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Collon House Louth +

For You Have Been Our Refuge

“You will enjoy Collon and the arresting parterre garden,” predicts Ireland’s foremost neoclassicist John O’Connell.

Maurice Craig wrote an article in Country Life, 1949, Some Smaller Irish Houses, “Most of the great houses of Ireland have received some descriptive attention, first from the Irish Georgian Society, and more recently from Country Life. At the other end of the social scale the Irish cottage has interested field geographers and anthropologists such as Dr Estyn Evans (Irish Heritage, 1942). But in between there are, in Ireland as in England, a number of those ‘middling’ houses which are the backbone of vernacular architecture. Social cleavages in the great building age were sharper in Ireland than in England, so that the middle class and its monuments were less numerous than in England. But they existed nonetheless, in both town and country, and their houses are not without distinctive qualities which repay study. Neither ‘big houses nor ‘cabins’, they range from farmhouses to gentlemen farmhouses.”

In the same publication 27 years later, John Cornforth worried in an article Tourism and Irish Country Houses, “With planning and preservation arrangements in town and country still in their infancy, there is nothing to stop a purchaser buying a historic demesne for its land, splitting it up, developing it and abandoning the house.” From earls and girls in pearls to manners and manors, cut to 2022 and the current Architectural Editor of Country Life, Jeremy Musson tells us, “I’m a curious house guest, writing about Irish country houses for a British magazine, Country Life. It’s a personal odyssey. The tall walls, owners with a disarming sense of humour … Irish country houses have a special flavour. I rarely get to bed before midnight! Country Life’s publication of Irish houses is an erratic study. Country Life was established in 1897; Powerscourt House in County Wicklow was published two years later. The magazine’s founder Edward Hudson is reported to have said, ‘Lismore Castle in County Waterford I believe is very photographable.’ Mount Stewart in County Down was featured in 1935.”

Jeremy relates, “Irish houses had far larger numbers of servants than English ones and greater hospitality. The complexity of servants’ basements contrasts with the simplicity of the layout of the main rooms above. Lissadell in County Sligo is a classic example of this arrangement. My first Country Life article was Russborough in County Wicklow. I covered Farmleigh in Dublin in 1999 and Killadoon in County Kildare in 2004. I also wrote up Castle Leslie in County Monaghan in 1999. Sir Jack Leslie loved going to the local disco – he said ‘Dancing shakes up the liver!’ I remember a dinner at Drenagh in County Londonderry. Mid course, cattle invaded the lawn so we all ran outside to chase the cows away!” Somewhere needs a haha. “In 2015 I covered Kilboy House in County Tipperary, probably the most ambitious Irish country house project in recent times. Country Life is the recording angel of the Irish country house and it continues to beguile.”

Another architectural historian, Roger White, shared with us this year, “The aristocracy and gentry in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice novel had limitless leisure hours, filling some of them by visiting country houses.” And that brings us rather nicely to sitting in the music room of Collon House, County Louth. We’re guests of owners John Bentley-Dunne and Michael McMahon. “Collon House is actually three houses around a courtyard which I inherited in 1995,” explains John. “The interiors were Victorianised so we wanted to bring them back to their original Georgian appearance. The restoration took 10 years. We reinserted correct glazing bars and shutters for the windows.”

Collon House is not quite a big house and certainly not a cabin. It’s a large middling size house. “I am not sure why Anthony Foster, Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer, ended up building a house in this village location in 1740. His son John was the last Speaker of the Irish Commons until its dissolution by The Act of Union in 1800. It is an example of an Irish ‘long house’. The Speaker’s descendants recently came from England to visit the house.” John O’Connell says, “‘Speaker’ Foster built Mount Oriel Temple a few kilometres north of Collon. Its pedimented portico was inspired by The Temple of the Winds. The house had a room with a series of grisaille paintings by Peter de Gree which I believe ended up at Luttrellstown Castle outside Dublin.” Mount Oriel Temple is much altered and under the ownership of Cistercian monks.

“It all started with an overspill at Tankardstown House in neighbouring County Meath,” intrigues John. “The owners asked if we could take some staying guests as they were full. The rest is history.” Canopy Room, Chinese Room, Speaker Foster’s Room, French Room, Massereene Room … there’s accommodation for 22 guests at Collon House. Modern conveniences are discreet: those one metre deep walls and oversized landings come in handy for adding en suite bathrooms.

