Category: Country Houses

Categories
Architecture Country Houses People

The Lindesays + Loughry Manor Cookstown Tyrone

Ladies First

Hansard, the Government record of the Houses of Parliament, logged on 25 April 1907 a question raised by Thomas Kettle, MP for Tyrone East, “To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland when, and in what manner, the land and buildings known as Loughry Manor, situated near Cookstown, County Tyrone, were acquired by the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction; and what use, if any, has been made of them since they were acquired?”

The response from Augustine Birrell was, “The Department of Agriculture received possession of Loughry Manor in the summer of last year, having acquired it by purchase in the superior courts. The property was acquired for the purpose of establishing a school of rural domestic economy for girls in the north of Ireland. The work of adapting the house to the required purpose is now about to be carried out. It was not possible to undertake this work at an earlier date, but it is hoped that the school will be ready to receive pupils next winter.”

An initial visit to Loughry in 1969 stimulated Nicholas Lindesay’s interest and he has researched his family history and connection to County Tyrone ever since. “The Lindesays originated from Leith, Scotland, and like the Stewarts of Killymoon Castle they were a Plantation family,” Nicholas explains. “My great grandfather times seven, Robert Lindesay, was the first to take advantage of the grant from James I in 1610, settling first on the hilltop at Tullahogue. The second Robert built Loughry, which means King’s Gift, in 1632. Ownership of Loughry passed out of the family on 1 February 1895. In some ways it was lucky that it became the Ulster Dairy School and later taken over by the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs because the estate remained as one.”

The original Loughry Manor was destroyed in the 1641 Rebellion and a replacement house not commenced until three decades later. A second house was completed in 1674 just after Robert’s death and continued to be the Lindesay residence until it was accidentally burnt down circa 1750. The handsome five bay two storey steep double pitched stuccoed main block of the current Loughry Manor is the third Lindesay house on this site. The Tuscan porch, decorative mouldings, two pane sash windows, and wings would follow. The mid 19th century owner Fritz Lindesay lived a little too well and by his death in 1877 had amassed debts in excess of £42,000. His successor Joshua lived frugally and vacated Loughry for Rock Lodge, a smaller property to the south of the estate.

Joshua died in 1893, leaving the family’s financial issues unresolved, and the entailed estate was sold by Lieutenant Colonel Henry Richard Ponsonby Lindesay of Devon to local businessman John Wilson Fleming, the last private owner. A long two storey Arts and Crafts style wing terminating in a square three storey tower was added by the Ulster Dairy School in 1906. Then in 1949 it became Loughry Agricultural College for female students. It took another 13 years before male students were admitted. Standalone educational buildings were built from the 1960s onwards but the 80 hectare parkland setting can still be appreciated.

Nicholas Lindesay confirms that turn of the 18th century owner Robert Lindesay wrote, “There is an old summerhouse at Loughry, a square turret surrounded by ivy and built upon a cliff impending a beautiful meandering river full of rugged rocks even which its waters rush with impetuosity and grandeur, particularly after rain, and on the opposite side a wooded bank rises abruptly to a considerable height, presenting to the eye a variety of majestic timber and environmental trees of oak, beech, elm, fir and ash… this square turret consists of one single room and a wine cellar hewn out of the limestone rock below, with two massive oak doors eacj about a foot and a half wide on which are affixed tremendous hinges, locks and keys.”

Robert was the fourth of the 10 Lindesay owners of Loughry. He was MP for County Tyrone, a Judge of the Common Pleas and a friend of Jonathan Swift who was Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral Dublin and author of Gulliver’s Travels. Nicholas notes, “The Dean was a frequent visitor to Loughry and it is said that he wrote many of his books and poems in the peace and tranquillity of the summerhouse accompanied by his friend Robert Lindesay who also possessed literary talent.” Loughry Manor and Dean Swift’s summerhouse are still intact but currently unused. A faded sign on the ground floor of the return wing “Swifts Bar” (missing an apostrophe and clientele) hints at happier times.

Categories
Architecture Country Houses Design Developers Hotels

St Ernan’s House + Island Donegal

A Memory of A Memory

A shimmer of morning light rushes across the motionless water and in a flash illuminates the house in a golden glow. The dash and hue of nature dictate the hurried glory of sunrise. Is this Ireland’s most beautifully situated house? Where are the contenders? Little wonder it has sent countless photographers into ecstasy, numerous architectural historians into a frenzy, and even inspired a novel. County Donegal: that’s the location. Donegal Town: that’s the nearest cèilidh. St Ernan’s House on St Ernan’s Island: that’s the never forever home.

First the literary giants who paved the way. Mark Bence-Jones gives it his best shot in A Guide to Irish Country Houses, 1978, “A house on an island in the estuary of the River Eske, built early 19th century by John Hamilton of Brownhall; then passed by John Hamilton’s daughter Annabella, wife of A H Foster. Subsequently owned by Henry Stubbs, who largely rebuilt the house, so that it became late Victorian in character, with gables and ornate bargeboards; but with a pillared porch, which was probably a surviving early 19th century feature. In the present century, it was the seat of the Honourable Matthew Fitzmaurice-Deane-Morgan, afterwards 6th Lord Muskerry.”

And then there’s Professor Alistair Rowan who spoke so eloquently and movingly at the much loved Dorinda Lady Dunleath’s Memorial Service in 2022. He writes in his Guide to Northwest Ulster, 1971, “This was the island retreat of John Hamilton of Brown Hall (1800 to 1884), the author of Sixty Years Experience as an Irish Landlord. Mr Hamilton took a romantic fancy to the island, laid out a pretty garden on it, with a wall round the shore, and built a two storey Regency style cottage there between 1824 and 1826. It is five windows long with a continuous verandah running the length of its front across canted bays at either end. The setting is indeed glorious, but the romantic whim of a young and newly married proprietor proved inconvenient. For most of each day the island was cut off either by the tide or, worse, by impassable shallows of mud. The construction of a causeway, despaired of by professional engineers, was achieved by Hamilton with free labour from the surrounding country.”

The most complete history is The Story of St Ernan’s, an undated booklet compiled by George Seaver and based mainly on John Hamilton’s Memoirs as well as “memories of some old folk communicated verbally to the compiler”. It opens with references to the eponymous saint, an acolyte of the better known St Columbanus. In circa 640, St Columbanus was buried in a monastic settlement to the south of Donegal Town. Red Hugh O’Donnell would build a Franciscan Abbey in the same area in 1474. “It may well have been the Friars there who gave the name of St Ernan to the island,” George reckons.

He writes, “The house owes its existence to a moment of impulse on the part of a wealthy young landowner of ancient Scottish lineage named John Hamilton, proprietor of Brown Hall in the neighbouring parish of Ballintra.” John was born in Dublin in 1800 and orphaned age seven, he and his siblings were brought up by their grandmother Lady Longford of Pakenham Hall in County Westmeath (now known as Tullynally Castle) and their relatives in Dublin. He married Mary Rose of Dublin in 1823 and they took up residence at the family estate of Brown Hall before selling their share to John’s brother. Around that time, John took a novel approach to solving a local argument: “There was a dispute between two of his tenants who had grazing rights for sheep on St Ernan’s Island, and he rode over from Brown Hall to settle it. It was, he wrote, a beautiful day in September; the tide was in, the sun was shining, the view was delightful. ‘I settled the dispute by taking the island for myself.’” Two years later, the happy couple moved into a newly built cottage on the island.

There was a practical issue as Professor Alistair Rowan observed. Accessibility. At low tide one could wade across to the island; at high tide one could row; at half tide, neither. “A rapid current flowed through the channel from south to north,” George records. “John Hamilton resolved to block it up entirely and thus deflect the current from its course to form a new channel through a sandbank that lay between St Ernan’s and Rooney’s Island to the south of it. Employing up to 100 men at a time he started building a dam reinforced with large round stones across the channel from both ends at once.” Equal opportunities were at work although it would be even more surprising if indeed it was free labour as Alistair claims. “One morning, hardly had a strong party of Orangemen from a Yeomanry Corps arrived from a village six miles away, than another party of equal force who were Roman Catholic Ribbonmen appeared from a mountain property even farther distant in an opposite direction.” The combined workforce got to it and completed the causeway over six weeks during a hot and dry summer.

“The completion of the causeway enabled him to transform the house on the island from a cottage to a substantial mansion with stables and coach house, a barn and various sheds, which grew with the years,” George notes. “The immense quantity of stone for their construction came from the Drumkeelin quarries above Mountcharles. These abound in a hard durable sandstone of a tawny mottled blue, laid in horizontal strata of convenient thickness easily sawn into the required size and shape like slabs of cake.” The rubble used to mortar the freestone was a soft limestone found on the shore close to where the gatelodge was later built, mixed with sand and ox blood. Horse drawn carts of building materials trundled across the causeway as the beauty of the house took shape.

He continues, “It is certain that the back door, heavily buttressed and with an early 19th century fanlight above it was the original front door; and the present front door, with two flights of steps below it leading down to an open space for cars, was a much later addition. Indeed, the entire south front of the house including the morning room and large drawing room and bedrooms and attic above them are also comparatively modern. The ‘garden close’ of 1826 became in course of time a high walled space of flowers embowered with various trees and some rare shrubs (from Ardnamona), interwoven with a maze of wood walks which led to a large stone bench at the end of the Island. It is still there and still known as Abraham’s Seat (the Reverend Abraham Hamilton was once John’s guardian uncle) and it commands a view of one of the most significant seascapes in Ireland.”

John Hamilton became a Christian in 1827. “What was traditional religion now became personal, and to the end of his life a vivid and earnest faith showed itself by a self denial, a thoughtfulness for the good of others and a sense of justice, combined with a liberality of mind and a freedom of enquiry not easily confined within the then popular systems or religious beliefs. He was in fact ecumenically minded generations before the idea had occurred to churchmen, because the Christian faith was for him personal discipleship rather than a system of ecclesiastical or doctrinal shibboleths.” John launched a Sunday school and Bible class in a schoolhouse he built on the edge of his estate, attracting 1,200 attendees. John donated to both Church of Ireland and Catholic church building. “In 1829, the year of Catholic Emancipation, he was active in suppressing, more than once at personal risk, demonstrations of belligerent Orangemen.”

John continued to put his faith into practice at the most traumatic time in Ireland’s history. According to George, “His exertions for the welfare of his tenantry during the terrible years of the Potato Famine were such that not one became an inmate of the union workhouse or died of starvation, and the only death that occurred on his property was attributable to other causes. It must have been during these years that as a measure of finding employment he encircled the entire island with a ‘famine wall’ 10 foot high, and extended the same operation to the opposite shore.”

Father John Doherty was the Parish Priest of Donegal Town and, despite his general opposition to the landlord system, told the Derry Journal in October 1880, “In all Ireland there never was, nor is there, a more considerate and humane landlord than the good and kind hearted proprietor of St Ernan’s. I know the pulse of his tenants well, and I know of my own knowledge that they honour him, respect him, and love him for personal kindness and friendliness towards them, and for his sympathy in all their worldly fortunes and mishaps. They regard him more in the light of a friend and benefactor, like his Master ‘going and doing good’, than as a landlord.” John Hamilton would die four years later.

His daughter with her husband Arthur Hamilton Foster inherited St Ernan’s. The property was sold after Arabella’s death in 1905 to Henry Stubbs (suggesting the Victorianisation mentioned by Mark Bence-Jones would have more likely been carried out by the Fosters). It was next bought by the Muskerry family and passed to Alma Elimina Blanche West in 1954. George Seaver notes, “Having a home of her own in Wokingham and a sufficiency of worldly goods, she wanted neither to occupy nor lease it.” Instead, Alma donated St Ernan’s to the Representative Body of the Church of Ireland and until 1983 it was used as a retirement home for clergy families before becoming a hotel.

Gillian Berwick includes St Ernan’s in Splendid Food from Irish Country Houses, 1990, “St Ernan’s House (now Ernan Park) on the 8.5 acre St Ernan’s Island near Donegal Town is close to some of the most beautiful scenery in this scenic county. Its creator sited his house on the low point of the island to protect it from the wild Atlantic winter gales. He built protective walls so that he could cultivate trees, and laid out attractive walks around his little domain. The restored interior of this manor house is strikingly beautiful with antiquity, colour and pattern inspiringly blended. As befits such a house, service is personal and charming. The views along the Atlantic Coast are of miniature white farmhouses and tiny sheep dotting the distant hills like a stage setting. It is an image of Ireland that people dream about. The gracious dining room glows with warmth. The cuisine is well nigh perfect. To stay at Ernan Park is to live a little.”

Hotel recipes in Gillian’s book include Stuffed Aubergine, Baked John Dory with Fennel Sauce and Strawberry Cheesecake with Irish Whiskey. Sounds like the components of a great three course dinner! An accompanying sketch by the Dublin based late architect Jeremy Williams shows the interior of the bay window with its coffered semi dome. The guide states there were 11 bedrooms: bed and breakfast was priced from 28 to 39.50 Irish Punts. Five course dinner, 17.50 Punts. The proprietors were Brian and Carmel O’Dowd and the hotel was open from Easter to the end of October each year. The hotel closed in 2010 and the building and island returned to use as a private residence and demesne.

St Ernan’s Blues is the intriguingly named 2016 novel principally set on the island. It is part of a mystery series by Magherafelt County Derry born London based Paul Charles featuring Inspector Starrett. “A lone building on a small island off Ireland’s Donegal coast, St Ernan’s is politely known as a ‘retirement home’ for priests. The exiled residents are guilty of such serious offences as entrepreneurship, criticising the Church, or getting too friendly with the flock. But things take a turn when Father Matthew McKaye is found dead in the kitchen. Has one of these isolated outcasts committed murder?” Although never used to house errant priests, the clergy connection is historically accurate albeit relating to ‘the other sort’ to use a colloquialism.

“Situated right at the mouth of the River Eske in Donegal Bay, Donegal Town or Fort of the Foreigners, was the town that gave its name to the county,” explains Paul. He describes how tricky it is to find St Ernan’s Island despite its position close to the town, before eulogising on the local natural beauty. “The thing about autumnal mornings in Donegal is that the sun, as it lights up every corner of the rich tapestry of fields; hills; mountains; trees; rugged hedges; blue heavenly skies; faint white clouds and all creatures great and small, does tend to show off our Creator’s magic in all its spiritual glory.” And on wintry mornings as well.

An entry in Ireland’s Blue Book of Charming Country Houses and Restaurants, 1996, states: “Quietly situated on a wooded tidal island, connected to the mainland by a causeway, St Ernan’s offers the perfect respite from the hectic pace of everyday life. There is a unique warmth and sense of serenity at St Ernan’s. It recaptures the charm of the past – quietude in a relaxing friendly atmosphere. The house, built in 1826 by John Hamilton, a nephew of the Duke of Wellington, has 12 bedrooms, each with a private bath or shower, telephone and television. Most have stunning views of the sea and countryside. The dining room is one of country elegance where the cuisine is based on fresh local produce. From this perfectly situated house the countryside may be explored. There are several excellent golf courses nearby. Horse riding, fishing and bicycle hire are also available locally. St Ernan’s offers the perfect escape from the pressures of modern life to the finest traditions of Irish country house hospitality.” As well as recording an additional bedroom, the Blue Book includes increased rates. Bed and breakfast ranged from 55 to 52 Punts. Dinner was 26 Punts.

The house is as deep as it’s wide: the north, east and south fronts are arranged around a west facing courtyard. Until recently it was painted pink, except for the window surround quoins and verandah columns which were picked out in white. An early 20th century photograph shows the ground floor either painted a dark colour or unrendered. The current pale cream colour scheme works well, changing tone as often as the unpredictable Donegal weather. The two storey east front is the most visible elevation from the mainland. A full width slimly columned verandah stretches across the whole of the ground floor and beyond, terminating in angled walls providing further shelter. The three middle bays of both floors have typical Georgian sashes. The outer bays of the ground floor have three sided chamfered projections: the righthand one has typical Georgian sashes; the lefthand one has very narrow sashed openings. This narrowing is the only element of asymmetry on the otherwise perfectly balanced elevation. The outer bays of the first floor have paired sash windows divided by a mullion.

In contrast to the late Georgian or Regency appearance of the east front, the two storey plus attic south front looks more Victorian. Gabled projections with frilly bargeboards stand tall on either side of an asymmetrical two bay setback. The lefthand projection has two paned sash windows; the righthand projection has quoined corners and Georgian sash windows to the first floor and attic above a large Doric pilastered and corniced bowed extension with five two paned windows. A conservatory projects from the central setback under two paired sash windows divided by mullions. The two storey six bay with attic and visible basement north front is plainer and looks the most Georgian due to a proliferation of multipaned sash windows, except for the two storey extension with its larger pane sash windows. It has just one gable to the left of the slate pitched roof. The west front comprises the courtyard with irregular gabled late 19th century extensions.

Rubblestone walls line the 190 metre long causeway linking the island to the small peninsula of Muckros. The 3.4 hectare roughly oval shaped island, now densely wooded, stretches to just over 300 metres at its widest point. At the far end of Muckros, close to the main road between Donegal and Ballyshannon, stands the gatelodge to St Ernan’s House. Kimmitt Dean (mostly) admires it in Gatelodges of Ulster, 1994, “Circa 1845. A pretty little lodge delightfully situated defending the entrance to a ‘furlong of causeway built by his grateful tenantry’ for John Hamilton, to save him from Atlantic tides on his approach to a retreat which he built in 1825. He had become disenchanted with Brown Hall which he had inherited on his father’s death in 1811 [which contradicts George Seaver’s account of John being orphaned age seven]. A one and a half two up two down Picturesque cottage with ornamental serrated bargeboard to gables. One elevation aligned obtusely with the entrance gates, a single storey canted bay window looks on. In uncoursed square masonry now painted over, a flat roofed rear return and entrance hall recently added are hardly compatible.” The gatelodge is closest in style to the south front of the big house. County Donegal: wild. Donegal Town: wild night out. St Ernan’s: wildness tamed.

Categories
Country Houses Design

Beyond Drumquin + Castlederg Tyrone

Those Nameless

There’s a sense of forgottenness. Time doesn’t stand still; it’s in reverse. The hands of the universal clock are turning backwards. Tock tick. Morning mist lies heavy over the bogland as the distant fiery sun slowly rises just beyond the blurred horizon. A drive across the borderlands of Counties Tyrone and Donegal offers up three historic places infused with nostalgia. Live, work, die. First, a cottage with a red tin roof, a red front door and green window surrounds next to an outbuilding with a green tin roof and red doors. Neither twee nor spoiled. Second, a string of monochromatic farm buildings excelling at form following function. Three road facing barns in descending size right to left, like a structural version of a Russian Matryoshka nesting doll. Third, crumbling stone remains and a scattering of tombstones inherently part of the landscape: nature completed, not violated. A mutual enrichment. The grassy graveyard is a metre or more higher than the trench like path to the open arch of the fragmented church, giving a feeling of being buried. Lived, worked, died.

Categories
Architects Architecture Country Houses People

Parkanaur Castlecaulfield Tyrone + Thomas Duff

Tudor Revival Survival

Forest parks on Irish demesnes often have a vital missing component: the country house. All too many were mindlessly demolished in the mid 20th century. Pomeroy House and Seskinore House both in County Tyrone are sadly typical examples. In those two cases all that remain are the stables and a footprint of the house just about legible from an aerial view. Parkanaur is a remarkable exception: the entire house with its rambling wings and outbuildings is intact and in use. Just to add to the country estate feel, white fallow deer descended from a pair gifted by Queen Elizabeth I in 1597 to her niece at Mallow Castle in County Cork roam an enclosure overlooked by the house.

In 1771, an Anglo Irish gentleman Ynyr Burges bought the Parkanaur Estate from the Caulfield family. John Henry Burges, a cousin of John Henry’s daughter Lady Poulet, leased the estate and built a triple gabled hunting lodge about 1804. The entrance door was to the left of the present one. A south wing was added in 1821 when the house became the family seat. John Henry’s son John Yner received an inheritance from Lady Poulet in 1838 enabling him to buy the freehold of the estate the following year.

John Yner commissioned the architect Thomas Duff to design a large extension which was completed at a cost of £3,000 in 1848. The original house has windows with mullions and Georgian astragals; the later addition has mullioned windows with leaded lights. The two principal fronts, at a perpendicular angle to one another, back onto courtyards surrounded by substantial outbuildings included a coach house and tower. The rear elevation of the largest courtyard building with its Georgian sash windows is three storeyed due to the sloping land.

The completed Parkanaur is a handsome Tudor Revival house. Thomas Duff was a serious architect. His oeuvre includes the Catholic Cathedrals of St Patrick’s Armagh, St Patrick’s Dundalk and St Patrick and St Colman’s Newry. Narrow Water Castle outside Newry, equally belonging to the revivification of the Tudor Style, is also by his hand. He partnered for a short time with the equally talented Belfast architect Thomas Jackson. The Newry based architect is credited with designing the first Presbyterian portico in Ulster at Fisherwick Place Church in Belfast.

As a Catholic, Thomas Duff was an unusual choice for Protestant commissions and clients. John Yner and his wife Lady Caroline also made improvements to the demesne, planting thousands of trees each year. The Burges enjoyed a sociable lifestyle revolving around entertaining and visiting other Anglo Irish families. Castle Leslie in County Monaghan, Glenarm Castle in County Antrim and Killymoon Castle in County Tyrone – neighbours in aristocratic terms – were all on their social circuit.

The 1830s were halcyon years for the Burges family. But the following decade, three of their four sons died leaving just two daughters. Lady Caroline sold the carriage horses to fund charitable efforts after the Great Famine struck in 1845. Her husband recorded, “My lady instituted a kitchen with every apparatus and convenience for feeding the labourers, all of whom were fed daily … they got the best beef, potatoes and pudding which sustained them while many were starving … with all this I could not keep my people and no less than 300 went off to America having disposed of their land to try their fortune in a strange country.”

The Burges were benevolent landlords. Lady Caroline’s brother, William Clements 3rd Earl of Leitrim, was not: he was murdered for his callousness in 1878. During World War II, Parkanaur was used as a base for the Western Command, housing 50 military personnel. In 1955, the Burges family sold the house and 25 hectares for £12,000 to Reverend Gerry and Mary Eakin. Their son Stanley had difficulty walking and would later use a wheelchair. The Eakins decided to set up an occupational training college in the house to support disabled students. Parkanaur now celebrates seven decades of educational use and residential care supporting a wide range of needs. It is currently occupied by the Thomas Doran Parkanaur Trust. The demesne continues to be a much loved forest park.

St Michael’s Church of Ireland Church Castlcaulfield is two kilometres from Parkanaur as the falcon files. At the summit of the sloping cemetery stands a Tuscan temple with a gloriously oversized pediment all faced in buff pink (long greyed) Dungannon sandstone. It is the Burges burial vault. There are two tombstones unmissably close to the church entrance porch. One marks the burial place of Frederica Florence Elizabeth (1873 to 1957) Burges of Quintin Castle, Portaferry, County Down (it’s now a nursing home). She was the widow of Ynyr Richard Patrick Burges who was buried in Lawrenny, Pembrokeshire, in 1905. Her tombstone is also over the grave of their daughter Margaret Elizabeth (1908 to 1958). Next to Frederica’s tombstone is the resting place of Major Ynyr Alfred Burges’ (1900 to 1983). The last of the Burges family to own Parkanaur, he was High Sheriff of Counties Armagh and Tyrone. His wife Christine (1908 to 1982) shares the same burial plot.

Categories
Architects Architecture Country Houses Design Developers People Town Houses

Charlton House Charlton London +

Red Not Dead

The mid 20th century County Down housebuilder Joseph Gribben always advocated building in brick, especially the rustic textured variety, and recommended constructing tall chimneys that would allow smoke to blow above the roof ridge. He would appreciate Charlton in south London. High on a hill, the principal buildings circling the summit are all red brick and there are plenty of tall chimneys. Bridget Cherry and Nicholas Pevsner record in their Guide to South London Buildings (1983), “The old centre of the meeting of Charlton Road and Charlton Church Lane is small, and still has some village character, although it is surrounded by later 19th century and 20th century housing on all sides. Apart from the 17th century Church of St Luke, and Charlton House and its outbuildings, no buildings visibly of before the 19th century remain in the village centre although the attractively stuccoed Bugle Horn Inn is of late 17th century origin.”

