South Hill, Delvin, Co Westmeath
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. 262. “(Tighe/IFR; Chapman, Bt, of Killua Castle/PB1917) A plain three storey seven bay early C19 house with interior plasterwork of the Morrison school. Passed by inheritance from a branch of the Tighe family to the Chapmans. the home of Sir Thomas Chapman, 7th and last Bt, of whom Lawrence of Arabia was the illegitimate son.”
St. Mary’s Hospital, SOUTHHILL, Delvin, County Westmeath
Semi-detached five-bay three-storey over basement country house, built c.1810, with central projecting single bay Doric porch flanked by three-bay single-storey (south) with wings to either side (east and west) to entrance front (north). Full-height single-bay bow projection to west side elevation containingstairwell. Later in use as a religious institution. Now in use as a residential health care centre/hospital with modern extensions to rear (south) and to the west side. Hipped natural slate roof with eaves cornice and rendered chimneystacks. Roughcast rendered walls to main building, ashlar limestone to projecting porch. Square-headed window openings with rendered reveals, cut stone sills and mainly six-over-six pane timber sliding sash windows. Square-headed doorcase to projecting porch with sidelights and a square-headed overlight with cast-iron fanlight tracery. Doorcase framed by Doric pilasters on square-plan. Set back from road in extensive grounds with complex of outbuildings to the east (15401402).
Appraisal
A large country house, which retains its Georgian character and much of its early detail. Although this structure is now adjoined by numerous modern additions the integrity and atmosphere of the original house has been retained. The rather plain front façade is enlivened by the Doric porch in crisp ashlar limestone and by the fine doorcase with elaborate cast-iron tracery. Although this house was reputedly built during the early years of the nineteenth century, it has the appearance of a mid-eighteenth century house on account of the small window openings and the asymmetrical arrangement of the chimneystacks. Casey and Rowan (1993) record interesting plasterwork by the Danish artist Thorvaldsen (1768-1844) to the interior and suggest that William Farrell, a prominent early-to-mid nineteenth-century architect, was responsible for the designs of this substantial house. South Hill was originally the home of the Tighe Family but later passed into the ownership of a branch of the Chapman Family of Killua Castle, Clonmellon. T.E Lawrence, better know as Lawrence of Arabia, was the illegitimate son of Sir Thomas Chapman, the 7th and last Baronet.
Casey, Christine and Alistair Rowan. The Buildings of Ireland: North Leinster. Penguin Books, London, 1993.
p. 202.
https://theirishaesthete.com/2020/06/13/what-might-have-been/
What Might Have Been
South Hill, County Westmeath is a house of five bays and three-storeys over basement, believed to date from c.1810 and perhaps designed by Dublin architect William Farrell. The building’s most notable feature is a long, single-storey limestone pavilion attached to the facade and centred on a pilastered porch with wide fanlight. Constructed for a branch of the Tighe family, South Hill was then inherited by the Chapmans of Killua Castle, a few miles away; in 1870 Thomas Chapman became owner of the estate, following the death of an older brother. Chapman, who would later become Sir Thomas, seventh and last baronet, had four daughters with his wife, an ardent evangelical Christian. The couple hired a governess for the children, Sarah Lawrence and in 1885 she became pregnant, giving birth to a son. Chapman was the father, and when his wife discovered this, he left the family home and moved with Sarah Lawrence to Wales, where a second son, Thomas Edward, was born; having settled in Oxford, the couple would have several further sons. They and their four half-sisters appear never to have met each other.
Sir Thomas Chapman never returned to Ireland, although he continued to receive an annuity from the estate. His second son, who would become famous as Lawrence of Arabia, was aware of his Irish ancestry and of the fact that his father had lived in South Hill; in later years he considered acquiring land in the area, but this didn’t happen before his early death. Eventually the property was sold to an order of nuns and became an educational establishment. Today South Hill is surrounded by institutional buildings of outstanding architectural mediocrity.
Irish Historic Houses 