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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 It was the end of a centuries’ long era for the McCausland family: the main lender Leeds Clydesdale Bank had withdrawn its support for Drenagh and the associated farm.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.

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Murlough Country House + Dundrum Down

The Business of Heaven on Earth

County Down, the east coast riviera of the north of Ireland, is blessed with large Georgian houses. The five bay two storey variety with all the upright prettiness of a doll’s house is especially prevalent in the southern half of this county. Woodford House, Dromara; Milltown House, Lenaderg; Beech Park, Leansmount and Kilmore House, all in Lurgan; Tullymurry House, Newry; Cabragh House, Rathfriland; and Annaghanoon House, Waringstown are just a few examples.

Murlough Country House (formerly known as Murlough Farm) on Keel Point betwixt Dundrum Bay and Murlough Bay looks earlier than most. The roof is higher; the wall to window ratio greater; the window boxes deeper. It firmly falls into the category ‘middling sized houses’ (a phrase originally adapted by Sir Charles Brett from Maurice Craig’s 1976 Classic Houses of the Middle Size) in Philip Smith’s 2019 guide to architecture in South County Down, a continuation of Charlie’s series. The windowsills and entrance door are painted peach to match the colour of the jagged brick eaves.

We spoke to leaders in tourism and the arts to garner their views ahead of staying at the house and experiencing the local village of Dundrum. Tim Knox, Director of the Royal Collection, observes, “Murlough Country House is indeed a rather fine house, charmingly Irish and looking very good newly harled and painted.” Charles Plante, international tastemaker and former Art Advisor to Sir Hardy Amies, Queen Elizabeth II’s dressmaker, remarks, “This house brings together neoclassical and provincial architecture in an appealing vernacular – the Georgian style at its best and rarest in Ireland.”

David Roberts, Director of Strategic Development at Tourism NI, elaborates, “Northern Ireland’s heritage is a cornerstone of our tourism offering. For more than a decade, Tourism NI and our partners have been working closely together to drive investment in high quality heritage experiences and accommodation which are attractive to visitors. Our research has shown that the ‘culturally curious’ segment of visitors represents great potential for being attracted to Northern Ireland in the future.”

He tells us, “Historic buildings can provide exciting, place based visitor experiences which can encourage longer stays in one location and more local exploring. Promoting connections between places and a more regionally balanced tourism sector are key objectives for the emerging Northern Ireland tourism strategy. The visitor brand for Northern Ireland ‘Embrace A Giant Spirit’ embodies and draws inspiration from the area’s heritage. Tourism NI is delighted to have Murlough Country House as a provider of high quality visitor accommodation. It provides a fantastic base for visitors to explore the Mournes and the wider area.”

Philip Smith writes, “The first Murlough House was not the large Victorian era Italianate style villa built by Lord Downshire but this smaller less formal yet in many respects more interesting house about one kilometre to the east. It is a charming unpretentious two storey over high basement block with a steeply pitched hipped roof, large multiphase but relatively homogeneous triple pile return and two sturdy centrally positioned chimneystacks.” Mourne Farm started out as a slim rectangular block with a central staircase return wing. An extension either side of the return enlarged the building: the blocked up rear elevation windows of the 18th century house became cupboards. Horn free sashes give way to the later horned variety.

He notes that the long straight tree lined avenue is a good indicator of age and is likely to be early 18th century despite not appearing on Oliver Sloane’s Down Map of 1739. The present house is marked on Kennedy’s Map of 1755. The Centre for Archaeology Fieldwork at Queen’s University Belfast completed an Excavation Report of Blundell’s House at Dundrum Castle in 2009. Included in this report is a 1758 ink, graphite and wash drawing by Mary Delany titled The Ruins of Dundrum Castle. In the background it appears to show Murlough Farm albeit three rather than five bays wide. The Delanys rented Mount Panther three kilometres to the north of Dundrum around that time.

Philip continues, “Since the mid 1600s, the Blundells had been absentees and thereafter their house may have been occupied by their agents; but by 1748 the ‘slate house by the castle of Dundrum’ was reported to be in ‘disrepair’ and not long after this ‘Murlough House’ begins to appear in the record; it may well, therefore, have been built as a replacement.” The hillside and hilltop ruins of the 12th century Dundrum Castle form a spectacular backdrop to the village and the perfect vantage point to survey the Ancient Kingdom of Mourne.

Dr Ciarán Reilly records in The Evolution of the Irish Land Agent: The Management of the Blundell Estate in the 18th century, 2018, that the career of father and son Henry and John Hatch as agents of the 5,600 hectare Blundell Estate lasted over 50 years. The Dublin based Henry Hatch, taking up his position in 1747, would have housed property managers at Murlough Farm. The 3rd Marquess of Downshire, a Blundell descendant, would deliver a 91 metre long pier for Dundrum in the early 19th century. The Downshire family still retains a house in Murlough.

The Armstrong family lived in Murlough Country House from 1991 to 2023 before selling it to the current owners. Belfast architect Dawson Stelfox advised on heritage matters. “We restored the blue slate and copper nail roof,” Elaine Armstrong confirms, “and added hipped roofs over the two flat roofed extensions to the back. We also added the authentic orangery style Conservatory. When we got the front door lock restored, the craftsman said the key dates from 1730. It’s a special building and we fell in love with it. We’re so thrilled to see it being brought back into life as holiday accommodation.”

Like many Belfast citizens, Clive Staples Lewis developed an early love of the Mourne Mountains. Or the Mourne Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty as it’s now known: all 57,000 protected hectares. The novelist, theologian and mathematician wrote, “I have seen landscapes, notably in the Mourne Mountains and southwards which under a particular light made me feel that at any moment a giant might raise his head over the next ridge. I yearn to see County Down in the snow; one almost expects to see a march of dwarves dashing past. How I long to break into a world where such things were true.”

The restoration of Murlough Country House and its 2.4 hectare estate – a little piece of Narnia – is an essay on correct conservation, surpassing any former glory. The courtyard facing elevation, or southeast front, is different in character to the entrance front. All three storeys are on full display and the series of hipped roofs lends it the delineated air of a château. The white painted harling of the house so admired by Tim Knox contrasts with the grey rubblestone and cut stone of the outbuildings. This is holiday accommodation at its finest.

On the lower ground floor, the large southeast facing Shield’s Conservatory with a dining table for 12 people projects into the courtyard. Agar’s Snug, a cosy room with a wood burning stove leads off the professional chef’s standard Shield’s Kitchen fitted with Shaker style cupboards. Blundell is an accessible bedroom and shower room suite. No 18th century house is complete without a Boot Room.

At ground floor level, the elegant Entrance Hall terminated by a flying dogleg staircase is flanked by Maitland, a drawing room, and Downshire, a cinema. Formerly a dining room, a dumb waiter still connects Downshire to the lower ground floor. The Entrance Hall spans three metres and three centuries of living (from 18th century elegance to 21st century technology). An abbreviated enfilade. Mitchell is the king size ground floor bedroom with a shower room next door. It’s impossible to tell it was once the kitchen. Four first floor bedrooms look out across the gardens to Murlough National Nature Reserve and onwards to the Mountains of Mourne. A tasteful roundelay.

Annesley is the principal suite and faces northwest with views onto the side lawn. The walls are painted ‘clover’ in the Edward Bulmer range. A vintage Louis de Poortere rug adds even more vibrancy. Dual aspect super king size Armstrong bedroom occupies the full depth of the 18th century main block. Two shuttered northwest facing windows set into the thick walls frame the front lawn and paddock; a third window overlooks the driveway. The king size Macartney also overlooks the front lawn and paddock. Lore has it that the handblown glass in the two sash windows of this room was salvaged from a Jacobean house. Magennes is a northeast facing king size bedroom. A former nursery, this sunny yellow room was featured in a Farrow and Ball book. We recognise Nina Campbell and Christopher Farr curtains and cushions.

“Oh I do love a bit of T ‘n’ G,” our friend Min Hogg, Founding Editor of The World of Interiors, told us over coffee one time in her nursery floor apartment above the treetops of Brompton Square in London. There’s plenty of tongue and groove panelling in these bedrooms. Naming rooms is very much a South County Down tradition: think Mourne Park House. At Murlough, the rooms are called after families associated with the house and area. No 21st century country house is complete without a Sauna.

The abutting estates of Murlough Country House and Murlough House share a coastal landmass of great natural beauty attached to mainland all protected by the National Trust. Wetlands on one side, sandy beach on the other. Designated in 1967, Murlough is Ireland’s first National Nature Reserve and has the country’s best and most extensive dune heath. We stroll through its 280 unspoiled hectares. Wildflowers, wildfowl, wild ponies (everything is wild); unbothered living, forever steeped in Sunday stillness … it’s hard to believe Belfast is only 50 kilometres away and Dublin 150 kilometres. We care to disagree with Clive Staples Lewis, “Adventures are never fun while you’re having them.”

Now London based, artist Anne Davey Orr shares her reflections with us from across the water on Murlough. As Founding Editor and Publisher of Ulster Architect magazine, former Board Member of Belfast Civic Trust, Arts Council, National Trust, Design Council and Chair of The Lyric Theatre Belfast she is well placed. “Murlough or Muirbolc in Gaelige means ‘seabag’ or ‘inlet’. The modesty of this title hides its importance on a number of levels.”

Anne continues, “These heartlands of the MacCartan and MacGuinness clans were forfeited to John de Courcy when he marched on Ulster in his attempts to conquer Ireland. MacGuinness Castle was renamed Dundrum Castle. Donal Oge MacCartan, a MacGuinness cousin, surrendered the castle in 1601 to Lord Mountjoy, in Irish terms renowned for the gaol named after him in Dublin. In 1605 it was made over to Lord Cromwell and sold to Sir George Blundell in 1636.”

Maurice Craig states in The Architecture of Ireland, 1982, “John de Courcy set out from Dublin and took Downpatrick in 1176. He married the daughter of the King of Man and kept princely state himself, founding Inch Abbey and (through his wife) Grey Abbey, and beginning the castles of Carrickfergus and Dundrum.” The layering of the centuries. The entrance to Murlough Country House encapsulates the duality of its character: simple square capped pillars heralding a farmhouse; a stretch of walls attached to either side suggesting something grander. On the far side of the main road, the Slidderyford Dolmen – a megalithic portal tomb – makes Dundrum Castle look positively modern.

Neighbour Edward ‘Ned’ Cummins calls by for coffee in Shield’s Conservatory. We get chatting: “I’ve lived here all my life. My dad came to work here with horses on this farm when he was 14 years of age. I own the retired racehorses in the field next door. If I hadn’t accepted them they would’ve gone to France to be eaten. The proper way into this house was down my lane before what they call the ‘Downshire Bridge’ was built. Before that there was a wooden bridge. Where would you get a causeway like that going to a private house?”

Coffee and conversation are flowing. “The Yanks stayed here during the War. The trees down the driveway are all big trees but you come to a place that is nice and flat and they’re very small trees. The Americans cut the trees down and brought aeroplanes into that field there. They took over this whole farm too. There’s a strip out there for the planes to land. There was a load of Nissan huts round the back. They’re all gone now. The Annesleys bought this place for £12,000 I would say shortly after the War. They built the bathroom extension in the 70s. It’s block not stone. The buildings behind the house are the Coach House, Middle Barn, Piggeries and Woodworker’s Barn. The one roomed Bothy was the gamekeeper’s house.”

Ned ends, “Brunel designed SS Great Britain and it ran aground in Dundrum Bay in 1846. The captain got drunk and ran it straight into the sand bar. Brunel came over and stayed in the Downshire Arms Hotel for about a year. He orchestrated strapping the ship and hacking it up to get it seaworthy again. SS Great Britain was the first iron hulled screw propelled steamship.”

Peeling ourselves away from Murlough Country House, we wend our way into Dundrum, the gourmet capital of South County Down. Thrice. Colour seeps into Irish village architecture and Dundrum is no exception. Lunch is in Mourne Seafood Bar (the exterior is painted duck egg blue on the ground floor, goose grey on the upper floors and the northeast wing is sorbet yellow). Dinner in The Buck’s Head (painted olive green). Drinks in The Dundrum Inn (pineapple yellow and blackcurrant purple). The striking house with a gable clock and weathervane opposite Mourne Seafood Bar is salmon pink. Next morning coffee is in Cúpla with its damson blue signage – its name comes from the Irish for twins after Dominque and Shane Gibben who own the café.