We join our distinguished fellow guests from Richmond, Virginia, for a candlelit and evening sunlit dinner of Irish country house portions and Irish country house hotel standard in the dining room. Starter is seafood cocktail wrapped in smoked salmon in seafood sauce followed by pea and coriander soup. Limoncello with lemon shavings forms the palate cleanser. When in Rome! Smoked salmon, butter mash, baby tomatoes, baby carrots and broccoli are something of the national tricolour on a plate. Lemon continues as a theme with sorbet pudding. Michael serves; John is busy in the kitchen. Coffee and chocolates are enjoyed in the music room across the staircase hall and garden hall lobby. Just in time to look out across the sunken parterre garden. Box edged flowerbeds are filled with asters, delphinium, helenium and phlox. The planting is so complementary to the tulips and hosta surrounding the fountain in the courtyard.

We enjoyed Collon and the arresting parterre garden.

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Architecture Country Houses

Lavender’s Blue + Castle ffrench Galway

Fortissimo

Anglicisation from Gaelic is to blame in some instances (The Argory is a case in point) but quite a few Irish country houses have intriguing names. Jockey Hall and Shandy Hall (the latter in Dripsey) sound fun. Whiskey Hall sounds like too much fun. Bachelors Lodge and Hymenstown are presumably miles apart. Mount Anne or Mount Stewart anyone? The mildly unnerving Flood Hall, Fort Etna, Spiddal Hall and The Reeks. Is Sherlockstown worth investigating? Zoomorphic zaniness: Fox Hall, Lizard Manor, Lyons, Mount Panther and Roebuck Hall. Elphin – Castle? Place names too. Bungalo begs the question: is it full of single storey residences?

Lots of houses without so much as a battlement are called castles: Beltrim Castle, Castle Coole, Castle Grove, Castle Leslie. Castle ffrench joins this list although there are ruins of a tower house on the estate. The double consonant lower case doesn’t disguise the fact the name originated somewhat unsurprisingly in France. The ffrench family were part of a Norman landing in County Wexford in 1169. In time, they became one of the 14 Tribes of Galway. Their single consonant upper class case cousins owned French Park in County Roscommon.

Castle ffrench is a star of Maurice Craig’s seminal work Classic Irish Houses of the Middle Size. He notes its plan is virtually identical to Bonnettstown’s in County Kilkenny, despite the 90 mile 40 year gap. A notable feature of both pretty Big Houses is the pair of staircases side by side, like slightly asymmetric Siamese twins. A thin wall between the pair once segregated the classes’ ascent and descent (for richer, for poorer). One is dressed in plasterwork; the other bare. Landings pressed against the four bay rear elevation provide interesting mid storey variations in window positions. Both stairwells are lit by tall fanlight topped windows identical on the outside – only the family one has internal panelling.

The front elevation is more conventional, the grouped middle three bays of a five bay composition gently projecting. Urns and finials sprouting from a solid parapet dot the horizon. A three storey over basement (hidden to the front | semi exposed to the sides | for all to see to the rear) limestone block, this house is the epitome of Irish Georgian style. It even has an archetypal fanlight set in the entablatured triglyphed pilastered fluted rosetted doorcase. Conservation architect John O’Connell calls the building “very accomplished” and recognises the influence of the architect Richard Castle. A niche in the entrance hall is marginally unaligned with the ceiling plasterwork above. A signal that the house is the work of a builder with a pattern book or two at his disposal? Or simply plastered on a Friday afternoon?

Castle ffrench rises above an unruffled patchwork quilt, a landscape of interlocking greens, quieter than Pimlico Tube Station on a Friday evening (are Pimlocals like Peter York too posh to push onto public transport?). So silent. Rural aural aura. Within the vale beyond The Pale. A mile long drive and 40 acres keep the populace at bay. Augustine days of yore aren’t so distant… Indoors, there’s a hooley! The plasterwork, at any rate. The stuccodores’ genius charges towards zenithsphere in the entrance hall and landing (of the family staircase). Neoclassicism and rococo blend and blur in mesmerising jigs and reels of fables and foliage ribboned round Irish harps and ffrench French horns. Wreathes and sheaves and sickles, the whole shebang.

