advised the Irish Georgian Society that it would allow a further six months’ grace before a decision over the house’s future was made. Anita Leslie battled on, helped by another stalwart of the society, Eoin ‘The Pope’ O’Mahony (he had been nicknamed ‘The Pope’ while still a schoolboy after declaring his ambition in life was to hold this title). A wonderfully eccentric character, one-time barrister, orator, genealogist and supporter of many lost causes, in this instance O’Mahony announced that he had persuaded a Fellow of St Catherine’s College, Cambridge to back a scheme whereby Browne’s Hill would be bought for 2,000 guineas, to be used as a student hostel. Extensive correspondence survives between Anita Leslie, Eoin O’Mahony, and Desmond and Mariga Guinness of the Irish Georgian Society as all of them – sometimes at cross-purposes – sought the best means of securing Browne’s Hill’s long-term future, each of them, and others besides, hounding the local auctioneer William Mulhall for information about possible rival bids for the place. On July 10th, Anita Leslie wrote somewhat histrionically to the Guinnesses, ‘I feel like Atlas holding up the last Georgian houses in Ireland on drooping shoulders & slender purse.’ If necessary, and as a last resort, she was prepared to pay the £2,500 required for Browne’s Hill, thinking it could either be let to a tenant or else run as a guesthouse. Finally, despairing that demolition awaited without her intercession and without telling her husband of the decision, she sent the auctioneer a cheque for the deposit. The cheque was promptly returned: it transpired that another offer for the property had been made – and not by any firm with demolition in mind. Instead, Browne’s Hill was bought by a local travel agent Frank Tully and his wife Patty. They subsequently moved into Browne’s Hill, which remained a family home until Mr Tully died in November 2018. Last month Browne’s Hill came on the market for only the second time since it was built more than 250 years ago.
The original entrance gates to the Browne’s Hill estate, which took the form of a splendid triumphal arch, were sold during this period and bought by University College Dublin, which in 1962 purchased the Lyons estate in County Kildare to run as a research farm. The gates can still be seen there at the entrance to the now-private house at Lyons.
Browne’s Hill County Carlow photograph courtesy of Irish Times 30th July 2020.
Benekerry (or Bennekerry) House and Bennekerry Lodge, near Carlow, Co Carlow
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. 40. “[Newton sub. Bagenal/IFR] A house of 7 bays and 2 storeys, with an attic lit by dormers in the roof, dating originally from end C17 or early C18. In the late-Georgian period, a single storey neo-Classical addition was built along the whole length of the entrance front; consisting of an enclosed 3 bay porch in the centre, with a short open colonnade of Doric columns on either side. One room has an apsed end with a screen of two Grecian Ionic columns. In 1832, Philip Newton, son of Col. Philip Newton of Benekerry, assumed the name of Bagenal in accordance with the wishes of his mother and his grandfather, Col. Beauchamp Bagenal, of Dunleckney, Co Carlow. At about this time, 1st cricket ground in Co Carlow was here.”
Detached seven-bay two-storey over basement house with dormer attic, c. 1700, with hipped roof. Renovated, c. 1840, with rusticated granite porch and flanking Tuscan screens added and interior partly remodelled. Extended to side, c. 1978, comprising four-bay single-storey range. Interior retains timber panelled hall and staircase.
A large, seven-bay, two-storey house over a basement, dating from circa 1700 and renovated circa 1840. It has rendered walls with a slight batter, hipped roof with natural slates, wide eaves with brackets, dormer windows and a pair of stacks in the centre. A screen of Tuscan Doric columns with an enclosed porch of channelled, granite ashlar, was added across the façade in about 1840. The screen has a full entablature and the doorcase is square-headed with a bracketed cornice. The sash windows have six panes in each sash. The interior retains a timber panelled hall and staircase dating from the original building work. The interior was partially remodelled about 1840. A single-storey addition was added to the house in the late 1970s.
