Woodbrook, Portarlington, Co Laois
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. 285. “(Wilmot-Chetwode/LGI1912) A two storey five bay late-Georgian house with a fanlighted doorway; extended at the back by a lower wing linking it to a three storey bow end block with a four story polytonal tower. Recently the house of Mr and Mrs Denis Quirke.”
https://www.buildingsofireland.ie/buildings-search/building/12800403/woodbrook-house-coolnavarnoge-and-coolaghy-county-laois
Detached five-bay two-storey late-Georgian house, built c.1820, with two-storey lower returns to rear. Double-pitched and hipped slate roofs with nap rendered chimneystack and profiled cast-iron rainwater goods with lion mask motifs. Nap rendered walls with ruled and lined detail, limestone plinth and sill/stringcourse to first floor. Square-headed window openings, set into recessed arches to ground floor level, with limestone sills and three-over-six and six-over-six timber sash windows. Diastyle Doric portico to entrance with timber door and wrought-iron fanlight over. Timber panelled internal shutters to window openings; vaulted ceiling to porch with coffers having plaster centrepieces. House set back from road in own grounds; landscaped lawns to site; gravel drive and forecourt to approach; sandstone step to entrance. Group of detached rubble stone outbuildings to site. Detached gate lodge to site (12800404).
https://www.buildingsofireland.ie/buildings-search/building/12800404/woodbrook-house-woodbrook-demesne-coolnavarnoge-and-coolaghy-co-laois
Detached gable-fronted gate lodge, built c.1880. Double-pitched slate roof with decorative red clay ridge tiles and limestone ashlar chimneystack on a hexagonal plan. Nap rendered rendered walls, painted, with limestone ashlar pediment to gable. Square-headed window openings with limestone sills and timber casement windows. Timber door. Interior not inspected. Gatelodge set back from road in grounds shared with main house at right angles to road; landscaped lawns surround lodge; gravel drive to front. Gateway to site comprising group of limestone ashlar piers with flanking walls having round-headed recessed niches and wrought iron gates and railings.
https://www.independent.ie/life/home-garden/homes/the-house-that-begat-gullivers-travels-is-not-for-the-little-people-26446253.html
July 8 2007
I’VE said it before and I’ll say it again. Some homes are born great while still others have greatness thrust upon them. In the case of Woodbrook House in Portarlington, however, it happens to be both.
I mean, check out the history on this one for a start. The Woodbrook Estate came into being on the marriage of Knightly Chetwood (do you think he was bullied?) to Hester Brooking at St Michans Church in Dublin in 1698.
By 1713, Knightly, now doubtless Knightrider, befriended Jonathan Swift and a long friendship began. In fact, Swift travelled to Woodbrook frequently, and used it as his weekend retreat where the bulk of ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ was written in the library.
To think that Swift, like all men with ideas above their Luas station, spent many an hour musing on the little people in this very room. Sure don’t we all.
Not content with being born great, Woodbrook House then began to have greatness thrust upon it in the form of extensive and sympathetic restoration, most of which has occurred in the last three years.
This home is now back to its 18th century glory with a bang. In fact a wing from this century, complete with a four storey tower that was banjaxed in the 1970s (weren’t we all) has now been reinstated.
The restoration has been massive and systematic. All roofs have been replaced using 18th century slate where required, timber sash windows, rewiring, oil fired heating system, new plumbing and sewage system, broadband, alarms – you name it, it’s been done.
My favourite is the Canadian hot tub on the tower roof terrace – the perfect place from which to ponder awhile about those that have less.
With a reception hall, stair hall, six reception rooms, orangerie, a master bedroom suite with twelve further bedroom suites and a selection of offices and stores on offer, it is difficult to see who wouldn’t want to buy this home.
Whether thinking of a commercial or private use or both, quite frankly, Woodbrook House is simply the best. Carpe diem.