Ah Charlton House, a miraculous half a millennium survival. It’s even still positioned in a parkland setting. Bridget and Nicholas describe its origins: “Built by Sir Adam Newton, tutor to Henry Prince of Wales, circa 1607 to 1612. Later owners were Sir William Ducie, who made repairs in 1659, Sir William Langhorne, East India merchant, after 1680, and in the 19th century the Maryon-Wilson family, for whom Norman Shaw restored the house and made minor additions in 1877 to 1878. Acquired by the Borough in 1925. Charlton House is the only Jacobean mansion of the first order remaining in the precincts of London. The plan is E shaped with four symmetrical bay windows at the ends of the four wings and two towers in the centres of the two wings, framing the building when seen from the west of east. The building is of three storeys above capacious cellars, built of red brick with pierced open tracery. The towers have ogee roofs. It is of plain and angular, spacious but not at all luxurious, with the exception of the west frontispiece, that is, the door surround and the bay window above which suddenly breaks out into the most exuberant and undisciplined ornament – the work of a mason probably who possessed a copy of Wendel Dietterlin’s Architectura of 1593 and a rare case of close imitation.”

And then the writing duo go inside, “The most remarkable feature of the interior is the position of the Hall, just as revolutionary (though not unique in Jacobean architecture) as Inigo Jones’s at the Queen’s House. it is two storeyed, placed at right angles to the front and back, and runs right across the building. Above it on the second floor in the Saloon reached by an elaborately carved staircase, quadrangular with a square open well and the flights of stairs supported by posts which between ground floor and first floor form palm branches in cases. The sloping pilaster balusters progress through the three orders from ground floor to top landing. The plasterwork is Victorian. The saloon has an original plaster ceiling with pendants and a marble fireplace with restrained architectural ornament to the overmantel above finely carved figures of Venus and Vulcan. This is very much in the manner of Nicholas Stone. In the bay window is circa 17th century heraldic glass with the Ducie arms. on the same floor the north wing is taken up entirely by the long gallery, also with a good plaster ceiling. The original panelling has gone except for pilasters by the windows. In these, more heraldic glass with the Ducie arms. The gallery is reached from the saloon by the white drawing room whose stone fireplace with two tiers of caryatids, three dimensional strapwork, and relief scenes makes the marble one in the saloon appear very classical.”

Finally, back to the great outdoors again, “Of outbuildings the stable to the south are contemporaneous with the house, now arranged on two sides of a quadrangle. Remanagements [sic] under Sir William Langhorne are easily discernible. In front of the entrance on the lawn a solitary gateway, plastered, with Corinthian columns and an 18th century cresting. To the northwest of the house, a handsome summerhouse of circa 1630, brick, square, with Tuscan pilasters, and a concave roof. There is no documentary confirmation of the traditional attribution to Inigo Jones, but the complete absence of Jacobean frills at evidently such an early date makes it quite justifiable. Nicholas Stone would also be a possibility.” The ski slope roofed Grade I summerhouse or lodge, a pepper pot pavilion, is now a public convenience (or rather inconvenience – it’s shut).

Armed with the wealth of knowledge Pevsner Guides are so adept at summarising, a decade ago Aimée Felton, Associate at leading architectural conservation practice Donald Insall Associates, led an Irish Georgian Society tour of Charlton House. Here are the highlights. Over to Aimee, “The lodge is widely attributed to Inigo Jones. Of course it is – he did most of Greenwich! Someone once attributed the lodge to him and it stuck.” She is undertaking a conditions survey as part of a long term masterplan of the house and estate. “A variety of historic fabric is remaining. Some in my opinion was later heavily edited by the various occupants. And heavily rebuilt following bomb damage.” This is most obvious in the north wing where the original imperial red brick and whitish grey stone have been patched up with metric red brick and yellow stone. These mid 20th century repairs included placing the sundial upside down.

“It’s the best Jacobean house in London and is of pivotal importance to its era,” Aimée declares. “It displays a full modern appreciation of flow and sequence of rooms. An H plan was so innovative. There are lots of Jacobean Houses of E plan and E without a tail, but not so many H. Charlton is first in its class: to walk in through the front door and see its garden beyond. The axis though the building is what makes it so special. The Kitchen was always on the north side of Jacobean houses to cool dairy produce and meat, with bedrooms above as heat rises. But this house is laid out to take in the views to the north towards the river and to the west to the King in Greenwich. This is a really bold statement and the only Jacobean house with a north facing gallery.”

The first floor Long Gallery stretches the full length of the north elevation. Like much of the house, the Long Gallery is an architectural puzzle. Aimée highlights, “The floor and ceiling are original but the panelling isn’t. Charlton has some of the best fireplaces of the Jacobean era. The Long Gallery marble and slate one is odd but exquisite.” No architect is recorded. “There is incredibly scarce information both on the Jacobean era and Charlton. You’ll notice I say ‘attributed to’ and ‘we suspect that …’ a lot!” At least there’s a keystone dated 1607 on the main block and one dated 1877 on the wing and the staircase is engraved 1612.

Sir Spencer Maryon-Wilson sold the house to Greenwich Council and auctioned the contents in 1920. The house has been used ever since by various community bodies. A public library is now in the former ground floor Dining Room and Chapel and a café occupies the Hall. Donald Insall Associates are tasked with applying a holistic approach to its fabric and future use or uses. Furnishing rooms in the original period like a National Trust house is not an option. “There simply isn’t enough Jacobean furniture,” she says. “Even the V and A wouldn’t have enough and any pieces it has are so special they’re kept in glass cases.”

There’s plenty of pictorial evidence of how the rooms were furnished in the latter Maryon-Wilson years. Aimée smiles, “If you can’t find a decent photo of a country house look in Country Life because someone is always bragging about their home!” Charlton House is no exception. Monochromatic images of the early 1900s show the interior chockablock with traditional brown furniture and taxidermy and tapestries. This eclecticism is reflected in later plasterwork. She points out the ceiling in the Prince Henry Room which isn’t original. “The cornice is beyond wrong! As offensive as the ceiling is, it’s a nice ceiling, but one that’s just not for this house. Just because it’s not right though doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be preserved to show history. Everyone has their oddities and we just move on.” Much more in keeping with the original architecture is the 1877 extension to the south, now a wedding venue. Unsurprising as Bridget and Nicholas record it was designed by that great historically aware Arts and Crafts architect Norman Shaw. Aimée sums up the extension as, “Jacobean with a Shaw twist.”

Categories
Architects Architecture Country Houses Design People

Francis Johnston + Townley Hall Tullyallen Louth

Thrill of the Chaste

An immaculate concept, a gorgeous late Georgian flowering. Townley Hall deep in the Boyne Valley came about in the closing years of the 18th century. Its architect Francis Johnston designed Rokeby Hall, 17 kilometres north of Townley Hall, a decade earlier in 1786. The former is a smaller version of the latter. Both are of a spare patrician architecture so appealing to the modern eye. Plain planes. Townley is an achingly svelte seven bay by seven bay 27.5 metre square block.

The architect conceals and reveals scale and massing as the viewer moves round the outside. This is a four storey house masquerading on three sides as a two storey building. Attic dormers lurk behind a solid parapet in a similar arrangement to the contemporaneous Castle Coole, County Fermanagh, except there the dormers peep through balustraded gaps in the parapet. Townley is Castle Coole taken to next level Grecian severity in a case of keeping up with the Lowry-Corrys. Francis’ brother Richard was the original architect for Castle Coole: he was replaced by the celebrity architect James Wyatt. There is another Fermanagh link: the client Blayney Townley Balfour married Lady Florence Cole in 1794. She was from Florence Court, a neighbouring estate of James Wyatt’s masterpiece.

Townley Hall is an essay in structural rationalism, a formal stone box grounded by rolling countryside. Recent semiformal planting softens the grey to green juxtaposition. Unencumbered by unnecessary architectural frippery, Francis employs taut lines. He let’s go – just a little – with the kitchen wing. A collection of curves carefully enriches the wing’s fenestration: recessed arches, roundheaded windows, segmental arched tripartite mezzanine windows, a bow window. It’s not just an august purity auguring minimalism that defines Townley. Workmanship and materiality are also top notch. The facing ashlar was quarried from nearby Sheephouse. It has lower absorbency than most limestone. Mortar is barely visible between the masonry. Metal rods reinforce the slimmest of glazing bars. A mid storey string cornice and Greek Doric eaves cornice relieve the expanse of wall.

A tetrastyle Doric portico leads into the entrance hall which has twin Doric chimneypieces – more restrained versions that those in Castle Coole. That’s a theme developing in this article. Rectangular plasterwork wall panels resemble vast empty picture frames. A coffered ceiling adds to the room’s crisp angularity. Straight ahead – silent drum roll – is the rotunda, a nine metre diameter glass domed cylinder forming the core of the house. A swagger of genius. A swoop of plasterwork swags and skulls. Irish design at its most suave. All the plasterwork whether naturalistic or geometric is of shallow relief. There are two coats of paint on the rotunda walls: the current 1920s creamy beige over the original stone grey. The ribbed dome casts a spidery web of shadows which leisurely climbs the staircase as the afternoon progresses.

An interlinking ceiling rose pattern in the drawing room is similar to the overhead plasterwork of the dining room in Castle Coole. Like all the main rooms around the rotunda it is 7.3 metres deep. This layout allows all the main rooms to have natural light while the rotunda is top lit. Rokeby Hall is similarly laid out and equally bright. It is an efficient arrangement removing the need for corridors. Andrea Palladio’s 1560s Villa Rotunda outside Vicenza is an obvious source of inspiration although the dome of Townley is hidden behind the attic floor rather than being on full display. Surprisingly Francis’ drawings illustrate the final rationality of layout and simplicity of design was achieved through an evolutionary process. For example, the more elaborate Ionic order (which James Wyatt used for the portico of Castle Coole) was replaced with the plainer Greek Doric for the portico. Francis was clearly a master of the Golden Ratio.

A set of early 1900s photographs (courtesy of the Irish Architectural Archive: reproduced here for non commercial educational purposes) includes views of the interior. Furnishings were suitably classical and restrained. Chinese wallpaper in the south facing drawing room is a rare flush of extravagance. The boudoir and dressing room over the drawing room overlook the parkland. They are one of five family suites clustered around the first floor rotunda landing. On the floor above, the view from the servants’ dormitories is the backside of the parapet below a sliver of sky. The only unobstructed attic windows are in the west facing barrack room which looks down into the courtyard: guards needed to be on watch.

In 1957 the family sold the house and 350 hectare estate to Trinity College Dublin for use as an agricultural school. Since 1977, Townley and its immediate 60 hectares has been a residential study centre owned by the School of Philosophy and Economic Science. A single level extension (visible as one storey on the north front) was recently completed over the kitchen wing plus a double height access link to the original house. The two main conservation schools of thought are to either design an extension that blends in with the host building or one that contrasts with it. The current Irish notion strongly favours the latter. Oh the architectural profession’s fear of that ultimate sin: pastiche! That’s despite every other modern glass building being derived from Philip Johnson’s Glass House in Connecticut and its 70 year old ilk. RKD Architects of Newmarket Dublin secured planning permission for an extension that consisted of similar massing to that executed except the courtyard facing elevation was a dormered mansard. RKD proposed Georgian style sash windows throughout.

Treasa Langford of Dúchas Heritage Service commented on the application, “The finishing of the north wall is not specified; however, the construction is specified as exposed uncoursed rubblestone, which would appear to be inappropriate on a cut stone house such as Townley Hall. We would recommend a ruled and lined nap lime plaster finish without use of cement.” Her opinion is based on the view of sympathetically blending old and new. It could be counterargued that rubblestone would be suitably subservient to the cut stone of the grand main block, emphasising the ancillary nature of the wing.

A decade later, MVK Architects of Fitzwilliam Square Dublin’s design also secured planning permission and this time it was built out. Their approach is very different. The design concept is to add an identifiably contemporary layer to this historic property. Subordination and deference are common themes of both practices’ thinking. MVK’s has neither a mansard nor Georgian style glazing bars but the window openings are classically positioned and proportioned.

Michael Kavanagh of MVK Architects relates, “The choice of material was based on aesthetic as well as practical considerations. Natural zinc has a light grey colour – from historic photographs it appears the slate on the original roof had a similar light grey colour. The material is not intended to match the limestone colour but rather be complementary to it. Zinc is natural, hardwearing, long lasting and difficult to puncture. These characteristics make it ideal for long term weatherproofed cladding. It is stiffer than lead or copper and consequently allows for the crispness of detailing which is intended throughout.” This metal envelope is fixed on plywood decking across battens to form a ventilation zone. The zinc is fitted in strips of varying widths using a staggered but repeating rhythm which reflects the use of differently sized limestone blocks on the main house exterior.

The best example in Ireland of a Modernist addition to a neoclassical building is of course the Ulster Museum Belfast extension. Edinburgh architect James Cumming Wynnes won the 1913 competition for the original museum. The exterior displays fairly ornate Beaux Arts decoration. In 1964, London architect Francis Pym won a competition to extend the museum. His highly inventive design is at once contextual and disruptive. He draws out the neoclassical detailing such as cornices and string courses which then collide with abstract cubic concrete blocks expressing the layout of the galleries inside. Francis’ dramatic work is unsurpassed in its genre. Surprisingly, he worked in church conservation and his only other recorded built form is a gazebo somewhere in England.

This is an article of superlatives. The O’Connell Wing of Abbey Leix in County Laois is a study in how to do it right. Architect John O’Connell’s masterful 1990s reimagining of an unfinished 1860s wing by Thomas Henry Wyatt (an Anglo Irish distant next generation relation of James) is a lesson in improving what’s there already. Client Sir David Davies explains, “This extension was never built as planned but the remains of the Wyatt scheme – a low unadorned wall to the right of the main house was a disfiguring distraction, an issue O’Connell resolved by puncturing the walls with windows and adding architectural ornament.” John O’Connell was also responsible for the late 20th century restoration of Castle Coole. This is an article of connections.

Sympathetic contextual additions; visibly contemporary extensions; dramatic architectural interventions; subtly remodelled wings – they all have their place and supporters. English Poet Laureate and architectural historian Sir John Betjeman once stated, “I have seen many Irish houses, but I know none at once so dignified, so restrained and so original as Townley Hall in County Louth.” More than 230 years after it was finished, such is the strength of Francis Johnson’s design, capturing the spirit of a future age, it still possesses dignity, restraint and originality.

Categories
Architects Architecture Art Country Houses People

The Hamiltons + Hamwood House Dunboyne Meath

Taking Refuge in the Shelter of Your Wings

Stephen Odlum sums up the origins of Hamwood House in his book Eva, Letitia and The Hamilton Sisters: Class, Gender and Art (2021): “The Hamiltons originally came from Scotland in the early 17th century and initially settled in the north of Ireland. The first of these settlers was Alexander Hamilton (1690 to 1768) who was MP for Killyleagh in County Down. In a tradition followed by many subsequent generations of the Hamilton family, he became a land agent. He seems to have been particularly successful in this role and left his five sons land worth £50,000. His son Charles Hamilton (1737 to 1818) moved south to Dublin where he first traded as a wine merchant. It appears that this business flourished, as he decided to build a house reflecting his new status. He chose to build in an area to the east of the village of Dunboyne in County Meath close to the border with County Dublin and only about 15 miles from the centre of Dublin.”

The writer details, “The Hamilton sisters remained attached to the old Ascendancy social monies and traditions. Letitia, Eva and Connie, who developed a gardening consultancy business, and Ethel, up to her death in 1924, pooled their resources to live in refined but declining style in a series of large, rambling houses in the Castleknock and Lucan areas of County Dublin from 1920 onwards. Manners mattered more than money – dinner was a formal event which the ladies dressed for and were summoned by a gong. In a world which would become increasingly dominated by Catholic dogma, Letitia and Eva would have had a liberty that was not often open to their Catholic sisterhood. Those who did choose to pursue modern feminist ideas were seen as being ‘West Brit’ or pro British. Indeed, Catholic women who were educated and middle class were more likely to join forces with their Protestant counterparts to achieve social and political recognition, as seen in the suffragette movement in the early part of the 20th century.”

It’s an unseasonably cool and overcast spring morning to meet Charles Hamilton VII for a private tour of his splendid home. The four bay two storey over basement under attic entrance front or perhaps it is the garden front (to be explained later) has curved wings extending out like crab claws grabbing pebbles – the end octagonal pavilions. “The house was built by Charles I in 1777 for £2,500,” introduces his descendant. “Ham comes from Hamilton and Wood comes from his wife Elizabeth’s maiden name Chetwood. Charles II’s wife Caroline found the house draughty – the original entrance on the side or west elevation opened straight into the reception rooms – so that’s how the current arrangement came about. A corridor now separates the entrance door from the living quarters. The driveway used to access what is now the garden elevation – really the house is back to front. In very hot dry summers the ghost of flowerbeds appears opposite the current entrance front.”

A set of early 1900s photographs (copyright of The National Trust and Irish Architectural Archive: reproduced here for non commercial educational purposes) includes a picture of the garden. And sure enough it is filled with flowerbeds. Other pictures show the house with window shutters and the house with the shadowy ghost of window shutters. Previous generations pose on the lawn and in the library.

Charles adds, “Caroline insisted on many more trees being planted to help create shelter for the strong winds. Remember that when she arrived at Hamwood in the early 1800s it was a cold and bleak situation and very exposed being 300 feet above sea level. That may not sound particularly high but in relatively flat Leinster there was nothing between the house and the east coast! Caroline and her husband were greatly involved in the interior design of the house too, adding furnishings, artwork and ornaments.”

“The architect is unknown,” he explains, “although a surveyor Joseph O’Brien is mentioned in family papers. During the 1798 Rebellion the agent for nearby Carton was hanged. So my ancestor Charles I took over as agent and my family continued in the role from 1800 to 1950. This supplemented the income they made of the 165 acres at Hamwood. The family have always been very active in the community. They set up agricultural societies to create work and during the famine they ran a soup kitchen. My father Charles Gerald was the last agent of Carton. The Duke of Leinster sold it to Lord Brocket and then eventually it was turned into a hotel. We will walk round to the other side of the house, down the long garden which has unbroken views across the countryside. Unbroken thanks to a nine foot wide haha.”

“The 1911 Census records a butler, three yard men, coachman turned chauffeur and five indoor servants. I remember as a child we still had seven glasshouses filled full of peaches and nectarines,” says Charles. Upon entering the house through the ocean blue coloured door, visitors are greeted by a Canadian moose head in the octagonal hall. The corridor ahead feels early Victorian: it is lined with tongue and groove wooden panelling and encaustic tile floored. It leads into an elegantly furnished double drawing room spanning the full four bay entrance front. The pale sea green blue walls are filled with paintings and drawings.

There are two corresponding reception rooms on the garden front. The two bay dining room is painted deep shell pink. Two similar oil paintings hang side by side: Mrs Charles Hamilton by Sir William Orpen (the subject dressed in back with white frills writing a letter) and Portrait of Louisa Mrs Charles Hamilton by Eva Hamilton (the subject in the same outfit reading a book). “Eva and Letitia both trained at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art,” Charles confirms, “where the prominent Irish artist William Orpen taught. Eva was especially influenced by Orpen’s style.”

Bright and airy even on a dull day, bedrooms fill most of the first floor. A roof lantern lit corridor extends off the staircase landing. “The two storey library wing was built by my great uncle,” notes Charles. “It disrupts the symmetry of the garden elevation.” The two pane Victorian glazing has been replaced on the principal front with 12 panes on the main block and intricate gothic topped panes on the arched windows of the wings. A painting of another country house hangs in the staircase hall. He states, “That was our family estate at Ahakista in West Cork. The television presenter Graham Norton lives there now. We used to have a townhouse in Dublin too – 40 Dominick Street Lower.” This four storey three bay terraced house, built in 1760, is now a language school. Hamwood House still stands proud as the family seat of the Hamiltons.

Categories
Architects Architecture Country Houses People

Castle Stewart Papers + Irish Country Houses + Glebe Houses

Plantation Shudders

The Public Records Office Northern Ireland is an Aladdin’s Cave for those of an architectural heritage bent. It’s in a coolly contemporary commercial building conveniently close to Titanic Hotel in Belfast’s Laganside. Super helpful staff deliver bundles of archive material to designated desks. The Castle Stewart Papers form a significant collection. They comprise about 6,000 documents dating from 1587 to 1960 mainly relating to the County Tyrone estates of the Earls Castle Stuart, their genealogy, their military service, and the building and rebuilding of their houses. The Stewarts were originally a Scottish clan: the surname is derived from the role of steward.

An orthographic issue needs explaining. The family name of the Earls Castle Stewart is Stuart. Their other titles are the Barony of Castle Stewart, the Viscountcy of Castle Stewart and the Viscountcy of Stuart. Confused yet? The petition which the 1st Earl Castle Stewart, then Andrew Thomas Stuart, addressed to the Irish House of Lords in 1768 in substantiation of his claim to the Barony of Castle Stewart sheds light on family history from 1619:

“James I, by his letter of 1619 to the Lord Deputy and Chancellor of Ireland, authorised them to create Andrew Stewart, Lord Stewart, Baron of Castlestewart in the county of Tyrone, to hold the said honour to him and the heirs male of his body. Andrew, the 1st Lord, left issue Andrew, John, and Robert. No Parliament having sat from the year 1615 to the year 1634, Andrew, the 1st Lord, never voted in Parliament, but constantly enjoyed the title. He was succeeded by Sir Andrew, his eldest son and heir, and many entries in the Journals of the Lords in the year 1634 prove his enjoyment of the dignity, in consequence of letters patent issued agreeable to the letter of King James.”

“This Lord died in or about the year 1639, leaving issue Andrew, Robert and Josias, and was succeeded by Andrew, his eldest son and heir. This Lord married one of the daughters of Sir Arthur Blundell, by whom he had issue one child only, a daughter named Mary, who married Henry Howard, afterwards 5th Earl of Suffolk, and this lady carried away almost the whole family estate. Andrew, the 3rd Lord, died without issue male, and Robert his brother being dead without issue, he was succeeded in the honour by Josias, his youngest brother. Josias died in or about the year 1662, without issue, and was succeeded in the honour by John, his uncle.”

“John, the 5th Lord Castlestewart, died without issue in 1685, and after his death, the descendants of Lieutenant Colonel Robert Stewart were the rightful successors to the barony of Castlestewart, [which remained dormant and unclaimed until 1774]. Lieutenant Colonel Robert was the brother of John, the 5th Lord, and consequently a son of the 1st Lord. Robert Stewart of Irry, died 1686, son and heir to Colonel Robert, married Ann Moore, daughter of William Moore of Garvey in the County of Tyrone. To him succeeded Andrew Stewart [1672-1715], his eldest son and heir, then an infant, and to him Robert Stewart [1700-1742], whose son and heir the petitioner is.” Andrew Thomas Stuart was successful in his claim to the Barony of Castle Stewart in 1774.

Amongst the many papers is an exclusive find. Opening the green covered book Photographs of Armagh and Tyrone Scenery by John McGie reveals faded photographs mainly of country houses. It’s undated; the archivists estimate the book to date from between 1868 and 1874. Dame Rosalind Savill, la grande Directrice of The Wallace Collection in London, once commented how she disliked the phrase “hidden gems” but that’s what springs to mind looking at these photographs and, in some cases, lost gems. Stewart seats featured include Ballygawley Park and Stuart Hall. Other country houses photographed also had Plantation of Ulster connections such as Aughentain Castle, Augher Castle, Cecil Lodge, Roxborough Castle and Tynan Abbey.

The Irish Architectural Archive on Merrion Square has another great wealth of material. In contrast to the modern spaces of the Public Records Office Northern Ireland, drawings and documents are laid out in an 18th century double reception room with elaborate plasterwork ceilings. In among various folders are a coloured illustration of Reverend Beresford’s proposed glebe house, a photograph of Moynalty Glebe House and a photograph of Lismullen House, reproduced here for non commercial educational purposes.

Ballygawley Park is a landmark ruin on the Belfast to Omagh A5 road. The formal façade with its Ionic columned breakfront is a romantic distraction to drivers motoring up the hill from Ballygawley roundabout. Remnants of the entrance pillars, railings and gatelodge continue to crumble year on year. The severely elegant neo Grecian mansion was built in the 1820s to the design of John Hargrave. The photograph is of the side elevation which overlooked a sunken garden complete with pond. The Stewarts never returned to the house when it was seemingly accidentally burnt in the 1920s. A not uneventful decade for Irish country houses.

Stuart Hall was the vast country house built on the outskirts of Stewartstown by the abovementioned Andrew Thomas Stuart no doubt to celebrate his social rise from Viscount to Earl. A two storey dropping to three storey Georgian block was attached to a Plantation tower. In Victorian times the building was dressed up with a castellated parapet added to the Georgian block and mullioned windows inserted in the tower. There are two photographs of the house in the book: one of the mainly two storey entrance front and one of the mostly three storey side elevation. Stuart Hall was an architectural victim of The Troubles: it was destroyed by the IRA in 1972.

Usually spelt with an E at the end, the photograph of Aughentain Castle (as it is labelled) shows the house in all its Italianate glory. Why settle for one campanile when you can have two? Haystacks stand between trees on the sloping lawn. This sprawling mansion was demolished in 1955 by then owner Colonel John Hamilton-Stubber who replaced it with a Continental classical style house. The current Aughentaine Castle, while smaller than its predecessor, is still a substantial and stylish building.