Lady Fifi ffrench (stutteringly fitting phonetics or what?) and her husband John were the last of the original family to reside at Castle ffrench. Sheila and Bill Bagliani, the current owners, have sensitively restored this knockout property, subtly preserving its patina of age. Bertie the Labrador and Sally the Westie run amok through the grounds. Sheila, a talented artist, has a top floor studio to kill for. No really. All stairs lead to a second floor central corridor spanning the full width of the house. This corridor might not have the ornate plasterwork of the spaces below but it’s very much defined by a series of blind and open arches like abstract vaulting. A forerunner to Sir John Soane’s streamlined style. At one end, a door opens into a softly lit corner room with views to die for. There are flowers and canvases and a ghost – a previous owner refuses to leave and who could blame her? – in the attic.

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Architecture Town Houses

Henrietta Street Dublin + Lavender’s Blue

Writers’ Block

Henrietta Street Dublin © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Lavender’s Blue, 2015, “It’s a permanent film set, a black and white photograph, a frozen moment in the decline of the Ascendancy – squares of cobwebbed glass blind to the 21st century.”

Henrietta Street Townhouse Dublin © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Christopher Hussey, 1979 1939, “There can be few streets in any city in Europe of such surpassing quality in such a state of decrepitude.”

Maurice Craig, 1970, “Of so palatial a cast that one easily understands how it remained the most fashionable street in Dublin till the Union, long after many rival centres of social attraction had been created.”

Henrietta Street Doorcase Dublin © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

James Joyce, 1914, “The gaunt spectral mansions in which the old nobility of Dublin had roistered.”

Henrietta Street Railings Dublin © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

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Architects Architecture Art Country Houses Luxury People

The Baglianis + Gaultier Lodge Woodstown Waterford

Townland and Country

Gaultier Lodge Front Garden © lvbmag.com Stuart Blakley

Bastardstown, Cheekpoint, Mooncoin, Passenger East, Priesthaggard… Names, names, such memorable names. Say them with a cut glass accent. Only in Waterford, the civilised southeast coast of Ireland. Geography is close, history closer. Everything is near water, everyone remembers generations past. Land of Molly Keane. Nowhere is more horse and hounds than Gaultier Lodge (pronounced “Gol-teer”) thanks to its country pursuits loving owners, Sheila and Bill Bagliani. Animal motifs abound, on potpourri sachets, coasters, wallpaper friezes, upholstery, saltshakers, pepper grinders, paintings (there’s an artist in residence – Sheila), even wine glasses. “We’re a bit obsessional!” jokes Sheila.

2 Gaultier Lodge Entrance Front © lvbmag.com Stuart Blakley

Gaultier Lodge may have been referred to in Victorian times as “Gaultier Cottage” but don’t be misled by its reticent exterior. This is a sophisticated design befitting its former status as a hunting lodge of the Earl of Huntingdon. Four rooms span the original beach front, linked by a tripartite gallery along the entrance front. The middle two rooms are deeper with more ornate mantelpieces and cornices. Now the drawing room and dining room, they are interconnected by a vast pair of panelled doors. In the middle of the gallery is a square vestibule with symmetrical openings. Twin sets of doors include a false door for visual harmony. A guest bedroom bookends either extremity of the beach front.

1 Gaultier Lodge Entrance Porch © lvbmag.com Stuart Blakley

The hand of a master is at work. His name is John Roberts, the architect who designed much of 18th century Waterford City and worked on Curraghmore, the Marquess and Marchioness of Waterford’s stately home. Never has a piano nobile been more appropriate. The raised ground floor provides breathtaking views across Woodstown’s unspoiled golden strand to a Knights Templar church on the opposite side of the Waterford Channel. “Thank goodness low tide goes out 2.5 kilometres,” says Sheila. “Otherwise we’d be as developed as Tramore.”

1 Gaultier Lodge Pillars © lvbmag.com Stuart Blakley

In the early 1900s a two bay bedroom wing was added – no country house, however miniature, should be without one. And a porch. “We’ve done our best to dress up the plain porch,” she continues, “with pillars and sash windows.” A pleasant colonial appearance is the result. The coastline was damaged by the Lisbon Tsunami of 1755. Gaultier Lodge was built four decades later. A photo dated 1870 shows the retaining wall along the beach part concealing the lower ground floor. “A storm has since washed away the mound of rabbit burrows against the wall. Last winter another storm flattened our greenhouse and blew 100 slates off the roof.” There’s a price to be paid for the beauty of proximity to nature. Not that it’s apparent, on a long spring evening sipping wine on the lawn watching the remains of the day.