For further information contact Savills Hamilton Osborne King 01 663 4350 or visit www.savills.ie
https://laoishouses.wordpress.com/2021/08/21/woodbrook-portarlington/
Probably where Swift wrote part of Gulliver’s Travels
In 1918 Walter Strickland wrote an article on Woodbrook in the Journal of the County Kildare Archaeological Society , Vol. IX., which is available as a download at the end of this article. As he had access to the Chetwood papers, his account is unlikely to be ever bettered. In summary Knightley Chetwood acquired the lands that had belonged to his wife’s family on his marriage to Hester Brooking in at St Michan’s Church in 1698 (something that he appears to have overlooked when they separated later in life). There was probably an existing building on the site as he was writing from Woodbrook in 1712. By 1715 he had engaged builders and was consulting his father-in-law’s friend Jonathan Swift about the gardens. He had the usual problems that anyone has when building a house, such as when the brick layer, John Mulloy, disappeared with the property of other tradesmen on the site. It is hard to make sense of the drawing reproduced in the Kildare Archaeological Society of the 18th century house. There is a very grand neo-classical doorway, perhaps taken from one of the seven architects’ designs (including one by James Gandon) that Valentine Knightley Chetwood commissioned pre 1771 that were not executed due to Valentine’s death that year – it has a slight resemblance to Gandon’s design for the entrance to the Rotunda. That door is said to be where the 5 storey tower is in the later building. In Colum O’Riordan’s House and Home, describing the Chetwood drawings at the Irish Architectural Archive, he describes the ground floor survey of 1770 as showing “a warren – a vaguely L shaped building with an indeterminate number of accretions around an older core”
In the late 1790s or early 1800s part of Woodbrook was destroyed by fire. Jonathan Chetwood, working with the architect James Shiel, rebuilt it about 1816, building the present entrance and hall, the dining-room and drawing-room, and changed the entrance from its former position facing the lake. The library and range of rooms beyond, including the great kitchen, part of the old house, remained though portions of the upper part were afterwards altered by Edward Wilmot Chetwood and his successors, who also added the tower on the side facing the lake, near where the old entrance had been. Elizabeth Hester Chetwood, granddaughter of Crewe Chetwood, (a younger brother of Valentine Knightley Chetwood of Woodbrook), married Robert Rogers Wilmot and had a son Edward Wilmot who took the name Chetwood in 1839 when he inherited Woodbrook.
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The old kitchen was a large room with an arched fire-place at one end, and at the opposite end a great dresser filling the whole wall. On the top of this dresser are painted these lines : BE CLEANLY. HAVE TASTE. HAVE PLENTY. NO WASTE.
The gallery which ran around the side was put up in 1858 by Lady Janet Wilmot Chetwood, in order, it is said, that she might be able to visit and superintend her kitchen without going down stairs and along the passage leading to it. In the 1940s the poet John Betjeman stayed often and fell in love with the house, and its galleried kitchen (from which the mistress could drop the menu of the day to the cook below).
Jane(tta) Erskine had married Edward Wilmot-Chetwode in 1830, the year after her father John Thomas Erskine, 25th/8th Earl of Mar had OD’ed on opium. The fifteen 1840 murals, which had been attributed to Edwin Hayes, were commissioned for her to remind her of Scotland. Hayes, now known as a great marine artist, was also a noted set painter and created highland castle murals. There are very similar murals by Hayes at Manor Kilbride in Wicklow (which was designed by Cobden for George Ogle Moore circa 1843). However the estate agents marketing the house in 2022, Conway Estates, state recent research proved them to be the work of Scottish artist David Ramsay Hay . It is one of 3 complete rooms of his work known to survive the others being 73 Lower Baggot Street, Dublin 2 and the staircase hall at Preston Hall in Scotland .
There was a vaulted room beneath the study, accessed through a trapdoor. This is where the historic correspondence with the Duke of Marlborough, the Duke of Chandos, Swift and others was stored in trunk. Fortunately the Swift letters had been transcribed in 1856 for Swift’s biography. The rest were destroyed by damp.