Augher Castle on the outskirts of the village of the same name and, like Ballygawley Park, is a showstopper for motorists, visible beyond a lake. Unlike Ballygawley Park, it is in excellent condition. The photograph shows the two storey entrance front range which is attached to a three storey lakeside toy keep. Dating from the 17th century, the castle is now mainly a Victorian rebuild. The people posing next to the exterior are probably fin du siècle dernier owners John and Elizabeth Carmichael-Ferrall and their son.

Many of the Big Houses of Ireland were plain boxy houses. Elizabeth Bowen’s family home in County Cork is a famous example. Cecil Manor, a neighbouring estate to Augher Castle, is another house with strong perpendiculars. Parapet free, hipped roofs rest on a distinctive dentilled cornice. It was designed by the architect William Farrell who had a flourishing country house and church designing practice in the first half of the 19th century. The photograph shows the magnificent backdrop of Knockmany Mountain. It was demolished in the 1930s.

Last but very much not least is the incredibly dotty Roxborough Castle, a Château Chambord by the Bann. The scale is as barmy as the design. Located outside Moy in County Armagh, it was the seat of the Earls of Charlemont. The original 18th century house can be seen in the Georgian glazed recessed portion of the entrance front. Architects William Murray then William Barre transmogrified the house into an enormous hotel like building with chunky four storey towers topped by steeple gradient roofs. The IRA burned Roxborough Castle in 1922, not a good year or indeed decade when it comes to architectural conservation.

Tynan Abbey was situated 18 kilometres south of Roxborough Castle. It was a large Gothic country house belonging to the Stronge family. Church like architecture included a spire rising over one end of the long garden front. The photograph shows a formal terrace dotted with yew trees – which have long been associated with graveyards. In one of the most infamous cases of The Troubles, Sir Norman Stronge and his son James were shot dead in their library by the IRA in 1981 and the house set ablaze. Tynan Abbey stood as a ruin until 1998 when it was demolished in its entirety. The site is now a featureless field devoid of architectural marvels.

The last image in John McGie’s book Photographs of Armagh and Tyrone Scenery is a view of a lake. An archivist has scribbled on the side “Camlough?” In the foreground are two well dressed gentlemen getting ready to row a small boat. In the background, is a high gabled single storey with attic lodge. A porch projects towards the lake. Pure tranquillity. Camlough Lake is a popular tourist attraction, a picturesque narrow strip of water 2.7 kilometres long and only less than half a kilometre at its widest point.

The Church of Ireland Board of First Fruits funded a glebe house at Fenagh, County Leitrim, in 1829. This two storey over raised basement stone building is of a type that pops up all over Ireland in the ultimate years of the Georgian period. The elevational drawing shows a mid storey landing roundheaded window: the executed arrangement regularises it into a ground floor window and first floor window matching the rest of the rectangular openings on the rear elevation. Fenagh Glebe House is three bays wide; these ecclesiastical dwellings are almost always three or four bays wide. Reverend George de la Poer Beresford, to give him his full name, was a relative of the owner of Curraghmore in County Waterford.

A mid 20th century photograph of Moynalty Glebe House in County Meath shows it to be in a poor state of repair. The entrance door of this well proportioned two storey over raised basement house is set in a chamfered bay window. Similar to Fenagh Glebe House, it has a tall grouped chimneystack, but is an earlier version of the Board of First Fruits clerical house model, dating from 1792. Moynalty Glebe House has been restored in recent years, the render painted a deep grey, and was sold in 2014 for €550,000. It cost £847 to build. The sale included the 275 square metre house, nine hectares of pasture, a gatelodge and a courtyard of stables and outbuildings.

Lismullen House (as it is spelt on the photograph labelling although more commonly Lismullin) in County Meath was the seat of the Dillon family. Presumably it is the Dillons who are playing archery in the faded photograph. The main block had a five bay three storey entrance front. Intriguingly, two storey Ionic pilasters just about visible on this front presumably once formed part of a tetrastyle portico. The IRA burnt Lismullen House along with its furniture and art in 1923. A Sir Joshua Reynolds painting was one of the few belongings the elderly Sir John Dillon and his family were able to rescue, cutting the canvas out of its frame. There is a metaphor lurking there about not seeing the whole picture.

Categories
Architects Architecture Art Country Houses Design Developers

Straffan House + The K Club Straffan Kildare

Riveting Pivoting

On 28 February 1990 the Irish Directors of Christie’s (Desmond FitzGerald the last Knight of Glin of Glin Castle in County Limerick and Danny Kinahan the last in the line to own Castle Upton in Templepatrick County Antrim) held a sale of contents of Straffan House which had been acquired by The Kildare Hotel and Country Club led by Michael Smurfit. It opened with Lot 1 “A plated cruet frame containing seven bottles and stoppers”, £50 to £80. Punts not pounds. It closed with Lot 515 “A mahogany crossbanded and ebony lined two tier occasional table, the moulded rectangular top on turned and fluted supports, the base fitted with a drawer to one side. 25 inches wide and a similar occasional table 15.5 inches wide”, £80 to £210.

Standout pieces included Lot 154: “A carved giltwood wall glass of early George III design, the shaped rectangular mirror plate in a rockwork acanthus caved and pierced foliate frame, the pierced surmount carved with rockwork and C scrolls, the base carved with C scrolls and foliage. 19th century. 46 inches high by 23 inches wide.” £3,000 to £5,000. Also Lot 160: “A kingwood burr walnut and floral marquetry commode of Louis XV style, the rounded rectangular pink veined marble top above a frieze mounted with circular floral painted porcelain panels enclosed in gilt metal laurel frames with ribbon tied surmounts and fitted with a drawer above a panelled cupboard door and flanked on either side by a bowed cupboard drawer inlaid in a trellis either side by a bowed cupboard drawer inlaid in a trellis parquetry with fleur de lys and divided by cast brass acanthus, mounts on cast brass paw feet. 55 inches wide by 22 inches deep.” £1,500 to £2,500.Unexecuted plans by Dubliner Benjamin Hallam dated 1808 (copyright of the Irish Architectural Archive: reproduced here for non commercial educational purposes) illustrate proposed two storey pavilion like wings in a refined neoclassicism to the original three storey Straffan House. The house would burn down a few years later. Under new owner Hugh Barton, the current Straffan House was constructed in 1832 to the design of Frederick Darley, another Dublin based architect. Its design was apparently based on the Château de Louveciennes near Paris. It’s not quite Waddesdon Manor (a Loire Valley château transplanted to Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire) but Straffan House does have its Franglais moments. Vintage photographs show there were once a set of five unusually ornate chimneystacks symmetrically arranged across the roof of the main block. A storey height chimney masquerading as an obelisk marks the spot where the house meets the 18th century heavily quoined stable block. Box hedged formal gardens fill the courtyard of the stable block which was converted to guest suites.

Modern art in the auction included Lot 299 Gerald Dillon’s The Escape Artist, £5,000 to £8,000; Lot 294 Paul Henry’s Mullary Beach, £15,000 to £20,000; and two pieces by Louis de Brocquy: Lot 288 Lemon II, £3,000 to £5,000; and Lot 286 Reconstructed Head, £15,000 to £25,000. There were no fewer than 13 paintings by Brummie artist Edgar Hunt ranging from £5,000 to £8,000 up to £12,000 to £18,000. That’s a lot of ducks, donkeys, goats, cows and chickens. Lot 349 was a George II white marble chimneypiece after a design by Inigo Jones and William Kent, £50,000 to £80,000. It was formerly in the collection of the Earls of Gosford, Gosford Castle, County Armagh. A salvaged piece that was retained is an early 18th century timber doorcase, now in a curved corridor of one of the later blocks.

This year, the estate celebrates 1,475 of recorded history. 550: After the Anglo Normal invasion of Ireland, Strongbow grants Straffan to Maurice FitzGerald. 1500: The lands are forfeited by the De Penkiston family, who are implicated in a rebellion, and disposed of to the Gaydon family. 1600: Straffan is forfeited again and granted to Thomas Bewley. 1650: The Gaydon family are granted back the 280 hectares they originally owned and then sell up to Richard Talbot in 1697 for £700. 1720: Dublin banker Hugh Henry purchases the lands and builds the original Straffan House. 1831: Hugh Barton, who owns French vineyards, acquires the estate. He demolishes the Henrys’ burnt out home and builds a new house beside the 18th century carriage yard. 1850: An Italianate campanile is added to the house. 1937: The Bartons reduce the size of the house.1949 The Bartons sell up and it changes hands several times. 1988: The Smurfit Group purchases Straffan House and double it in size recycling a Francis Johnston granite porch from the ruinous Ballynegall House in County Westmeath to link both blocks together. 1991: The K Club opens.

In 2001 the original building was doubled in size with a new block designed by Henry John Lyons architects. It more or less replicates the appearance of Straffan House. A new north elevation entrance was created through the Francis Johnston Ionic portico: the original Ionic portico now leads into a lounge. Walls awash with white painted stucco walls. First floor and attic pedimented window surrounds repeated. And repeated. And repeated. Strung out stringcourses. The impact is powerful, only to be felt again 14 years later. The 2015 block by Henry John Lyons is even bigger, dropping another two storeys and having its very own campanile – a stylised version of the tallest component of Straffan House. It’s the hotel that never stops growing.

Just when you think the contiguousness has sprouted full growth along comes another extension. The latest proposals are by Michael Fetherston who bought The K Club in 2020. He commissioned JNP Architects to design an extension to replace the single storey swimming pool wing with a double height flat roofed function suite. Michael has restored the 1910 weir originally built to provide power for Straffan House. It has become the first weir powered resort in Ireland by harnessing hydropower from the River Liffey which runs through the 220 hectare estate.

We know The K Club well. Very well. Those stone steps flowing from the central bow window on the south front of Straffan House through grass banks onto a path past rose and lemon coloured flowerbeds to a fountain and finally the River Liffey are familiar terrain. Our first visit to The Byerley Turk Dining Room was on a windswept winter’s evening 30 years ago. The restaurant was named after a large painting measuring over three metres wide by two and a half metres high of a famous early 18th century thoroughbred racehorse. It is attributed to the English equestrian painter Thomas Spencer. Crimson flock wallpaper provided the perfect backdrop to the dark horse. Michael Smurfit sold the painting along with art by Jack Yeats in 2020. The Chinoiserie wallpaper in the drawing room painted by Naomi McBride has survived numerous refurbishments. Our subsequent writeup formed a double page spread in Ulster Architect November 1995 and our photograph of the south front graced the Christmas edition of the same magazine.

Categories
Architecture Country Houses People

Seskinore House + Forest Seskinore Tyrone

Negative Volume

The name Seskinore is derived from the Irish Gaelic seisceann mhór which means big marsh or bog. Tracing its roots back to the early 17th century, the population is still just a few hundred. To the north of the village is Seskinore Forest. Only remnants of an Ulster Plantation country estate can be traced: cast iron gates minus a gatelodge and outbuildings without a country house. Seskinore House was demolished in 1952 when the Ministry of Agriculture took over the 47 hectare estate. Up until 1941 it had been the seat of the Anglo Welsh Perry family and then through marriage the Anglo Scots McClintock family. Seskinore House was used by American soldiers during World War II.

An advertisement appeared in the Belfast Newsletter on 10 July 1940, “For sale by private treaty by the executor of Captain Wilfred Joynson-Wreford, deceased. Seskinore, County Tyrone. Beautiful country residence with about 120 acres land, portion of which is well wooded with valuable timber. The residence has modern conveniences and contains large entrance hall, inner hall, drawing room, dining room, library, smoke room, 11 bedrooms, servants’ apartments, kitchen, sculleries, pantries etc., six WCs, bathrooms. The out offices are most extensive, forming a large inner and outer yard. There are five cottages on the lands. The entire buildings are in splendid condition. The residence is situated in a good district, amidst beautiful surroundings, with nicely laid out grounds and gardens; and the entire property is held free of rent forever. Further cottages in the village of Seskinore can be included in sale, if so desired. Further particulars from McCoy Solicitors, Omagh, County Tyone.” There were no private takers.

A Garden of Remembrance lies deep in the forest. It marks the resting place of the last people to live in Seskinore House: Amelia “Leila” née Eccles-McClintock Joynson-Wreford (1898 to 1937) and Wilfred “Tony” Joynson-Wreford (1896 to 1940). Leila died of meningitis aged 38 and her husband Tony died three years later of tuberculosis aged 44. Their gravestones are surrounded by a colourful carpet of autumnal leaves. A third gravestone is of Tony’s son Patrick Anthony Joynson-Wreford (1928 to 2015). Tony was married three times – Patrick was the child with his second wife Olive née Trainor. Leila and Tony had one child: Xenia.

On 6 October 2005, Jonathan Rainey reported in the Tyrone Constitution, “The people of Seskinore recently welcomed back a long lost member of one of the village’s most respected families – over 65 years after she vanished from village life. Mrs Xenia Lewis, aged 70, from Townsville in Australia made an emotional return to Seskinore to try to answer some of the any questions that surround her childhood. Within the last year, Xenia has discovered that she is the granddaughter of Colonel John Knox McClintock, who contributed much to the life of Seskinore during his lifetime, including building the local primary school, before his death in 1936.”

“She has also discovered that she spent much of her early childhood in the village, even though today she has no memory of that time,” Jonathan records. “Both of Xenia’s parents died when she was still a young girl, leaving her in the care of an English guardian, who moved her to London, and then Sussex. As she got older, her guardian never revealed anything about her family or her life, in Seskinore. And in another twist to an already fascinating story Xenia has also met the half brother she never knew existed while she has been uncovering the truth about her past.” Xenia and Patrick restored the neglected Garden of Remembrance during her visit.

He concludes, “During a party organised in her honour at McClintock Primary School, Xenia told the assembled villagers, ‘It’s been a very emotional journey, but everyone has made me feel welcome, and I feel like I’ve come home. I think my father was really devastated when my mother died. According to an obituary published in the Tyrone Constitution, and from what numerous people have told me in Seskinore, my father used to go down to the Garden of Remembrance in the McClintock estate, where my mother is buried, at 6pm every single night with my mother’s dog, no matter what.’”

Seskinore House was rebuilt in 1862 to the design of the illustrious Sir Charles Lanyon. A formal symmetrical east facing façade had two bays on either side of a pedimented breakfront with three narrow roundhead windows above a balustraded Ionic portico – its outside columns coupled. Wide rustication in the form of stretched quoins terminated each end of the elevation. The side elevations had full height canted bay windows. The main block was two storeys with lower two storey ancillary wings to the west and north. Horizontal glazing bars creating four panelled windows were a popular fad of the second half of the 19th century and appeared in residences across Ulster including Seskinore House.

Categories
Architects Architecture Country Houses Hotels People Restaurants

Corick House Hotel Clogher Tyrone + Lanyon Lynn + Lanyon

A Distant Other Place

Alistair Rowan writes in Buildings of North West Ulster (1979), “The seat of the Story family since 1697, almost completely rebuilt in a plain minimal Italian style by Lanyon, Lynn and Lanyon in 1863. It is a large scale rendered villa L shaped. Three storey tower in the angle with an Italianate hipped slate roof. The old house had a five bay two storey front of which Lanyon kept two bays, building the tower and south wing before the rest. The yards behind the house have handsome barns of 1748 and 1858, one with a late 18th century brick vaulted end.”

The rebuilt house is sober, restrained, undemonstrative, far removed from Lanyon Senior’s palazzos. Befitting for a rural residence in the landlocked County of Tyrone. Dignity over decoration. Plainness over ostentation. Smaller versions of Corick House with chamfered bay windows, whether rendered or brick faced, would spring up in suburbs of Belfast and Ulster towns. To that effect it would become more influential than the practice’s grander designs. The towers and bay windows of Barden Towers in the fashionable east Belfast area of Ballyhackamore, three decades later, had their genesis in the early work of Lanyon, Lynn and Lanyon, who in turn drew on British taste for the Italianate. Cue the campanile. Enter the acanthus leafed cornice.

Drawings signed Lanyon, Lynn and Lanyon Architects dated 28 January 1863 illustrate that originally a gabled porch was proposed on the east elevation. The three storey tower containing the main entrance door must have been a later idea. The balanced but slightly asymmetrical south elevation (the two windows to the right of the bay window are wider spaced that the two windows to the left) was built in line with the drawings. The irregular north elevation is hidden behind trees now and the equally irregular west elevation is hidden behind recent extensions.

A Specification of Work for “making alterations and additions to Corick House, Clogher, for the Reverend William Story” accompanies the drawings. One clause states, “The works to be completed immediately on the signing of the contract, and to be completed on or before the 1st day of April 1864.” A further clause states, “The whole of the work is to be executed in the most substantial and workmanlike manner, with materials the best of their several kinds.”

Corick means a confluence of streams in Irish Gaelic: it was part of the lands granted to the Bishop of Clogher in the 1610 Plantation of Ulster. The townland is where Fury Rover rising in County Armagh joins the Blackwater River flowing through County Tyrone. John Story arrived in Corick in 1697 from Northumberland a the behest of the Bishop of Clogher to become his land agent. In 1994 Jean Beacom bought the house and immediate grounds of two hectares. The Story family gone, a new chapter began. Two years later she opened the house as bed and breakfast accommodation with nine bedrooms. Her grandchildren continue to run the property which is now a 43 bedroom hotel.

In a county lacking coastline and multiplicity of tourist attractions, Corick House Hotel is a welcome hospitality highlight. Nuptuals keep the wolfish debt collector from many a country house’s door and Corick is no exception. Banqueting rooms, a spa and wedding party accommodation fill new wings and converted outbuildings. The reception rooms and bedrooms of the original house are still enjoyed for their original purpose. Views from the well kept demesne are glorious. The ancient St McCartan’s Protestant Cathedral of Clogher can be seen across the valley from the sloping Victorian Walled Garden.

Categories
Architecture Country Houses Design Hotels Luxury People Restaurants

Barberstown Castle Straffan Kildare + Lavender’s Blue

No Pale Comparison

An article appeared in The Irish Times on 23 November 1974: “Two Historic Castles Now on Property Market”. It states, “Two of the country’s most interesting castles are currently on the market – Barberstown, Straffan, County Kildare, which is being run as a hotel, and Portlick near Athlone, County Meath, which will be sold with its lakeside estate complete with planning permission for an extensive new holiday village. Barberstown’s lands were granted to Lord Fitzgerald in 1172, and it was about this time that the keep (which is still in use) and the halls (long gone) were built. Later, it was the home of the de Capella, Fanning, Perkinson, Sutton and Dillon families before the entire estate was confiscated under what is euphemistically known as the Cromwellian Settlement.”

There’s more, “It was during the Sutton family occupancy that the Elizabethan wing of the castle (still in use) was built. The castle, house and grounds were valued at £200 in 1640. In 1703, Bartholomew van Homrigh bought the property, and although he achieved considerable political and social stature in his own right, he is mainly remembered today as the father of Vanessa, the girl immortalised in Dean Swift’s writings.”

And more, “One of Barberstown’s legends concerns a man said to be interred between the top of the main staircase and the roof of the tower. His family held the castle by a lease which expired when he was ‘put underground’ and they sought this novel method of postponing that day. Barberstown, standing on five acres, is at present being run as a fully licensed hotel and restaurant. It is to be sold (by private treaty now, or auction later) by Keane Mahony Smith and the solicitors with carriage of sale are Kennedy and McGonagle of Molesworth Street. The accommodation at Barberstown includes 13 bedrooms, six bathrooms, two bars, lounges, two dining rooms, large kitchens, plus the Norman tower keep. Outside there are two furnished penthouses, stabling, garages and well kept grounds. Barberstown, only 15 miles from Dublin, is a property with great potential, Keane Mahony Smith’s Robin Palmer declared. It will be sold as a going concern, with full seven day licence.”

Five years later, the musician Eric Clapton would buy the castle. Then in an article “£500,000 for Eric’s Castle” the Evening Herald reported on 12 July 1984, “Big excitement in the international property market with the tale that popstar Eric Clapton has at last found a buyer for his restaurant. Three years ago Clapton bought Barberstown Castle after many stays and banquets there – commuting from his Surrey home. However, after spending just under £400,000 buying the stately home restaurant in County Kildare, Clapton lost all interest – as popstars do – and has not appeared at all in the Castle. Now Clapton, apparently, has a buyer for Barberstown. The buyer is said to be German, no less, and the price is said to be in excess of £500,000, no less. One way for a popstar to shake off the Irish connection.”

All the bedrooms in the 2015 wing (currently draped in a cloak of reddening leaves) are named after previous owners and the date they took over. On the first floor in clockwise order the bedrooms are Maurice Fitzgerald 1170, Eric Clapton 1979, Norah Devlin 1973, Mrs Todd 1971, Robert Middleston 1941, Sandham Symes 1908, Mr Littleboy 1881, Edward Smith 1842, Admiral Robinson 1836, Hugh Barton 1826, Hugh Cairncross 1780, Joseph Cairncross 1780, Hugh Henry 1716, James Young 1660, Bartholomew van Homrigh 1703, Nicholas Barby 1300, Richard de Penkinson 1289, Sir John Fanning 1288, Thomas Fanning 1275 and Robert de Copella 1250. Amanda Torrens 2021 can be the name of the next new bedroom. The Barton Rooms Restaurant is named after Hugh Barton who added a wing in the 1830s. Battlefield Car Park is a reminder of the strategic location of this castle within The Pale.

“Smurfit in Talks to Buy Barberstown” roared the headline in The Irish Independent on 19 January 1990. “Business tycoon Michael Smurfit is believed to be negotiating the purchase of Barberstown Castle,” exhales Cliodhna O’Donoghue, “the former Irish hideaway home in County Kildare of rockstar Eric Clapton. Just a mile away from the 17th century Straffan House, which was purchased by Smurfit in September 1988 for £4 million, it is understood that if the deal goes ahead Barberstown will become an exclusive annex to Straffan’s palatial Georgian mansion and grounds.”

There’s more, “Standing about 15 miles from Dublin, the 1172 built Barberstown has had a series of notable owners including Sir Richard Talbot, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and more recently rockstar Eric Clapton who purchased the property from the current owner of nearby Moyglare Manor, Mrs Devlin. Barberstown again changed hands for around £300,000 and its existing owner, Ken Healy has extensively refurbished and extended the premises. Barberstown is presently being run as a hotel and is extremely popular as a wedding venue. Smurfit is expected to spend about £4.5 million transforming Straffan into an exclusive gentlemen’s club and is converting the 40 stables in Straffan’s Queen Anne Yard into luxurious bedroom suites as well as building a golf course in the 300 acres of grounds.”

And more, “To encourage industrialists to take membership of the Straffan Club the property will also contain a conference centre to attract investors, particularly Japanese and Americans, who plan to take occupation in the Financial Services Centre. Straffan, which has also had a chequered history of owners over the years, was sold for £4 million in September 1988 by Scots born businessman Alan Ferguson who bought the property from the liquidator of Patrick Gallagher’s estate. Market authorities believe that Mr Smurfit is considering the purchase of Barberstown with a view to extending the Straffan Estate further and it is estimated that the historic castle will cost between £700,000 and £1 million.” Clodhna’s exclusive did not come to pass. There is no Michael Smurfit Room.

In fact the previous owner, businessman Ken Healy, had purchased Barberstown in 1987. He transformed it into a 58 bedroom hotel, more than doubling the size of the original building, adding extensions in a sympathetic neo Georgian style. Norah Devlin first converted the castle to a 10 bedroom hotel in the 1970s. It is worth more now than the £1,033 the Dutch merchant Bartholomew van Homrigh paid for it at the beginning of the 17th century. A two or three storey Georgian house attached to a taller castle is not uncommon in Ireland. Other examples are Ballymore Castle in Lawrencetown, County Galway; Blackwater Castle in Castletownroche, County Cork; and Sigginstown Castle in Tomhaggard, County Wexford. The 18th century portion of Barberstown Castle originally had a thatched roof. Later rendering has been removed from the keep exposing rubblestone which contrasts with the smooth rendering painted a lighter shade of pale on the rest of the building.

Barberstown Castle is now the setting for high society weddings (Champagne sorbet) and high energy getaways (Champagne). On a random Thursday night in October, dinner might be panfried halibut, scallop ravioli, grilled asparagus and lobster bisque preceded by Jerusalem artichoke velouté, crispy egg milk and wild mushrooms. An amuse bouche might be crab salad with lemon jam on a scalloped crisp. Fashionably flavoured butters, garlic and seaweed, are sure to make an appearance. Photogenic puddings might include The Apple (Velvet Cloud yoghurt and white chocolate mousse, Irish Black Butter apple preserve, chocolate soil) or Gianduja and Pear (chocolate and hazelnut sabayon with caramel pear, Champagne poached pear). Anyone up for a Pale Rider cocktail at 2am on the terrace?