Detached five-bay single-storey over raised basement former dower house, c. 1830, on an L-shaped plan with granite columnar projecting porch, segmental-headed panels to window openings, eaves brackets and hipped roof. Remains of detached gate lodge to site. Now in ruins.
Record of Protected structures:
Bennekerry Lodge, townland: Bennekerry.
An early-19th century house of five bays and a single storey over a high basement. It has rendered walls, now covered with creeper, an asymmetrically-placed, granite, Doric porch approached by a tall flight of steps, tall windows, which now have uPVC glazing, wide eaves with paired brackets and a low-pitched, hipped roof with natural slates and a pair of stacks which are set parallel to the façade. The front area is protected by cast-iron railings.
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.
p. 17: “Bennekerry Lodge, the home of the Doyle family, was built by the Newtons [see Dunleckney], whose land ownership in the middle of the last century was just over 4000 acres. [p. 18] The last of the Bagenal family to live at Bennekerry House was Beauchamp Walter Bagenal, who spent his life in the Australian wine trade. It was his brother who lived at Benekerry House from 1930-6, and then moved to South Africa. When Walter Bagenal died in 1952 without an heir, the representation of the family was vested in Hope Bagenal, the well-known London based acoustic architect who died in 1979. It was his father, Philip Bagenal, who wrote the family history The Vicissitudes of an Anglo-Irish Family. The Bagenalstown property was left to Captain J.B. Blackett, a great-nephew. The present head of the family is John S. Bagenal whose career was in the Dept of Agriculture in Kenya, and who now lives near Hertford in England.
Bennekerry House, on 120 acres, was purchased in 1936 for £2000 by solicitor Smauel Roche and his wife, and was sold in the 1950s to Dan Morrissey, founder of the concrete products company to which he gave his name. The house is now owned by his eldest son, Andrew Morrisey.”
Detached seven-bay two-storey over basement house with dormer attic, c. 1700, with hipped roof. Renovated, c. 1840, with rusticated granite porch and flanking Tuscan screens added and interior partly remodelled. Extended to side, c. 1978, comprising four-bay single-storey range. Interior retains timber panelled hall and staircase.
Bennekerry House was inhabited by the Newton family since 1702 when Bryan Newton obtained a lease of it from Bishop Vigors who held it. The Newton family came to Ireland with William III from Lancashire. In 1785 Colonel Philip Newton of Bennekerry married Sarah Westrop Bagenal, sister of Walter Bagenal above-mentioned, and their son, Philip Newton adopted the name Bagenal. Hence it was that the name Bagenal carried on in Bennekerry until 1936 when the property was sold to its present occupant Mr. S. Roche.
Leaving Castle Hill and walking to the left extremity of our triangle we reach Bennekerry House. This in Dineley’s time belonged to William Ewers, Esq., but I have been unable to find any reference to this individual. Bennekerry is of interest to us in being at one time the residence of Walter Bagenal, the last male heir of the Bagenal family. Walter Bagenal died in Staplestown in 1814 and is buried in the local Church. A monument erected to his memory by his widow Elizabeth, and daughter Maria, can still be seen in the church. The monument was probably erected when the new church was built in 1821, or else it was removed from the old church.
BENEKERRY, otherwise BUSHERSTOWN, a parish, in the barony of RATHVILLY (but locally in that of Carlow), county of CARLOW, and province of LEINSTER, 2½ miles (E. N. E.) from Carlow; containing 135 inhabitants. This parish is situated on the road from Carlow to Tullow, and is bounded on the south-west and east by the river Burren: more than four-fifths consists of meadow and pasture land, and the remainder is arable, with a few acres of woodland. In the ecclesiastical divisions it is not regarded as a parish, but as forming part of that of Urglin, the incumbent of which receives the tithes, except of about ten acres, which pay tithe to the incumbent of Ballinacarrig or Staplestown.