The Land Commission took over the 250 acre estate from the 100 year old Gladys Chetwood- Aiken in 1965 “The richly planted and picturesque lawns” described in Thomas Lacy’s 1863 “Sights of Our Fatherland” rapidly disappeared beneath the subsistence farming dictums and dictates of Oliver J and Dev. In 1969 Oliver J had the sale of 300 excellent ash beech and elm trees and 6 tons of cut beech at Woodbrook Demesne.
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Denis Quirke, who had already devastated the demesne of Bert House with his notions of prairie stud farming, bought the house and 100 acres, and cleared even more of the tree and hedges, destroying the largest heronry in Ireland. The Quirkes sold in 1976, and Denis Quirke died soon afterwards.
In the 1970s the devastated demesne featured in an IGS exhibition in Portlaoise called “Open Your Eyes”. Few did. The new owners were an absolute disaster area, whose idea of restoration was to demolish pretty much everything apart from Shiel’s 1816 villa – the great kitchen and all the original 1700s building were turned into rubble. Such dumb dolts and blockheads should be confined to spaces where they can’t do too much damage. The truncated house was bought by Jim and Brenadette Robson who offered elegant country house accommodation to tourists, long before Ireland’s Ancient East was fashionable.
The historian and photographer Robert Vance viewed Woodbrook “Many moons ago” He writes “The OS showed woods and an ornamental lake within the acreage to be sold. On arrival I saw the woods were clear-cut and the roots had been used to fill in the lake. The parkland was now overgrown with rushes. The farmer pointed out the stump of a walnut tree he had cut. It had been planted by Jonathan Swift 250 years previously. The early buildings, servants’ wing and stables were left as a vast pile of brick, rubble and nettles behind the house.”
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The very shook remains struggled on and it was for sale again in 1990 for £200,000 and then again in 1998, for €550,000
The current owner, Ray Simmons, has rebuilt a replica of the demolished part of the house and planted trees.
https://proper.ie/property/Laois/Mountrath/WOODBROOK%20HOUSE,%20WOODBROOK,%20MOUNTRATH/16408524338949159042
Sold 10th May 2019 for just €260,000
Family tree see Crewe Chetwode b. 1710
€2,750,000 on 29/6/22
An impressive and substantial late Georgian house comprising 2 and 3 storeys privately set within its own lands . Extensive any sympathic restoration over the last number of years included the rebuilding of a mid 18th century wing complete with 4 storey tower and undertook much of the structural repairs necessary but repairs in some parts of the residence are incomplete.
Woodbrook House represents an opportunity for a potential purchaser to complete and decorate the house to their liking and perhaps would consider a commercial use subject to the necessary planning consents . Approx. 39 ha / 98 acres with the laid out to pasture and tillage interspersed with maturing parkland trees.
About 1,398 square meters/ 15,078 square feet comprising in brief : reception hall, stair hall, 6 reception rooms, kitchen, Orangerie, Master Bedroom Suite, 12 further bedroom suites, a number of offices and stores. Gate Lodge ( 1 bedroom ), large selection of stone outbuildings and yards and two walled gardens. •
Portarlington 4km • Emo 7.5km • Portlaoise 16km • Kildare 14km • Dublin 80km • Dublin Airport 60-minute drive • The Heritage Killenard Hotel & Golf Club 5 minute drive • Ballyfin House 25 minute drive • The K- Club 50 minute drive • The Curragh Racecourse 25 minute drive • Punchestown Racecourse 45 minute drive (times approximate)
History The Woodbrook Estate came in to being on the marriage of Knightly Cherwood to Hester Brooking at St. Michael’s Church Dublin in 1698 . Hester brought 620 acres of land and Tinakill Castle with her as a dowry and in 1700 the couple set upon building a residence there . A letter dating as early as 1712 describes “the continued building works and improvements” to the property. In 1713 Cherwwod befriended Jonathan Swift when the latter returned to Ireland as Dean of St. Patrick’s. A long friendship and correspondence ensued . Swift travelled frequently to Woodbrook, using it has his weekend retreat , and it is here in the library he penned much of Gullivers Travels. Unfortunately, as with many of Swifts friendships, he and Cherwood had a falling out and spent their latter years not speaking to each other. On February 17th 1752 , Chetwood died in London.