1 Gaultier Lodge Entrance Front © lvbmag.com Stuart Blakley

2 Gaultier Lodge Beach Front © lvbmag.com Stuart Blakley

1 Gaultier Lodge Beach Front © lvbmag.com Stuart Blakley

Gaultier Lodge from the Beach © lvbmag.com Stuart Blakley

Gaultier Lodge Driveway © lvbmag.com Stuart Blakley

1 Gaultier Lodge Garden © lvbmag.com Stuart Blakley

Gaultier Lodge Garden © lvbmag.com Stuart Blakley

Gaultier Lodge Beach © lvbmag.com Stuart Blakley

Gaultier Lodge Bedroom View © lvbmag.com Stuart Blakley

Gaultier Lodge View © lvbmag.com Stuart Blakley

“Historic houses are like horses,” declares Sheila. “They’re expensive to run!” That hasn’t stopped the Baglianis buying another one on the opposite side of Ireland. “Castle ffrench was the home of Percy French. Maurice Craig compares it to Bonnettstown in his book Classic Irish Houses of the Middling Sizes. All the original furniture was sold but we’ve bought suitable pieces, many from the US.” Sheila and Bill also own a stud in North Carolina, suitably called Castle French Farm.

Gaultier Lodge Entrance Hall © lvbmag.com Stuart Blakley

The fire roars. Frequently read books on the country and houses and country houses and country house owners and lovers of country houses and country house owners’ lovers pile high on occasional tables. “When I used to go to Mount Juliet, it was just like the famous Colman’s Mustard advert, where the butler is sent back from the hunt to get mustard for a guest’s sandwich. The butler really did cater to every whim,” recalls Sheila. Bats noiselessly swoop in eternal graceless circles across the lawn while inside dinner is attentively served. Red onion and goat’s cheese tart is followed by monkfish with salad on the side, an American touch. The hallmark of Gaultier Lodge cooking is fresh country produce, layered with taste, such as the carrots soaked in butter and citrus. Gin and tonic sorbet – what’s not to love? Pudding is Italian carrot cake “baked with ground almond instead of flour to make it lighter”.

Gaultier Lodge Cornice © lvbmag.com Stuart Blakley

Woodstown has always been famed for its decadent high end hospitality. In 1967 newly widowed Jackie Kennedy and her children Caroline and John stayed at nearby Woodstown House. The Daily Herald breathlessly reported, “Woodstown House, about seven miles from Waterford City, where the Kennedys will stay during their visit is one of the most beautiful residences in the area, known for its gracious mansions… Mrs Kennedy will occupy the main bedroom which is toned in a predominantly dark blue colour.”

Gaultier Lodge Breakfast © lvbmag.com Stuart Blakley

It keeps going, “The Woodstown area itself probably carries the greatest concentration of Anglo Irish blue bloods in the country and the social whirl runs at a pretty fast pace. Among her neighbours in the county will be the Duke of Devonshire who owns Lismore Castle and the Marquess of Waterford who lives at Portlaw.” Another temporary resident in the 1960s was Jack Profumo who decided to lie low at Ballyglan, his brother’s house across the road from Gaultier Lodge. Names, names, such memorable names.

Gaultier Lodge Carrot Cake © lvbmag.com Stuart Blakley

 

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Architecture Art Country Houses People

Robert O’Byrne + Thomas Heneage Art Books London

A Knight in London 

Robert O'Byrne © lvbmag.com

A life in sound bites and superlatives; there’s no hiatus in the hyperbole. Friday evening. Thomas Heneage Art Books is back to back with aristos and aficionados. It’s the launch of Robert O’Byrne’s brilliant biography of Desmond Fitzgerald, the late last Knight of Glin aka the Black Knight. We’re on Duke Street St James (even the road has a double-barrelled name). Names, names, Madam Olda Fitzgerald and her daughters, son-in-law Dominic West, Min Hogg, Johnny Lowry-Corry 8th Earl Belmore, James Peill, Lindy Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava and more Guinnesses than last orders at the bar from Desmond downwards. My Goodness! My Guinness!

Irish Georgian Society Robert O'Byrne book launch © lvbmag.com

John O’Connell: “Easton Neston today; Chatsworth tomorrow.”

Robert O’Byrne: “You must do Curraghmore.”

Susan Crewe: “We’re really quite eclectic at House and Garden.”

William Laffan: “I seem to remember a lively lunch at St Pancras Hotel.”

Desmond Guinness: “Is Maurice Craig’s book Classic Irish Houses of the Middle Size or Middle Class?”

Hugo Vickers: “I’m on a break between biographies.”

Madam Olda Fitzgerald © lvbmag.com