But first there’s a visit to Dundrum Coastal Rowing Club. Andrew Boyd and Robert Graham proudly show off two boats they’ve built: Danny Buoy and Mystic Wave. “It started off as a community project to reconnect people round this coastline with our boat building heritage,” explains Robert. Traditional St Ayles skiffs were built by locals along the County Down coast from Donaghadee to Dundrum. “It took us six months to build Danny Buoy. We finished it the night before the 2016 Skiff World Championship Rowing Race. We just got it out into the bay to give it a test that it floated and then went straight into the race and won! We generated lots of interest and so we ordered the second kit and built Mystic Wave.”

Andrew is the founder of Kilmegan Cider. He relates, “I started about a mile away from Dundrum. It was my parents’ orchard and every year when we were younger we had to gather up the apples and store them in boxes. Waste not! We’d make a wee bit of apple wine and there was one year I went down and all the apples were lying on the ground. The fieldfares and redwings were having a field day. I decided to try a batch of cider with an old winepress. So it started as a hobby and grew from there. I registered it in 2014.” Kilmegan Cider has been winning national and international awards ever since.

It’s time for lunch in Mourne Seafood Bar which is in the former Downshire Arms Hotel, a grand three storey building dominating Main Street. Owner Chris McCann joins us. “Bob McCoubrey launched Mourne Seafood Bar in Dundrum in 2005 and in Belfast a year later. We took over the Dundrum restaurant seven years ago. Chris Wayne is our Head Chef. We stick to what the brand is – it’s in the name – and just have one meat dish on our menu. Our mussels come from Strangford Lough. Our oysters come from Carlingford – they have a sweetness and there’s a consistency of quality and supply. Wednesday night is lobster night. We’ve 10 guest bedrooms too.”

Samphire, known as ‘sea asparagus’, is a popular garnish foraged from Murlough Beach. Nowhere in Ireland is further than 85 kilometres from the coast. In Dundrum, make that one kilometre. Reisling served has the surprising label ‘Donaghadee’: the German winemaker married a County Down lass. Platters arrive – this is tasting on an epic scale! Cracked crab claws, langoustines and mignonette oysters. We devour the entire starters menu.

“All our food is farm or sea to plate,” welcomes Bronagh McCormick who took over The Buck’s Head with her business partner Head Chef Alex Greene in April 2024. He’s a regular on the TV programme Great British Menu. The pub was built in 1834. She records, “We’ve 75 covers in our dining room and we’re opening rooms for guests to stay over. We’re kept pretty busy with dinner reservations at least four weeks in advance.” Wheaten bread made with treacle sums up the menu: local with a twist. Pan roast salmon with gnocchi and charred broccoli continues the Dundrumesque seafood theme. Alex tells us later they also own the Fish and Farm Shop in nearby Newcastle. They’re custodians of produce.

“There’s nothing we’re not trying and there’s nothing we’re not doing,” Alex shares over coffee and cakes in Cúpla. “It’s very much an evolving product. We’ve a lot of repeat business, especially on a Sunday. We run Sunday lunch up to 7pm. We’ll add a couple more vegetarian options but if you put too many dishes on the menu the quality starts to drop. It’s better selling 30 of one dish in a day than three of 100. But you don’t want to make the menu too small either with not enough choice for people. Our meat mostly comes from my family farm three miles up the road.”

The Dundrum Inn, a few doors down from The Buck’s Head, is the perfect place to pull a late night Guinness and order a nightcap (make that a round of Kilmegan Ciders) in the large beer garden while being entertained by live music. The Dundrum Inn has been going for 190 years so far and is still a social hub. “Dundrum Village Association organises the Summer Festival,” says Community Leader Alan Cooley. “It brings everyone together. Food stalls, bands, circus performers and a raft race fill a Saturday each July.”

“Let’s go out on our boat!” is a thrilling suggestion by our hosts upon leaving Cúpla. Soon we’re riding the waves fantastic. Leaving behind Dundrum Bay to enter the Irish Sea, looking back, the castle has vanished under a cloud and gradually landmass fades to grey and disappears. Splash, crash, splash, crash! We’re now in the midst of the vast grey sea which has merged with the vast grey sky. There’s no horizon; everything’s grey. A grey seal swims by giving us side eye.

We recall Andrew Boyd telling us, “When you get the high tide running out of the bay and you have a bit of a southerly wind, there’s a roar of the sea known as Tonn Ruairí. This is the ‘Wave of Rory’ named after a Viking who drowned in Dundrum Bay from the forces of a mystic wave. It makes a crashing roaring sound. As much as the sea round here is beautiful you need to respect it.”

Brian de Breffny, writing in Castles of Ireland, 1977, breaks away from conventional architectural historian mode to wax lyrical, “Something of Dundrum’s distant Celtic past seems to cling mysteriously to the castle and its wooded hillside. Perhaps more than any other place in Ireland, it suggests too the world of the Norman adventurers and mercenaries – conquerors and Crusaders who fortified a castle in Ulster and talked there of the palace castles of the Seleucid rulers they had seen in the East – the world of the overmighty barons and Plantagenet kings.” Almost half a century later, his words still ring true.

There was a sense of crossing a border when we went over that triple arched causeway for the first time … we’d crossed a line into a slight otherness. And when Murlough Country House appeared, there was a sensation of arrival, of distant belonging. We would succumb to the enchantment of days spent passed in South County Down. Later, much later, unfurling thoughts and images of Dundrum, we realise anew it’s a place to experience the serious business of joy. And to parrot Clive Staples Lewis, “We meet no ordinary people in our lives.” And visit no ordinary places.

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Gosford Castle Markethill Armagh + Thomas Hopper

Norman Gates

In 1970, the Honourable Desmond Guinness, Founder and first President of the Irish Georgian Society, participated in the television programme Whicker’s World. He told the presenter Alan Whicker that, “In England any dovecote by Robert Adam has been written up about 20 times in Country Life.” While the aforementioned magazine featured Gosford House in East Lothian in 1911, it does not appear to have ever included Gosford Castle outside Markethill in County Armagh. Gosford Castle has though appeared in several books on Irish architecture and rightly so.

Brian de Breffny’s Castles of Ireland, 1977, is a serious study of fortresses and fortified houses. He records, “When it was completed after 20 years, Gosford was claimed to be the largest country house in Ireland – a massive complex of circular towers, angular keep, bastions, towerlets and arches linked internally by rambling corridors. Pale granite quarried at Bessbrook in County Armagh was used for its construction. The Norman theme is pursued purposefully and executed with masterful originality.” Gosford Castle is no mean dwelling, but Coolattin and Humewood (both in County Wicklow) as well as Temple House (in County Sligo) would give it a long and strenuous run for its money as Ireland’s largest country house. Its restoration is approaching 20 years in the making.

Mark Girouard in his seminal 1979 work Historic Houses of Britain (before the avalanche of country house coffee table books truly spilled forth) mentions Gosford Castle when writing about Penrhyn Castle in Gwynedd, Wales, “Thomas Hopper had been fashionable ever since George IV – then still Prince Regent – had commissioned a Gothic conservatory from him in 1807 for Carlton House, London. Like most architects of his time, he was prepared to design buildings in almost any style. Hie had already designed one castle and altered another. His new Irish castle was Gosford in County Armagh. It had the distinction of being the first of the new castles to be Norman.”

“By the 1820s there were plenty of new castles but only one other new Norman one, and that in a part of Ireland which relatively few people visited. The reason why most people steered clear of Norman was straightforward. Norman was the oldest, most primitive and uncomfortable of the English styles (except of course Saxon, of which only a handful of churches, and no houses or castles, survived). It was hard enough to build something which looked sufficiently like a castle and was still reasonably comfortable without loading the dice against oneself by making it Norman too.”

The most recently published commentary on the castle comes from Kevin Mulligan, The Buildings of Ireland: South Ulster, 2013. It is part of the series founded by Sir Nikolaus Pevsner and Alistair Rowan similar to that on England, Scotland and Wales. “Set on a ramparted platform in dense woods, Gosford is a great brawny pile. Large and unforgiving, its castellated form rises mirage like, a picturesque grouping of square and circular masses with carefully recessed surface layers and an impressive display of Romanesque detailing. Even in pale granite, the architecture appears grave, a brooding grandiloquent expression of an invented past that represents the most assured instance of a revived Norman style in these islands.”

“It was probably Hopper’s role as arbitrator in a dispute between Nash and Lord O’Neill at Shane’s Castle in Antrim in 1816 that won him the commission here, brought to Lord Gosford’s notice perhaps by his agent William Blacker, who had also acted for O’Neill. It is difficult to gauge the role of the Earl in the actual choice of design, but there is nothing to suggest that he was the innovator. The Romanesque style was never to become popular, the general view holding that the forms of its apertures are inapplicable to our habits. Hopper’s unique feeling for Romanesque forms expressed here, and later in a more ambitious work at Penrhyn Castle in Wales, was undoubtedly conditioned by his birthplace in Rochester … Hopper was to express deep regret that he had come to Ireland, so disillusioned had he become with his patron in 1834. Even then the castle was far from complete.”

“The second phase of work, undertaken by Hopper’s assistant George Adam Burn for the 3rd Earl, involved the creation of a new bastioned entrance on the eastern corner of the north front, along with the completion of the family apartments in the straggling northwest range. The architecture subtly becomes more eccentric and the details more inventive. Adding a new two storey entrance block on the northeast corner, Burn disrupted the formality of its cubic proportions by forming an unusual engaged cylinder as a corner turret to the first floor Billiard Room.”

Sir Charles Brett devoted four pages to Gosford Castle in Buildings of County Armagh, 1999. Charlie’s epic series on the architecture of the Counties of Ulster was cut short by his death six years later. “An important work by one of the leading London architects of the first half of the 19th century, Thomas Hopper, 1776 to 1856. Sir Howard Colvin says that Hopper was an eclectic designer who held the belief that ‘it is an architect’s business to understand all styles, and to be prejudiced in favour of none’, and considers that ‘his most interesting and original works were the two Norman castles in which he effectively combined picturesque massing with a remarkable repertoire of Romanesque detailing which owed something to his familiarity with the 12th century keeps of Rochester and Hedingham.’ His pupils included the young Belfast architect John Millar, who worked on this commission with him, and signed a drawing showing the proposed front elevation.”

“The design was commissioned by Archibald Acheson, 2nd Earl of Gosford, after the previous house had burned down. Mark Bence-Jones says that it was ‘largely paid for by his wife, the daughter and heiress of Robert Sparrow, of Worlingham Hall, Suffolk: so that it is possible that the choice of so strange a style as Norman was hers; she was a lifelong friend of Lady Byron so may have absorbed some of Byron’s exotic and somewhat sinister brand of romanticism.’” Even before the castle was completed, the Gosfords separated and Lady Gosford returned to live in Suffolk where she died in 1841, eight years before her husband. Her Ladyship’s final earthly journey was not without incident. A record from the time states, “On its return journey to County Armagh for burial in the family vault at Mullaghbrack, her coffin was mislaid by the drunken servants whom Lord Gosford had sent to fetch it, and was conveyed by train to somewhere in the Midlands.” Charles Acheson the 7th Earl of Gosford, born in 1942, whose father sold the castle, lives in Suffolk.

Charlie continues, “Gosford is remarkably large, remarkably elaborate, and exceptionally well built – indeed, it appears not just defensible but practically indestructible. It is dominated by its great square keep with corner turrets containing chimneys, with subsidiary round and square towers. Bence-Jones considers that ‘the garden front has a strange beauty; the stone seems pale, Norman becomes more like Southern Romanesque’. The grouping is masterly; the walls are at different angles to each, so that there is a great sense of movement. Although Norman was really unsuited to 19th century living, the interior does not suffer from the heaviness one finds at Penrhyn.”

Bringing the commentary up to date Nicholas Sheaff, first Director of the Irish Architectural Archive, offers these observations in 2024: “The neo Norman style was practised with great conviction by the architect Thomas Hopper in the second quarter of the 19th Century. It was a ‘reinvention of tradition’ (to pirate historian Eric Hobsbawn’s theme) which had its origins in two distinct aesthetic currents. The first current was the neoclassical proclivity for the ‘elemental’ in architecture, awakened by the rediscovery of the Greek temples at Paestum and amplified by the architectural visualisations of Piranesi, particularly his ‘Carceri’ of the 1750s and Paestum etchings of 1778. The second current was the growing pride in British nationhood in the years after Waterloo, with an exploration of the national tradition in architecture and decorative design where the Norman (often dubbed ’Saxon’) was seen as the fountainhead.”