His son Valentine, who in 1758 was High Sherrif of Co. Laois , succeeded him. He in turn passes away in 1771 and was succeeded by his son Jonathan . The family continued to reside on the estate until 1963 until the blood line ran out .
The original house was a modest 2 storey property comprising drawing room, ding room, library and 4 bedrooms, but like many Irish country houses embellished as family circumstances allowed.
In 1750 a grander 3 storey wing was added incorporating a 4 storey tower.
A fire in 1790 saw the demise of the drawing room but cleared the way for the now existing Regency wing.
The drawing room houses a collection of wall paintings depicting scenes of Scottish Castles, created to remind the new Mrs. Cherwood, a daughter of the Earl of Mann and descendant of the Kings of Scotland, of her homeland. The paintings, executed in the style of Watteau, remain intact to day and have only recently been proved to be the work of Scottish artist David Ramsay Hay. It is one of 3 complete rooms of his work known to survive the others being 73 Lower Baggot Street, Dublin 2 and the staircase hall at Preston Hall in Scotland.
Drawing room: with original grey marble fireplace. Suite of oil paintings by David Ramsy Hay depicting scenes of Scotland . Wired for phone , smoke alarm and music.
Dining Room ; with original Kilkenny marble fireplace. Silver cupboard. Wired for phone. Smoke alarm, music and service bell to kitchen .
Staircase Hall: with ornate ceiling and decorative arched window .
Library: with original fitted bookcases including a “secret door “ and original Kilkenny marble fireplace. Wired for phone, smoke alarm. Music and tv Breakfast Room; with original Kilkenny marble fireplace. Wired for phone, smoke alarm and music.
Kitchen: with full range of bespoke cupboards and granite counter tops . Full range of integrated appliances including two oven Aga, 4 electric ovens, twin microwaves, twin dishwashers, 5 ring gas hob, twin 6ft refrigerators. Trapdoor to vaulted 17th Century cellar . Wires for phone, smoke alarm and music. Galleried Hall: over lit by ornate dome. Grey a marble fireplace . Wired for phone, smoke alarm and music. Billiard Room : with fireplace . Wired for phone, smoke alarm and music. Study : Anteroom with fireplace leading to octagonal study . Wired for phone, smoke alarm and music. Orangerie : with double glazed pvc roof . 4 pairs of timber double doors with fanlights opening to south facing garden. Master suite with fireplace . Wired for phone, smoke alarm, tv and security lights on the grounds. Leading to dressing room and master bath plumbed for bath separate shower, wc, twin whb, twin heated towel rails. 12 further bedrooms all with bathrooms ensuite . Smoke alarm and phone. All ensuites plumbed for bath/shower, wc, whb and heated towel rail . A selection of offices and store rooms including strong room. Gardens and grounds At the entrance to the estate there is a Gate Lodge with a kitchen, living room, shower room and mezzanine bedroom . Extensive yards behind the house comprise a large range of stone outbuildings in varying repair, some benefit ting being re roofed in natural slate. Immediately beyond these yards lie 2 walled gardens. The lands are laid out to pasture and in crop and benefit from extensive tree planting (c 1,000) throughout the estate including a very impressive avenue of Lime trees and planting to reestablish the parkland lost in the 1970’s. Also filled in around this time was a large lake in the field off to the right of the avenue and north and east of the house which could possibly be reinstated . Fixtures & Fittings A full inventory is available on request and separate negotiation. Title Freehold Title Protected Status Woodbrook House is a listed protected structure .
Synopsis of restoration work to date Extensive and sympathetic restoration has been undertaken in the last number of years to restore the property to its former 18th Century glory and reinstate the 18th Century wing complete with 4 storey tower that was lost in the 1970’s . Great effort has been taken when restoring , rebuilding or replacing to use materials sympathetic to the original craftmanship of the house . The schedule of works to date to the main house include ; restoration and replacement of all roofs using reclaimed 18th Century slate where required: replacement of all windows with traditional timber sash windows, reinstating the original hand spun 18th Century glass where possible and taking the opportunity to install a “Ventrolla” draught exclusion system to all windows .
