Lucan House, Lucan, Co Dublin
Bence-Jones, Mark. A Guide to Irish Country Houses (originally published as Burke’s Guide to Country Houses volume 1 Ireland by Burke’s Peerage Ltd. 1978); Revised edition 1988 Constable and Company Ltd, London.
p. 195. “(Sarsfield, Lucan, E/DEP; Colthurst-Vesey/LGI1912; Colthurst, Bt/PB; O’Conor Don/IFR; Teeling (formerly Burke), LGI1958) A Palladian villa built 1770s by Agmondisham Vesey, MP, replacing an earlier house which itself replaced the old castle which had belonged to Patrick Sarsfield, Earl of Lucan, hero of the Seige of Limerick. The estate came to Agmondisham Vesey’s father through his first marriage to the Sarsfield heiress; but instead of leaving it to his daughter by her, who was the ancestress of the Binghams, Earls of Lucan, he left it to Agmondisham, who was his son by his second marriage. Agmondisham Vesey acted as his own architect, while consulting with Sir William Chambers, and also James Wyatt and Michael Stapleton, with regard to the interior. Of two storeys over basement, seven bay entrance front with a central feature of a pediment raised on a three bay attic, and carried on four engaged Ionic columns, the gound floor beneath them being treated as a basement, and rusticated. The central feature of Charleville, Co Wicklow, is similar. Five bay side elevation; garden front with central curved bow containing oval room; the plan resembling that of Mount Kennedy, Co Wicklow. The house is entirely free-standing, the officed being detached and connected to it by an underground passage. The interior has very fine neo-classical decoration on the walls and ceilings, some if not all of it by Stapleton. The hall has a screen of columns marbled to resemble yellow Siena. The Wedgwood Room, the ceiling of which curves downwards at the corners giving the effect of a shallow dome, has roundels painted by Peter de Gree. The small but attractive demesne by the River Liffey contains a Coade stone urn on a pedestal designed by James Wyatt and erected as a monument to the great Sarsfield, and a Gothic hermitage. Inherited from the Colthurst-Vesey family by Capt Richard Colthurst (afterwards 8th Bt), who sold it 1932 to H.E. Charles O’Conor, President of Irish Association of the Order of Malta. Re-sold post WW(II by Charles O’Conor’s son in law, William Teeling, MP, to the Italian gov’t, for use as their embassy.”
Detached seven-bay two-storey over basement Palladian country house, c.1775, with three-bay pedimented breakfront and three-bay rere bow, each having attic storey. Five bays to south side. Roughcast rendered walls with granite platband, string courses, sill course and quoins. Ashlar granite walls to breakfront, with rusticated ground floor and four half-engaged giant Ionic columns above. Small pane sash windows with stone sills throughout. Timber panelled door with elaborate fanlight. Hipped slate roof behind parapet with stone cornice and rendered chimney stacks. Retains many fine interior features, including late eighteenth-century plasterwork. Single-storey service building to north, with roughcast rendered walls, round-headed windows, segmental-headed archwayand single-pitched roof. Set within mature demesne parkland with various outbuildings (separately recorded).
An impressive, imposing and substantially intact country house and demesne, with a richly decorated interior. Partly designed by William Chambers, with interior plasterwork by Michael Stapleton, Historically and socially important as the principal land holding in Lucan village with which the demesne is intimately associated.
Detached multiple-bay single-storey with attic former stable building, c.1790, now in use as house and storage building, and partly unoccupied. Built on a C-shaped half-octagonal plan. Roughcast rendered walls to convex side. Rendered, ruled and lined walls to concave side, with five three-bay sections alternately having superimposed arcade or ashlar pedimented breakfront. Pedimented breakfront to single-bay end bays. Granite platband at arch springing level. Timber sash windows with stone sills. uPVC casement windows to southern domestic section. Timber tongue and groove doors with overlights. Hipped slate roof with red brick dentil eaves course. Single-storey red brick lean-to shed to north.
A particularly handsome and well-executed stable building, retaining many original features. Set just inside one of the main demesne gates, it presents a most striking façade on entry. Also a dominant presence on the Leixlip Road and in the vista west from Lucan village. An integral element of this intact demesne.
https://archiseek.com/2013/1766-lucan-house-lucan-co-dublin
1772 – Lucan House, Lucan, Co. Dublin
Architect: William Chambers, Michael Stapleton
Lucan House, often described as a pure Palladian villa, was constructed by Agmondisham Vesey, who cleared the previous residence and began construction in 1772. Vesey, although not an architect, designed the house in conjunction with William Chambers, with Michael Stapleton responsible for the plasterwork.
However this image by John James Barralet, and in the Paul Mellon Collection at the Yale Center for British Art is inscribed: “Lucan House, Co Dublin, built 1776 by the Rt. Hon. Agmondisham Vesey from his own designs with the help of the Dublin builder Michael Stapleton”.
The estate passed through the Sarsfield, Vesey and Colthurst families through marriage – the descent of the house was through the female line, as no member of the family produced a male heir.