Categories
Architects Architecture Country Houses People

Kings of Leinster + Borris House Carlow

The Lines of Beauty

“The sun has one kind of splendour, the moon another and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendour.” I Corinthians 15:41

Roger White writes in Country Life, 3 October 2011, “First time visitors to Irish country houses are often struck by two things in particular. One is the sheer quality of architecture and craftmanship, and the other is the idiosyncrasy of the families who have owned these houses. Borris House in County Carlow has both characteristics in spades. The idiosyncrasy tends to be associated with the Anglo Irish but it would not be strictly accurate to so describe the Kavanaghs of Borris, about whom there is nothing ‘Anglo’.”

Staggered up a hillside, an architectural beauty parade of picturesque cottages clinging to the gradient, a Georgian house doubling as a petrol filling station, a boutique hotel boasting a celebrated chef, and an improbably vast château emerging like a granite mirage on the horizon, Borris in County Carlow is a cut above the average Irish village. With a County population of 50,000, one third that of the smallest London Borough, driving around Carlow is a breeze. It’s off the beaten track of the touristy east coast. Despite a chalkboard at the gates announcing a house tour, we’re the only people to turn up. Just us and the owner Morgan Kavanagh. There are no National Trust style timed entry queues round the curtilage.

While we are led round the house and adjoining chapel, something magical is happening outside. It’s the bewitching hour: late afternoon in an Irish winter. The windows of Borris House are ablaze – amber, cerulean, mauve, scarlet – in reflected glory as the sun sets behind the Blackstairs Mountains far away across the Barrow Valley. So what do we learn on our select tour? Rather a lot: Morgan proves to be an entertaining and well versed guide.

Key points of his tour include: Borris House is a mostly 1830s Richard and William Vitruvius Morrison confection. Neoclassical innards beneath a Tudoresque skin. In turn, the original Georgian box had swallowed up an older castle. Morrison masterpieces stretch the length of the country from Glenarm Castle in the north to Ballyfin in the midlands and Fota House in the south. Glenarm Castle, County Antrim, is the closest in looks.

Borris is the seat of the MacMorrough Kavanaghs, High Kings of Leinster. Their pedigree is traceable back to the dawn of Irish history. King Art Mór Mac Murchadha Caomhánach was a particularly feisty ancestor who reigned for 42 years, reviving his family’s power and land in between warring with the English King Richard II. The estate was once 12,000 hectares before being broken up in 1907. On the current 260 hectare walled demesne are Lebanon cedars, fern leaf beeches and Ireland’s tallest broadleaf tree. It’s a 44 metre high hybrid American poplar down by the River Barrow.

Morgan says, “A two storey wing with a walkway over the kitchen used to connect the main house to the estate chapel so that the family could enter straight into their first floor gallery seating. My grandmother demolished that wing. Anglican services are still held in the chapel every other Sunday.” Songstress Cecil Frances Alexander, forever extolling the combined merits of Christianity and country life, donated an organ (of the musical variety) to the chapel. Her son Cecil John Francis Alexander married Eva Kavanagh, daughter of a 19th century owner of Borris House, in 1882.

Most excitingly, in 1778, Eleanor Charlotte Butler, the sister-in-law of Thomas Kavanagh fled from Borris House where she was staying to elope with Sarah Ponsonby of Woodstock in Inistioge, County Kilkenny. Eleanor and Sarah escaped to East Britain and set up home together in Plas Newydd, Llangollen. They became well known as the ladies who did more than lunch together. Morgan recently discovered an 18th century letter in the library of Borris which refers to the pair as “Sapphos”.

Local historian Edmund Joyce carried out a study titled Borris House County Carlow and Elite Regency Patronage in 2013. Extracts include: “This study focuses on Borris House, the ancestral home of the MacMurrough Kavanagh family, situated beside the town of Borris in south County Carlow, Ireland. The house sits on a hillside facing southeast towards the County Wexford border. The Blackstairs Mountains, which terminate the prospect, form a boundary in that direction of unusual grandeur. During the 18th and 19th centuries, the MacDonough Kavanagh family were amongst the most powerful in the country with up to 30,000 acres of land in Counties Carlow, Kilkenny and Wexford.”

“In the early 19th century Borris House underwent a dramatic transformation and the house as it now stands is the result of this remodelling of the earlier classical house. The architectural historian Peter Pearson describes how ‘in the 1800s the MacMurrough Kavanaghs of Borris embarked on a lavish building programme that transformed their 18th century mansion into a Tudor Revival showpiece’. The changes were performed under the direction of Richard Morrison, the Cork born architect. The remodelled Borris House was the earliest recorded property in County Carlow to adopt the Gothic Revival style. Early Gothic Revival houses such as Slane Castle, County Meath (1785), are simply classical houses with gothic details.”

“The importance of Borris House as a Regency house designed by an Irish architect, furnished by Irish craftsmen and occupied by a landed family of Gaelic descent deserves a thorough study in order to draw out a deeper understanding of its meaning in the broader context of Regency design both at home and abroad. The scale of the building project at Borris House can be categorised as considerable by any comprehensive by any standard. The veneering of the house in the Gothic Revival style brought it up to date with fashionable contemporary design. In Ireland, a building draped in a Gothic shroud provided a consciousness and awareness of defence together with a deep rooted long ancestral provenance.”

“Christine Casey in her essay The Regency Great House describes how Richard Morrison ‘created a series of starkly contrasting interiors’, stating that ‘Borris is clearly a house bristling with ideas, unresolved but full of vitality and interest’. This clearly underscores the importance of the house in the context of Irish Regency design. Casey sees Borris House as Richard Morrison’s Regency prototype that ‘whets the appetite for the Morrisons’ grandest and most mature country house, Ballyfin, County Laois’.” Richard Morrison’s son, although suffering from depression, would join him in the thriving architectural practice. Randal McDonnell, Lord Antrim, owner of Glenarm Castle, once remarked to us how Morrison junior, “Went by the rather wonderful name of Vitruvius.”

In 2022 Edmund Joyce gave a lecture on Borris to the Kilkenny Archaeological Society. He explained, “The house is missing a big chunk and that chunk is missing as a result of works that happened in the 1950s. So when you get an architect in the 1950s to give you advice they give you three options. First option to let Borris House and build a small house adjacent. Second, to demolish rear sections of Borris House and take down the top storey of the main house. Third, to demolish Borris House and build a small house adjacent, a four bedroom bungalow in the walled garden.”

The Kavanaghs’ architect was Dan O’Neill Flanaghan of Waterford City. Edmund pulled extracts out of his 1957 report: “Perhaps I will be forgiven if I say that Borris House is not an architectural gem … to completely remove the front portico I do not think the general appearance of the house would suffer by its removal … to invite tenders from demolition contractors, and the second to auction it room by room, or floor by floor, and employ one’s own contractor on the demolition.”

Fortunately any decisions on the future of the house and estate had to go through four trustees. Option two was chosen in part: demolish the long two storey subsidiary wing. This proved costly and bereft the house of its kitchen. A vintage photograph (copyright of the Irish Architectural Archive: one of several reproduced here for non commercial educational purposes) shows part of the vanished wing. The cupolas, the crowning glory of the square turrets at each corner of the main block were removed at this time.

That’s as far as the demolition progressed. Edmund ended his lecture with, “The house was going forwards then it started going backwards now it’s going forwards again. A lot of restoration work is happening and the current generation is very interested in putting back what was there before. It’s nice to see that it’s gone full circle.” The recent lime rendering washed in apricot accentuates the best parapet in Ireland, even without its cupolas. Turning the circle comes at a price: it costs the Kavanaghs about €250,000 a year to maintain and run Borris House and estate.

“The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises.” Ecclesiastes 1:5

Categories
Architects Architecture Art Country Houses

Chartwell + Country Houses Westerham Kent

West Oast Cooler

South of Westerham lie wooded hills and valleys dotted with delightful country houses. Many of them exhibit the Tudorbethan characteristics of early 20th century domestic architecture. Others have highly distinctive roof shapes which display their origin or inspiration. Over to Sir William Addison’s Farmhouses in The English Landscape (1986), “The farm buildings associated with the new agriculture of fruit growing were oast houses, delightfully built in local vernacular style. It was appropriate that it should be so since ‘oast’ means ‘kiln’ and Kent had limekilns in the 14th century. They also integrate into the historical scene because they belong to the same tradition of mechanical ingenuity as windmills. Hops were introduced into Kent north of the Downs in 1525, but drum shaped oast houses, capped with a pivoted timber cowl with a flyboard controlled by the wind in the way weathervanes are, were not invented until the 1830s, so were a 19th century innovation.”

The most famous country house in the locale is Chartwell, once the home of Sir Winston and Lady Clementine Churchill and now a very popular National Trust tourist attraction. John Newman explains in his Pevsner Guide 1969, “Created in 1923 to 1924 for Sir Winston Churchill, who wanted a family house and was captivated by the site: high, but enclosed by wooded slopes and opening out to a panoramic view of the wooded Weald. The red brick mid Victorian house on the site was drastically reformed by Philip Tilden to create two narrow, towering wings to the east and south, both crowned by crowstep gables. In the angle between them a square staircase tower. Viewing terrace below. That was the grouping that mattered. Long, indecisive entrance front close to the road. The mighty timber doorcase with oakleaf columns was bought from a dealer; likewise the fancy wrought iron weathervane on the stair tower.” A rather odd naked squared trellis snakes across the entire highly visible gabled side wall.

There are two standout paintings in Chartwell. A strikingly flattering portrait of a young Sir Winston in oils hangs over a narrow staircase. It was painted by the wildly talented north Belfast born Sir John Lavery. The painting depicts the war hero as Lieutenant Colonel of the 6th Battalion Royal Scots Fusiliers which he commanded on the Western Front of World War I in early 1916. The artist employs his trademark technique of a brightly lit figure in a dark surround. Rather different but still of interest is Sir Winston’s oil painting of Clementine hanging in the hallway below. It’s his best painting by a country kilometre. Clementine’s joyful face joyfully beams upwards against a rough hewn surround creating a sketched appearance. He created it aged 80 using a photograph mirror imaged and enlarged on a projection.

The environs of Westerham overflow with greenness and pleasantness on Diary Lane and Froghole Lane and Hosey Common Lane and Puddledock Lane and Spout Lane. One house brings a little Strawberry Hill to Crockham Hill. The prettiness of Mariners has evolved over half a millennium. A seven bay Georgian brick main block is enlivened by a Gothick porch and end turrets with lancet windows. Asymmetrical wings add yet more eclectic charm. This is how the other half of the one percenters live. Even the goats look posh.

Categories
Architects Architecture Art Country Houses Design People

The Wellesleys + Stratfield Saye House Not Too Near Reading Hampshire

The Continuation of Humble Elegance

Henry James (1910), “You first discovered yourself in England, just as I first did myself.”

In the days before everything was organic, authentic and artisanal; when experience was lived by default; gaslighting involved illumination; ghosting had a supernatural connotation; deep dive involved water; extra referred to additionality; mankind included women; bad actors were thespians who weren’t good at their job; there was Caesar, Greek and Niçoise but no word salad; only trains were cancelled; and catfish was just an animal, hero projects were all about winning battles.

Let the poor eat carrot cake. Such a relief the architect Benjamin Dean Wyatt didn’t get to “out Blenheim Blenheim” with his dream of a palace of ceremonial pomp and circumstance. The 1st Duke of Wellington had a rather better idea after for the estate he bought in 1817, two years after his Battle of Waterloo victory. Keep the old house and add on a couple of bedrooms above the orangery wings. So in the end Benjamin only got to see his design for a porch realised – albeit a rather smart Greek Doric one. Ever inventive, in 1831 the Duke added secondary glazing, central heating and WCs to the existing house (the latter naturally lit by tiny single pane casement windows like the type you get in 20th century Berlin flats). Stratfield Saye House is large by most people’s standards but it’s not ducal in style or scale. Fit for a baron and all the better for it. Tate Britain has Tracey Emin’s installation My Bed. Stratfield Saye has the Great Duke of Wellington’s Campaign Bed.

Mark Girouard comments in Historic Houses of Britain (1984), “One can see why Wellington developed an affection for Stratfield Saye. It is certainly not a stately home but it has a great deal of character and charm. It was originally a long, low, red brick house, built in about 1650 by Sir William Pitt, James I’s comptroller, and decorated with the so called Flemish gables (with curved sides and pedimented tops) which were in fashion at the time. Two matching stable blocks front the house and give it a forecourt and a pleasant air of formality.”

An elephant used to mow the lawn. The stables are now apartments, an archives office and a museum to the 1st Duke. There are a few false windows on the entrance front. The external walls were once painted buff and the window surrounds green. And so they remain. Clocks chime indoors. Apollo magazines sit on chests in the Entrance Hall. That room is the volume of a five bay three storey house. Well stocked drinks trolleys are in the corridors. Country Life magazines sit on chests in the Library. When you’ve finished browsing the back issues there are 3,000 books to read. The silk wallcovering dates from 1953. A jib door in the Study with its Chippendale desk and replica of the chair on which the 1st Duke died in Walmer Castle in Kent leads through to a private suite of a bedroom and spa bathroom.

The centrepiece of the museum is the 1st Duke’s catafalque made of bronze cast from melted down French cannon captured at Waterloo. It was designed and constructed in just 18 days by the wonderfully named Department of Practical Arts. The height of the car was limited to 5.2 metres to pass under Temple Bar on its procession through central London. It was drawn by twelve black dray horses leaving Horse Guards at 9.25am on 18 November 1852 and arriving in the yard of St Paul’s Cathedral at noon.

The Illustrated London News reported at the time, “The eight cavalry bands, too, being in motion along the Mall, contributed their notes of measured grief. The ‘trumpet’s silver sound’ still discoursed Handel’s music, and the ear found a new beauty in every accidental combination by which the breeze or the distance imparted novelty to the effect. The soldiers having filed off, the Kings-at-Arms, in their gorgeous tabards, marshalled the mourning coaches in their due order of precedence.”

The 8th Duke inserted a swimming pool into the Orangery off the Library. Logs are piled up in the chimneypieces of the main rooms: the Wellesley family might call in at any moment. The wine box in the Dining room holds 250 bottles. The 7th Duke designed the Gold Room carpet which was made in 1946. Once the Housekeeper’s Room, the Breakfast Room is filled with 60 place china including arsenic blue Meisen. In Mrs Arbuthnot’s Bedroom upstairs there are two corner cabinets. One is a wardrobe, the other a WC. There’s a freestanding roll top bath in the bedroom. Someone has been using Ren shampoo. And reading Nancy Lancaster: Her Life, Work, Her Art (1996) by Robert Becker. The Print Room was created by the current Duke and Duchess using Boydell prints found in the attics.

John Cornforth writes about the 7th Duke in The Inspiraton of the Past (1985), “Lord Gerald Wellesley, one of the most interesting figures of his generation, who explained in his Collected Works (1970) that he had always wanted to be an architect, but his parents had considered it a hazardous and uncertain career for a younger son who had his own way to make; and it was only after World War I that he was able to fulfil his ambition. By nature a scholar and possessing a finely tuned, fastidious taste, he became involved in many projects relating to the improvement of the arts of design, public taste and later preservation, particularly of country houses, and through his friendships and his houses he had an influence on a considerable number of people. Indeed Mrs Lancaster says that he and Lady Juliet Duff were the people in England who understood the arrangement of furniture and works of art best.”

John continues, “Lord Gerald Wellesley was drawn to the Regency period both for aesthetic reasons and for personal ones too, because it was the period of his ancestor, the Great Duke of Wellington, but as an architect he was concerned with the present and the future, and it is interesting to see in his work and in a great deal of what Christopher Hussey wrote in the late 1920s and early 1930s that they were concerned with the future of classicism.” Gerald designed the tall cupola crowning the roofscape of Stratfield Saye.

The dashing moustachioed brunette Henry Valerian Wellesley wasn’t as fortunate as his famous ancestor, dying in battle aged 31. Born Earl of Mornington in 1912, he was styled Marquess of Douro between 1934 and 1941 before spending the last two years of his short life as the 6th Duke of Wellington. He was killed in action in World War II and is buried in Salerno close to where he died. His uncle Lord Gerald Wellesley would succeed him as the 7th Duke of Wellington.

In early Victorian times Chelsea was transmogrifying from a village into an area of London. St Luke’s Anglican Church celebrated its bicentenary last year. It was the brainchild of the Reverend Gerald Wellesley, the 1st Duke of Wellington’s brother, who held his office from 1805 to 1832. He conducted the marriage of Charles Dickens and Catherine Hogarth in 1836. The 1st Duke married Kitty Pakenham of Tullynally Castle, County Westmeath who attracted good, bad and ugly critique. Kitty’s rooms were in the northeast corner of the first floor of Stratfield Saye; the Duke’s, in the southwest corner of the ground floor.

Playwright Lady Elizabeth Yorke observed, “Her appearance, unfortunately, does not correspond with one’s notion of an ambassadress or the wife of a hero, but she succeeds uncommonly well in her part.” Novelist Maria Edgeworth commented, “After comparison with crowds of other beaux spirits, fine ladies and fashionable scramblers for notoriety, her graceful simplicity rises in our opinion, and we feel it with more conviction of its superiority. Philosopher Germaine de Staël thought Kitty was “adorable”. The Great Duke’s closest female friend Harriet Arbuthnot, who sounds like she had a vested interest, said Kitty was “a fool” and he had “repeatedly tried to live in a friendly manner with her but it was impossible and it drove him to seek that comfort and happiness abroad that was denied him at home”.

Kitty was a prolific letter writer. In a letter to Elizabeth Hume, daughter of the 1st Duke’s doctor, dated 22 August 1824, she mentions various animals including a canary called Crispino and her husband’s famous horse Copenhagen: “It was at Broadstairs that I was first called Viscountess Wellington. It was on a Sunday for the Gazette came out on a Saturday night. I recollect holding the plate at church on that day in my new character, for a charity sermon. I have nothing more to say dearest girl except that little Crispino is quit ewell, so is the emew and as for Copenhagen he trots after me eating bread out of my hand and wagging his tail like a little dog. Are you very good? What are you reading?”

The Heritage of Great Britain and Ireland edited by Melanie Bradley-Shaw and Jacqui Hawthorn (1992) records, “On each side of the house lie the Pleasure Grounds with may rare and interesting trees with a particularly fine group of Wellingtonias, named in honour of the Great Duke in 1853. In the Ice House Paddock lies the grave of Copenhagen, buried with full military honours after living out his days in retirement at Stratfield Saye, frequently ridden by his master and a multitude of children. The spreading Turkey Oak which shelters his grave grew from an acorn planted by Mrs Apostles, the Duke’s housekeeper.”

A 550 metre straight avenue leads from the gatelodges to the forecourt in front of the northwest facing entrance front of the house. The southeast elevation looks across a vast lawn stretching down to the River Loddon which acts as a haha. A rustic wooded Roman Temple built in 1846 to commemorate a visit by Queen Victoria is an eyecatcher in the North Pleasure Gardens. The South Pleasure Gardens stretch out in the direction of St Mary the Virgin Church and The Old Rectory. The Duke and Duchess-in-Waiting’s home, The Old Rectory is a highly attractive pale brick house with a late 18th century core. A lunette window over a Tuscan columned projection looks over formal gardens. The house was later twice extended so appears as three distinct phases of development. The Pheasantry Lodge is a larger than normal mid 19th century Italianate gatelodge marking the entrance to the St Mary’s and The Old Rectory. The Great Duke’s beautifully planted formal gardens are laid out on one side of the north avenue.

An Anglo Irish atmosphere somehow still permeates Stratfield Saye House – Curraghmore (County Waterford) meets Mount Stewart (County Down). The Wellington connection lives on in Ireland. Annadale Grammar School for boys opened in south Belfast in 1950. It was named after the childhood home of Anne, Countess of Mornington, mother of the Great Duke, which had once stood on the school site. The school adopted the Duke’s motto Virtus Fortunate Comes: Fortune Favours the Brave. The family connection became even more apparent when Annadale amalgamated with Carolan Grammar School for girls in 1990 and Wellington College was formed.

Henry James (1905), “These delicious old houses, in the long August days, in the south of England air, on the soil over which so much has passed and out of which so much has come, rose before me like a series of visions.”

Categories
Architects Architecture Country Houses People Restaurants

The McCauslands + Drenagh Limavady Londonderry

Jericho’s Retina

“The house looks lovely in the sun: we want you to come and visit us! The gardens are open seven days a week and you can do lots of walks. There are walks from five minutes to 45 minutes. We have a Walled Garden, an Italian Garden, an Arboretum and lots of fun stuff. It’s poignant for me because having almost lost everything I now want to make a legacy for my children. Sometimes it is overwhelming because when I look at other gardens that are successful and how well they do it, I look at the number of staff they have and I think – it’s just Daniel and me! That’s it at the moment. When you’re in the house and you see all these 12 generations of McCauslands looking down at you, you can’t help but feel they’re watching you. The café and shop are the first building work on the estate in a century.” So says owner Conolly McCausland.

Welcome to Drenagh, one of the three Sir Charles Lanyon designed statement country houses of Ulster. The other two are Ballywalter Park in County Down and Dundarave in County Antrim. In 2014 two of the three were for sale. Dundarave and its 485 hectare estate were sold through Savills to an investor company for around £10 million. Drenagh and its 400 hectare estate went on the market through Simon O’Brien for the same price. It was the end of a centuries’ long era for the McCausland family: the main lender Leeds Clydesdale Bank had withdrawn its support for Drenagh and the associated farm. But the following year, Conolly raised £5 million with the sale of land which more than covered the reported bank debts of £3.2 million. Drenagh was taken off the market.

The Honourable Dorinda Lady Dunleath and Sir Charles Brett and their cohorts spent much of the second half of the 20th century Listing the heritage of Ulster. Walter Girvan compiled the unusually titled North Derry (the accepted norm is Derry City in County Londonderry) List in 1972 to 1974. It’s quite the entry and worth quoting in its entirety for fullness. So here goes. “Drenagh House stands in a commanding position in the centre of well wooded parkland to the east of Limavady. The family home of the McCauslands, it was originally called Fruithill; as at Dundarave near Bushmills, it seems to have assumed a new name with its final rebuilding in the late 1830s. Its predecessor appeared to date from the 1730s; the Ordnance Survey comments that it was ‘an old fashioned looking house, which looks extremely well when seen partly through the trees by which it is surrounded’. It probably was similar to Streeve House and, in spite of extensions, was already by the 1820s thought to be too small, so John Hargrave was asked to produce drawings for an entirely new house. Elevations and plans survive and show a chaste neo Greek design, which bears a resemblance to Seaforde House, County Down. Hargrave was not given the job and there the matter rested until Charles Lanyon arrived in County Antrim as County Surveyor in 1836. The present building appears to be Lanyon’s very first commission for a country seat of major proportions, and it is interesting to watch his progress from the relatively restrained neoclassicism of Drenagh, through the greater flamboyance of Laurel Hill in Coleraine of 1843, to the sumptuous Italianate of Dundarave in 1847. In retrospect, the superb assurance of Dundarave is lacking in the earlier building, although there are typical Lanyon touches.”

Born in Cork in the 1780s, John Hargrave’s office was on Talbot Street in Dublin. He was especially active in the northwest. One of Omagh in County Tyrone’s most prominent landmarks, the Courthouse, is by his hand. One of Omagh’s most obscure buildings is another of his designs, the Prison Governor’s House. He brings the former’s strong string courses and the latter’s polygonal geometry to his design for Drenagh. The house that never was has a long five bay two storey “Elevation of Principal Front” with tripartite windows at either end of the ground floor. The entrance door is also treated in tripartite form with flanking sidelights. Clerestory windows below the cornice light an attic floor. At first it’s hard to reconcile this front with “Elevation towards the Rear” as the latter is narrower, higher with an exposed raised basement, and treated differently with a canted bay window either side of the central three bays. Column and pilaster free, John proves himself to be master of astylar architecture.

Why the McCauslands dropped John Hargrave’s proposal is lost in the mists of time. Sir Charles Lanyon’s executed main block is more regular in footprint, a deeper and narrower rectangle. It is a mirror image of John’s: the ancillary wing stretches to the left, not the right, of the main entrance door. The basement is not externally visible. Both designs have two canted bay windows on the elevation facing away from the entrance although the built version are much shallower.

Back to William Girvan, “The house, of two stories, is of finely dressed sandstone. As at Dundarave, each of the main facades is treated differently. The entrance front is five bays wide, the central bay recessed in the usual Lanyon way. While the lower windows are plain, the upper have shallow surrounds, curving into the string course which acts as a sill. The hipped roof is concealed behind a balustrade, and weight is given to the central bay for blocking out the balusters. A hexastyle portico of unfluted Ionic columns, surmounted by a balustrade, enclose the entrance door, which has a semicircular fanlight and sidelights, an idea reused at Laurel Hill and Dundarave. The double string course between storeys units each façade. The southwest front is more awkward – six bays long; the central two bays step forward and are framed by shallow giant pilasters; the surmounting pediment is not strong enough to dominate. The northwest front is managed better. Canted bay windows rise through the two storeys and frame a French window which has a mock segmental fanlight. A lower block of offices extends north eastwards.”