Detached seven-bay two-storey over basement house with dormer attic, c. 1700, with hipped roof. Renovated, c. 1840, with rusticated granite porch and flanking Tuscan screens added and interior partly remodelled. Extended to side, c. 1978, comprising four-bay single-storey range. Interior retains timber panelled hall and staircase.
Record of Protected Structures:
The Turrets,
Bennekerry House,
Staplestown
Ruins of a house built about 1660 by Sir William Temple. The ruins consist of two main structures: the first is arched and is built of rubble stone with some brick and the other is a two-storey structure also built of rubble stone. The two structures are no longer connected. There is also a stone wall between them.
The Turrets were replaced by Staplestown Lodge, occupied by Mrs. Ireland up to a recent date, and now owned by Mr. O’Neill. The house is of Elizabethan style and built of granite, which is plentiful in the district. The house has probably been reconstructed and renovated since that time. It was originally occupied by a Mr. Henry Watters, J.P., also of Lincoln’s Inn. He is probably the Mr. Watters who once owned the mill close by.
A seven-bay, two-storey house, dating originally from the early 18th century, and perhaps built for the Newton family, soon after they first rented the estate from Bishop Vigors in 1702; they later acquired the freehold. In about 1840, a single-storey neo-classical addition was built along the whole length of the entrance front, consisting of an enclosed three-bay granite porch in the centre, with a short open colonnade of Doric columns to either side. The dormers in the roof are a 20th century addition. In 1978 a four bay, single-storey wing was added to one side. Inside, the house has a panelled hall and staircase, and one room has an apsed end with a screen of two Grecian Ionic columns, which sounds as though it may also date from c.1840.
Descent: Rt. Rev. Bartholomew Vigors (1644-1721), who leased it to Bryan Newton…John Newton (d. 1748); to son, Bartholomew Newton (d. 1780); to son, John Newton (d. c.1807); to brother, Col. Philip Newton (1770-1833); to second son, Philip Newton (later Bagenal) (1796-1856); to widow, Georgiana Thomasina Bagenal (c.1814-97); given (c.1870?) to son, Beauchamp Frederick Bagenal (1846-1930); to son, Beauchamp Walter Bagenal (1873-1952); sold 1936 to S. Roche…sold to Andrew Morrissey (d. c.2008)…
p. 42 of Jimmy O’Toole:
“Labelled the “Carlow Land War” by the media, its leader was Kathleen Brady of Bennekerry, the daughter of a neighbouring small farmer [neighbour to Myshall Lodge], who was one of the founders of the local land club. The writer Brendan Behan called her the Joan of Arc of the small farmers fight for land in County Carlow, and the land club had an even more important literary ally in another radical of the period, Peader O’Donnell… as a result the Harold syndicate sold Browne Hill House to the Land Commission.”
Ballyellen House, Co Carlow – destroyed by fire in 1908
Not in Bence Jones
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.
Chap 4: Blackney of Ballyellen
p. 30 “After the Bagenals and Kavanaghs had conformed to the Established Church, the only resident Catholic gentry family left in County Carlow at the beginning of the 19th century was the Blackneys of Ballyellen. Walter Blackney settled in Ballycormack in 1685, where he inherited land from his maternal grandfather Dudley Bagenal. In 1781, they leased 800 acres from Lord Kenmare at Ballyellen, the family seat, until they sold their interest in 1865. Not surprisingly, it was a Blackney who was in the political front-line in 1831, when the Tories lost their political supremacy in County Carlow for the first time in almost a century and a half. Following his successful campaign for Catholic Emancipation, granted in 1829,Daniel O’Connell launched a campaign for repeal of the Union with Britain in 1830, drawing his political support from the merchant and professional classes, and some larger Catholic tenant farmers. Small tenant farmers and labourers did not have votes.”
“The second Lord Kenmare, an absentee Catholic landlord, whose family seat was in Killarney, had 2000 acres in the parishes of Ballyellen and Lorum, but he did not use any influence on his Carlow tenants to resist or aid either side during this crucial period in local politics.”