“As the architectural historian Hugh Dixon has suggested, Hopper’s massing of architectural forms at Gosford probably derives from the profile of the great Norman castle of Carrickfergus County Antrim, with its dominating central keep. Hopper’s interior planning embodies a narrative informality which draws on the example of his older contemporary John Nash, each room contributing a fresh spatial and decorative experience to the interior sequence. Hopper’s neo Norman architecture has a sculptural and emotive presence which is the antithesis of the rectilinear, rationalist neoclassical. A lithograph of circa 1830 portrays Gosford Castle in an almost untamed wooded demesne, an irregular architectural grouping set in a vigorous natural environment as advocated by Richard Payne Knight, that leading aesthetician of the picturesque. The lithograph presents a romantic vision of a turbulent landscape under a northern sky, as painted possibly by Jacob van Ruisdael, far distant in its style and impact from the arcadian vistas and golden light of Claude Lorrain.”

It is something of a wonder that Gosford Castle and its demesne both survive for ever since Thomas Hopper put pencil to paper it has had a rocky time. Financial constraints, disputes and overseas sojourns slowed down construction. In 1821 the outbuildings were progressing; in 1828 the Portland stone staircase was erected; in 1833 plasterers and joiners were working on the main rooms; in 1835 Lord Gosford became Governor in Canada for four years; in 1840 Newry architect Thomas Duff took over designing alterations and additions although Thomas Hopper remained involved at some level; in 1852 the Armagh Guardian reported that “a number of tradesmen are now engaged finishing the remaining wing of this building”; in 1864 the 3rd Earl died and the house became a family shooting lodge; in 1888 the 4th Earl sold the library; in 1921 he sold the rest of the contents; in 1940 the British army occupied the house; and in 1978 the Northern Ireland Forestry Commission acquired the 240 hectare demesne and castle. At least Gosford Castle didn’t burn down like its Georgian predecessor which had ended up a charred ruin in 1805.

An estate acquisition by the Forestry Commission normally rang the death knell for a house (not least Pomeroy House in County Tyrone) but somehow even after a failed stint leased to a hotel, Gosford Castle has survived relatively unscathed. The unrelenting permanence of this mountain of a house built of local stone rooted in geography and history continues to shine like a beacon in the woods. The road to its revival has not been smooth and is a story of changing ownership, court cases and construction delays – all sounding familiar as history repeats itself. Hopefully the restoration won’t take longer than the original construction.

At the opening of the 21st century, the Belfast architectural practice The Boyd Partnership led by Arthur Acheson (no relation to the Gosfords) was commissioned by the developer Gosford Castle Development Ltd to design the conversion of Gosford Castle into 23 homes. Arthur had form. He had restored the 17th century Finnebrogue House near Downpatrick and converted outbuildings to residential use. Arthur and his wife lived at Finnebrogue from 1994 until 2009. He died earlier this year. In her condolences, Lord Lieutenant of Belfast Dame Fionnuala Jay-O’Boyle noted the architect was founding Chair of Belfast Civic Trust.

The rockiest of times had immediately preceded The Boyd Partnership’s involvement. Marcus Patton reported in the Summer 2006 Heritage Review of the Ulster Architectural Heritage Society that, “It is one of fewer than 200 Grade A Listed Buildings in Northern Ireland and is arguably our most important building at risk. The Society has maintained a keen interest in its future, and for those with knowledge of its recent history the confirmation of its sale for £1,000 to a private developer on 6 January will have come as something of a surprise.”

“Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of this process has been the lack of vision shown by central Government as the long term custodian of the castle. We all recognise the significant challenges that such a building can present, and we want to see it sympathetically restored. However this surely could have been achieved in a manner which would have allowed public access to the most important internal spaces as well as facilitating wider economic regeneration.” The Society was concerned about the loss of internal architectural detailing and spatial integrity through the conversion process.

Just before his death, Arthur explained, “In the design of this restoration we as a company decided to break away from the typical apartment model usually associated with conversions of Listed Buildings. Instead we opted to develop the castle as a series of individual homes, each with their own front door, hallway, staircase and in some cases, as many as four floors of accommodation. These unique homes range in size from 92 square metres to 371 square metres.” The average sized three bedroom house in the UK is 88 square metres. This vertical arrangement maximised character and minimised room subdivision. Country townhouses.

The contract value of the development is £8 million; work began in 2006 and is well progressed in 2024. This restoration and conversion is in three phases: firstly, the western part of the family wing and the southern part of the courtyard into eight houses; secondly, the northern part of the courtyard into four houses; and thirdly, the eastern part of the family wing and all of the main block into 11 houses. The cylindrical tower is one of the self contained houses. The neo Norman decorative plasterwork and panelling of the principal rooms such as the Library have been restored. It is unknown if any of the military graffiti scrawled on internal walls will be retained in situ. The demesne is open to the public as a forest park.

Dixie Deane records a structure that predates the castle in his 1994 gazetteer Gatelodges of Ulster, “Circa 1700. Off the old county road, now absorbed into the enlarged Gosford Estate, lie two large ornamental ponds between which the avenue to the manor house led over a causeway. The access is below a semicircular headed carriage archway in a large wall of roughly carved rubble whinstone dressed in classically moulded carved limestone.” On either side of the archway are attached 15 square metre porters’ lodges. Each has a Dutch gable reminiscent of Richhill Castle, also in County Armagh, and Springhill County Londonderry. Perched on their roofs are Sir John Vanbrugh style arched chimneystacks mimicking miniature belfries.

A rerouting of the road to Tandragee means the former gamekeeper’s cottage dating from circa 1840 is now accessed off a cul-de-sac backing onto the Gosford Castle Estate. Probably by Thomas Hopper, it is as unique in its own way as the neo Norman castle: this rustic log cabin is a gingerbread house brought to life. Spindly metal columns prop up a steep hipped roof and frame a wraparound verandah. The walls are panelled with narrow strips of wood at various angles and the windows have triangular heads. A simple rendered contemporary extension doubles the ground floor accommodation of this diminutive dwelling. The cottage is now a two bedroom holiday let.

Gosford Castle is a marvel in so many ways. For starters, why did the 2nd Earl and Countess of Gosford select neo Norman instead of the more popular Gothic or Italianate styles? Perhaps it was in the spirit of choosing your ancestors wisely. In a country of castles to show off your ancestry the next best thing to living in a Norman castle would be erecting and living in a neo Norman castle. The turn of the 18th century entrance archway and lodges – Blenheim Palace on Keizersgracht – are very special. The lodges are windowless but roofed and vegetation has been removed. Most marvellous if not miraculous of all is the survival and reuse of the wooden former gamekeeper’s cottage.

Gosford Castle itself has never looked better. The huge revivification is finally nearing completion to house 23 new Lords and Ladies of the Manor. The white stone glistens in its dense forest surroundings like a fairytale scene. Surprisingly there was no enabling new development as part of the restoration and redevelopment. The Planning Appeals Commission has though in 2024 allowed on appeal a development of 11 one and a half storey contemporary cottages in the abandoned car park to the rear of the castle courtyard. The adjoining walled garden will be restored as part of this residential development.

Commissioner Laura Roddy reports, “The scale and massing proposed with the low elevation design would respect the Listed Building. Whilst the proposed dwellings would be of a more modern design than the castle, this, combined with the simplicity of the design would ensure that the proposed dwellings would be sympathetic to, and do not compete with or detract from, the castle.” She concludes, “Overall, I find the appeal proposal would be of a sympathetic scale of development and would respect the character of the setting of the Listed castle and walled garden. Further, it would restore the Listed walled garden, reinstate the historic pathway between the castle and walled garden and include a significant level of landscaping which would be sympathetic to its setting.” So in the end enabling development was allowed – just for the walled garden not the castle.

And that concludes the definitive tale of Gosford Castle, spanning two centuries and delivered in different voices over four decades, its origins best summarised by Nicholas Sheaff’s narrative of two distinct aesthetic currents.

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Sammy Leslie + Castle Leslie Glaslough Monaghan

The Rear View 

In 2006 Ulster Architect was Ireland’s leading design magazine – by a country kilometre. Publisher Editor Anne Davey Orr blazed the trail much to the chagrin of Perspective journal which was set up in competition by some local architects to no fanfare: the bitterati. Ulster Architect far outlived Prince Charles’ blink and you’ll have missed it publication Perspectives in Architecture. Success is a dish best served cold. The articles in Ulster Architect – by Sir Charles Brett, Leo McKinstry and too many other literati to mention – have stood the test of time. It’s hard to believe that our interview with the glorious Sammy Leslie for the September edition of Ulster Architect is now nearly two decades old. Happy 18th!

Sir John Betjeman, Sir Winston Churchill, Marianne Faithfull, Sir Paul McCartney and William Butler Yeats have all been. The great and the good, the glitterati in other words. In recent years thanks to Sammy Leslie and her uncle the 4th Baronet, Sir John (forever known as Sir Jack), Castle Leslie has flung open its heavy doors to the hoi polloi (albeit the well heeled variety) too, rebuilding its rep as a byword for sybaritic hospitality. Visitors from Northern Ireland could be forgiven for experiencing déjà vu – it’s the doppelgänger of Belfast Castle. Both were designed in the 1870s by the same architects: William Lynn and Sir Charles Lanyon.

Together these two architects captured the spirit of the age. William Lynn produced a majestic baronial pile with chamfered bay windows perfectly angled for simultaneous views of the garden and lake. Sir Charles Lanyon crammed the house full of Italian Renaissance interiors and designed a matching loggia to boot. Fully signed up members of the MTV Cribs generation will find it hard not to go into unexpected sensory overload at this veritable treasure trove of historic delights. Castle Leslie is all about faded charm; it’s the antithesis of footballer’s pad bling. But still, the place is an explosion of rarity, of dazzling individuality. Sir Jack’s brother Desmond Leslie wrote in 1950, “The trees are enormous, 120 feet being average for conifers; the woods tangled and impenetrable; gigantic Arthur Rackham roots straddle quivering bog, and in the dark lake huge old fish lie or else bask in the amber ponds where branches sweep down to kiss the water.”

We caught up with Sammy in the cookery school in one of the castle’s wings. “Although I’m the fifth of six children, I always wanted to run the estate, even if I didn’t know how. After working abroad, I returned in 1991. The estate was at its lowest point ever. My father Desmond was thinking of selling up to a Japanese consortium. There was no income … crippling insurance to pay … The Troubles were in full swing. People forget how near we are to the border here.”

Nevertheless Sammy took it on. “I sold Dad’s car for five grand and got a five grand grant from the County Enterprise Board to start the ‘leaky tearooms’ in the conservatory. They were great as long as it didn’t rain! And I sold some green oak that went to Windsor Castle for their restoration. Sealing the roof was the first priority. Five years later we started to take people to stay and bit by bit we got the rest of the house done. So we finished the castle in 2006 after – what? – nearly 15 years of slow restoration.” The Castle Leslie and Caledon Regeneration Partnership part funded by the European Union provided finance of €1.2 million. Bravo! The house and estate were saved from the jaws of imminent destruction.

The Leslies are renowned for their sense of fun. An introductory letter sent to guests mentions Sir Jack (an octogenarian) will lead tours on Sunday mornings but only if he recovers in time from clubbing. In the gents (or “Lords” as it’s grandly labelled) off the entrance hall beyond a boot room, individual urinals on either side of a fireplace are labelled “large”, “medium”, “tiny” and “liar”. Take your pick. A plethora of placards between taxidermy proclaim such witticisms as “On this site in 1897 nothing happened” and “Please go slowly round the bend”.

Bathrooms are a bit of a Leslie obsession ever since thrones and thunderboxes were first introduced upstairs. “The sanitaryware in the new bathrooms off the long gallery is by Thomas Crapper. Who else?” she smiles. “We’ve even got a double loo in the ladies so that you can carry on conversations uninterrupted!” Exposed stone walls above tongue and groove panelling elevate these spaces above mere public conveniences. In the 1890s the 1st Sir John Leslie painted murals of his family straight onto the walls of the roof lantern lit long gallery, which runs parallel with the loggia, and framed them to look like hanging portraits.

Always one to carry on a family tradition with a sense of pun, this time visual tricks, Sammy has created a thumping big doll’s house containing an en suite bathroom within a bedroom which was once a nursery, complete with painted façade. It wouldn’t look out of place on the set of Irvine Walsh’s play Babylon Heights.

A sense of history prevails within these walls, from the mildly amusing to the most definitely macabre. The blood drenched shroud which received the head of James, 3rd Earl of Derwentwater, the last English earl to be beheaded for being a Catholic, is mounted on the staircase wall. “It’s a prized possession of Uncle Jack’s,” Sammy confides. Unsurprisingly, the castle is riddled with ghosts.