“The interior plan is similar to both Ballywalter Park and Dundarave. An entrance hall with a shallow dome set on Soanesque pendentives opens into a central hall from which all the reception rooms lead. More intimate in scale than its successors, it has a screen of richly decorated Corinthian columns. For ceiling and overdoor and ornaments Lanyon used classical mouldings. A shallow coloured glass dome lights the room. The effect is Roman in its weightiness. The stair, rising between one of the columned screens, divides at the half landing; it has particularly fine cast iron balusters, clad in ivy tendrils. The stairwell ceiling is richly moulded with a scalloped design, bordering an acanthus roundel. Each of the reception rooms is treated differently; the Drawing Room ceiling is the most splendid with an enriched gilded cornice, containing a device Lanyon used elsewhere in the house and at Bellarena – a continuous pipe, encircled by acanthus leaves; the rest is panelled, with a flower bedecked roundel. The Morning Room and Dining Room ceilings are simpler; a nice original Victorian wallpaper of tangled flowers still hangs in the Saloon. Each room has a lavish marble fireplace, all of different pattern and hue. The first floor bedroom passage has unusual and attractive plaster ribbed vaulting, rising from corbels; on the side opposite the stairwell, the pattern changes to a series of shallow domes.”

“The courtyard behind the house is entered by a shallow segmental archway; above is a pediment with clock inserted. The two storey stable courtyard lies beyond; a simple design of six wide coach arches, the centre two pedimented and stepping forward; the side wings, seven bays long have round headed fanlights over the doors. All is in dressed sandstone. Adjacent to it is a second court of rubblestone: this is probably the stable block of the older Fruithill.”

“The house is surrounded by lawns, enclosed by balustraded terraces. Beyond are well wooded shrubberies and a stately flight of steps leading to a massive balustraded vantage point, which looks over a dell, laid out formally with ponds; under it is a fountain exedra. The remains of the old house have been laid out as a walled garden. The northern gatelodge by Lanyon is an exceptionally refined three bay by three sandstone cottage with minuscule tetrastyle Ionic portico – a foretaste of the big house. It has a fine set of piers and gates. The southern lodge dates from 1830 and is a charming L shaped sandstone cottage with pretty paired Gothick lattice pane windows set in simple reveals. It is known as Logan’s Lodge.”

Taken for Granted, compiled by Alistair Coey and Richard Pierce in 1984 for a specialist audience, was described by its authors as “a celebration of 10 years of historic buildings conservation”. The entry for Drenagh confirms, “Charles Lanyon’s first large country house commission. Built in 1836 on the site of an earlier house dating from the 1730s. The house is neoclassical two storeys of finely detailed ashlar sandstone with three different main elevational treatments. A balustraded parapet conceals the roof. The interior is planned around a large central hall lit by a circular leaded light. Phase one: grant assistance of £263 given towards repairs to leadwork. Approximate cost of work: £640. Carried out in 1976. Contractor: Dickie and Hamilton, Coleraine. Phase two: grant assistance of £1,400 given towards repairs to chimneys, roofs, rainwater goods and stonework. Redecoration of remedial items. Approximate cost of work: £2,868. Carried out in 1978. Contractor: Dickie and Hamilton, Coleraine. Phase three: grant assistance of £250 given towards repairs to leadwork including clocktower. Approximate cost of work: £513. Carried out in 1980. Contractor: Dickie and Hamilton, Coleraine. Phase four: grant assistance of £680 given towards treatment of wood rot and subsequent reinstatement. Approximate cost of work: £1,363. Carried out in 1980. Phase five: grant assistance of £3,800 given towards repairs to leadwork. Treatment of extensive dry rot and repairs to internal plasterwork. Approximate cost of work: £7,615. Carried out in 1981. Contractor: William Douglas, Limavady. Timber treatment: Rentokil, Belfast.”

The footprint of the main block is deeper than in it is wide. Perpendicular to the five bay southeast facing entrance front, the southwest front is a generously spaced six bays. An even number is unusual: an odd number of bays allowing for a central feature is conventional in classical architecture. Sir Charles Lanyon came to own it though: Ballywalter Park has a six bay garden front (excluding the wings) and Dundarave has a six bay entrance front. The Entrance Hall of Drenagh leads into a central Corinthian columned Hall naturally illuminated by a circular rooflight. The triple flight staircase rises to one side of the Hall. The architect was a master of the flow: the main reception rooms – Billiard Room, Morning Room, Library, Drawing Room, Salon and Dining Room (going anticlockwise) – all open off the Hall.

On the first floor, a continuous bedroom corridor circulates around the void over the circular rooflight. Still going anticlockwise, Work Room, Blue Room, Balcony Room, South Room, Green Room, Rose Room, Orange Room, Monroe Room and Bow Room all have glorious views across the gardens and parkland. The footprint of the wing, which is formed around a courtyard and stretches towards the stable block, is as large as the footprint of the main block. The storey heights of the wing are much lower as befits its status. Drenagh is built on a grand scale: the Drawing Room measures 11 metres into the bay window by 6.6 metres wide. The Orange Room above it measures 6.7 metres by 6.6 metres. To put that in context, at 44.22 square metres the Orange Room is just shy of the recommended size of a one bed flat in the 2021 London Plan which is 50 square metres.

There are lots of other residential properties on the estate. Bothy Flat, Clock Flat, Laundry Flat and Upper Garden Flat are in the wing. Forester’s Cottage, Garden Cottage, Logan Cottage, Kitty’s Cottage, The Pheasantry, Shell Hill Cottage, Streeve Hill and Yard House are standalone buildings. Killane Lodge is a gatelodge: the main house in miniature. So the farmland continues to be farmed and the estate dwellings tenanted.

Conolly launched Drenagh as a wedding venue in 2012. A ceremony for up to 60 guests can be held in the house or a marquee in the Walled Garden for a maximum of 200 people. He says, “The romantic Moon Garden and the elegant Morning Room are inspirational places for couples to tie the knot. We can accommodate 16 overnight guests in the main house and 12 in the wing. Drenagh can also be rented and is proving popular, especially for American guests. Our housekeeper will look after arrangements.” Helicopter flights can be arranged to pick up guests arriving at City of Derry Airport and set them down on the lawn outside the house. Or a limousine can be despatched.

A lot has changed since 1991 when Conolly’s mother and stepfather took the first steps towards estate diversification by opening the house to large group tours and for bed and breakfast as part of the Hidden Ireland group. Back then the Italian Garden was a mass of bamboos. The remote northwest of Northern Ireland has some catching up to do with the touristy east coast. There are no National Trust country houses nearby. The nearest country house, Bellarena, which was partially remodelled by Sir Charles Lanyon, remains unopen to the public. Drenagh fills the cultural void, flies the heritage flag, and provides fabulous quiche in The Orangery café inside the Walled Garden.

Categories
Architects Architecture Country Houses Design Luxury People Restaurants

Squerryes Court + Winery Westerham Kent

The Summer Garden of England

Apart from the parkland surrounding the house, the rest of the 1,000 hectare estate until the beginning of this century was used for agriculture. Now 21 hectares are under vine. Our joyful vintner explains the vineyard uses the double fermentation Champagne method for the sparkling wine it produces. She says, “We blend Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier to create our balanced and complex final signature wines. Chardonnay brings elegance and finesse; Pinot Noir delivers structure and depth; and Pinot Meunier adds a fruity profile.” Located high on the North Downs in Kent, the vintage wines of the Squerryes Estate are a distinct expression of the terroir – such a great French word – and winemaking methods.

But first we spin by Squerryes Court to get a glimpse of the house and lake and parkland. The house is at the top of a gentle rise to the south of Westerham (the Winery is to the east). The two most famous sons of this historic town are General James Wolfe and Sir Winston Churchill. Both gentlemen were friends with the owners of Squerryes Court. John Warde and Anne Warde signed the interwar visitors’ book at Chartwell, the Churchills’ nearby residence. Squerryes Court is the quintessential English country house. The Pevsner guide to Kent: West and the Weald by John Newman (1980), states, “The epitome of the hipped roof house, as popularised by Sir Roger Pratt’s Clarendon House, Piccadilly, handsome in its proportions and unusually craftsmanly in its warm red brickwork.” Sir Nicholas Crisp bought the estate in 1681 and completed the house five years later. In 1731, John Warde bought the house and estate.

We head off to the Squerryes Winery Restaurant in time for the last of the summer sparkling wine. Our ebullient vintner tells us the Head Chef is from the west of Ireland. Seamus McDonagh trained at the Galway Mayo Institute of Technology. “A lot of my food is based around the French cooking classics,” he shares. “I just like to add a bit of a modern twist.” We’re fine wining and dining and reclining on the terrace on a sunkissed evening watching shadows creep across the vines. Marmite butter, smoked cod roe, Scottish King Scallops, barbequed aubergine marinated in chimichurri, chocolate sponge cake … everything we love.

Vintage Rosé 2021 is the perfect accompaniment to our meal. This vegan wine disgorged in August last year is 75 percent Pinot Noir and 25 percent Pinot Meunier. Laura Evans, Squerryes Master of Wine, describes its tasting notes, “Delicate pink. On the nose crunchy red fruits, redcurrant, sun ripened strawberries and raspberries. On the palate, notes of strawberries and cream pink grapefruit and minerality.” The warm climate and chalk soil of Kent are ideal for such high quality sparkling winemaking.

Henry Warde is the eighth generation of the family to live in Squerryes Court. He relates, “‘Licet Esse Beatis’ is our family motto, meaning ‘permitted to be joyful’, so we like to say that we’re in the business of creating joy! Treasured letters tell how my ancestor Sir Patience Warde traded wool from the Estate with the French for red wine which he then sold to the hardworking people of London bringing some pleasure to their days.”

He continues, “It felt like the tides were changing when centuries later a very well known French Champagne house came to Squerryes looking to buy some of our land on which to grow their vines. My father John and I decided to walk away from those negotiations and instead set about planting 36 acres of vines ourselves back in 2006. The ‘long thirsty wait’ that my father spoke of when the first vines were planted has been well worth it. We are already enjoying recognition for the quality of our vintage wines.” Our jubilant vintner tells us the Winery now sells 100,000 bottles a year.

Wine GB’s 2025 Industry Report states that there are now 1,104 vineyards (totalling 4,489 hectares under vine in England and 91 hectares in Wales) which together produce 9.1 million bottles a year (6.2 million of sparkling and 2.9 million of still). Plantings are up 510 percent since 2005. The most planted grape varieties in descending order of dominance are Chardonnay (31 percent of the total hectarage), Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier, Bacchus, Seyval Blanc, Solaris, Pinot Gris, Reichensteiner, Rondo and Pinot Blanc (one percent of the total hectarage). Actually there are now 99 grape varieties in England and Wales including just three hectares of Merlot and a lonely two hectares of Riesling.

England now has 10 wine growing counties. Again, in descending order of scale is Kent (almost one third of the total hectarage), West Sussex, Essex, East Sussex, Hampshire, Surrey, Dorset, Gloucestershire, Devon and Suffolk (below two percent). Squerryes Winery is in line with the regional breakdown: the top Southeast varieties are Chardonnay followed by Pinot Noir and finally Pinot Meunier. Champagne watch out!

Categories
Architecture Country Houses People

The Landmark Trust + Obriss Farm The Weald Kent

A Gentle Revisitation of Days That Are No More

An article in the May 1990 edition of the now defunct Traditional Homes magazine marked The Landmark Trust’s silver jubilee. Julia Abel Smith records in History for Hire, “The organisation was founded in 1965 to save minor but important buildings, and to give them a new life by letting them out to holidaymakers. In co founder Sir John’s words, ‘The Landmark Trust was set up ‘to tackle projects too troublesome or unfashionable for anyone else.’” So there might be a midnight dash across a roof terrace to the bathroom or the need to duck under low ceiling beams. Julia notes that generally the Trust does not take on buildings that could be restored as permanent homes.

Some are urban oases such as Marshal Wade’s House in the centre of Bath. Others are coastal retreats like St Augustine’s Grange and St Edward’s Presbytery on the edge of Ramsgate. And at least one has a kilometre long drive and a view unbroken by any other buildings stretching across fields towards infinity or at least the far side of The Weald. That will be Obriss Farm betwixt pretty Edenbridge and even prettier Westerham. Except for the occasional plane streaking the sky en route to Gatwick, it’s hard to imagine the property is a mere 61 kilometres from The Ritz (London not Paris). A copse and an orchard and fields form a green and pleasant apron round this red house and attendant barns. The Trust lets out the 65 hectare farm for pasture.

Obriss Farm was bequeathed by Helena Cooper in 1990. It was formerly part of the Chartwell Estate which was bought by Sir Winston Churchill in 1922 and is now a major National Trust tourist attraction. The oldest part of the complex is the late 16th century dark stained weatherboarded bakehouse immediately behind the farmhouse – a standalone kitchen. The front half of the house also dates from Tudor times. It was doubled in size down the centuries. Later stables and a cowhouse to the west of the house and a wool store to the east have similar dark stained weatherboarding. A 17th century threshing barn is set back from the end of the lawn. The two storey plus attic house has tile hung upper floors on the side and rear elevations matching the roof tiles. Brick is used elsewhere.

The rectangular floor plan is simply laid out to accommodate five guests. Leaded casement windows, exposed timber frame walls and terracotta tiled floors provide a robust backdrop to antique pieces and comfortable furniture. Everything is so beautiful and simple. “The countryside was still in its summer green,” rhapsodises the poet Siegfried Sassoon in his 1940 autobiography The Weald of Youth, “and the afternoon roads hot and dusty.” That’s just one of many local interest books in the sitting room. On a warm summer weekend little has changed. Rabbits and pheasants and buzzards appear and disappear. Apples and blackberries and damson plums are ripe for picking. Local placenames are quintessentially English: Bardogs; Pootings; Puddledock.

Richard Harwood OBE KC, Joint Head of Chambers of 39 Essex Chambers, and Clarissa Levi, Art and Heritage Counsel of Wedlake Bell, host a podcast series Art and Heritage Law. The Landmark Trust at 60 episode is an interview with the historian and charity’s Director, Dr Anna Keay OBE. “We were established to do two things,” Anna explains. “Firstly, to rescue historic buildings in jeopardy in the UK, principally, and to repair and rejuvenate them. Secondly, and really importantly, to make them into places people can really enjoy and specifically through making them available for people to stay in for breaks – for holidays. That’s what we’ve been doing for the last 60 years.”

Anna expands on the origins of the Trust. “We were founded by two individuals, John and Christian Smith, both sadly now dead. They were quite involved in the conservation movement in the Sixties and of course this was a postwar time of unparalleled destruction and damage to historic fabric – partly the impact of war and partly a process of what was seen then as national renewal. The rate of Listed Building demolition in the mid 1960s – I always find this amazing – was 400 a year in England.” While the big institutions, notably The National Trust and the Ministry of Works, concentrated on saving stately homes, smaller properties were being overlooked.

Clarissa mentions how she likes Sir John Smith’s quote about rescuing troublesome and unfashionable buildings. Anna responds, “That’s us!” John Smith was an MP for a short time and was one of the people responsible for introducing the Planning Act 1965 which created Conservation Areas. “They started small,” Anna confirms. “The first two buildings they took on were quite modest vernacular buildings: Church Cottage and Paxton’s Tower Lodge, both in south Wales. They placed an advert in The Sunday Times in 1967 saying holiday cottages from The Landmark Trust available to rent and they went from there to completing three or four buildings every year.”

When you enter a Landmark Trust property, after being bowled over by the architecture, there’s a distinct interior look to admire. Anna says, “Essentially it’s an old English country house vibe slightly merged with a sort of Arts and Crafts quite spare approach which is totally born of personal taste. It’s timelessly lovely.” Old Turkish rugs, oak furniture, comfy sofas and pictures of local scenery or historical characters create a formula that works along with branded details like clothes hangers and soap. Richard remarks, “It comes over in the fabulous book for the 50th anniversary by Anna and Caroline Stanford that the Trust was a personal mission of the Smiths but also how they would pull their friends and contacts into how things were designed and how things were thought through.”

She observes, “The irony is that such is the strange world for demand of different types of furniture and paintings and stuff from the past that if you were to go into John Lewis to buy a new dining room table it would cost way more that if you were to go to an antiques fair and get one from a bloke in a field.” Old pieces are more sustainable, often better made and look more at home in period properties. What Anna calls “a whole cycle of positives”.

There are three core criteria for choosing to take on a new building. It must be of really special historical or architectural significance. It must be at genuine risk and not saveable by the market. And it must be financially viable under the Trust’s model. “Our work not only involves the physicality of trying to save somewhere but also trying to untangle complicated tenure or freeing a building from the status that may in part be why it’s got into such a bad state.” Clarissa comments, “I love the reimagining of buildings for places to have a lovely holiday in that were never intended to actually be stayed in. I am thinking of when I was a child I went to stay with family one time in the Landmark Trust’s Pineapple. It blew my mind – it still does really!”

The charity also plays a wider role. Over to Anna again, “The Trust has shown how adaptable buildings can be ever since it was converting old industrial buildings to domestic use in the Seventies. Now of course we’re all used to the idea of an old mill becoming flats but in the Sixties that was unthinkable. As well as being a lovely thing for people to stay in them it can be a way of showing how changes can be made sympathetically that will hopefully inspire other adaptations.” A philosophy of care guides each restoration (and often a conversion is involved) from the outset. The Trust considers what are the special characteristics to enhance and preserve. This founding principle is referred to when practical decisions need to be made. The volumes of the original space and its former use are respected and celebrated.

Anna says, “Projects take a long time so we always have some we are just about to finish on and hang up the curtains and others right at the beginning and we’re trying to do the land acquisition. One we are working on at the moment which is a really exciting is a World War II project: what was RAF Ibsley down in the New Forest. It was what was known as a ‘watch office’. The building is derelict and in a really bad way.”

“Another big one that we’re right at the beginning of and we’re so excited about has been a cause célèbre of heritage at risk for actually 50 years is a house called Mavisbank. It’s just outside Edinburgh – it’s not a remote building. The house was designed by William Adam, father of Robert Adam, the progenitor of that amazing dynasty of architects. His client was John Clarke who was one of the people who signed the Act of Union between England and Scotland. Mavisbank is really the first great neo Palladian house in Scotland and has been derelict, roofless and in the most dangerous state for decades now. It was nearly demolished in the Eighties. The compulsory purchase order is under way and all being well by the end of the year we will be the proud owners of a totally derelict 1720s house!”

Anna concludes, “We’re thrilled to be part of the rescue of these buildings but we’re only a part of the journey. Those people who come to stay in our buildings or financially support our campaigns or write letters of support – they are travelling with us. It’s a real mass movement activity. We haven’t got a shares portfolio; we don’t have a mega investor. We are literally a charity that survives on the support people give us because they choose to and the fact that people can stay in our buildings. The pioneering spirit of the Edwardian philanthropists is in our DNA.” Richard ends the podcast, “What you’ve set out is not only the philosophy of heritage but also the way you go about it, the way you think about buildings and how they should be rescued and brought back into use.”

Browsing through more books in the sitting room, Sir William Addison could easily be referring to Obriss Farm in Farmhouses in The English Landscape, 1986, “Eventually the prudent yeomen of The Weald realised how destructive of every local interest reckless felling of timber would be if it continued much longer. So what was called half timbering was introduced, with thinner timbers wider apart built into the structure in square or oblong panels to be filled with wattle and daub in the East Anglia manner. But in Kent, as early as Elizabeth I’s reign, tiles were being used for wall cladding in half timbered buildings as well as for those built up to first floor level in brick. In the later years of the 17th century weatherboarding came into competition with hanging tiles for wall cladding.” Half timbering can best be seen in the south wall of the single bedroom at the rear of the house: it was once an external wall.

And Roger Higham nicely sums up the county in Kent, 1974, “There are at least three good reasons why Kent makes a fit literary and photographic subject: firstly, it is large; secondly, it is diverse; and thirdly, it is accessible. A fourth reason perhaps transcending the first three, could be suggested: its importance.” The last reason could apply to an article and even more so when it focuses on Obriss Farm in The Weald.

Categories
Architects Architecture Art Country Houses People

Lytham Hall Lytham St Anne’s Lancashire +

Rhymes With Rhythm

A short car ride though the beautiful Blackpool suburb of Lytham St Anne’s – turn of the 20th century villas between sand dunes – leads from the best hotel in northwest England (obviously Boulevard) to the grandest country house in the region. A few months previously Peter Sheppard and Keith Day had hosted lunch on a rainy afternoon in the library of Wolterton Hall in Norfolk just before they sold up. In contrast, a visit to Lytham Hall is on a sunny morning. What’s the connection? The two buildings were crowned joint winners of the Historic Houses Restoration Award 2022. It is thanks to the combined drive of General Manager Peter Anthony and Deputy Manager Paul Lomax over the last eight years that the revival of Lytham Hall has been such a laudable success.

The main block, wings, most of the outbuildings and the parkland have all been restored beyond any former glory.  Rooms are now brimming with chattels from taxidermy to hosiery, dressed to the nines or at least the 1890s. Intense colours ensure there’s never a dull moment: lemon coloured walls; an emerald hued ceiling; lime panels and peach coving; burgundy flock wallpaper. In contrast, Lytham Hall has a no nonsense Palladian exterior that is unmistakeably by the able hand of Yorkshireman John Carr. Everything is just so about it from sound proportions to sturdy detailing. Exuberance is saved for the interior decoration. Fellow Yorkshireman Francis Johnson would take on the mantle of serious neoclassical architecture two centuries later.

Francis even worked on Everingham Park, a John Carr house outside York. This contemporaneous seven bay three storey house is a smaller plainer version of Lytham Hall. David Neave and John Martin Robinson state in Francis Johnson Architect: A Classical Statement (2001), “Francis’s treatment of Everingham was typical of his scholarly approach to old buildings. He fully researched the history of the house and its place in Carr’s oeuvre before preparing his designs; studying the original drawings as well as the building itself. The Duke of Norfolk wished to reduce the house to its manageable 18th century core, and commissioned Francis to carry out the work. Francis found that the structure of Carr’s building, with its oak joinery, had withstood mid 20th century neglect better than the 19th century wings with their pine joinery; this reinforced the decision to demolish the later parts. The 19th century blocking course was removed and replaced with a half round cast iron gutter and cornice copied from that at Carr’s Lytham Hall in Lancashire.”

Brian Wragg gives the best lowdown on Lytham Hall in John Carr of York (2000), “Thomas Clifton inherited Clifton, which his family had bought in 1606, aged 10, in 1737. 20 years later, although he had no obvious Yorkshire connections, he called in Carr to rebuild the house, which lies on flat pasturelands a mile from the estuary of the River Ribble. Most of the building accounts, bills, plans and drawings have disappeared, but a labourers’ account book first mentions building work in 1757 and in 1750 mentions ‘Doorcasing and stroothing of grand staircases etc’. The 1757 to 1764 account book of the steward, Raymond Watt, shows that the house was complete in 1764, when on 17 March, Carr was paid £189 and 14 shillings, the balance of his account … Fitting up of the house continued well into the 1760s … Care and money were lavished on the elevations, with an attached Ionic portico on the east elevation. The main rooms are on the ground floor, and the Main Entrance Hall, with a handsome Rococo ceiling, has a heavy Kentian fireplace. The imperial staircase, one of Carr’s finest creations, is particularly grand and may have been inspired by that by Paine at Doncaster Mansion House of 1745 to 1747. The Dining Room shows the influence of Adam and must have been completed later. The house is now offices.”

In familiar country house fashion, portions of the preceding 17th century house were remodelled as ancillary wings around a courtyard. All that is hidden behind the lawn view of the entrance front. Nine bays rising three storeys are set in bright red brick in Flemish bond framed by a grid of stone and yellow painted stucco quoins and Ionic columns and string courses and cornicing. The proportions are so pleasing to behold. A pediment surmounting the three bay columned breakfront is just the right height. A hipped roof follows the slopes of the pediment. The main block is five bays deep. The three bay east facing Entrance Hall leads through to the Staircase Hall which links with the smaller North Entrance Hall (a double cube). Four reception rooms fill the rest of the ground floor. Four principal bedroom suites and Violet Clifton’s mid 20th century rooms occupy the first floor with secondary bedrooms on the second floor.

Good looks don’t come cheap. “It takes in excess of £1 million a year to run Lytham Hall,” Peter explains. “Once we’ve finished the expensive restoration projects, we should really just be maintaining the place but maintenance alone costs a fortune. For example, the building has a very intricate expensive alarm system – it’s got museum status in its own right.” Paul adds, “We do have a vast stable block that could potentially be used as holiday lets in the future. It’s going to cost a fortune to restore that area because it’s a large building and in quite a state. It would make a lovely kind of retail space for local crafts as well. We utilise every corner of what we have because you have to when our costs are so high.”