In 1925, the entire contents of the house were sold at auction. In 1954, it was purchased by the Italian Government for use as the residence of the Italian Ambassador to Ireland. At the time, they purchased the house, it was an empty shell.
https://theirishaesthete.com/2024/05/27/lucan-house/
Addio del Passato
Last Monday, the Presidents of Ireland and Italy jointly inaugurated a new public park in Lucan, County Dublin, the space henceforth to be known as Parco Italia. The reason for this somewhat unusual name? Since 1942 Lucan House, which stands at the centre of the 30-acre park, has been the official residence of successive Italian ambassadors to this country. The building here has, like so often, a long and complex history but in its present form was commissioned in the early 1770s by the estate’s then-owner Agmondisham Vesey who, although he consulted several eminent architects, played an active role in the eventual design. Vesey’s house replaced an earlier one, probably dating back to the Middle Ages but much altered over the centuries. A painting by Thomas Roberts produced shortly before its demolition shows what appears to be a late-mediaeval tower house with a fortified manor house with castellated roofline to one side. Vesey’s wife Elizabeth, a noted bluestocking (and close friend of Elizabeth Montague) lamented the destruction of the older building, ‘with its niches and thousand other Gothic beauties,’ but her husband was determined to start afresh. To do this, he not only had to overcome his spouse’s opposition but also the original house’s associations with noted Irish patriot Patrick Sarsfield, first Earl of Lucan. His forebear, Sir William Sarsfield, had acquired the Lucan estate in 1566 and although temporarily dispossessed during the Confederate Wars, several generations of the family lived there until the marriage in 1696 of heiress Catherine Sarsfield (a niece of Patrick Sarsfield) to Agmondisham Vesey, father of the man responsible for building Lucan House.
As mentioned above, Agmondisham Vesey, displayed a keen interest in architecture despite his involvement in many other activities: a Member of the Irish Parliament, he was also a Privy Councillor and Accountant and Controller General of Ireland. Like his wife Elizabeth he liked to keep abreast of cultural developments: in 1773, during the period that work was underway on the new house, he was elected to the ‘Club’, the informal dining and conversational group established by Samuel Johnson and Joshua Reynolds 10 years earlier. Johnson and James Boswell granted him the notional title of ‘Professor of Architecture,’ and the latter wrote that Vesey had ‘left a good specimen of his knowledge and taste in that art by an elegant house built on a plan of his own at Lucan.’ Boswell exaggerated his friend’s role in the matter because while Vesey undoubtedly had a hand in Lucan House’s appearance, so did a number of architects, not least Sir William Chambers who in 1773 sent him now-lost ‘Designs for a Villa.’ It is thought that the facade of the building was based on this work, not least because in March 1774, Vesey wrote to Chambers, ‘I am much more intent in finishing the South front of your Plan at Lucan this summer.’ The aforementioned facade is of seven bays and two storeys over basement except for the breakfront three centre bays which feature an additional attic storey beneath a pediment (despite Vesey reminding Chambers ‘You have taught us to think pediments but common architecture). This central section is faced in granite ashlar with four half-engaged giant Ionic columns above a rusticated ground floor. Originally at that level the two bays on either side were given rusticated render, as can be seen in an engraving of the house produced by Thomas Milton in 1783, but this was removed at some later date. Lucan House’s design looks to have been the inspiration for Charleville, County Wicklow, designed by Whitmore Davis in 1797, although the facade of that building is entirely faced in ashlar and runs to nine bays. Meanwhile, at Lucan, the house forms a rectangular block, other than a three-bay bow to the rear that, as with the facade, rises three storeys over basement.
If Sir William Chambers was involved in designing the exterior of Lucan House, James Wyatt, together with his Irish representative Thomas Penrose, can claim much credit for the building’s interiors, with Michael Stapleton responsible for much of the plasterwork found on many of the walls and ceilings in the ground floor, as well as the main staircase and first-floor lobby. Lucan House has some of the finest examples of neo-classical decoration in Ireland, beginning with the entrance hall, to the rear of which a screen of columns and pilasters painted to imitate Siena marble, provide access to the principal reception rooms. That to the immediate left here, now called the Wedgewood Room but originally the breakfast room, is a perfect square, its walls rising to a gently domed ceiling at the centre of which is a medallion depicting a warrior kneeling before Minerva accompanied by her maidens. Around the room, floral drops surround panels containing what appear to be grisaille paintings: in fact, these are in fact prints overpainted at some date when age had caused them to fade. To the rear is the drawing room, although this was intended to be the dining room. Its walls were left undecorated (and today covered in paper) but again the ceiling has been covered in plasterwork centred on another medallion, this one, somewhat unusually, featuring the Christ child and infant John the Baptist together with a lamb. The rear of the house is taken up by what is now the dining room but was originally intended to be the drawing room. The ceiling decoration here is simpler than that in the previous rooms, but the walls are decorated with plaster girandoles, their design found among those created by Michael Stapleton. Oval in shape, the bow in the window is echoed by a similarly curved wall centred on a door leading back into the entrance hall. This arrangement of the two rooms – hall with screen of columns to the rear and central door opening into an oval room – is found in Castle Coole, County Fermanagh designed in the early 1790s by James Wyatt.
Agmondisham Vesey died in 1785 and having no children, left the estate to his nephew Colonel George Vesey. The latter’s only child, Elizabeth Vesey, married Sir Nicholas Colthurst and their descendants lived at Lucan House until the property and its contents were sold in September 1925 by Captain Richard Colthurst (later eighth baronet), after which it was occupied by Charles Hugh O’Conor and then his son-in-law William Teeling. In 1942 the building and surrounding gardens were rented by the Italian government and then bought 12 years later, to serve as a residence for its ambassador. It continued to serve the same purpose until this month, at the end of which the present ambassador leaves his position and the property passes into the hands of a new owner, the local authority, South Dublin County Council. What happens to both house and grounds in the future remains to be seen.
For anyone wondering, the bronze buffaloes seen in the grounds and fibreglass horse in the entrance hall, all by contemporary Italian artist Davide Rivalta and placed in their present positions last year, are due to remain on site.
Irish Historic Houses 