The current owner undertook much of the structural repairs necessary but repairs are incomplete; complete rewiring with 5 separate zones ; installation of new gas fired heating system with 5 separate zones; insulation of new plumbing with 2.5 bar pressure to power showers to all bedroom suites; installation of a new well with all bathing water passing through a water softener system; installation of a “Puraflow” sewage treatment system with superfluous capacity fro present accommodation, i.e. could potentially take accommodate extension/conversion of outbuildings subject to the necessary consents; new insulation and fireproofing throughout, wired for high specification integrated fire alarm system; wired for 3 phone lines wireless broadband, and Phonewatch, fittings throughout and the replacement of all gutters and down pipes .
Features
*An impressive and substantial Late Georgian House. *Approximately 39 Hectares (98 Acres) . *Vendor would consider splitting the Estate in two Lots . *Lot 1 – Woodbrook House, Gate Lodge on approx. 10 Acres . *Lot 2 -Approx. 89 Acres of Land .
BER Details
BER: Exempt
https://theirishaesthete.com/2025/06/23/woodbrook/
Making A Swift Connection
The name Woodbrook has been given to a number of houses in different parts of Ireland, and the natural assumption would be that it derives from the property having once had a brook in woodland. In the case of Woodbrook, County Laois, however, it combines the second syllable of original owner Knightley Chetwood’s surname along with the first syllable of that of his wife Hester Brooking: hence Woodbrook. An article written by Walter Strickland and published in the Journal of the Archaeological Society of the County of Kildare in 1918 provides a detailed account of the origins of the Chetwood family and their arrival in Ireland following the restoration of Charles II in 1660. There is some uncertainty as to how Knightly Chetwood, whose family had been impoverished English gentry, managed to acquire the lands in County Laois on which Woodbrook now stands: Strickland proposes that it may have come to him via his spouse, but without being able to say precisely how this should have been the case. In any case, some years after the couple’s marriage in August 1700, despite living contentedly in County Meath, he embarked on a project to build a residence on his midland’s property, albeit with some reluctance: at one stage he implored a friend to find him another house in Meath, since otherwise he would be condemned to ‘go and live in a bog in a far off country.’ Indeed, being as Strickland says ‘an uncompromising Tory,’ following the accession of George I in 1714, Chetwood found it best to live, if not in a bog then certainly in a far-off country, spending a number of years in mainland Europe before returning to Ireland around 1721 when he took an oath of allegiance to the Hanoverian monarch and abjured the Stuart pretender. It may have only been after this time that serious work commenced on the house at Woodbrook.
We know more about the early development of the Woodbrook estate than would usually be the case thanks to surviving correspondence between Knightley Chetwood and Dean Swift, who not only provided its proprietor with advice but visited the place on a number of occasions. There was likely some kind of residence already on the site, not least because Chetwood was able to write letters from there even before his new house had been built. Strickland cites a note from Swift to his host dated 6th November 1714 and composed when he had arrived at Woodbrook to find the Chetwoods away from home. The following month, after the dean’s departure, Chetwood informed him, ‘This place I hate since you left it.’ Swift is believed to have been responsible for planting a grove of beech trees close to the house, although these were cut down in 1917 for sale to the then-Government. The two men also make regular reference to an area of the estate called the ‘Dean’s field.’ Once Chetwood returned from his self-imposed exile and turned his attention to erecting a new house, Swift’s opinion was again sought, the dean recommending in June 1731, ‘I can only advise you to ask advice, to go on slowly and to have your house on paper before you put it into lime and stone.’ Unfortunately, it was around this time that the friendship of almost twenty years came to an end. Chetwood seems to have had a tricky, volatile character. He had already become estranged from his wife, husband and wife formally separating in 1725, and he was inclined to find himself embroiled in rows on a regular basis: that he and Swift should fall out accordingly seems to have been inevitable. Chetwood died in London in 1752 and Woodbrook then passed to his elder surviving son, Valentine but since he spent most of his life out of Ireland, it was the younger son Crewe Chetwood who stayed in Laois. The next generation, Jonathan Cope Chetwood, did live at Woodbrook from the time he inherited the property in 1771 until his own death in 1839. As he had no immediate heir, the estate went sideways passing to Edward Wilmost, a great-grandson of Crewe Chetwood, who duly took the additional surname of Chetwood. However, following the death during the Boer War of Edward Wilmot-Chetwood, Woodbrook passed to another branch of the family, being inherited by Major Harold Chetwood-Aiken; his widow lived there until 1965 when what remained of the estate was taken over by the Land Commission.