Peter says, “We just strive to get bigger and better each year and to give the best visitor experience. We now have around 250,000 visitors a year. When we came on board that figure was around 20,000. I always call it mould to gold: we have gone from a mouldy old mansion to something now that is glowing and twinkling like a beacon. Our new larger shop has been a great success. We hold massive events in the grounds such as the Lytham Proms attracting a few thousand people. There’s never a quiet month because we’re open all year round whereas a lot of stately homes close for the winter and reopen at Easter. The start of our year is the snowdrop season which is very popular; that then gently rolls into Easter and before you know it the open air theatre is happening followed by Halloween and Christmas activities.”

“After weeks of hard work our Billiard Room is finally finished and we are over the moon with the results!” exclaims Paul. “This room had to be taken off our tour for a couple of years ago as the roof lantern was being problematic. Thankfully the roof work was completed last autumn and the large timber lantern was repaired and made watertight.” Local company Finelines then started work on the huge task of redecoration. A mauve and green National Trust endorsed Little Greene colourway replaces a toxic gâteau of beige paint layers. Brass Art Nouveau hanging lamps are quite an improvement on the removed strip lighting. Billiard rooms were the must have extension of the late 19th century. Think Mourne Park and Ballywalter Park, both in County Down. The Billiard Room at Lytham Hall is a late Victorian interior embellished with Edwardian stained glass windows. William Morris’ 1901 seaweed pattern was selected for the curtain fabric: historically and geographically appropriate.

A sign in one of the dressing rooms states: “Lady Eleanor Cecily Lowther Clifton’s beautiful dress was reproduced from the stipple engraving of Lady Eleanor (John Henry Robinson 1845, National Portrait Gallery) by one our talented house volunteers, Judith Davitt. The dress is made of silk taffeta and features a typical V shape at the waist. As we don’t know the original colour of the dress we used some beautiful fabric from a pair of donated curtains. The dress was first displayed Christmas 2024 at Mr Fezziwig’s Party, part of our Dickens of a Christmas display. Lady Eleanor (1822 to 1894) was married to Colonel John Talbot Clifton (1819 to 1882). She was the sister of the 3rd Earl of Lonsdale of Lowther Castle in Cumbria.”

Peter concludes, “Lytham Hall means the absolute world to us: we live and breathe it. We’ve lived in Lytham since 1997 so the Fylde is definitely home and Lytham Hall itself has become such a massive part of our lives. It’s so rewarding – no two days are the same. You never know what’s going to happen when you walk through that door and that’s really exciting. It’s not just a place to work – it’s a vocation. The people who we’ve met along the way and worked with including staff and volunteers have been brilliant.”

The last Squire, Henry Talbot de Vere Clifton (Violet’s son), gave up ownership of Lytham Hall in 1965 to the creditors Guardian Royal Insurance who used it as a headquarters. In 1998 a local charity Lytham Town Trust bought the house and its remaining 32 hectares of parkland, and two years later passed everything over to the Heritage Trust for the Northwest. Since 2017 Peter Anthony and Paul Lomax along with Trustee Stephen Williams have developed a sustainable operation maximising every useable area. Fylde Borough’s only Grade I Listed Building is in safe – and enthusiastic – hands.

Categories
Architects Architecture Art Country Houses Design Luxury People Restaurants

Waddesdon Manor Buckinghamshire + Pablo Bronstein + The Temple of Solomon

Because Your Love Is Better Than Life

There are two principal Biblical temples: Solomon’s in the past; Ezekiel’s to come. God provides descriptions of both in the Old Testament. For example, Ezekiel 40:24 to 27, “Then he led me to the south side and I saw the south gate. He measured its jambs and its portico, and they had the same measurements as the others. The gateway and its portico had narrow openings all around, like the openings of the others. It was 50 cubits long and 25 cubits wide. Seven steps led up to it, with its portico opposite them; it had palm tree decorations on the faces of the projecting walls on each side. The inner court also had a gate facing south, and he measured from this gate to the outer gate on the south side; it was 100 cubits.”

King David was a man of war; his son, a man of peace, would be chosen to build the Temple. II Samuel 7:5 to 12, “Go and tell my servant David, ‘This is what the Lord says: You are not the one to build me a house to dwell in. When your days are over and you go to be with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, one of your own sons, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for Me, and I will establish his throne forever.’” I Kings 6:1 states that in the month of Zif in the 480th year after the Israelites came out of Egypt, Solomon began to build the Temple. It was the fourth year of his reign, which likely spanned from around 1,015 to 975 BC.

The Bible provides dimensions and details and decorations. I Chronicles 28:11, “Then David gave his son Solomon the plans for the portico of the temple, its buildings, its storerooms, its upper parts, its inner rooms and the place of atonement.” The foundations were 60 cubits by 20 cubits (II Chronicles 3:1). The interior was covered with pure gold according to I Kings 6:21, and pots, shovels and sprinkling bowls were of burnished bronze (I Kings 7:40). Upon completion of the Temple, Solomon summoned the leaders of Israel to bring the Ark of the Covenant from Zion, the City of David, to its final resting place in the Temple on Mount Moriah.

Artist Pablo Bronstein (who was born in Argentina and lives in London) believes, “The reconstruction of ancient and Biblical structures says more about the societies that reconstructed them than it does about any long gone originals. My reconstructions of the Temple explore idealising tendencies in architecture across porous boundaries of styles relevant during a defining era of archaeology – roughly the 18th to 20th centuries. That’s precisely the time when nationalisms sought to tie themselves to particular architectural traditions and during which nascent professional archaeology informed our understanding of the past. I’ve tried to inhabit the ambitious contestants entering the Prix de Rome as they set about reconstructing the Temple entirely in their own image.” And where better to host such an exhibition rooted in the Tanakh than that most Jewish of English country houses, Waddesdon Manor?

Mark Girouard was a prominent country house architectural historian of the 20th century. His grandfather Henry Beresford, 6th Marquess of Waterford, owned one of the top estates in Ireland: Curraghmore. He records in Historic Houses of Britain (1979), “Baron Ferdinand, like other Rothschilds of the later generations, had largely detached himself from the Rothschild banks, except as places through which to invest his money. He was able to devote himself to sport, politics, philanthropy and pleasure. Like all Rothschilds he entertained lavishly. Waddesdon was meant for use, not just as a repository for treasures. Edward VII, who had a fondness for Rothschilds, came there frequently, and once fell down the staircase. Victoria was there for the day in 1890; her visit was something of a triumph for she was much less partial to Rothschilds than her son, and Waddesdon was the only Rothschild house she ever visited.”

He continues, “It is easy to envisage house parties at Waddesdon. It is harder to think of children playing there, or in general, to envisage a Rothschild nursery. Indeed there never was a nursery at Waddesdon. When Baron Ferdinand died childless in 1898 (he caught a chill on one of his regular visits to the grave of his wife), he left Waddesdon to his sister Alice, who never married. When she died in 1922 she left it to a French Rothschild, her great nephew James. James de Rothschild was married but had no children. It was he, on his death in 1957, who left the house, all its contents and an endowment to the National Trust – a legacy of almost unequalled munificence.”

Soon after they inherited the house, James de Rothschild and his wife Dorothy installed an electric servants’ bell system to replace the traditional manual bells. The indicator panel includes connections to Baron’s Room, Blue Dressing Room, East Hall, Low White Room, Portico Bathroom, Smoking Room, State Entrance, Tower Drawing Room, Turret Bedroom and many more. They also installed hot and cold water plumbing. The tradition of entertaining continues at Waddesdon with the Manor Restaurant on the ground floor of the Bachelors’ Wing. The wine list includes Waddesdon Rothschild Collection Viognier 2024 with hints of peach and apricot, sourced from the hills of Languedoc in the south of France.

In 1870, Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild had bought 2,500 hectares near Aylesbury (favoured family territory) from George Spencer-Churchill, 6th Duke of Marlborough, to build a country house designed by a French architect (the gloriously named Gabriel-Hippolyte Destailleur) filled with French furnishings (coordinated by interior design company Decour) and surrounded by gardens planned with the assistance of a French landscape designer (Elie Lainé). More Loire Valley than Aylesbury Vale. His wife had died in childbirth after a year and a half of wedded bliss: they had met at their mutual relatives’ London residence of Gunnersbury Park House. Cartoonist Osbert Lancaster even included Le Style Rothschild in Homes Sweet Homes (1939), referring to “heavy golden cornices” and “damask hung walls” and “fringed and tasselled curtains of Genoese velvet”. The tradition of supporting the arts continues with the Rothschild Foundation. CEO Roger White states, “There are still remarkable philanthropic initiatives happening at Waddesdon.”

Senior Curator Janet Carey introduces The Temple of Solomon and Its Contents exhibition: “In this room are Pablo’s two different versions of the Temple of Solomon. In order to create them he has imagined himself in the personae of prize seeking students of 19th century architecture. We have extraordinarily detailed instructions from God written down in the Bible but of course nobody actually knows what the Temple looked like. So what Pablo has done is read those instructions and make these incredible works of art conjured up from the hands of imagined individuals.” Divine design.

Erudite quotations range from the portico of Palais Garnier in Paris to William Blake’s painting The Great Architect. Styles include Adamesque, Indo Egyptian and Persian. “Pablo uses the famous spiralling Solomonic columns,” Janet notes. Or is he inspired by the spiralling copper pipes of Gabriel-Hippolyte Destailleur’s architecture? “His Veil of the Temple is quite provocative: here it is interpreted as a very froufrou Waddesdon style curtain with glorious red tassels. The Veil separated the world from the Divine and was torn in two at the moment Christ died.” And what about the Greek key tile pattern around the courtyard? A nod to Sir William Chambers, perhaps? She smiles, “The pattern comes from the band around those ubiquitous New York takeaway coffee cups! It’s this blend of high and low references that is really fun.”

There are also acrylic on paper paintings of specific Biblical objects. Janet states, “You can read in the Bible how God gives very precise instructions to Moses about how the candelabra should be designed and Pablo follows to incredible detail how many branches and so on should be on this. It is an oil lamp, not a candle lamp, so God specifies that each of the cups for the oil at the tops of the seven branches must be almond shaped. Pablo interprets that very literally as a cast for an almond. He’s really obeyed the Divine instructions in the Bible while deriving some detailing from the objets d’art of Waddesdon.”

“In the space adjacent is this extraordinary selection of drawings and books from Waddesdon’s permanent collection,” she adds. “They’re mostly 18th century French works of art which Pablo chose himself from about 1,000 design and architectural works. The moment you see those works you will understand why he has chosen them. Each one has some very clear visual relationship with Pablo’s own work. Some of the drawings have never been displayed before.”

Another attraction feature of the exhibition space is a model of the Supreme Court in Jerusalem made by James Burke. Completed in 1992, the building was designed by Ada Karmi-Melamede and her brother Ram Karmi. The Supreme Court was proposed and funded by the Yad Hanadiv Foundation established by Dorothy de Rothschild in 1960 and chaired by Jacob 4th Lord Rothschild until his death in 2024. In the gallery on the floor above, 18th century Jewish Italian embroidered hangings from the Rothschild Collection depicting the Temple of Solomon and the Second Temple (built after the First Temple was destroyed by the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II in 586 BC) are on display. Waddesdon Manor continues to evolve and expand.

Categories
Architecture Country Houses Design Restaurants Town Houses

Ramelton Donegal +

Drop the Tea and the Haitch

Donegal County Council’s 2020 Ramelton Action Plan prepared by Dedalus Architecture of Moville states, “Ramelton is a town of significant built, social and cultural heritage with a unique regional character and comparable in quality to the most visited historic places in Ireland. The current town was founded as a Plantation settlement in the early 1600s by Sir William Stewart of Ayrshire on the site of an O’Donnell castle.” Sir William built Tullyaughnish Reformation Church on the edge of the town, now a scenic ruin. Dr Finola O’Kane of University College Dublin ruminates, “Ruins in Ireland have always been political in light of the country’s history.”

In his 2021 essay Beyond Pastness: Reuse in Ramelton, Gary Hamilton argues, “In the picturesque town of Ramelton, located in the northwest of Ireland, a hulking set of warehouses on The Quays are a tactile reminder of what this place used to be. In stone, shale, and concrete, they tell a story about the past: of bustling trade, industrialisation, and prosperity in rural parts of the country. After decades of dereliction, some of the warehouses have been recently repurposed into a heritage centre, a café, and even apartments. Two, however, remain in a state of decay, and one is on the brink of collapse. The tourism economy values the ‘pastness’ of rural Ireland, but preserving that pastness has the effect of consigning towns to a state of perpetual limbo.”

Lo, the tide was turning. The following year Donegal County Council was awarded the Chambers Ireland 2022 Excellence in Local Government Award for Heritage and Built Environment for an urban scale conservation project in Ramelton. A 2019 audit had demonstrated a high rate of vacancy (13 percent), dereliction (seven percent) and buildings at risk (20 structures). The Council worked with the local community to reverse this advancing decay and repair 14 of the historic buildings.

Most visible is the restoration of The House on the Brae in the centre of the town. Council funding was the catalyst for Ramelton Georgian Society bringing this 1760s building back to life for community use. In 2025, the restoration is nearing completion. The House appears on Bridge Street as a modest two storey over basement rendered block with very wide windows on the first floor. Generously proportioned window openings are a feature of 18th century houses in the town, possibly to maximise natural light for linen weavers at work. The House falls dramatically to the rear towards the riverside Shore Road, revealing its three storey plus attic full extent. Ramelton Georgian Society plans to reinstate a two storey block along Shore Road, enclosing the rear garden of The House on the Brae.

Shore Road continues eastwards, becoming The Quays. Mill House is located at the sharp right angle of Shore Road elbowing into the River Leannan. It’s a tall, darkish and handsome 1840s three bay three storey villa faced with random rubblestone and cornered by squared smooth stone quoins. A shallow fanlight stretches over the entrance door and sidelights framed by Tuscan columns and pilasters. A hipped roof resting on eaves is fully exposed: this is a parapet free town. Mill House backs on to some of the restored and converted warehouses.

At the western end of the town, yet more gorgeous buildings are clustered around Bridge End where the River Leannan narrows and is crossed by Ramelton Bridge. The Tannery backs onto the river and was converted to apartments in 2000. Built in the late 19th century, it’s an impressive 13 bay three storey block. Coursed and square rubble limestone walls with flush squared rubblestone quoins produce a grand vernacular.

Set at a right angle to The Tannery is The Green, a country house and estate in miniature. Three bay two bay symmetrical perfection overlooks – as its name suggests – a large green. The house was built circa 1830 for James Watt, the owner of a linen bleach mill, now demolished. An Ionic distyle porch framing the entrance door with its fanlight provides the decorative highlight to the simply elegant smooth rendered with limestone plinth façade. A hipped slate roof completes the simple outline. The main block is three bays deep and is elongated by later return wings.

On the brow of the hill heading out of Ramelton and looking down over The Tannery, Bridge Bar Restaurant is the quintessential Irish pub. A slightly asymmetrical five bay two storey pebbledashed façade is quirkily enlivened by red shutters, red quoins and a red entrance door. it’s colourful and lively, just as a pub should be. This tour is but the icing on the cake that is the architectural treat of Ramelton. There are many rich layers to explore of the heritage of sweet unique town. Ramelton is no longer in perpetual limbo: pastness has a present and a future.

Categories
Architecture Art Country Houses Design Hotels People

The Sweeneys + Castle Grove Letterkenny Donegal

Weathering Well

Tiree, Stornoway, Lerwick, Wick Automatic, Aberdeen, Leuchars, Boulmer, Bridlington, Sandettie Light Vessel Automatic, Greenwich Light Vessel Automatic, St Catherine’s Point Automatic, Jersey, Channel Light Vessel Automatic, Scilly Automatic, Milford Haven, Aberporth, Valley, Liverpool Crosby, Valentia, Ronaldsway, Malin Head, Machrihanish Automatic. For the uninitiated that’s the pure poetry of Radio Four’s shipping forecast, a rhapsodic melodic episodic late night cruise circumnavigating the coastlines of the British Isles.

The penultimate point along the shipping forecast’s journey, Malin Head, is the exposed most northerly tip of Ireland teetering on the tip of the Inishowen Peninsula in view of the Aurora Borealis. The ultimate location in this neck of the island is Castle Grove. Unlike windswept Malin Head, next stop Iceland, this romantic estate lies huddled off the Wild Atlantic Way in the sheltered mid southwest wiggle of Lough Swilly, the waterscape separating the peninsula from the mainland.

A two kilometre long drive sweeps through 100 hectares of bucolic parkland complemented by glimpses of the Lough as composed as a Derek Hill landscape; a wave of anticipation rises, then behold, a house four square, an abiding place of great and unsearchable things. Like two faced Clandeboye in County Down, the principal elevations stand proud at right angles to one another. Face to the avenue, face to the sea. Unlike Bellamont Forest, Edward Lovett Pearce’s poppet of Palladian perfection in County Cavan which is designed to be seen from every angle, Castle Grove is country house front, farmhouse back. A Tuscan porch fills the vacancy of the centre of the south facing four bay façade: charm captured in render and stone.

Subsumed within its solid footprint lies an older house dating back to 1695 and rebuilt in 1730. A radical makeover brought Castle Grove bang up to date for the swinging 1820s. As the Grove family went up in the world, so did the height of their windows and ceilings. The resultant structural idiosyncrasies only add to the house’s character. Four of the façade window openings are higher outside than inside – this comes to light when the shutters are pulled and a gap appears above them. A shuttered cupboard in the Samuel Beckett Room was once a window on the east elevation. Elsewhere, blind windows and angled openings maintain external symmetry. A 19th century conservatory to the side of the façade has come and gone. Heritage architect John O’Connell remarks, “Castle Grove now looks like a beautiful Regency house.”

The Wrays of Donegal by Charlotte Violet Trench, 1945, is a carefully researched genealogy of the family who owned the adjoining estate southwest of Castle Grove. Unusually, the walled gardens of Castle Wray and Castle Grove adjoin each other. Down the centuries, the two families were linked by various marriages. Charlotte records, “I went to Castle Grove, about three or four miles outside the town of Letterkenny on the shore of Lough Swilly. A large demesne, then a lawn with flowerbeds and the house; not the original Castle Shanaghan; but, like most of these places, a house built a couple of 100 years ago and added to at intervals. Mrs Grove was at home and I was led through a square hall to a long shaped drawing room with many windows, where Mrs Grove received me … Mrs Grove told me of the sorry state of ruin into which the house of Castle Wray was now falling, and said her gardeners should take me to see it.”

It’s after spring equinox. Snowdrops have disappeared; daffodils are in late bloom; primroses are on their way. “Castle Grove was a country house closed up when we bought it,” says Raymond Sweeney. “The owners were all dead and the next of kin were living in Northern Ireland. So it was up for sale and we were lucky to get it. We got possession of the house on 23 February 1989. It wasn’t looking as well as it looks today! It took time as well as money to get it going. The house was structurally sound though; the previous owners looked after it well over the years. Do you see that lock on the front door? It came from the women’s prison in Armagh 200 years ago!”

The Sweeneys bought the house and estate from Commander Peter Campbell and his wife Lady Moyra Hamilton, the sister of James Hamilton, 5th Duke of Abercorn. Incidentally, Lady Moyra was one of Queen Elizabeth II’s six Maids of Honour at her coronation. She died in 2020 aged 90 and her husband died four years later aged 97. Lady Moyra was one of three titled ladies known for their charitable works who simultaneously spent their last years in Somme Nursing Home, Belfast. The Commander had inherited Castle Grove on the death of his distant relative Major James Grove but he already lived at Hollybrook House in Randalstown, County Antrim. Mary agrees with her husband Raymond’s comment, “The land steward and housekeeper kept Castle Grove in good shape. For the first year we lived in the house and opened it as a bed and breakfast.”

“We wanted to develop it but not spoil it,” she explains. “The house – it was a real challenge. We wanted to keep the characteristics, the symmetries. We again looked and looked at it. In the end we pushed the entire house back into part of the rear courtyard. The stable wing was already lofted so we retained its front and added a corridor behind linking it to the main house. We didn’t want guests having to go out in the rain. The bedrooms in this wing are just as big as those in the main house. We never demolished a wall in the original house. Instead, we adapted windows as doors or indoor mirrors. I feel a great obligation to maintain Castle Grove.” Heritage. History. Hibernia.

Mary continues, “When we applied for a dining room addition the planning officers wanted it to be a conservatory. But that part of the house faces northeast and rarely gets direct sunlight! It took a year to resolve, to get our sympathetically designed extension approved. We didn’t want the corner sticking out in views from the driveway so it’s chamfered. We turned the sideboard recess in the old dining room into double doors under a fanlight. A local carpenter built the doors to match the 1820s double doors between the two main reception rooms. The fanlight is based on the one between the entrance and staircase halls.”

“The original dining room is now the Red Drawing Room,” she notes, “and next door is the Yellow Drawing Room. The marble fireplace in the current Dining Room is a replica from my old home. I jokingly asked Portadown Fireplaces if they could remake it based on a photo and sure enough they did!” The house is filled with modern Irish art. “Buying paintings from young artists exhibiting their work on the railings of St Stephen’s Green in Dublin in summer stemmed our interest. Artists like Maurice Wilks, Liam Jones, Brendan Timmons. Derek Hill gave us his oil painting Donegal Late Harvest. Derek brought many guests here. Really such a humble man and so friendly.”

The house is filled with antiques. Mary relates, “We have some stories to tell about auctions! Newark Antiques Fair is good. So is the Mill at Ballinderry. The bed in the George Bernard Shaw Room came from Seventh Heaven outside Chester. The beds are unbelievable there! That bed was made for Archduke Ferdinand of Austria. When we bought the fourposter in the Jonathan Swift Room we used saddle soap and toothbrushes to carefully clean it before using French polish. Beds and food – they’re so important!” As for the chandeliers, Sia could swing from them.

It’s time to talk to Mary’s daughter Irene who is managing reception (the former flower room). “The weather is unpredictable in Donegal or perhaps that should be predictable – it rains a fair bit! Donegal may be right off the Atlantic but we’re very inland here. The house has a warm, loving presence. It’s a very welcoming atmosphere. Whether this is us as a family, or the building, I’m not sure. The Groves were extremely good landlords, especially during the Famine when they fed and educated local children in the long barn. Perhaps this generosity and goodwill has over the centuries seeped into the walls. There’s houses before you know the history, they’re chilling …”

Irene explains, “Our main bedrooms are named after Irish writers including Oliver Goldsmith, James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, William Butler Yeats. There are 15 in total; eight in the main house. The exception is the Daniel O’Connell Room. He actually stayed in the house. Daniel wrote to the Groves after his visit, referring to his ‘answer to the Irish problem’. Mr Grove introduced him to the House of Lords. General Montgomery also stayed here. Mrs Grove invited him from Dublin to stay.”

She recommends, “We can accommodate 120 guests for a wedding in our Michelin recommended Restaurant. Or 140 if the adjoining Red Drawing Room is used too. The Bar was once a breakfast room and the TV Room was a library and office. We still use the original Kitchen. We grow organic vegetables, herbs, and fruit – apples, blackberries, blueberries and strawberries – in our four acre Walled Garden.” Other stats include the size of the George Bernard Shaw Room which is 4.3 metres wide by 5.5 metres deep by three metres tall. The George Bernard Shaw Room bed is two metres wide. The wall between the Entrance Hall and the Yellow Drawing Room is 0.8 metres deep. The Yellow Drawing Room mantelpiece projects by 0.3 metres.

Charlotte Violet Trench recalls the Walled Garden as: “A vast place, enclosed by great high stone walls. It seemed very full of fruit trees and vegetables of all sorts, some parts were rather wild; it would have needed a regiment of gardeners to keep it really in order; but the old time herbaceous border was a blaze of colour and rich in beauty. In the old days there was a gate in the wall that divided the two gardens by which the families could pass through to one another’s place.”

Dinner in the Restaurant accords with Irene’s description of very local produce. Walled Garden leek and potato soup. Coffee infused garden beetroot, beetroot remoulade, salted feta cheese, toasted walnuts, garden greens. Garden rhubarb and white chocolate crème brûlée, sweet sable biscuit, cherry gel, mango sorbet. On a Saturday night the Restaurant is filled to its chamfered corner. The atmosphere is chilled on a Sunday morning as oak smoked Killybegs salmon wild salmon and scrambled Glenborin eggs are served. The Irish economy has sailed through some choppy waters this century but at Castle Grove the outlook is bright.