Our conversation moves on to her latest enterprise: the Castle Leslie Village. “An 1850s map records a village on the site,” she says. “Tenant strips belonging to old mud houses used to stretch down to the lake. Our development is designed as a natural extension to the present village of Glaslough.” In contrast to the ornate articulation of its country houses, Ulster’s vernacular vocabulary is one of restraint. Dublin architect John Cully produced initial drawings; Belfast practice Consarc provided further designs and project managed the scheme. Consarc architect Dawson Stelfox has adhered to classical proportions rather than applied decoration to achieve harmony. Unpretentiousness is the key. At Castle Leslie Village there are no superfluous posts or pillars or piers or peers or pediments or porticos or porte cochères. Self builders of Ulster take note!

That said, enough variety has been introduced into the detail of the terraces to banish monotony. Organic growth is suggested through the use of Georgian 12 pane, Victorian four pane and Edwardian two pane windows. There are more sashes than a 12th of July Orange Day parade. Rectangular, elliptical and semicircular fanlights are over the doorways, some sporting spider’s web glazing bars, others Piscean patterns. “We’ve used proper limestone and salvaged brick,” notes Sammy. “And timber window frames and slate.”

We question Sammy how she would respond to accusations of pastiche. “They’re original designs, not copies,” she retorts. “For example although they’re village houses, the bay window idea comes from the castle. The development is all about integration with the existing village. It’s contextual. These houses are like fine wine. They’ll get better with age.” It’s hard to disagree. “There’s a fine line between copying and adapting but we’ve gone for the latter.”

Later we spoke to Dawson Stelfox. “Pastiche is copying without understanding. We’re keeping alive tradition, not window dressing. For example we paid careful attention to solid-to-void ratios. Good quality traditional architecture is not time linked. We’re simply preserving a way of building. McGurran Construction did a good job. I think Castle Leslie Village is quite similar to our work at Strangford.” The houses are clustered around two highly legible and permeable spaces: a square and a green. Dwelling sizes range from 80 to 230 square metres. “We offered the first two phases to locals at the best price possible and they were all snapped up,” says Sammy. “This has resulted in a readymade sense of community because everyone knows each other already. A few of the houses are available for holiday letting.”

“We’re concentrating on construction first,” she explains. “The Hunting Lodge being restored by Dawson will have 25 bedrooms, a spa and 60 stables. It’ll be great craic! Between the various development sites we must be employing at least 120 builders at the moment. Estate management is next on the agenda. Food production and so on.” Just when we think we’ve heard about all of the building taking place at Castle Leslie, Sammy mentions the old stables. “They date from 1780 and have never been touched. Two sides of the courtyard are missing. We’re going to rebuild them. The old stables will then house 12 holiday cottages.”

We ask her if she ever feels daunted by the mammoth scale of the task. “I do have my wobbly days but our family motto is ‘Grip Fast’! I think that when you grow up in a place like this you always have a sense of scale so working on a big scale is normal. I mean it’s 400 hectares, there’s seven kilometres of estate wall, six gatelodges – all different, and 7,300 square metres of historic buildings.” Sammy continues, “The back wall from the cookery school entrance to the end of the billiard room is a quarter of a kilometre.”

“A place like this evolves,” Sammy ruminates. “There’s no point in thinking about the good ol’ days of the past. The castle was cold and damp, y’know, and crumbling. And it’s just – it’s a joy to see it all coming back to life. The whole reason we’re here is to protect and preserve the castle and because the house was built to entertain, that’s what we’re doing. We’re just entertaining on a grand scale. People are coming and having huge amounts of fun here. Castle Leslie hasn’t changed as much as the outside world. Ha!” This year there’s plenty to celebrate including the completion of Castle Leslie Village, the Leslie family’s 1,000th anniversary, Sammy’s 40th birthday, and Sir Jack’s 90th coinciding with the publication of his memoirs.

That was six years ago. This summer we returned to Castle Leslie. Our seventh visit, we first visited the house umpteen years ago. Back then Sammy served us delicious sweetcorn sandwiches and French onion soup in the leaky tearooms, looking over the gardens of knee high grass. The shadows were heightening and lengthening ‘cross the estate. Her late father Desmond showed a nun and us round the fragile rooms lost in a time warp. Ireland’s Calke Abbey without The National Trust saviour. He would later write to us on 11 May 1993, waxing lyrical to transform an acknowledgement letter into a piece of allegorical and existential prose.

On another occasion, Sammy’s younger sister, the vivacious blonde screenwriter Camilla Leslie, came striding up the driveway, returning home from London to get ready for her wedding the following week. “People have been buying me pints all day! Nothing’s ready! I’ve to get the cake organised, my dress, at least we’ve got the church!” she exclaimed to us, pointing to the estate church.

This time round we stay in Wee Joey Farm Hand’s Cottage in Castle Leslie Village and enjoy a lively Friday night dinner in Snaffles restaurant on the first floor of the Hunting Lodge. We’re all “tastefully atwitter over glissades and pirouettes” to take a quote from Armistead Maupin’s More Tales of the City (1984), applying it to a rural setting. The following day, afternoon tea is served, this time in the drawing room. Meanwhile, Sir Jack is taking a disco nap in the new spa to prepare for his regular Saturday night clubbing in nearby Carrickmacross.

That was four years ago. Visit number eight and counting. More to celebrate as Sammy, still living in the West Wing, turns 50. Sir Jack would have turned 100 on 6 December 2016 but sadly died just weeks before our visit. This time, we’re here for afternoon tea in the rebuilt conservatory or ‘sunny tearooms’ as they turn out to be today. The assault of a rare Irish heatwave, 26 degrees centigrade for days on end, won’t interrupt tradition. A turf fire is still lit in the drawing room. “Apologies for the mismatching crockery as so many of our plates have been smashed during lively dinner debates” warned a sign on our first visit. The crockery all matches now but the food is of the same high standard: cucumber and cream cheese brioches; oak cured Irish smoked salmon pitta; fruit scones with Castle Leslie preserves and clotted cream; crumpets and custard pies; rounded off with Earl Grey macaroons, Victoria sponge cake and lemon meringues.

Miraculously, Castle Leslie still has no modern extensions. It hasn’t been ‘Carton’d’ (in conservation-speak that means more extensions than an Essex girl in a hairdressers). Instead, the hotel has grown organically, stretching further and further into Lynn and Lanyon’s building. An upstairs corridor lined with servants’ bells – Sir J Leslie’s Dressing Room, Lady Leslie’s Dressing Room, Dining Room, Office – leads to a cinema carved out of old attics. Castle Leslie has had its ups and downs but Sammy Leslie is determined to ‘Grip Fast’! And in response to Ms Leslie’s late father’s letter to us, we will come again when there is nothing better to do on a nice weekend.

That nice weekend has come or at least a nice Friday evening. We’re here for a celebration dinner. January 2024 is especially cold – minus two degrees centigrade but the turf fires at Castle Leslie are, as ever, roaring. Dinner is in Conor’s Bar on the ground floor of the Hunting Lodge below Snaffles.

It’s 3pm in New York, 5am in Tokyo and 8pm in Glaslough according to clocks high up on the stone wall of the courtyard entrance hall. A poem by the comedian Billy Connolly, The Welly Boot Boy, hangs in the boot room. A cartoon series on The Gentle Art of Making Guinness hangs in the gents. And so to dinner: garlic tiger prawns (toasted sourdough, Estate Walled Garden chimichurri sauce) followed by sweet potato and mozzarella gnocchi (asparagus, peas, spinach and crushed basil) keep up the very high standard of gourmet cooking with local produce.

We’re dressed to the nines, accessorised by Mary Martin London, for our ninth visit to the castle. Sammy, looking as fresh as she did 18 years ago, also dining in Conor’s, greets us like a long lost friend. We congratulate her on saving one of Ireland’s most important historic houses and estates. “There’s still more to do!” she beams. “We need to restore the seven kilometre Famine Wall next and several gatelodges too. There’s always work to be done!”

Sammy explains that overnight guests staying in the castle bedrooms have breakfast in the dining room but later meals in the day are down in the Hunting Lodge as that’s where the main kitchen is now. The paradox of continuity and progress at Castle Leslie. Time stands still for no woman. The leaky tearooms may no longer leak but the ghosts are still all around, some new ones in their midst, silent misty figures just out of clear vision, partying in the shadows. To take another quote by Armistead Maupin, “Too much of a good thing is wonderful.”

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Coastal Path Moville Donegal + Liam McCormick

Signs to Mark Sacred Times

“Yonder is Lough Foyle, debouching into the ocean,” John Weir gloriously thrills in The Ulster Awakening, 1859. St Colmcille’s Day is an appropriate day to visit Moville on the western shore of Lough Foyle, County Donegal. A coastal walk connects Moville to Greencastle, the next village to the north. It starts out as a winding path which graduates into crossing sandy coves then climbing over walls and finally clambering through gorse. On one side the lough, on the other, splendid villas, several owned at one time by prominent figures. A white painted well marks the spot where St Colmcille stopped for water before leaving Ireland for Scotland. Modernist seating pavilions, painted white of course, punctuate the path at regular intervals. Lights in the vaults of the sky.

The Ark House: Noachian named, the first residence to admire is right on the water’s edge overlooking the stone pier which extends into the quay opening into Lough Foyle. Like all the period houses to follow it is rendered and painted white with a dark slate roof. Three bay three storey with attics, this house looks like it could be an end of terrace rather than standalone. It was built by a Captain John Ramsay who bought an old brig, the original ark, and dragged it up onto this site, converting it into a dwelling in the 1820s. He later broke up this brig and used the timbers in the construction of the current building.

Ravenscliff: dating from the 1830s, it was once a hotel. The main house is a multi gabled one and a half storey mildly Tudoresque affair. A long unusually crenellated single storey wall extending out to one side encloses a garden that originally contained exotic plants. Like the following houses, Ravenscliff is separated from the coastal walk by generous lawns fringed by woods.

Gorgowan House: similar in scale and date to the main block of its neighbour Ravenscliff, it was designed by an English architect James Malton. A projecting gable containing a semilunar window rests on two columns and the chamfered bay windows on either side of the entrance door. Two 19th century residents include Reverend Charles Galway, Rector of the Church of Ireland in neighbouring Greencastle, and later, Captain Ernest Cochrane of the Royal Navy.

Carnagrave House: built as a fishing lodge in the 18th century, it was extended in three stages. A bulbous conservatory protrudes out from between a pair of chamfered bay windows. Carnagrave House and grounds are currently undergoing an extensive and expensive restoration. This estate in miniature is the grandest of all the houses and will soon be even grander.

Lafferty’s Lane: this links the coastal walk up to the main road between Moville and Greencastle. It is lined with several discreet 20th century bungalows in wooded grounds. One of the bungalows was the home of politician John Hume. The Nobel Peace Prize winner regularly entertained the good and the great at his beachside home. There is a sandy cove at the shore end of Lafferty’s Lane.

Glenburnie House: a Scottish sounding name for a Scottish looking residence. A baronial turret rises above the double fronted beach elevation of this 1830s house. It was once owned by the Marquess of Donegall. These days it can only be glimpsed through a cast iron gate propped up in the deep vegetation separating the private garden from the public access.

Ballybrack Lodge: this was another Marquess of Donegall property. He lived up to his name at least in ownership terms. It is of lower architectural pretension that the preceding villas, displaying something of the air of a farmhouse with a red painted entrance door. Ballybrack Lodge is set further back from the coastline than some of the other houses, overlooking a long stretch of garden and backing onto dense woodland.

Friel’s: this was the seaside retreat of one of Ireland’s greatest playwrights. Brian Friel was born outside Omagh but in his life and work became synonymous with Donegal. He was friendly with that other literary Irish colossus, Seamus Heaney, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature. Plenty of chamfered bay windows capture views of the sea or as Seamus Heaney would call it, “The Flaggy Shore”.

Portchapel: a decent sized house masquerading as a dinky cottage. Single bays flanking a large gabled porch protrude with mini gables into the low eaves level. Single storey wings to the side and rear expand the accommodation of the main two storey block. A previous resident was Dr Thomas Terence Baird, Chief Medical Officer for Northern Ireland 1968 to 1973.

Brooklyn House: built in 1830 by the great grandfather of Donegal’s celebrated 20th century architect Liam McCormick. The house has passed down the family line. Liam McCormick may have designed modernist masterpieces but he was happy to reside on holidays at this substantial Victorian villa. Like Friel’s, chamfered bay windows maximise the unbroken sea views. It is located on the edge of Greencastle.