The evolution of the house now standing at Woodbrook is complex, even by Irish standards. The original building commissioned by Knightley Chetwood can be seen in a pencil drawing reproduced in Strickland’s 1918 article and shows the long east-facing entrance front, seemingly single-storey but with two-storeys visible to one side and dominated by a great doorcase beneath a steeply-pitched roof. A 1770 ground floor survey is described by Colum O’Riordan in House and Home as depicting ‘a vaguely L shaped building with an indeterminate number of accretions around an older core.’ Much of this structure appears to have been damaged or destroyed in a fire in the early 19th century, after which Jonathan Cope Chetwood undertook extensive alterations to the house, not least the addition of a new neo-classical entrance front facing south. Designed c.1815 by James Shiel, it included a spacious hall off which opened drawing and dining rooms. The older part of the building contained the library and staircase, and, beyond these, service quarters including a double-height kitchen one wall of which was filled with a great dresser and above which, according to Strickland, were painted the words ‘BE CLEANLY. HAVE TASTE. HAVE PLENTY. NO WASTE.’ Later in the 19th century, further changes took place, not least in the drawing room where the walls were covered with 15 murals representing scenes of the Scottish Highlands: still extant (although some are currently undergoing restoration), they were painted in 1840 by artist David Ramsay Hay, commissioned by Lady Jane Erskine, daughter of the 25th/8th Earl of Mar and wife of Edward Wilmot-Chetwood, as reminders of her native country. At some unknown date, a five-storey polygonal tower was added towards the rear of the house on the east side.
Alas, the later decades of the last century were not kind to Woodbrook. All the ancient trees, not least those lining the avenue to the house, were all cut down in 1969. The lake to the immediate east, created by Jonathan Cole Chetwood, also suffered devastation causing the loss of what was said to have been the largest heronry in the country. Then, in the 1970s, the owners of the house demolished almost all of what had stood behind Shiel’s early 19th century extension, everything that had remained from the original building constructed by Knightley Chetwood, along with the great kitchen and the polygonal tower. This strangely truncated property somehow survived until the present century when another owner ambitiously reconstructed the sections that had been reduced to rubble just a few decades earlier. In consequence, at least on the exterior, Woodbrook looks much as it did when still occupied by the last members of the Chetwood family. Just under two years ago, the house and surrounding lands changed hands once more, and the current owners have embarked on an ambitious and admirable programme of restoration and restitution, with thousands of trees being planted, the lake being brought back to life and the surrounding lands improved. Similar considerate work is taking place inside the building so that in due course Woodbrook will once again take its place among County Laois’s finest country houses. It’s always thrilling to visit a property which is undergoing renewal, and the owners of Woodbrook deserve all the applause and support they can get.
https://theirishaesthete.com/2025/06/27/woodbrook-gates/
Upon Entry
After Monday’s post about the main house at Woodbrook, County Laois, here are the the south gate lodge and gate screen into the estate. The lodge itself is a curious structure which may, or may not, have been designed by James Shiel at the same time as he was coming up with proposals for the house. The facade is dominated by an substantial ashlar pediment with window beneath, the latter flanked by deep recesses, one of which has a door into the building. So generous are the recesses that the pediment has to be supported by a pair of slender iron columns. The gate screen itself, of limestone ashlar and wrought iron, is more standardised with its piers, quadrant walls and arched niches in the outer sections. Here also is an old milestone advising that Dublin lies 47 miles distant.
Irish Historic Houses 