Archivist at Donegal County Council Archives Service, Niamh Brennan, and archivist at the Irish Architectural Archive, Aisling Dunne, have unearthed a Grove family tree and some accompanying photographs and letters as well as several 19th century recipes from the estate [the latter with lots of sic]. William Grove, High Sheriff of Donegal, rebuilt the house in 1730. His son Thomas was also High Sheriff; he died childless. William’s second son James married Rose Brook. William’s sister Dorothy Grove married John Wood of the 9th Light Dragoons in 1802 and they lived at Castle Grove. Their son James Grove Wood was born in 1803. He was a barrister and became High Sheriff.

James married Frances Montgomery of Convoy House, 32 kilometres south of Castle Grove – close neighbours in gentry terms. The 1806 building accounts of Convoy House record tree coverage of 300 Alders, 300 Beech, 300 Larch, 200 Ashes and 200 Scotch Firs. James and Frances’ daughter Dorothea Alice married the Reverend Charles Boyton of Derry City in 1871. Dorothea Alice’s brother John Montgomery Charles Grove was born in 1847 and inherited Castle Grove. He was land agent of Convoy House for three years starting in 1890.

John Montgomery Charles Grove married Lucy Gabbett, daughter of Major General William Gabbett of East India Company’s Artillery. John and Lucy’s children included Lucy Dorothea and her elder brother James Robert Wood Grove. He was born in 1888, joined the Royal Dublin Fusiliers aged 20, and served in World War I. James married Eileen Edmonstone Kirk of the now demolished Thornfield House in Jordanstown, County Antrim. They were the last of the Groves to live at Castle Grove.

“Marrow Bones. If too long to serve undivided saw them in two; cover the open ends with a lump of paste and a cloth floured and tied close. The paste must be removed before being sent to table. Boil one and a half and two hours according to size. Put a ruffle of papar round each and serve in a napkin, with very hot toast. The marrow is spread on very hot toast and seasoned with pepper and salt.”

“Raisins Chutnee. Raisins cleaned and minced two pounds. Sugar three and a half pounds. Salt eight ounces, green ginger eight ounces, red pepper two ounces and garlic half an ounce. These with the exception of raisins sugar to be separately well pounded then mixed. Add to them the raisins and sugar and lastly one bottle of vinegar. This quantity will make nearly four bottles. Fill and leave them in the sun in India but at home cook for about an hour.”

“White Milk Soup. One onion. One carrot. One turnip. Three cloves stuck in the onion. A little stock made of rabbit vial, fowl or button. Put the vegetables in the stock and boil for an hour and a half to two hours. Strain salt through a verry fine hair seive. Then warm one pint of new milk and add all these together. Season with pepper and salt. This soup must be made just before using as it will not keep – the vegetables turn the milk sour.”

“Bed Sore Prevention. 10 grains of the nitrate of silver, to one ounce of water, to be applied by means of a camel hairbrush over every part exhibiting the highest appearance of inflammation, two or three times a day, until the skins has become blackened, afterwards only occassionally.”

“Anglo American Hospital Cairo. 11 May 1915. My Dearest Madam, Just a line to let you know that I am going on all right, and that there is really no more to tell you. The wound on the back of my hand has practically healed by now, but the other one is still pretty unpleasant and is exuding a good deal of matter and stuff. However the doctor seems satisfied about it. It is tied up still of course and has to be dressed pretty frequently. I can’t do very much with the fingers yet but they are better than they were. I can write a little faster with my left hand now though it is still rather a tedious process. The chief difficulty is to keep the letters at the right angle and prevent them falling over backwards. I don’t know yet whether I am likely to be sent home later or not, but very possibly will be. Anyhow I shan’t be able to move from here for the present till the wound has healed a bit.”

“We are very lucky from what I can gather to be in this hospital as everything is very comfortable and they look after us very well. Some of the other hospitals are very different from what I hear as they are badly off for nurses etc and the food is pretty rough and badly served out of tin mugs and tin plates etc. I fancy they weren’t prepared for such a large number of casualties from the Dardanelles. 12 more officers arrived here last night but all very slightly wounded from what I gather. Don’t bother to send anything from home as I can get anything I want here. A suit of my thin khaki might be useful but that is about the only thing. Major Molesworth and Captain Mood are the only ones of the regiment here. The others I think have been sent to Malta. Well, must stop now. I haven’t had any letters since about 23rd, but I hope some will come very soon. Love to you and Monsieur and you needn’t worry about me as I am quite all right. I sit out on the verandah most of the day. Your affectionate son, James Grove.”

Categories
Architects Architecture Art Country Houses Luxury People

Dunmore House + Gardens Carrigans Donegal

Northern Dancer

Wiling away endless days during the sunniest Irish spring while County Donegal opens up as a new front of the western riviera. Gnomons cast their shadows across plates of 1930s stone sundials. A drawing room lit by tall windows on two sides. The French door ajar to country air. Alexander Moore’s mother in Jennifer Johnston’s 1974 novel How Many Miles to Babylon? lyricises, “The evenings are so beautiful. Ireland should be renamed, I always think, the Island of Evenings. Don’t you agree?” Lounging in the wing of a country house. How many kilometres to Derry?

“When I arrived in Ireland I couldn’t read or write English,” says Amelia McFarland, châtelaine of Dunmore House. “I was brought up in Moscow until I was 10. I learnt to ride with the Russian Cavalry stallions at the age of seven.” Both sets of grandparents lived in Ireland so her parents returned and eventually took over Dunmore House. Her grandfather, Sir John Talbot McFarland, 3rd Baronet of Aberfoyle, died in 2020. He’s buried in St Fiach’s Church of Ireland Church in the village at the end of the avenue, Carrigans.

After living abroad, the 35 year old has returned to open her family’s ancestral pile as a setting for weddings and corporate events. She admits, “I love travelling and I love Dunmore. It was always well known for its hilarious parties and welcoming atmosphere and I wanted to bring all of that back again. I wanted to share this beautiful house and its gardens with everyone. So I came home to Donegal for a whole new adventure.” A converted barn is perfect for nuptials and there is overnight accommodation in the east wing and log cabins in the grounds.

As for wedding photographic opportunities, where to start? The conscious coupling of the seven bay house and 1.3 hectare walled garden is a match made in heaven encircled by woodland. Architecture, texture, horticulture, culture. “We try to be sustainable,” explains Amelia, “and encourage wildlife like bats and hedgehogs. As well as providing a wedding and events venue with accommodation we have a 100 acre farm and estate.”

“There are actually no records of Michael Priestley’s involvement with the house,” she confirms. “A large servants’ wing at the back of the house was knocked down some time in the 20th century. When the porch was added the area in front of the house was filled in. That created tunnels going nowhere under the house. You can see the top of two basement windows that were blocked up. The house is actually quite compact and not that hard to heat.” In between hosting, Amelia farms, rides and plays rugby for the City of Derry.

Wedged between Derek Hill by Bruce Arnold (2010) and Derry and Londonderry History and Society by William Nolan and Gerard O’Brien (1999) on a Georgian bookcase in the drawing room of the wing is Agatha Christie’s The Complete Short Stories (2008). The crime novelist was related by marriage to the McClintocks who formerly owned Dunmore House. A bedroom over the drawing room is also lit by windows on two sides. “This wing was added by the owner in the 19th century for his own use,” Amelia explains. “We let it out as one self contained space with its own door off the terrace.”

Identifying Michael Priestley as the architect of the main block is on stylistic grounds. The giant Palladian window was his trademark. His certified work of Lifford Courthouse, County Donegal, has a particularly fine example on its riverside elevation. St John’s Church of Ireland Church in Ballymore Lower, County Donegal, is attributed to Michael and has a vast Palladian window on its east front and a smaller version on its west front. The first floor central Palladian window of Dunmore House over the entrance hall – all 42 panes of it – lights the landing of the staircase hall. Confident handling of architectural components is another subtler clue to design ownership.

The entrance elevation of the 1742 block is five bays wide by two storeys over (hidden) basement and (hidden save for gable windows) attic with a high pitched slate roof. It’s a rebuilding of a 17th century house. Walls are roughcast rendered with ashlar sandstone quoins. A 19th century smooth rendered porch is painted dark yellow: Doric pilasters support an entablature with triglyphs to the frieze and mutules to the cornice. The Doric order frieze and cornice are repeated in the drawing room of the 19th century wing. This south front, elevated on a rise, can just about be glimpsed from the road between mature trees. The informal north elevation with various projections backs on to a courtyard surrounded by outbuildings.

A book of newspaper cuttings in the drawing room includes this intriguing undated unattributed piece, “Missing deb says: I want to marry. Reported missing earlier in the week from her home at Blessington, County Wicklow, Eire. 19 year old [sic?] debutante Miss Ann Daly turned up in London, yesterday, with Mr Robert Knowles of Sneem, County Kerry, Eire, 25 year old son of Lady Farquhar of Blandford, Dorset, and said: ‘We want to get married.’ They had been staying at the home of Lady Farquhar and her husband Lieutenant Colonel Sir Peter Farquhar at Turnworth, Blandford. The Farquhars are a well known hunting family.”

“‘I met tall dark Miss Daly with Mr Knowles as they arrived together at Waterloo Station, London, late yesterday on the train from Blandford. ‘I can’t understand all this mystery and fuss,’ Miss Daly told me. ‘We have come up to London to try and persuade mother to let us get married. There is no real mystery about me leaving home, and I am sure my mother and father must both have guessed where I was. Robert and I met nearly three years ago. We have been racing, hunting and point-to-point riding together many times since then.’”

“‘We want to get married but I am still a minor and my parents have objected. But I feel sure that if mother gives her consent now father will agree readily.’ Robert Knowles said, ‘There has been no objection from my family, and we should both be happy if it were possible for us to be married soon.’ Mr Knowles and Miss Daly went off to meet Miss Daly’s mother, who has been staying at a West End hotel. Miss Ann Daly is regarded as the most beautiful girl in Irish society. Although only 18 years of age she is such a good horsewoman that she rides at many point-to-point meetings in Ireland, and competed in such events during the past season. She is a member of the fashionable Kildare Hunt and has ridden to other packs in Ireland. She is tall, dark and athletic and is expected to be one of this year’s most popular debutantes.” Go Ann!

Categories
Architecture Art Country Houses Town Houses

St Fiach’s Church of Ireland Church + Carrigans Donegal

Developing An Overarching Grammar Based on Idealised Irish Country Life

The Laggan lies between the River Foyle and Lough Swilly: a lowland rich in agriculture, rich in architecture, rich. It was once dominated by flax growing and salmon fishing. In between country house estates lies Carrigans, one of the prettiest villages in Ireland. Population in 1841: precisely 235. Population today: about 350. In between single and double storey houses, Main Street has a Garda Station, Carrig Inn, Post Office and Village Shop, Village Chippy, and AMC Hair and Beauty. This 215 metre stretch of road is bookended by a a painted boat in a sloping field to the west and a derelict cottage with windows and a door painted on its facade to the east. A car port provides a roof for a Christmas sleigh. Next door and set back from Main Street is St Fiach’s Church of Ireland church which is the Parish Church of Killea in the Diocese of Derry and Raphoe.

This is Plantation of Ulster country. After confiscation by the British Crown in 1607, County Donegal was carved up into parcels of 400 hectares, each distributed to mainly Scottish families. Scottish sounding surnames can still be found in the area: Buchanan, Galbraith, Hamilton, McClintock and Stewart. Other nearby Plantation settlements include Castlefin, Convoy, Killygordon and Stranorlar.Reverend George Hill writes in An Historical Account of the Plantation in Ulster at the Commencement of the 17th Century 1608 to 1620 (1877), “From occasional glimpses at the general condition of Ulster in the 17th century, as given in these Plantation records, the reader will probably infer that our northern province must have had certain rare attractions for British settlers. Among the descendants of the latter, however, it has been a cherished faith that our worthy ancestors came here to find homes only in a howling wilderness, or rather, perhaps, in a dreary and terrible region of muirland and morass. We very generally overlook the fact, that the shrewd and needy people whom we call our forefathers, and who dwelt north and south of the Tweed, would have had neither time nor inclination to look towards the shores of Ulster at all, had there been no objects sufficiently attractive, such as green fields, rich straths, beauteous valleys, and herds of Irish cattle adorning the hillsides. But such was, indeed, the simple truth.” The Laggan is still filled with that greenness, richness and beauty.

Many of the buildings of Carrigans are gaily coloured. Whoever decided to paint the rendered St Fiach’s Church was clearly a blue sky thinker. Literally. Most Irish churches are grey. This one is blue. Beyond the Pale blue. Erected in 1763, St Fiach’s was altered over the next two centuries while still retaining exquisite allure. It’s a simple three bay nave barn church. Roundheaded windows have extremely fine cast iron quarry glazing with timber Y tracery. The chancel, vestry and porch were added in 1856 to the design of Armagh architect Alexander Hardy. Their grey rubblestone contrasts with the blue render of the main church building. Reverend William Law was the first incumbent. The current rector is Reverend Canon John Merrick; his predecessor Reverend David Crooks retired in 2024 after 47 years service.

Categories
Architects Architecture Art Country Houses Design Developers People Town Houses

Sir John Soane’s Museum Holborn London + Richard Rogers

Architectural Communication

The extraordinary townhouse that is Sir John Soane’s Museum has played host to many exciting exhibitions drawing synergy from the riveting interiors. Highlights of the last nine years include shows featuring Alcantara (microfibre fabric) and Space Popular (multidisciplinary design practice); Emily Allchurch (artist); William Shakespeare (a certain playwright); and Sarah Lucas (artist). The latest is the first UK retrospective since his demise of the work of Richard Rogers, leading exponent of High Tech architecture. And so, at 13 Lincoln’s Inns Fields two architects who had a passion for materials, light and life meet posthumously.

Will Gompertz, Director of Sir John Soane’s Museum, opens the exhibition: “Rogers Pink completely fits with the vibe of the good weather and also aesthetically fits with the vibe of Soane as next door in the South Drawing Room there is this extraordinary colour field of yellow which is called Turner Yellow – not Turner the painter but Turner the designer – which he very specifically chose and then you’ve got the Rogers Pink in this exhibition. I think Soane would approve of this enormously and also he would have loved Richard as a man. They would have had so much in common.”

“The exhibition started three weeks after I began as Director here and Richard’s son Ab got on the phone and said, ‘Can I come round with an idea?’ He came round and five minutes later we had a show! Ab’s idea was for the Soane to show the first retrospective of Richard Rogers in this country since he sadly passed. And the answer was emphatically yes.”

Ab provides a tour of the exhibition Talking Buildings: “It’s a simple show based on eight pivotal projects across his career. It’s really about this escalating idea how the buildings talk to each other. I think Richard really wanted his architecture to talk to the people, to improve the quality of the citizens’ lives, to celebrate the streets, to get people to look up at the sky, to enjoy the public space and to really look at the responsibility of the building to respond to its uses.”

“This ongoing conversation started with the Zip Up House which is a solution to social housing. It is an object made out of prefabricated units, incredibly well insulated, that can continuously grow and expand. He was looking at sustainable issues before there was awareness of them in 1969. The house he designed for his mother and father also in 1969 creates this very open space where there’s no specific programme and you’re free to play with it as you will. You can roll out of the building and into the grass – it’s very free, almost boundaryless.”

“And that plays into the Pompidou Centre in Paris where 50 percent of the site is given to the public; you see all the services taken from the inside to the outside to free up the programme of the interior. And you can argue that this free programme that exists inside the Pompidou also exists inside the Zip Up House. This escalation goes on and then he creates Lloyds Building – this shining armour sitting in the historical setting of the City of London. They’re both very brave and radical buildings. Lloyds was the youngest building to be Listed in the UK.”

“We go on to the Millennium Dome, a building which was quite controversial at its time although it came in on budget and on time. This huge roof held a world beneath it. The Dome was meant to be up for one year but instead 25 years later like the Eiffel Tower it becomes this icon of the capital. And from there we go back to social housing looking at The Treehouse which is a collection of ‘shoeboxes’ fabricated from cross laminated timber, rapidly assembled as a tower and very low cost. The roof of one becomes the garden of the next creating these ‘shoeboxes’ with free programmes.”

“We see this conversation and idea continue when we finally end up in the drawing gallery which takes us back to the Zip Up House’s very muscular cantilevered box. It is designed like a telescope with a straight line of viewing out to the landscape. Talking Buildings is a quick journey really trying to work around this conversation and Richard’s passion for creating civic architecture which is generous to the citizens and generous to the streets, while trying to provoke the role of the developer and the council to be bigger and more integrated.” This show adds yet another layer of brilliance to the immersive multimedia experience that is Sir John Soane’s Museum.

Categories
Architects Architecture Art Country Houses Design Luxury People

WOW!house 2025 + Design Centre Chelsea Harbour London

Always

It’s the perfect single storey neoclassical villa. And there’s just one month to experience it. “The façade draws on early Georgian architecture amplified in a Chelsea London context,” explains Darren Price, a Design Director at Adam Architecture. “Its refinement embraces contemporary minimalism and reinterprets the language of classicism in a way that feels both timeless and relevant to modern sensibilities. The neoclassical design relies on lines and arches rather than columns and pilasters.”

WOW!house is back in the Design Centre Chelsea Harbour for another year to inspire, educate and thrill. One of several new elements is a Town Garden designed by Alexander Hoyle and delivered by Artorius Faber. Stone materially links Adam Architecture’s façade and the garden: a Portland limestone plinth; reclaimed sandstone cobbles and walling; and reclaimed flagstones for the portico and arcades flooring. Walking through Darren’s portico, under the oculus in the Soaneian pendentive dome, over the corresponding tiled circle, leads into a procession of eight rooms, a Courtyard, 10 further rooms and onwards and outwards to a Grand Terrace. It’s like wandering through a stationary Venice Simplon-Orient Express with side carriages. International collaborations of interior designers, architects, design brands and suppliers stimulate the senses. Even smell: each room has its own dedicated Jo Malone London fragrance from Pomegranate Noir to Red Roses.

Victoria Davar of Maison Artefact perfectly captures a sense of arrival in the Entrance Hall sponsored by Cox London. A five metre ceiling height adds an extravagance of volume allowing for a floating staircase to spiral up towards an imaginary upper room. Victoria reckons, “We have designed a modern day cabinet of curiosities including a cast bronze and iron chandelier from Cox London.” A Robert Adam plaster frieze from Stevensons of Norwich draws on the neoclassicism of the façade. In contrast, Chad Dorsey’s members’ clubby Drawing Room, sponsored by Fromental, is Arts and Crafts. Fromental’s Kiku wallcovering wraps the room (and ceiling) in panels of stylised chrysanthemums and sunflowers. Chad continues the nature theme with Kyle Bunting’s chequerboard leather rug featuring birch and wheat emblems.

“The Phillip Jeffries Study is designed to be visually compelling but also should enhance the way someone lives and interacts with their environment,” suggests Staffan Tollgård. The Creative Director of Tollgård selected a striking abstract artwork formed of slices of oak and paulownia wood as a wallcovering by Phillip Jeffries. Another cosy space is the Nucleus Media Room designed by Alex Dauley. This Myrrh and Spice Jo Malone London aroma filled cocoon is swathed in Zinc Textile’s suede wallcovering and incorporates Nucleus’ seamless home automation.

“A space to intrigue, inspire and spark conversation,” is how Spinocchia Freund describes The Curator’s Room. The designer has a commitment to working exclusively with women. She collaborated with Ashley Stark, Creative Director of the room’s sponsor Stark, on a bespoke rug. Spinocchia explains, “This rug is a celebration of 87 powerful creative women such as Élisabeth Garouste, Zaha Hadid, Charlotte Perriand, Faye Toogood and Vanessa Raw. Their names are woven into it. My biggest issue was deciding who to include as there were so many suitable names!”

Tommaso Franchi of Tomèf Design collaborated with three of Italy’s leading heritage brands for the Primary Bedroom. Fabric house Fortuny, rattan furniture company Bonacina, and Venetian glass masters Barovier and Toso have all contributed pieces to a room embracing Italian craft. A Primary Bedroom that could be in Venice or Verona is not complete without some Murano: a Tomèf designed coffee table contains a collection of objets d’art made from offcuts of Barovier and Toso’s Murano glassware. Alisa Connery of 1508 London based the House of Rohle Primary Bathroom on reflection, ritual and reverie. The fluid shape of the freestanding bath and standalone shower by the room’s sponsor embodies the energy and movement of water.

Hurrah, Treasure House Fair has come early this year! Or at a least a foretaste has popped up. The Season fixture is Daniel Slowik’s Morning Room sponsor. The interior designer and antique dealer sourced furniture, paintings and objets d’art from contributors to the Treasure House Fair. Daniel’s imaginary client Richard Wallace. The 19th century art collector’s London home, Hertford House in Marylebone, is now The Wallace Collection. This museum and art gallery was reinvented by the brilliant symbiotic force of the late Director Dame Rosalind Savill and the neoclassical architect John O’Connell. A Bardiglio marble chimneypiece by Jamb provides a focal point for the Treasure House Morning Room. Set pieces include a George III pedimented bookcase from Ronald Philipps and a portrait by the 18th century artist Maria Verelst from Philip Mould.

The second of three (or is it four?) open spaces at WOW!house, the Perennials and Sutherland Courtyard designed by Goddard Littlefair combines the best of Andalusian gardens and Moorish architecture. Jo Littlefair compliments Perennials and Sutherland’s technological advancement, “Their outdoor Crescent furniture uses powder coated aluminium as a finish. It’s perfect in hotter climates because the coating has good thermal stability.” The Sims Hilditch Courtyard Room is firmly back on British soil. Country house specialist Emma Sims Hilditch has created a very smart behind the green baize door space. A coffered ceiling and antique furniture elevate this space from back of house to front of courtyard. A dog room and a boot room are set behind glazed internal partition walls in two corners of the Courtyard Room.

The perfect neoclassical villa must contain at least one fourposter bed and American Alessandra Branca comes up trumps with the Casa Branca Bedroom. Drawing on eclectic sources from David Hicks to Lee Radziwill, the sponsor and designer’s own brand of textiles, wallpapers and furniture fill the room. A border stripe framing curly motifs wallpaper is echoed in the striped bed curtains. Murano vases provide hints of Alessandra’s Italian heritage.

“It all began with a pair of taps,” reveals Samuel Heath, the exclusive bathware designer and manufacturer sponsoring the Bathroom by Laura Hammett. The stepped profile, chamfered corners and bronze finish of the new taps could belong to only one style of full bathroom design: Art Deco. “This year is the centenary of l’Exposition des Arts Décoratifs à Paris which launched Art Deco,” Laura relates. “We are really reimagining the 1920s style with gusto and have included a San Marino marble rolltop bath and matching double vanity unit.”

No world class display of interiors is complete without the Pre Raphaelite tour de force that is Kelly Hoppen CBE. Her moody Living Room, sponsored by Visual Comfort and Company, is all that is to be expected from the design powerhouse. She confirms, “Visual Comfort’s collection gave us the freedom to create atmosphere and rhythm through lighting.” Kelly has selected an earthy palette of rich brown, terracotta and muted neutrals. Vintage furniture sits cheek by jowl with bespoke pieces. She notes, “The Living Room blends asymmetry, history and personal storytelling.”

Curvature is a theme of the interiors and reaches a geometric climax in the Dedar Library by Pirajean Lees which is encircled by bookcases. Designers Clémence Pirajean and James Michael Lees discovered something they have in common with the cutting edge (no pun) fabric house of Dedar: a love of music. A440 Hz, the tuning standard of musical instruments before a concert, provides an unlikely source of inspiration for patterns in the painted dome ceiling and the rug made by Jennifer Manners. A pitch perfect room. The Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges imagined Paris as a library. And as the American journalist Maureen Callaghan warns, “If you ever go back with someone after a night out and they’ve no books in their home, run! Run!”

Drummonds backed Nicola Harding’s jewel box inspired Powder Room. The Art Deco style collection includes a marble top vanity and storage units reflected in antiqued mirrors in a glazed ceramic tiled setting. “For the Powder Room you have to be more dramatic,” Nicola opines. “It’s a space where you’re likely to be alone so it can be an escape. We wanted to create an intoxicating atmosphere rich with colour and texture.” The colourway includes ruby, turquoise and jade. In contrast, Toni Black of Blacksheep uses a palette of soft blush, terracotta and taupe for her Home Bar. The scheme is centred on Shepel’s handmade joinery and furniture. A curvaceous bar follows the rounded rectangle room shape.

“The application and finish of the paint is paramount to the finished look and feel of any room, so we’re thrilled to work with Benjamin Moore, the best paint brand out there,” exclaims Peter Mikic, the designer of the Dining Room. A vast abstract artwork by Billy Metcalfe and trompe l’oeil panels by Ian Harper – using Benjamin Moore paint of course – provide sweeps of colour across the walls. Vintage Lucite leopard skin fabric metal framed dining chairs contrast with a circular dining table bejewelled with semi precious stones made by Kaizen.