Anne Davey Orr, Publisher and Editor of Ulster Architect, Ireland’s longest running and most read architecture magazine, invited architects Sir Hugh Casson, Michael Scott and Liam McCormick to judge the Building of the Year launch in 1985. Later judges of the awards would include architect Max Glendinning and architectural critic Martin Pawley. Magazine alumni include the journalist Leo McKinstry, the writer Sir Charles Brett and the columnist Stuart Blakley.

One of the last articles Stuart Blakley wrote and photographed for Ulster Architect was on Carton LeVert House in Rathmullan, County Donegal. Published in February 2007, it included an interview with Tarla MacGabhann who runs the second generation practice with his brother Antoin. “I would call the house a reinterpretation of the vernacular cottage which has been formed, shaped and developed by the specifics of the site and climate.” Employing a language of skewed angles, non Euclidean geometries and shards, this building may be single storey but isn’t exactly a typical bungalow. Tarla’s five years experience working in the 1990s in the office of Daniel Libeskind working on the Berlin Jewish Museum clearly paid off. MacGabhann Architects also designed Brian Friel’s widow’s house Teach Annie in this county. They smoothly took on Liam McCormick’s mantle as Donegal’s best architectural practice.

Brian Friel’s play Dancing at Lughnasa was one of the highlights of The Lyric Theatre Belfast programme when Anne Davey Orr was Chair. She explains, “The theatre company which originally produced Translations by Brian Friel was called the Field Day Theatre Company. It was founded by Friel and the actor Stephen Rae in 1980 specifically to produce Irish plays in an attempt to build a new theatre audience in the midst of the Troubles. Other people involved were Seamus Heaney and Seamus Deane.”

Rudyard Kipling ponders in his poem The Sea and the Hills, 1903, “Who hath desired the sea? – the sight of salt water unbounded.” Clive Staples Lewis wrote in his 1955 diary about Donegal and “the monstrous, emerald, deafening waves”. A robin is perched on the sill of one of the coastal path pavilions. Signs and wonders. Wonders and signs. Signs and great wonders. Signs and symbols. Great signs from heaven. Wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below.

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Killeavy Castle Hotel + St Luke’s Church Meigh Armagh

A Major Retrospective

Mark Bence-Jones’ tome A Guide to Irish Country Houses, 1978, unusually misses out Killeavy Castle. Its architect George Papworth (1781 to 1855) moved from London to work in Dublin. There’s an entry for another of his works, Middleton Park in Mullingar, County Westmeath: “A mansion of circa 1850 in the late Georgian style by George Papworth, built for George Augustus Boyd. Two storey six bay centre block with single storey one bay wings; entrance front with two bay central breakfront and single storey Ionic portico. Parapeted roof with modillion cornice; dies on parapets of wings. At one side of the front is a long low service range with an archway and a pedimented clocktower. Impressive stone staircase with elaborate cast iron balustrade of intertwined foliage. Sold circa 1958.”

Middleton Park is very well restored as a hotel; another of the architect’s houses is not. Kenure Park in Rush, County Dublin, is included in The Knight of Glin, David Griffin and Nicholas Robinson’s 1988 publication Vanishing Country Houses of Ireland, “A large early to mid 18th century house altered circa 1770 when the two large drawing rooms were created. These rooms had magnificent rococo ceilings and carved doorcases, that on the ground floor having a superb Doric chimneypiece. The house was altered and enlarged again in 1842 for Sir Roger Palmer Baronet, to the design of George Papworth. Papworth refaced the house and added the granite Corinthian portico. He also created the entrance hall, the library and the central top lit staircase hall. The house was sold in 1964 and became derelict before its demolition in 1978. Samples of the rococo ceiling were saved by the Office of Public Works. Only the portico remains.”

Nick Sheaff, the first Executive Director of the Irish Architectural Archive, recalls a visit to Kenure Park: “My first impression was of a mansion conceived on ducal scale in Greco Roman style. In reality it was a stucco refacing of a mid-18th-century three-storey house, skilfully realised by George Papworth in 1842 and fronted by his great Corinthian porte cochère of limestone. It had stylistic echoes of Nash’s work at Rockingham, County Roscommon, and the Morrisons’ work at Baronscourt, County Tyrone. Kenure had a remarkable interior, with two magnificent rococo ceilings of circa 1765 in the style of Robert West. The majestic top lit stairhall by George Papworth had a double-return staircase with a decorative cast-iron balustrade painted to resemble bronze, and walls marbled to suggest Sienna marble blocking as at Benjamin Dean Wyatt’s York House, St James’s in London (now Lancaster House), completed in 1840. When I visited Kenure in 1977 with Rory O’Donnell the house was derelict, open to the elements and to vandalism. It was demolished in 1978 with only the great porte cochère left standing. Kenure had contained some exceptional English furniture of the mid-18th-century, including pieces attributed to Thomas Chippendale, Pierre Langlois, and William and Richard Gomm.” A Chippendale cabinet, commissioned by Sir Roger Palmer for Castle Lackan in County Mayo, and formerly at Kenure Park, was sold at Christie’s in 2008 for £2,729,250.

George Papworth, typical of his era, was able to fluently design in a multiplicity of styles, from the neoclassicism of Middleton Park and Kenure Park to the Tudor Gothic medieval castellated Killeavy Castle. The latter’s setting is majestic, backing into the hillside of the Slieve Gullion and commanding a panorama across the green basin floor. The castle is now a wedding venue and forms the star in a galaxy of 140 hectares of forest, farm and formal gardens. It stands in isolated splendour rising over its battlemented apron of a terrace like a fairytale in granite. In line with best conservation practice, the ‘enabling development’ contemporary hotel and spa accommodation is kept away from the main house. No sprawling 20th century type extensions here. The Listed coach house and mill house were restored and five less important farm buildings demolished and replaced with newbuild around a courtyard roughly filling the original footprint. The mill fountain and pond form eyecatchers framed by the large single pane windows of the hotel. Owner Mick Boyle, locally born then raised in Australia, returned to his homeland and together with his wife Robin and four children took on the immense task of restoring and rejuvenating the castle and demesne. He explains,

 

“The environment around us inspires all that we do at Killeavy Castle Estate. Everything has a purpose. We put much thought into what we grow, buy, use and reuse. We’re restocking our woodland with native oak to restore habitat diversity. And creating forest trails to bring you closer to nature. We farm sustainably too. Traditional local breeds of Longhorn cattle and Cheviot sheep graze in our pastures. Whenever possible we use fresh ingredients foraged, grown or raised right here, in our fields, forests and extensive walled and estate gardens. We make our own jams, preserves and dried foods. We smoke, age and cure our own meat so that bounty can be savoured year round in our restaurants and farmshop. We support our community by sourcing 90 percent of what we serve and sell from within a 32 kilometre radius. Even the seaweed adorning Carlingford oysters ends up fertilising our strawberry plants. And slates have a second life as plates. We’re always finding inventive ways to meet our sustainable target goal of being carbon neutral by 2027.”

The Boyles’ architect was Patrick O’Hagan of Newry. In the planning application of 2014 (which would be approved a year later by Newry and Mourne District Council) he explained, “The Grade A castle will be repaired and fully restored adapting current conservation techniques and standards. Interventions to the Listed Building will be minimal. The works to the Listed Building will be under the direction of Chris McCollum Building Conservation Surveyor, working in conjunction with Patrick O’Hagan and Associates Architects, and other design team members. A 250 person detached marquee will be sensitively positioned to the rear of the castle, excavated into the hillside and suitably landscaped to ensure it does not detract from the setting of the Listed Building or the critical views from the Ballintemple Road.” A discreet wheelchair ramp to the entrance door is just about the only element Powell Foxall wouldn’t recognise. The entrance hall leads through to two formal reception rooms with further informal reception rooms now filling the basement. The first floor has a self contained apartment including a sitting room, dining kitchen and three bedroom suites.

Patrick O’Hagan continued, “The hotel will have its main entrance located in the Listed coach house and will be restored under the direction of the conservation surveyor working closely with the architect. The lean-to Listed structures and the old mill building will be restored and form part of the hotel accommodation. The design carefully maximises the benefits of the steeply sloping site, sloping to the east, which ensures that the new three story hotel building’s roof level is some six metres below the floor level of the castle. The flat roofs of the hotel will be appropriately landscaped to present a natural ‘forest floor’ when viewed from the castle and terrace above.”

And concluded, “The layout of the hotel provides important views to the castle, the restored walled garden and distant views of the surrounding demesne and beyond making travel in and around the hotel an experience in itself. The restaurant, lounge and kitchen areas are vertically stacked on the northern elevation but the public areas also address the internal courtyard providing a southerly aspect and natural solar gain. Views up to the castle from the restaurant and lounge areas are a critical element of the design and will ensure a unique ambience. The courtyard level bedrooms are externally accessed directly from the landscaped courtyard and internally via passenger lifts. The remaining bedrooms are designed with both courtyard and east elevation views.”

Sustainability was a theme of the construction as well as the ongoing running of the hotel. “A limited palette of materials is proposed in the new building work. The use of granite cladding and larch boarding reflects materials naturally occurring on the site. The larch boarding will be painted with a water based wood stain to emulate the great boughs of the adjacent ancient beech, lime and sycamore. The organic masonry water based paint colours will be selected to tone with the woodland setting. All construction materials will be 100 percent recyclable.” Sustainable operational features for the 45 bedroom hotel include a woodchip boiler harvesting waste timber from the demesne and collecting and reusing rainwater.

Kimmitt Dean records in The Gate Lodges of Ulster Gazetteer, 1994, “South Lodge circa 1837 architect probably George Papworth; demolished. A painting in the Armagh Museum indicates what was a contemporary and unassuming gatelodge at the end of a straight avenue on an axis with the front door of the ‘castle’.” Not content with simply restoring the castle, the Boyles commissioned Templepatrick based architects Warwick Stewart to dream up a suitably romantic replacement gatelodge. The result is a convincing neo Victorian country house in miniature faced in stone, dressed with cut granite, and dressed up with bargeboards. The gatelodge provides self contained guest accommodation of two bedrooms over a sitting room and dining kitchen.

Kevin Mulligan provides a detailed account of the castle in The Buildings of Ireland: South Ulster, 2013. Highlights include: “A delightful toy castle rising above a castellated terrace… remodelled in 1836 … In both architecture and picturesque effect the design recalls Charles Augustus Busby’s dramatic Gwrych Castle near Abergele in Wales … a lot has been achieved in a small compass: by the addition of an entrance tower, corner turrets, stringcourses, battlements, attenuated slits, flat label mouldings and mullioned windows, what was effectively a decent farmhouse has been impressively transformed … The tall narrow doorway is flanked by stepped buttresses, the door an ornate Gothic design bristling with studs and set under a Tudor arch and a machiolated bay window with three round lancets. The Foxall arms are displayed in Roman cement on the upper stage.” George Papworth’s client was Powell Foxall even though the Newry bank his family co founded, Moore McCann and Foxall, had folded two decades earlier.

And adds, “There is little dressed stonework in the design, and Papworth’s additions are distinguished from the rubble of the 18th century work by rough ashlar blocks – of limestone rather than the local granite – with wide uneven joints. On the side elevations, presumably as an economy, he concealed the old wall by replicating the newer pattern in stucco, using a composition render, as he had done at Headford (County Galway) in 1829.” Really it’s an attractive 1830s pre Gothic Revival version of Gothic.

Sir Charles Brett devotes four pages of Buildings of County Armagh, 1999, to Killeavy Castle. He’s clearly an admirer, “An exceedingly fine, deceptively modest, pre Victorian castle … a sort of scaled down version of Gosford Castle … The crenellations are marvellously convincing, as are the splendid mock medieval studded front door (painted green) and the astonishingly tall and narrow slit windows … George Papworth was the younger brother, and pupil, of the better known English architect John Buonarotti Papworth, son of a notable stuccodore. He established a successful practice in Ireland, and designed Sir Patrick Dun’s Hospital in Ireland, and the King’s Bridge over the Liffey, in Dublin. His drawings for Killeavy were exhibited in the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1836, with the comment ‘now erecting’.”

The castle started life as an 18th century two storey over basement villa of the rectory size, with a three bay entrance front and a bow window in the centre of the rear elevation. George Papworth mostly retained the symmetry and plan, adding a square tower to each corner except for a circular tower to the rear northwest corner which rises an extra storey. A bathroom now occupies the top floor of the tallest tower. Charmingly, the Gothic carapace cracks on the rear elevation to reveal glimpses of the earlier house. Less charmingly, well for the Foxalls anyway, this was probably down to that age old issue of running low on funds. Earlier sash windows still light the bowed projection.