During the decade 1831-1843, County Carlow became a political cauldron, as the Tory landlords on one side and the O’Connellites on the other, vied for the support of the unfortunate tenants, who were torn between a desire to support the “popular party,” and the demands for political support from their landlords, who used the potent threat of eviction against wavering tenants…p. 31 It was a reign of terro during which some horrific injuries were inflicted, resulting in some instances in loss of life; a herdsman on a Bruen farm tenanted by a Catholic at Ballybrid had his two ears cut off. Animals were attacked and injured, and arson attacks on property were frequent.”
“The election on 9th Aug 1830, after the death of King George IV, was fairly typical of what had gone before, with three Tory candidates – Henry Bruen II, [p. 32] Thomas Kavanagh and Horace Rochfort – in a three way content for two seats, with Bruen and Kavanagh being elected. In the general electin of 1831, the same three Tory candidates faced opposition from repeal candidate Walter Blackney, and the Catholic liberal, Sir John Milley Doyle, a veteran of the Peninsular War. Detecting strong support for the opposition candidtes, all three Tory candidates withdrew from the contest the night before polling was due to take place, and Doyle and Blackney were both declared elected.”
Three days after the election, The Kilkenny Moderator reported that sixty voters, tenants of Lord Downes, Colonel Bruen and Mr. Kavanagh, were taken from their houses, and concealed by the priests and the mob.”
“In the next election in Dec 1832…Blackney’s running mate was Thomas Wallace, an eminent Dublin barrister. Their victory at the polls on this occasion was decisive over Bruen and Kavanagh.”
“Anger among the Carlow landlords was now at fever pitch, following the loss of a second successive election, and the two defeated candidates petitioned against the return of their opponents on the grounds that some voters had not taken the oath required by law [p. 33], that freeholders and leaseholders of insufficient value had been allowed to vote, and that Walter Blackney did not own sufficient property to entitle him to be a candidate for the election. The petition was eventually thrown out by the select committee established to examine the objections, and the successful candidates held their seats…”
“Walter Blackney did not seek a nomination in the election of January 1835, called as a result of Sir Robert Peel’s failure to form a government. Maurice O’Connell, eldest son of Daniel O’Connell, and barrister Michael Cahill, were narrowly defeated by Bruen and Kavanagh, but the election result was declared void and a new election held in June the same year. Nicholas Aylward Vigors, and Alexander Raphael, won that contest, but they in turn were unseated by a committee of enquiry, with the seats eventually going to Bruen and Kavanagh.”
“The Blackneys came to Carlow from Dublin, where they ranked among the principal gentry of the Tudor times. The land inherited through Dudley Bagenal was forfeited in the late 1600s, but a claim in 1700 for renewal of the leases by the first Walter Blackney’s three teenage children, James, William and Mabel, was successful before the Court of Claims in Chichester House. Walter, the MP was the fifth generation of the Carlow branch of the family, and he was succeeded by his son Hugh, born 1818, who was the last Blackney to live at Ballyellen. The property was purchased in 1865 by Patrick Maher of Paulstown, Co Kilkenny, who had moved to live at Ballyellen house before his second marriage to Ann Clowry of Kilbricken in 1869. The house was destroyed by fire about 1908 and not rebuilt.”
The Peerage:
James Blackney married Gertrude Galwey, daughter of John Galwey and Jane O’Bryen, in October 1775. He lived at Ballycormack, County Carlow, Ireland He lived at Ballyellen, County Carlow, Ireland
Children of James Blackney and Gertrude Galwey
Colonel Walter Blackney
Jane Blackney
Walter Blackney lived at Ballyellin, County Carlow, IrelandG.1
Child of Walter Blackney
Mary Ann Blackney. She married John Wyse and had daughter Mary Wyse, d. abt. 1805.
Irish Historic Houses 