Atmospheric lighting is another theme of this villa so who better than Hector Finch to sponsor the Thurstan Snug? “We were inspired by Hector’s enthusiasm for designing and crafting his lighting,” says the room’s designer James Thurston Waterworth, Founder of interiors practice Thurstan. “So we imagined a practical creative space where he could draft sketches, test samples and immerse himself in books.” Blue lime plaster walls painted with marble dust bound by varnish and a d’Ardeche parquet floor bring rich patinas to the Snug.

Ben Pentreath Studio is one of King Charles’ favourite architectural design companies. The Studio’s Rupert Cunningham, Leo Kary and Alice Montgomery have come up with the Kitchen built by Lopen Joinery which would definitely persuade Queen Camilla to don her cooking apron. Grecogothik is a novel portmanteau the team jokingly use to describe the genre of this unfitted room. Octagonal shaped cabinet legs reflect the shape of the octagonal rooflight. Art should be in every room in the house and paintings in the Kitchen include Tallisker Isle of Sky bye by John Nash (Paul Nash’s younger brother, not the architect).

His Majesty would certainly enjoy the Garden Terrace designed by Randle Siddeley which leads off the Kitchen. This exotic garden under the glass sky of the Design Centre Chelsea Harbour is filled with lush planting and framed by formal trellis in the style of an orangery. Randle believes, “The Garden Terrace is an immersive escape where one can pause, entertain and connect with nature.” Bespoke aluminium outdoor furniture by the space sponsor McKinnon and Harris includes scalloped dining chairs and an Italianate table. Mental note: every space deserves a crystal chandelier. Things get really wild … in the same collaborators’ Secret Garden filled with Oxenwood outdoor furniture.

This year, WOW!House truly is La Nouvelle Exposition des Arts Décoratifs de Londres. WOW!House 2025 deserves its own chapter in the sequel to Peter Thornton’s 1984 authoritative tome Authentic Décor The Domestic Interior 1620 to 1920.

Categories
Architecture Art Country Houses Design Developers Fashion Hotels Luxury People Restaurants Town Houses

Lavender’s Blue + 1,000 Articles

Upward We Fly

The Tuamgraney born London based novelist Edna O’Brien once remarked, “There’s a very interesting thing about memory and exile. It is only when you leave someone or something that the full power if you like, the performance of it is in you, it’s inside you. So separation brings the emotions and ultimately a book. I think a book is the accumulation of emotions written in a particular, hopefully musical, way. It’s a beautiful feeling actually; it’s like the whole influx of something that is stronger than memory. Of course, it’s memory but you’re back in it, not writing it secondhand. Again, that counts for a certain derangement.”

It all started with Cliveden. In September 2012, we received an invitation to stay in the Berkshire hotel but as hard copy publications back then were disappearing faster than Veuve Cliquot at one of our soirées, we came up with the idea of publishing an article online. And so Lavender’s Blue was born. The name has triple derivation after our home (“Your house is so cinematic!” declares film director Stephan Pierre Mitchell), our location and the song by Marillion. Before long, every PR in London and further afield learned we always turn up, give good party, and even better copy. Although five parties in one day starting with an 11am Champagne reception for New York thinker John Mack in the Rosewood Hotel was pushing it even by our standards. Actually, it all really began in April 1995 with a column House of the Month in Ulster Architect magazine, edited and published by the bold and brave and brilliant Anne Davey Orr. But that’s a whole other story.

While most events are one-offs, from a vanishing crystal coach at Ascot to a vanishing guest on the Orient Express, others would become annual events. If the preview of Masterpiece (in Royal Hospital Chelsea grounds) was an early summer hit each year, the Boutique Hotel Awards (in Merchant Taylor’s Hall) would quickly become a midwinter highlight. Fortunately Masterpiece has been replaced by The Treasure House Fair and WOW!house and we’ve landed ourselves on their preview lists. We’re also proving a hit at the annual International Media Marketplace.

Behind the curtain. That’s our forte. And we don’t just mean peeping round the iron variety (think Gdańsk). We’re not only through the gates: we’re over the threshold. We gain access where others dare not tread. If it’s an Irish country house, we’ll stay with the owners and explore the cellars and attics – preferably when they’re tucked up in their fourposter (Temple House). We’ll pop into the kitchen to see what’s really going on whether in Le Bristol or Comme Chez Soi. We’ll talk to the lady of the manor and a millworker (Sion Mills). Sometimes it takes a village to raise an article: in Castletownshend the fun began over breakfast at The Castle continuing through public houses and private houses up Main Street before ending back in The Castle by dawn.

If “design” is the mauve thread that sews Lavender’s Blue together, “celebration of life” is our way of banishing anything mentally blue. Illuminated by art and architecture, fashion and the Divine, we’re mad for life, channelling that literary derangement. But if it ain’t good, it don’t appear. Simple. At the opposite end of the spectrum, some events are far too private to be published such as an impresario salon recital in one of London’s grandest houses surrounded by more Zoffanys than The National Gallery owns while sampling the owners’ South African wine cellar. Or a party in Corke Lodge, County Wicklow, with more diplomats per square metre than Kensington Palace Gardens being serenaded by the Whiffenpoofs on the folly gladed lawn.

Lavender’s Blue is all about places and people so we rarely do personal. You won’t read how we were catastrophically frogmarched out of The Lanesborough (too much catwalking) or categorically told to pipe down in Launceston Place (too much caterwauling). Or the full story of hijinks with the model Parees which one friend described as sounding like an escapade from an Armistead Maupin short story. Original writing and original photography – and occasionally original drawing (from a two minute sketch of Mountainstown House to a 10 hour floor plan of Derrymore House) – are our creative cornerstones. We never plagiarise except from ourselves: to quote from one of our most read articles, Beaulieu House, “Lavender’s Blue is the brilliant coated edition of universal facts, riveting mankind, bringing nice and pretty events.” We’ll coin the odd phrase too from “Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder” to “You can’t be this fabulous and not make a few enemies!”

What’s our literary style? Well we’re not paid up members of Plain English for starters. Lord Wolfe would blanche at such opening gambits as, “There’s nothing standard in The Standard” or “Mary Martin London fashion is more than an antinomic macédoine: it is a semiotic embrace of science and conviction made manifest in materiality, tactility and sartorial disruption”. There are a quarter of a million English words to choose from (compared to a mere 100,000 in French and a meagre 85,000 in Chinese) so why reach for simplicity when you can stretch the lexicon? We don’t like to namedrop but as Daphne Guinness shared with us about her lyrics at a party in Notting Hill, “There are some words I just really like the sound of!” A picture tells 1,000 words and sometimes we’ll deliver 1,000 words and 1,000 pictures. But how can you keep the shutter open when you’re cherishing Chatsworth or roaming round Rochester? We’re not just about obvious glitz and glamour. So we frequent Hôtel Meurice in Paris and Hôtel Meurice in Calais. We’ve explored Georgian Bath and Georgian Dover. Doubling down on clichés is avoided except in derision while downing Chapel Down south of the Kent Downs.

How long does an article take to prepare? Some flow with automatic writing on a commute or in bed or in the bath in almost unconscious reverie. Others take decades. Mourne Park House started with a memorable visit in 1992 (the boathouse collapsed and gracefully slid into the lake mid morning coffee) and continued with return visits up to 2021 (by then the house was badly burnt). Crevenagh House was photographed over two decades in every season from heavy snow to scorching sunshine. We visited Gunnersbury Park four times over a London heatwave to capture it morning, noon, evening, and after supper. We also vacationed at Murlough four times, Irish Sea hopping in search of elusive sunlight. Montevetro and Marlfield both first appeared in Ulster Architect before being resurrected on Lavender’s Blue. Marlfield is the work of genius architect Alfred Cochrane with later lodges by the talented Albert Noonan. And on that note, John O’Connell’s work (Montalto) and tours (Ranger’s House) have added an abundance of sparkle to Lavender’s Blue.

We’re always up for top drawer collaborations: polo in Buenos Aires; the Government in Montenegro; Audi in Istanbul; Boutique Hotels Club in Bruges; Guggenheim in Bilbao; Rare Champagne in Paris. Did we mention Paris? The friendliest city in the world! As long as you’re in the right set, of course. We know our French, spring, red and rings. Oh, and we’re easily dragooned to fashion shows stretching the bailiwick especially when it comes to fashion artist Mary Martin London. Vintage models (Goodwood, Carmen dell’Orefice and Pattie Boyd), modern models (Esther Blakley, Janice Blakley and Katie Ice – all beautiful, all gazelles), royalty (Queen Ronke and Catherine Princess of Wales) and pop star royalty (Heather Small) have all enjoyed Lavender’s Blue exposure. There are even occasional segues into filming (Newzroom Afrika and English Heritage) and the dreaded bashing of ivories (Rabbit).

The current culmination of Lavender’s Blue is an exquisitely printed hardback coffee table book of substance on the Holy Land. The first edition of SABBATH PLUS ONE was an instant sellout at Daunt Books Marylebone. It’s now on the coffee tables of all the best homes – including a certain Clarence House. Oh yes, King Charles III is really enjoying his copy. “Your most thoughtful gesture is greatly appreciated …” So it’s time for the second edition. Same high quality print with a reddish burgundy rather than navy blue hard back hand stitched fabric cover. We’re still gonna vaunt about Daunt. Only the finest. In all the best libraries now, not least earning its stripes at Abbey Leix House and Pitchford Hall. And lobbies: The American Colony Hotel and The Jaffa.

We do love our triple Michelin starred places (L’Ambroisie, Lasarte, Core). Champagne! Foam! Truffle! While most of the restaurants we have visited are still thriving, unknowingly at the time, Lavender’s Blue would become an archive for quite a few. Aquavit, Bank Westminster and Zander Bar, Duddell’s, Farmacy, Galvin at Windows in The Hilton Park Lane, The Gas Station (one of our regular rendezvous with fellow gourmand Becks), Hello Darling, Marcus Wareing’s Tredwell’s, 8 Mount Street, Nuala, Plateau, Rex Whistler at Tate Britain, San Lorenzo, Senkai, Tom Kemble at Bonham’s, and Typing Room all in London have disappeared. So have Scheltema in Brussels, Le Détroit in Calais, The Black Douglas in Deal, The Table in Broadstairs, l’Écrivain in Dublin, Cristal Room Baccarat in Paris, and Forage and Folk in Omagh.

Still, nothing tastes as good as skinny fries. It’s survival of the fattest! Impressive as it was, Embassy Gardens Marketing Suite was never built to last. Erarta Art Gallery, Fu Manchu nightclub (the real Annabel’s!) and The Green and Found gift shop are lost in the mists of time. We’d barely photographed Quinlan Terry’s 35 year old junior common room bungalow at Downing College before the wrecker’s ball entered the site. We’re already missing our perfumer neighbour Sniff.

Even sadder, we have become the repository for final curtain interviews. Min Hogg, Founding Editor of The World of Interiors magazine and Anna Wintour’s first boss, the 9th Marquess of Waterford and the musician Diana Rogers entertained us – and hopefully you – with their end of life witticisms. David George, a reader of our Diana in Savannah article wrote, “I was married to her for 10 years and we were together for more than two decades. When you look in the sky she is the brightest star that you will ever see! I love you sweet middle class princess! Rest in peace, all my love, David.” We featured artist Trevor Newton’s final solo show and fashion designer Thierry Mugler taking his au revoir bow at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs Paris. Now historic photographs of model Misty Bailey appeared on Lavender’s Blue. Lindy Guinness, the last Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava, shared thoughts at one of her last townhouse parties full of people one should know like the international tastemaker Charles Plante. Beresford Neill reminisced on early 20th century Tyrella. And of course, two memorial pieces to the much missed Dorinda, Lady Dunleath. The last book launch of Dame Rosalind Savill, the inspirational scholar of European decorative arts and visionary museum director of the Wallace Collection, is another moving memory now frozen in time.

Readers’ comments are always of interest. Standout messages include a painting request to Ballyfin; advice on the best photographic viewing point at Dungiven Castle; revealing a shared love of Mary Delany or the Mitfords; a discussion of the meaning of Rue Monsieur; Samarès Manor relatives trying to contact each other during a Jersey storm; and an unreported baby drowning in a mansion swimming pool in Sandwich Bay. Mount Congreve attracted interesting comments including from James Sweeney who wrote, “I worked in Mount Congreve Estate for many years as a Private Chef to the Congreves. It was a joy and a pleasure and has given me cherished memories. Mr Congreve was an amazing man and I owe him a great deal for his wisdom that he kindly let me benefit from.”

Ewelina from Beauty on the Cliff poetically scribed, “Waterford is my home since 17 years and Mount Congreve was always my soft point. The moment when you enter the place is simply magical. I’ve been inside the house recently, just before yesterday. I was inside of the Blue Wedgwood Room … well … only the pale blue walls and the beautiful but sadly empty china cabinets reminded me about past grandeur of this place. It’s really really heartbreaking to see the empty rooms, stripped from everything … even the curtains … the books all over the floor in the library … totally without the respect for Mr Congreve. I hope that Waterford City Council didn’t forget that was someone else’s home. As Mr Yeats said, ‘Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.’ Thank you so much for your review. Kindest regards from Waterford.” Sara Stainsby messaged, “Really interesting essay on Stapleford Park. My great grandparents worked there, my grandmother was born there and was married in the church. In the 70s I visited my great grandparents when they lived in a flat above the stables …” Birthday wishes (Portrait) and restoration concerns (Barden Towers) are always welcome. Even more welcome was a Champers accompanied poem hand delivered to the state dining room (Hartwell House).

There are direct messages too: “I came across your Lavender’s Blue series starting from Auchinleck then Crevenagh House and Tullan Strand. I can see from your McClelland connection that you have an interest in Northern Ireland including Donegal … I found that your articles on architecture address the most erudite, meticulous and expansive aspects of the subject so perhaps the work of James Taylor in late Georgian times will fall beneath the range of your interest in the style and proportions of symmetrical Palladian buildings.” We jumped straight in a car to Islington. Likewise when tipped off about Stockwell Park. A reader enjoyed our “wonderful commentary on various aspects of Ballyshannon … tis wonderful to share your thoughts about my hometown”. We’ll accept high praise from Ireland’s greatest host: “I just love your articles striking notes of deepest erudizione to soprano and coloratura gossip! I’m so glad you were the catalyst to my party and I can’t believe it went so well.”

Amazing Grace Point inspired a declaration of faith: “Lough Swilly and Fort Dunree is one of the most wonderful places in Ireland to visit, and especially to look out across the waters where so many great ships have sailed. But most of all – to ponder the words of Amazing Grace written there by John Newton. His miraculous conversion credited to his mother’s prayers. She never gave up, like my mother, who never gave up but prayed me into the Kingdom.” Messages come from above and down under: “I hope you don’t mind me emailing you but I happened to walk into a beautiful graveyard today in Picton, Australia, and happened to come across this one particular headstone. I was instantly intrigued as my grandparents were from Donegal in Ireland and I wanted to see if this was close? Anyway I just read about Mountjoy Square and when the area become established. I’m not sure but working out the dates I think this couple might have been some of the original inhabitants? I saw an article that you wrote and just wanted to share this with you – you may or may not appreciate it but I wanted to bring this couple home!” They’ve come home.

Artist and art restorer Denise Cook crosses the rare divide from comment provider to content provider sharing her expanse of knowledge from Pink Magnolias to the Rector of Stiffkey. So does Dr Roderick O’Donnell, world authority on all matters Pugin. Another reader turned writer, the ever erudite historian and patron of the arts Nicholas Sheaff, brought Gosford Castle completely (back) to life. “There is really too much to say,” to parrot Henry James in The Portrait of a Lady, 1881. Haud muto factum.

As Reverend Prebendary Andy Rider once quipped, “You do get around.” Amsterdam to Zürich, Brussels to Verona, Channel Island hopping, nowhere is safe from the Lavender’s Blue sagacity filled patrician treatment. As for our favourite place, that’s simple: Bunbeg Beach, especially at 10.30pm on a sun drenched midsummer night. Chronicling our times, we produce the material – and sometimes we are the material. But only when shot by the likes of top cinematographer Mina Hanbury-Tennyson-Choi and shoot the shoot supremo Simon Dutson. Striking a striking pose. Fading grandeur (the interior not the model).

“The whole earth is filled with awe at Your wonders; where morning dawns, where evening fades, You call forth songs of joy,” Psalm 65. Lavender’s Blue is between the bookends of everything that was and is to come. It’s about dealing with things as they are, not as they should be. We’re all about orchestrating a fresh approach, synthesising Baroque stridency with Palladian refinement. Our oeuvre is a sumptuous sequence of artistic compositions. On the frontline, turning to face the light. Mary Oliver always gets it right: Instructions for Living a Life, 2010, “Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.” Thank you to all our readers. Thank you Council Bluffs. In the short now, to pluralise the words of the French Resistance fighter Simone Segouin, “We’d do it all again.”

Categories
Architecture Country Houses Hotels Restaurants

Richmond House Cappoquin Waterford + Lavender’s Blue

Fair Ground

Our first glimpse of Richmond House was from the hanging gardens of Cappoquin House. Just two of the many fine estates we are popping into along the Blackwater River Valley. When the owners die they must barely notice the difference to their surroundings, such is the paradisal allure of west County Waterford. It’s a late afternoon (or evening as southerners like to say) drive by shoot of this Georgian box standing a mere 480 metres from the west bank of the Blackwater River.

Richmond House earns a paragraph in A Guide to Irish Country Houses by Mark Bence-Jones, 1978, “A three storey late Georgian block, five bay front with Doric porch, three bay side. Eave roof on bracket cornice. In 1814, the residence of Michael Keane; in 1914, of Gerald Villiers-Stuart. Now a guesthouse.” Small world – smaller in this valley – the Keanes still live at Cappoquin House and the Villiers-Stuarts at Dromana House.

All is serene, all is calm, except for the roar of engine and screech of brakes. We’ve an hour to cross county lines for dinner in New Ross. Not so easy comes, easy goes today. Long a restaurant with guest rooms, Richmond House is thankfully free of superfluous signage. The simplicity of the green lawn and pale skin coloured architecture speak for themselves. Doric, that most grounded of the classical orders, is used for the tetrastyle portico, the central portion now glazed to form a porch. And we’re off.

Categories
Architects Architecture Country Houses

Salterbridge Gatelodge Cappoquin Waterford + Irish Landmark Trust

Maquette of a Mansion

Gatelodges are one of the exciting distractions of driving round rural Ireland. Each one poses and poses questions. Is it in the same style as the Big House? Is it more adventurous? Has it outlived the Big House? Due to their diminutive size and often far flung locations, many are unoccupied although there are always ways to extend them sympathetically. Enter the Irish Landmark Trust, saviour of follies and farmhouses, lighthouses and gatelodges, restoring them as human and dog friendly holiday accommodation.

If Tullymurry House (near Newry, County Down) was the perfect getaway to celebrate a wintry milestone birthday with fellow elites, Salterbridge Gatelodge (on the edge of Cappoquin, County Waterford) is the ideal romantic retreat for early spring. Dating from about 1850, this stone gatelodge is in the severe Grecian idiom best exemplified on this island by English architect Francis Goodwin’s Lissadell House (outside Carney, County Sligo). The plainest of pilasters and parapets define its hard edges. An octagonal storey height double chimneystack is more English Tudor than Ancient Greece and hints at the shape of an internal feature. The chamfered entrance bay shape is internally mirrored to form an octagonal dining hall. A sensitively designed rear extension contains the kitchen.

Is Salterbridge Gatelodge the same style as Salterbridge House? Yes and no: the Big House also has plain stone pilasters and parapets but is otherwise rendered with Wyatt windows in the Regency mode. Is it more adventurous? On a par except for that double chimneystack: otherwise there is nothing over the top about the architecture of either the gatelodge or house. Has it outlived the Big House? No: fortunately Salterbridge House is also in great condition. In 2021, the 11 bedroom house and its 55 hectare estate was sold for €3.25 million to the Vernons who are only the third family to own the property. Robert O’Byrne celebrates the revival of the architectural white elephants of last century in his splendid latest book The Irish Country House: A New Vision (2024).

Categories
Architects Architecture Country Houses People

Cappoquin House + Gardens Cappoquin Waterford

The Best Days  

In The Super Seven Towns and Villages of West Waterford (2024), James Hyde describes the “glittering necklace” of Aglish, Ballyduff, Cappoquin, Lismore, Mount Mellerey, Tallow and Villierstown. “Cappoquin is a friendly business town located where the River Blackwater turns south. For decades it saw boats and paddle steamers plying their trade to the Irish Sea at Youghal, and bringing people upriver for days out and sports matches.” The crown jewel in this pretty village is Cappoquin House.  

The Big House in Ireland is usually hidden away behind high stone walls, locked gates and a wooded demesne. Notable exceptions are Castletown Cox (Piltown, County Kilkenny), Lismore Castle (Lismore, County Waterford, visible despite being set in a 3,240 hectare estate), and Rosemount House (New Ross, County Wexford) which are all distractingly visible from public roads. Cappoquin House firmly fits into the latter category: not many country houses have an address on Main Street. It rises high above the whole town, closer to heaven physically and visually that any of the nearby buildings.  

An Introduction to the Architectural Heritage of County Waterford by the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage (2010) states, “The late 18th century Cappoquin House (1779), home of the Keane family, was burnt in 1923 but was reconstructed with great care to designs by Richard Orpen (1863 to 1938), brother of the more famous society painter William (1878 to 1931). The by then conservative aesthetic in which Cappoquin was rebuilt underlined the cautious approach to architecture that more or less dominated the century.” 

There are a lot of plants to see for an honesty box €6 entrance fee. Current owner Sir Charles Keane’s mother Lady Olivia Keane revamped the 19th century gardens in the 1950s and then expanded them two decades later. Due to the steep gradient, the town is invisible from the house and garden, and instead the uninterrupted view is across the tidal valley of the River Blackwater as it gains momentum en route to the sea at Youghal. Rambling Rector climbing rose drapes over the verandah; Golden Showers climbing rose wraps round the courtyard.  

“My mother began to develop the grounds more vigorously and she had a great concept of design,” says Sir Charles who lives in the house with his wife Lady Corinne. “She planted well with an instinct for what looks right – and that’s key. The aim, really, is beauty. If you are on a slope you must keep open to the view which means we’re always cutting back.” His ancestor, solicitor John Keane, bought the property 290 years ago. The Keanes are descendants of the O’Cahans of County Londonderry who lost their lands in the Plantation of Ulster. Ah, the nuances of Anglo Irish and British and Irish and West British lineage.  

“The country houses of politicians became a regular target during the Civil War that followed Irish Independence,” Sir Charles relates, “so when my grandfather Sir John Keane was elected to the Senate in the new Irish Free State, he anticipated an attack. With considerable foresight he removed the contents and many of the fixtures, and placed them in storage. It transpired that his premonition was well founded and the house was duly burnt. But by the 1930s he felt sufficiently confident to rebuild with the advice of Richard Orpen. In the ensuing remodelling the façade became the garden front while the north front facing the courtyard became the entrance front.” Before the era of Éamon de Valera as Taoiseach, the Irish Free State Government provided compensation to country house owners who had their properties destroyed in the Civil War. Most chose not to rebuild. The shadowy veil of picnickers in a foreign land would sadly prevail down the generations.  

Cappoquin House and gardens are in fact a 20th century creation or recreation. The real Phoenix Park. There’s a tantalising approach to the house: it appears in long distance views only to vanish above the town; a steep avenue off Main Street leads to the stable block which offers the first glimpse of the house framed by an archway. Names mentioned in connection with the original 1779 house are John Roberts of Waterford or the better known Sardinia born Davis Ducart. John Roberts designed the simply elegant Gaultier Lodge in Woodstown, 73 kilometres east of Cappoquin. But there is more of Cappoquin House to be found in the refined Italianate neoclassicism of Castletown Cox, a Davis Ducart designed country house 226 kilometres north of Cappoquin. Both share a seven bay elevation with three bay breakfront and s scattering of arch headed windows.  

The Keane residence is a two storey building constructed of smooth grey limestone. A flat roof behind a parapet dotted with finials is centred on a circular lantern over the staircase hall. A seven bay south elevation with a three bay breakfront overlooks the Sunken Garden and far below, the Blackwater River. The breakfront of the corresponding north elevation has two first floor bays above a three bay entrance arrangement treated as a two dimensional portico: Doric columns flank the partially glazed front door and pilasters end said arrangement. The north elevation is slightly shorter than the south elevation due to the projections on the east and west elevations. It faces the courtyard and the Upper Pleasure Garden. A verandah is attached to the three bay projection to one side of the six bay west elevation facing the Croquet Lawn. This ivy clad front resembles Mount Stewart in Greyabbey, County Down. A neoclassical conservatory projects from the six bay east front: a lower earlier wing extends from the three bay projection. The east front is plainer than the rest of the exterior with no window surrounds and overlooks the Wing Garden.