It’s hard to imagine the perilous state of Killeavy Castle until the Boyles came to its rescue. Imagination turns to reality in a lobby of the hotel: a gallery of photographs shows the ruins. St Luke’s Church of Ireland in the local village, Meigh, hasn’t been so lucky. At first glance it could be mistaken for another George Papworth commission, an offshoot of the castle. But Kevin Mulligan confirms that it is an 1831 design by the prolific Dublin based architect William Farrell. “A variation of the design for the churches of Clontribret and Munterconnaught. A small three bay hall with Farrell’s familiar pinaccled belfry and deep battlemented porch. The walls are roughcast with dressings of Mourne granite, nicely displayed in the solid pinnacle topped buttresses framing the entrance gable and porch. The windows are plain lancets with hoodmoulds, made impossibly slender on either side of the porch. Inside, the roof is supported on exposed cast iron trusses.”

Those trusses now compete for space with trees growing up the aisle. “The roof of the Protestant church in Meigh was only removed 15 years ago,” says Derek Johnston, landlord of Johnny Murphy’s pub and restaurant in the village. A trefoil arched plaque set in a high pedimented gravestone reads: “In loving memory of William Bell who died on 10 March 1896 aged 75 years. Margaret Bell wife of above who died 2 November 2016. Dr Margaret Boyd who died 21 August 1906. Joseph Priestly Bell who died 24 August 2013. John Alexander Bell who died 15 November 1928. Elizabeth Anne Bell who died 27 May 1951. John Alexander Bell who died 1 July 1957. George Reginald Bell who died 16 July 1957. George Reginald Bell who died 16 July 1972. Henry Wheelan Bell who died 30 October 1973. Phyllis Maureen Bell died 7 July 2000.” Their ancestor, Joseph Bell, had bought Killeavy Castle in 1881. Phyllis Maureen Bell was the last of the line to own the castle.

Charlie Brett had big concerns yet high hopes for Killeavy Castle, “It is now, alas, empty, and in poor order, the victim both of vandalism and of burglary, though many interior features appear to survive – including even some of the original wallpaper … It richly deserves its classification as one of only a handful of buildings in Category A in the county … Dare one hope that happier days may come, and that this delightful building might, in some shape, become a showpiece of the Ring of Gullion?” Happier days are here, and this delightful building has, now in shipshape, become a showpiece of the Ring of Gullion.

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Architecture Country Houses

Isaac Corry + Derrymore House Bessbrook Armagh

Luggala of the North

Driving uphill out of Newry through Bessbrook suddenly on the righthand side behind a stone wall is a brilliant flash of mustard between the thinning greenery and vibrant orange of late autumn. Aha! It’s Derrymore House, a cottage orné on a grand scale. And a very charming one at that. John Richardson, its last private owner, donated the unfurnished house and its demesne to The National Trust in 1952. In that era of architectural freezing in aspic, a sympathetic three bay extension containing an entrance hall with a central fanlighted doorcase was demolished. The early 19th century extension filled the gap on the north elevation to complete a courtyard. Derrymore was returned to its original late 18th century magnet or long C shape. A purist approach indeed.

The name Derrymore originates from ‘doire’, the Irish for an oak grove, and ‘mór’ which means large. It formed part of the lands owned by the O’Hanlons before being taken over by the Earls of Kilmorey who were based at Mourne Park in Kilkeel. It came into the ownership of Isaac Corry who built the current house in 1776 as his residence, not just a hunting lodge or summer retreat. Architect unknown: possibly John Sutherland who designed the landscaping. Isaac Corry was an MP for Newry for three decades and the last Chancellor of the Irish Parliament before the Act of Union in 1800. Politically, he swung both ways.

There are two canted bay windows: one with 82 small panes; the other, 90. At first glance, this would seem extravagant for Isaac Corry was responsible for introducing the Window Tax in Ireland. But he would have benefitted from a loophole that any window could be considered as one for taxation purposes if it was divided into portions less than a foot (30.5 centimetres) wide. Commercial pressure and building regulations dictating design are not a new phenonomen.

Derrymore is the forerunner to a spate of single storey (or at least just one level over basement) modest country houses erected in the late 18th and early 19th centuries in mid to south Ulster, especially around Rostrevor. A thatched roof draws Derrymore closer to cottage than country house in appearance although not in scale. Hugh Dixon explains in An Introduction to Ulster Architecture, 1973, “Occasionally the two traditions merge into a picturesque, Georgian vernacular style which is Ulster’s alone… undoubtedly the most ambitiously developed example of the type is the house built by Isaac Corry at Derrymore near Newry in County Armagh. Adopting both traditional materials and ‘architectural’ features like quatrefoil windows topped with label mouldings, the building is arranged as a series of small units round an open court.” There is a formality to the elevations, especially the symmetrical southwest facing garden front, at odds with the provincial roof material. A classic cottage orné combo.

Ever since, there’s been an unstoppable love of the lateral when it comes to self building in Ireland much to local planning authorities’ ire.

Before he died in 2005, Sir Charles Brett, architectural commentator and contributor to Ulster Architect magazine did a U turn on his view of bungalows in Ireland. As Chairman of the Northern Ireland Housing Executive, he was a strong advocate of terraced houses. But in his later years, Charlie declared bungalows in many ways to be the rightful Irish vernacular, or at least an inheritor of the traditional cottage form. That is, single storey, rectilinear, narrow, practical.

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Dorinda The Honourable Lady Dunleath + Killyvolgan House Ballywalter Down

Life and Times

Dorinda loved discussing the many Irish country houses she knew well. “I could write a book about my experiences in country houses. Maybe you should for me!” One of her earliest memories was visiting her uncle and aunt, Major Charlie and Sylvia Alexander, at the now demolished Pomeroy House in County Tyrone. Dorinda also enjoyed visiting Springhill in County Londonderry (now owned by The National Trust) – she was married from there in 1959. There was a painting of Springhill in the sitting room of Killyvolgan House. It was her Great Aunt Mina’s home. Mina Lenox-Conyngham was the last owner of Springhill. “Staying at her house was always enormous fun.”

“I remember aged six being taken against my will to dancing lessons at Lissan House. It was absolutely freezing! I lay on the ground screaming and kicking my feet in the air. Such a dull house, don’t you think?” She was great pals with Diana Pollock of Mountainstown House in County Meath and recalled good times there with Diana and her sisters. “I could never love Mount Stewart. Dundarave has an interesting vast hall but the reception rooms are plain. I remember the auction of Mount Panther’s contents. Everyone was standing in the entrance hall and up the stairs when the staircase started coming away from the wall! Cousin Captain Bush lived in Drumhalla House near Rathmullan in Donegal. He’d a parrot and wore a wig. I remember he threw his wig off when he went swimming in the cove end of the garden. I was absolutely terrified to jump in after him!”

One of Dorinda’s most memorable stories combines several of her loves: country houses, fashion and parties. “It was the Sixties and I had just bought a rather fashionable tin foil dress from a catalogue. I thought it would be perfect for Lady Mairi Bury’s party at Mount Stewart. It was so tight and I was scared of ripping it so I lay down on our bedroom floor, arms stretched out in front of me, and Henry slid me into it.” She gave a demonstration, laughing. “Unfortunately I stood too near one of the open fires and my dress got hotter and hotter. I thought I was going to go up in smoke! So that was the first and last time I wore it!” Dorinda always managed to look stylish, whether casual or formal. Her suits were the envy of fellow Trustees of the Board of Historic Buildings Trust. Her ‘off duty’ uniform of polo neck, sports jacket, jeans and boyish shoes was effortlessly chic.

When it came to finding her own country house after her tenure at Ballywalter Park ended, things proved challenging. “I searched for two years for a suitable property. There’s a country house for sale in Keady. Nobody lives there! I’d be driving up and down to Belfast non stop!” Eventually Dorinda would build her own house on a site just beyond the walled estate of Ballywalter Park. At first, she wanted to rebuild the double pile gable ended two storey three bay house occupying the site called McKee’s Farm but when the structure proved unstable, a new house was conceived. Despite being known as a modernist, Belfast architect Joe Fitzgerald was selected to design a replacement house of similar massing to McKee’s Farm, adding single storey wings in Palladian style. Like its owner, Killyvolgan House is understated, elegant and charming. She was pleased when the council planners described Killyvolgan as the ideal new house in the countryside. It displays a distinguished handling of proportion and lightness of touch.

“I bought the Georgian grandfather clock in the entrance hall from Dublin. I’m always slightly concerned at how fragile my papier mâché chairs are for ‘larger guests’ in the drawing room. I guess the chairs were really meant for a bedroom? I’ve painted all the walls in the house white as the shadows on them help me see around.” And then there was the urn in the courtyard. “The Coade stone urn I found in the 19th century barn was much too grand. So instead I bought this cast iron urn on the King’s Road in Belfast. Fine, I will leave the Marston and Langinger pot you have brought me in the urn so that I remember that colour. Oh, Farrow and Ball are very smart! They’re very clever at their marketing.” In the end, the much debated urn would remain unpainted. “Henry wouldn’t deal with snobs. That’s why I liked him. Henry took everything he got involved in very seriously. Henry was the only Alliance Party member in the House of Lords. He strongly promoted the Education (Northern Ireland) Act 1974 which provided greater parity across the sectarian divide.” Later, “Oh how exciting, is it full of good restaurants and bars? Great! I’ll be an authority now on Ballyhackamore.”

She recalled an early drama at The Park. It was a tranquil Sunday morning in 1973 and unusually Dorinda was at home rather than at Holy Trinity Church Ballywalter. “Henry was singing the 23rd Psalm at Eucharist when he heard six fire brigades go by. Poor people, he pitied. I’d warned our butler not to interfere with the gas cylinders of the boiler, but he did, and the whole thing exploded, lifting off the dome of the Staircase Hall like a pressure cooker. The Billiard Room disappeared under a billow of smoke and flames. I rang the fire brigade and said, ‘Come quickly! There’s a fire at Ballywalter Park!’ The operator replied, ‘Yes, madam, but what number in Ballywalter Park?’” The estate of course doesn’t have a number – although it does have its own postcode.

“A spare room full of china collections fell through the roof. Well, I guess I’d always wanted to do an archaeological dig! It was so sad, really. As well as the six fire brigades, 300 people gathered from the village and around to help lift furniture onto the lawn. Fortunately the dome didn’t crack. Isn’t life stranger than fiction? The Powerscourt fire happened just one year later. Henry was philosophical and said we can build a replacement house in the walled garden.” In the end the couple would be responsible for restoring the house to its lasting glory. Ballywalter Park is a mid 19th century architectural marvel designed by Sir Charles Lanyon.

“I arrived over from London as a young wife and suddenly had to manage 12 servants. I used to tiptoe around so as not to disturb them. There was a crazy crew in the kitchen. Mrs Clarke was the cook. Billy Clarke, the scatty elderly butler, mostly sat smoking. Mrs Clarke couldn’t cook unless he was there. I was too shy to say anything!” Dorinda once briefly dated Tony Armstrong-Jones who would become the society photographer Lord Snowdon. “We met at pony club. He got me to model sitting next to a pond at our house in Widford, Hertfordshire.” One book described Dorinda as being “very pretty”. When questioned, she replied, “Well, quite pretty!” She was more interested in her time bookbinding for The Red Cross. In those days The Bunch of Grapes in Knightsbridge was Dorinda’s local. “Browns Hotel and The Goring were ‘safe’ for debutantes. After we got married we went to the State Opening of Parliament. We stayed in Henry’s club and I haled a taxi wearing a tiara and evening dress. Harrods was once full of people one would know. We would know people there. ‘Do you live near Harrods?’ people would ask. I’ve heard everyone now lives southwest down the river, near the boat races. You need some luck and then you’ve just got to make your own way having fun in London.”

As ever with Dorinda there were always more great stories to relate. “I bought the two paintings from the School of Van Dyke in my dining room for £40. I knew they were rather good landscapes so I decided to talk to Anthony Blunt about them. We arranged to meet in The Courtauld for lunch. Halfway though our meal he disappeared for a phone call. He was probably waiting for a message, ‘Go to the second tree on the left!’ He never reappeared. Next thing I heard he was a spy and had gone missing! I think he turned up in Moscow. I’ll remember other interesting things when you’re gone.” Occasionally colloquialisms would slip into her polite conversation. “The funeral was bunged! He’s completely mustard! She’s a pill!” One of Dorinda’s catchphrases, always expressed with glee, was, “That’s rather wild!”

“I called up to The Park. It was so funny: for the first time in history there were three Lady Dunleaths including me all sitting chatting on a sofa! One lives in The Park; the other, King’s Road and I don’t mean Belfast!” Dorinda made steeple chasing sound so riveting. A dedicated rider and breeder, she was Chairman of the Half Bred Horse Breeders Society. The Baroness’s contribution to Northern Irish culture and society is unsurpassed. She was Patron of the Northern Ireland Chest Stroke and Heart Association and the Northern Ireland Council for Integrated Education, as well as being a Committee Member of the Royal Ulster Agricultural Society. Dorinda was a Director of the Ulster Orchestra and a founding member of the National Trust in Northern Ireland and the Ulster Architectural Heritage Society. Along with Sir Charles Brett she laboriously carried out and published early ‘Listings’ of buildings in places such as Downpatrick, Dungannon and Lisburn. The Baroness’s legacy lives on in the Dorinda Lady Dunleath Charitable Trust. This charity was started by her late husband but after he died it was changed into Dorinda’s name and she added to it every year thereafter. It supports education; healthcare and medical research; the arts, culture, heritage and science; the environment; alleviating poverty; and advancement of the Christian faith. The Dorinda Lady Dunleath Charitable Trust continues to donate to charities that she would have liked, with a focus on Northern Ireland.

One of the last heritage projects Dorinda supported was the restoration and rejuvenation of Portaferry Presbyterian Church, not far from Ballywalter. It’s one of the best Greek Revival buildings in the United Kingdom. “Prince Charles came to the reopening. I curtsied so low I could barely stand up again! Afterwards, a few of us had a very grand supper at Ikea to celebrate!” She voiced concern about the future of the organ at Down Cathedral. Music in May at Ballywalter Park was an annual festival of organ music started by the newlyweds. The Dunleath Organ Scholarship Trust was set up by her late husband and she continued to support it for the rest of her life, attending its concerts each year.

“It’s so exciting… I can’t say how exciting it is you’re here! Tell me, who is this David Bowie everyone’s talking about? I feel like I’m about 100! It’s like when my father asked me, ‘Who is this Bing Crosby?’ The House of Lords used to be full of country specialists like experts in bees or men who loved linen. They used to give the most marvellous speeches. Each generation must do something. It would be great to write this down.” Later, “Gardens should have vistas, don’t you think? They need focal points; you need to walk for an hour to a place of discovery. Capability Brown and Repton knew how to do it.”

In latter years, there were memorable times to be had at The Wildfowler Inn, Greyabbey. Those long, languid lunches. “Portavogie scampi? I’ll have the same as you. And a glass of white wine please. We can have sticky toffee pudding after.” Dorinda would don her yellow high viz jacket, pulling the distinctive look off with considerable aplomb. Her eyesight failing, she would claim, “It helps people see me in Tesco in Newtownards!” Much later, balmy summer afternoons in the sheltered courtyard of Killyvolgan House would stretch long into the evening. There was Darjeeling and more laughter. Those were the days. Halcyon days by the shore. Days that will linger forever. On that last evening at Killyvolgan, Dorinda pondered, “Is there anyone left who cares about architectural heritage?”

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Montalto House + Estate Ballynahinch Down

A Dawning of Clarity Upon Complexity

Montalto Estate Ballynahinch Map © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Braving Storm Ciara, on a blustery photogenic winter’s day, architect John O’Connell and his client Managing Director David Wilson lead a two-to-two private tour of Montalto Estate: The Big House; The Carriage Rooms; and the most recent addition, The Courtyard. It’s an extraordinary tale of the meeting of minds, the combining of talents, a quest for the best and the gradual unveiling and implementation of an ambitious informed vision that has transformed one of the great estates of Ulster into an enlightening major attraction celebrating old and new architecture, art and landscape, history and modernity. And the serving of rather good scones in the café.

Montalto Estate Ballynahinch Lake © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Philip Smith has just completed the latest book in the architectural series of the counties of Ulster started by the late Sir Charles Brett. Buildings of South County Down includes Montalto House: “Adding a storey to a house by raising the roof is a relatively common occurrence that can be found on dwellings of all sizes throughout the county and beyond. But the reverse, the creation of an additional floor by lowering the ground level, is a much rarer phenomenon. This, however, is what happened at Montalto, the original mid 18th century mansion assuming its present three storey appearance in 1837, when then owner David Stewart Ker ‘caused to be excavated round the foundation and under the house, thus forming an under-storey which is supported by numerous arches and pillars’. Ker did a quite successful job, and although the relative lack of front ground floor fenestration and a plinth appears somewhat unusual, it is not jarring, and without knowledge of the building’s history one would be hard pressed to discern the subterranean origin of this part of the house.”

Montalto Estate Ballynahinch © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

The author continues, “Based on the internal detailing, Brett has suggested that William Vitruvius Morrison may have had a hand in the scheme, but evidence recently uncovered by Kevin Mulligan indicates the house remodelling was at least in part the work of Newtownards builder architect Charles Campbell, whose son Charles in September 1849 ‘came by his death in consequence of a fall which he received from a scaffold whilst pinning a wall at Montalto House.’”

Montalto Estate Ballynahinch Garden © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Rewind a few decades and Mark Bence-Jones’ threshold work A Guide to Irish Country Houses describes Montalto House as follows, “A large and dignified three storey house of late Georgian aspect; which, in fact was built mid 18th century as a two storey house by Sir John Rawdon, 1st Earl of Moira; who probably brought the stuccodore who was working for him at Moira House in Dublin to execute the ceiling here; for the ceiling which survives in the room known as the Lady’s Sitting Room is pre 1765 and of the very highest quality, closely resembling the work of Robert West; with birds, grapes, roses and arabesques in high relief. There is also a triple niche of plasterwork at one end of the room; though the central relief of a fox riding in a curricle drawn by a cock is much less sophisticated that the rest of the plasterwork and was probably done by a local man.”

Montalto House Ballynahinch Garden © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Some more: “In the 1837 ground floor there is an imposing entrance hall, with eight paired Doric columns, flanked by a library and a dining room. A double staircase leads up to the piano nobile, where there is a long gallery running the full width of the house, which may have been the original entrance hall. Also on the piano nobile is the sitting room with the splendid 18th century plasterwork. Montalto was bought circa 1910 by the 5th Earl of Clanwilliam, whose bride refused to live at Gill Hall, the family seat a few miles to the west, because of the ghosts there. In 1952, the ballroom and a service wing at the back were demolished.”

Montalto House Ballynahinch © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Montalto House Ballynahinch Facade © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Montalto House Ballynahinch Old Photograph © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Montalto House Ballynahinch Porch © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Montalto House Ballynahinch Bay Window © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Montalto House Ballynahinch Entrance Hall © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Montalto House Ballynahinch Dining Room © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Montalto House Ballynahinch Mirror © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Montalto House Ballynahinch © Curtain Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Montalto House Ballynahinch Chinese Room © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Montalto House Ballynahinch Niche © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Montalto House Ballynahinch Plasterwork © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Montalto House Ballynahinch Ceiling © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

The Carriage Rooms Montalto Estate Ballynahinch © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

The Carriage Rooms Montalto Estate Ballynahinch Conservatory © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

The Carriage Rooms Montalto Estate Ballynahinch Gable © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

The Carriage Rooms Montalto Estate Ballynahinch Bar © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

The Carriage Rooms Montalto Estate Ballynahinch Brickwork © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

The Carriage Rooms Montalto Estate Ballynahinch Windows © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

The Carriage Rooms Montalto Estate Ballynahinch Artwork © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

The Carriage Rooms Montalto Estate Ballynahinch Interior © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

The Carriage Rooms Montalto Estate Ballynahinch Chairs © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Books aside, back on the tour, David Wilson considers, “You need to stay on top of your game in business. Montalto House was our family home – we still live on the estate. It’s personal. You have to maintain the vision all the time.” John O’Connell explains, “The baseless Doric columns of the entrance hall draw the exterior in – they are also an external feature of the porch. The order is derived from the Temple of Neptune at Paestum. Due to the ground floor originally being a basement it is very subservient to the grandeur upstairs. There are a lot of structural arches supporting ceilings.” A watercolour of the Temple of Neptune over the entrance hall fireplace emphasises the archaeological connection.

The Stables Montalto Estate Ballynahinch © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Upstairs, John’s in mid flow: “And now we enter a corridor of great grace and elegance.” The walls are lined, like all the internal spaces, with fine art, much of it Irish. David points to a Victorian photograph of the house: “It used to be three times as large as it is now!” The house is still pretty large by most people’s standards. Three enigmatic ladies in ankle length dresses guard the entrance door in the photograph. Upstairs, in the Lady’s Sitting Room which is brightly lit by the canted bay window over the porch, David relates, “the plasterwork reflects the original owners’ great interest in flora and fauna”. John highlights “the simple beauty of curtains and walls being the same colour”. Montalto House can be let as a whole for weddings and parties.

The Courtyard Montalto Estate Ballynahinch Pergola © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Onward and sideward – it’s a leisurely walk, at least when a storm isn’t brewing – to The Carriage Rooms. While John has restored Montalto House, finessing its architecture and interiors, The Carriage Rooms is an entirely new building attached to a converted and restored former mill. “In the 1830s the Ker family made a huge agricultural investment in Montalto,” states David. “They had the insight to turn it into a productive estate. The Kers built the mill and stables and powered water to create the lake.” White painted rendered walls distinguish John’s building from the rough stone older block. The Carriage Rooms are tucked in a fold in the landscape and are reached by a completely new avenue lined with plantation trees.

The Courtyard Montalto House Ballynahinch © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

“I didn’t want to prettify this former industrial building,” records John. “It needed a certain robustness. The doors and windows have Crittall metal frames. Timbers frames would not be forceful enough. The stone cast staircase is a great achievement in engineering terms – and architectural terms too! The new upper floor balcony design was inspired by the architecture of the Naples School of Art. Horseshoe shaped insets soften the otherwise simple balustrade.” In contrast the orangery attached to the rear of The Carriage Rooms is a sophisticated symmetrical affair. “It’s where two worlds meet. This gives great validity to the composition,” John observes. Much of the furniture is bespoke: architect Anna Borodyn from John’s office designed a leaf patterned mobile copper bar. A formal garden lies beyond glazed double doors. The Carriage Rooms can be let as a whole for parties and weddings.

The Courtyard Montalto Estate Ballynahinch Garden © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Justifiably lower key is the design of The Courtyard, a clachan like cluster of single and double storey buildings containing a café, shop and estate offices. It’s next to the 19th century stable yard. John’s practice partner Colin McCabe was the mastermind behind The Courtyard. Unpainted roughcast walls, casement rather than sash windows, polished concrete floors and most of all large glazed panels framed by functioning sliding shutters lend the complex an altogether different character to The Big House or even The Carriage Rooms. The Courtyard harks back to the Kers’ working estate era. “We wanted to create a sense of place using a magical simple vocabulary,” confirms John, “and not some bogus facsimile”. A catslide roof provides shelter for a barbeque. An unpretentious pergola extends the skeleton of the built form into the garden.

The Courtyard Montalto Estate Ballynahinch Cafe © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

“We have over 10,000 visitors a month and employ 80 people,” beams David. The 160 hectares of gardens and woodlands have entered their prime. A new timber temple – a John O’Connell creation of course – overlooks the lake. Contemporary neoclassicism is alive and very well. The Beautiful. The Sublime. The Picturesque. As redefined for the 21st century. Montalto Estate hits the high note for cultural tourism in Ireland, even mid storm.

Montalto Estate Ballynahinch Cafe © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Categories
Architecture Country Houses

Rockport Lodge + Mount Druid Causeway Coast Antrim

A Penchant for the Peculiar

Ballintoy Beach Causeway Coast © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

There are two distinguished Georgian houses along the Causeway Coast with unusual fenestration. Rockport Lodge just beyond Cushendun appears to have missing windows on the canted flanks of its outer bay windows on the south elevation. Mount Druid high above Ballintoy appears to have the middle windows missing in its two bay windows on the north elevation. Forget the wild weather resistance of yore: a modern sensibility would be to capture from all angles such a view sweeping down to the incredibly untouched Ballintoy Harbour. Mount Druid’s mildly idiosyncratic face to the world (the entrance front is actually the more regular five bay south elevation looking into the hill) is austere – an attribute noted by writers as being highly suitable to this bare landscape. White painted walls against the dark hill add to the stark grandeur of Mount Druid. Waves lap up to the white painted walls of Rockport Lodge. It too has a more conventional entrance front, four bays facing westwards inland.

Ballintoy County Antrim © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Sir Charles Brett includes both houses in Buildings of County Antrim. On Rockport Lodge, the once Belfast based full time solicitor part time architectural writer records, “According to Boyle, in 1835, the house ‘the summer residence of Major General O’Neill is a modern two storey edifice, and very commodious’. It was valued on 9 August 1834 at £20.13.0 of which £2 was added ‘for vicinity to sea, being a good situation for sea bathing’… soon after the name of General O’Neill was struck out, and that of Matilda Kearns substituted. Her name in turn was struck out in 1868, when Nicholas Crommelin moved here from The Caves, the house being valued then at £38.”

Ballintoy Harbour © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Ballintoy Harbour Causeway Coast © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Rockport Lodge Cushendun © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Five Big Houses of Cushendun is a smaller book written by Sir Charles Brett. It includes Rockport Lodge: “The handsome white painted house, hugging the shoreline, can be dated with some accuracy to 1813. It does not appear on William Martin’s conscientiously detailed map of 1811 to 1812; but Ann Plumptre, who was here in the summer of 1814, wrote that Cushendun ‘is an excellent part of the country for game; on which account Lord O’Neill, the proprietor of Shane’s Castle’ [in fact, his younger brother] ‘has built a little shooting box very near the shore, whither in the season he often comes to shoot’. It stands between Castle Carra and the sea. The south front facing across the broad curve to the village, consists of three canted bays, set in a zigzag under the wide eaves, leaving triangular recesses in between: five 16 pane windows on the ground floor; three more, and two oculi, in the upper floor. The entrance front, of four bays, has wide Georgian glazed windows and a pleasing and unusual geometrical glazing pattern in the recessed porch.”

Rockport Lodge Cushendun Entrance © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

The entry for Mount Druid in Buildings of County Antrim reads, “A remarkable house, on an extraordinarily prominent (and exposed) hillside, looking out due north across the North Channel to the cliffs of Oa on Islay. The house is of two storeys, on a generous basement, with tiny attic windows in the gables; in principle, seven bays wide, with generous canted bays facing north – but the central face of each bay is blank – as Girvan says, ‘giving a very bleak effect, not inappropriate to the inhospitable position.’ Between the bays, a tall round headed window lights the upper part of the staircase, an oculus above and below. The remaining windows are 15 pane Georgian glazed. There are six chimneypots on each stack; the doorcase in the square porch in the entrance front facing south is modern.”

Mount Druid Ballintoy © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

There’s more: “The vestry minute book for the parish contains the following uncommonly useful entry: ‘There was 40 acres granted by Alexander Thomas Stewart Esq of Acton to Reverend Robert Traill and his successors, Rectors of Ballintoy, in perpetuity, for a glebe, in the townland of Magherabuy on the ninth of August 1788. Rent £25.5.0. In May 1789 Mr Traill began to build a Glebe House and got possession of it on the 14th November 1791 – changing the name of the place from Magherabuy to Mount Druid, on account of the Druid’s Temple now standing on the Glebe.’ Unfortunately, despite this wealth of documentation, there is nothing to say what builder, mason, carpenter or architect was involved: no payments appear in the vestry book since Mr Traill evidently paid for the house out of his own pocket.” The similarities between the two houses may not be entirely coincidental. Charlie wondered if  Rockport Lodge could be the work of the same architect or skilled builder as Mount Druid?

Mount Druid Ballintoy Entrance © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

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Architects Architecture Country Houses Luxury People

Ashbrooke House Fermanagh + William Farrell

The Spring of Content

Dr Roderick O’Donnell, author and Country Life contributor, considers Ashbrooke House in County Fermanagh to be “a very successful Regency country house”. Kimmitt Dean notes that “this seems to have formed part of a lucrative commission for the architect, there being many buildings of similar form in the vicinity…” Such a shame the late Sir Charles Brett didn’t come west of the River Bann in his riveting series on the buildings of Ulster. It would have been interesting to hear what Charlie thought of Ashbrooke. Would he have classified it as middling or large? The front elevation stationed above a grass bank is simply divine. Aha, a haha. Five bay bliss. Formality | solidity | proportionality | materiality.

A study by Queen’s University Belfast confirms Ashbrooke’s walls are of buff pink sandstone: Ballyness Sandstone and Fermanagh Carboniferous Sandstone to be precise. This material has a lovely coloured textured finish. Just like the enigmatic standing stone on the estate. No pale smooth featureless Portland stone here. Ashbrooke House is the substantial dower house of an even larger property, Colebrooke Park. There’s an experiential reduction in scale and grandeur (yet no diminution of quality) as befits the generational decline from Viscountess to Dowager. They’re both by the same architect: William Farrell. The commodious Portaferry House in County Down is also by Will. His work has a sturdiness: an antidote to Adam style frippery. He was one of several early 19th century Dublin architects (others that spring to mind are John Bowden and John Hargrave) with country house practices. Writing in Buildings of North West Ulster, Professor Alistair Rowan summarises Ashbrooke as:

“A five bay, two storey front with big windows and a projecting solid porch with Tuscan columns. Above, a tripartite sash window. Shallow hipped roof, like the big house, but here supported on an eaves cornice with projecting stone mutules. The house has only one regular front, with a long wing behind. A plaque, in the stable yard behind, has the legend, ‘Built by Sir Henry Brooke Baronet, for the use of his tenants in the year 1830’.”

The 3rd Viscount and Viscountess Brookeborough have restored and revived and rejuvenated and reinvigorated and refurnished Colebrooke. “The house was cement rendered in the early 19th century,” notes the Viscount, Lord Lieutenant of Fermanagh and Lord-in-Waiting to the Queen. An 1891 photograph shows the south elevation in that state: the polygonal conservatory has since gone; the sunken garden was yet to come. An unpeeling revealed the rugged reddish sandstone underneath. Vast (seriously large – if anything, William Farrell got scale) reception rooms with Victorian wallpaper (and umpteen bedrooms) make it the ideal setting for shooting parties. Two paned sash windows frame uninterrupted views across the parkland.

In 1974, the executors of the 1st Viscount Brookeborough instructed Osborne King + Megran to auction the contents of the big house to cover death duties. Basil Brooke had been Prime Minister of Northern Ireland for two decades. The 2nd Viscount was also a politician. The 3rd Viscount’s brother the Honourable Christopher Brooke and his wife Amanda live in a new baronial style house on the estate. The Brooke family has been in Fermanagh since Sir Henry (High Sheriff, Governor and MP for County Donegal) was granted lands by Royal Patent in 1667. Military and public service have been something of a family tradition ever since.

In the family plot in Colebrooke Church of Ireland graveyard (a cornerstone dates the church 1765), one tombstone reads, ‘Here lies the body of Brigadier General Henry Francis Brooke eldest son of the late George Frederick Brooke of Ashbrooke and of the Lady Arabella Brooke born 13th August 1836 killed in action 15th August 1880 aged 44. He fell while commanding the sortie against the village of Dehkhoja during the siege of Kandahar, south Afghanistan, in the noble endeavour to save the life of a wounded brother officer Captain Cruikshank R.E. Greater love hath no man that this. That a man lay down his life for his friends. John 15.13.’

Amanda, a talented ceramicist who has exhibited at the Royal Ulster Academy, has turned her artistic hand(s) to decorating Ashbrooke House. It is available for parties or as a holiday let. All four reception rooms, eight bedrooms, six bathrooms and one kitchen (with Aga). The tack room and rabbit man’s cottage, outbuildings behind the main house, are now artists’ studios.

Hidden from the public for almost 200 years, now is the time for Ashbrooke House to be revealed. Literarily, not literally. Nestling in the 1,000 acre Colebrooke estate, it’s always going to be exclusive. The building is T shaped: a drawing room and dining room on either side of the entrance hall in front of an older lower wing. This arrangement allows for lots of light and airy dual aspect rooms. “I don’t like subdivided rooms so en suites are in former dressing rooms and other minor rooms,” explains Amanda. With typical 19th century disregard for convenience, the kitchen was originally located at the tip of the return. That is, as far as possible from the dining room. Not anymore. The new kitchen is next to the dining room and the old one is now a bright sitting room with exposed stone arches. Guests who can’t cook won’t cook never cook can rely on catering by French Village.

“The house had barely changed in 40 years,” she records. “But in restoring it we haven’t gone for the ‘interior designed’ look.” A more organic approach was taken: relaxed country house chic. With a few family heirlooms thrown in for good measure. A portrait of Eugene Gabriel Isabey dominates the drawing room; Reverend James Ingram guards the dining room. Architectural detailing is restrained in keeping with the exterior. The drawing room timber and marble fireplace was salvaged long ago from the ruinous Corcreevy House in Fivemiletown. Vintage fire extinguishers and milk churns marked ‘Colonel Chichester, Galgorm Castle, Ballymena’ are recycled as lampstands. There are one or two inherited colour schemes. The last Dowager’s choice of mustard walls in the dining room for instance. “That’s my late mother-in-law’s wallpaper,” smiles Amanda pointing to the trellis design zigzagging across the walls and ceiling of the blue bedroom. “Not the best for hangovers.”

Over dinner, distinguished Fermanagh architect Richard Pierce waxes lyrical about Ashbrooke: “The proportions are beautiful. The scale is beautiful. The setting is beautiful. You approach Colebrooke from above. You first see Ashbrooke from below. It’s very austere except for the porch. There’s a tremendous counterpoint between the centre and the rest. I like the fact it’s not showy. It’s quiet good taste but very good taste. What I feel about Ashbrooke is that it has a sense of neoclassicism you’d find in a St Petersburg dacha.” Amanda agrees, “There’s a purity to the design.”

“These houses aren’t museums,” Christopher believes. “They have always been sources of employment. They need to be run like businesses to survive.” He should know. He has turned Galgorm Castle outside Ballymena, another family property, into a thriving enterprise employing around 300 people. Gatelodges on the Colebrooke Park estate are holiday lets. Historically, the triumphal arch, still the main entrance to the estate, was a less successful venture. It was built for the arrival of Queen Victoria but at the last minute, she pulled a sickie. The Baroness was not amused.

It’s spring at Ashbrooke House. Dewy drumlins sprinkled with a dusting of daffodils and bluebells by day. And lambing by night: after dinner a midnight jaunt beckons across the estate to a barn full of Zwartbles sheep and lambs gambling amok. “Zwartbles sheep are very friendly and make great mothers,” observes Christopher. This Dutch breed has a distinctive blackish brown fleece and white forehead streak. Sure enough, in the wee small hours one gives birth to twin lambs. “It’s a far cry from Clapham Junction,” observes Amanda. She used to live near Lavender Hill.

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Architects Architecture Country Houses People

Ormiston House Belfast + Woburn House Millisle Down

We Dream the Same Dream

Ormiston House Belfast © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

This isn’t a tale of two pities. At last! A country house in Ireland not being converted into flats or a hotel or worst of all abandoned? Rather, being returned to its original use? Well, that is a good news story. Ok, it’s a country house historically if not geographically cause it’s plonked in Ballyhackamore, Belfast’s very own East Village, off a busy dual carriageway, but still. Restoration is ongoing – already, correctly detailed skylight windows in the stable block and proper cleaning of the sandstone suggest it’s all going to be terribly smart. Consarc are the architects of its revival. Ormiston House had a narrow escape. Planning permission was granted in 2010 to carve it up into 20 frightful flats. Thank goodness for a knight and madam in shining white armour in the form of the owners of Argento Jewellers. Past distinguished owners include Sir Edward Harland of Harland + Wolff fame.

Architect David Bryce Tombstone Edinburgh © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

With a burst of turn of the century optimism, the Northern Ireland Assembly bought Ormiston for a whopping This Boom Will Never Bust £9 million. Late 20th century uses had included a boarding house for nearby Campbell College and a police station. The final sale price to Peter and Ciara Boyle was a few quid over £1 million. Scottish architect David Bryce’s 1860s baronial pile is back in town. A grand 57 square metre staircase hall accessed through north and south lobbies sets the tone. Back of country house essentials such as a pastry kitchen and boot room aren’t forgotten. The four staircases will be put to good use, linking two floors of formal reception rooms, informal entertainment suites and bedrooms to a turreted top floor of two airy eyrie guest rooms.

A smorgasbord of cafés, restaurants and bars now consumes Downtown Ballyhackamore. Highlights include Graze (farm to plate), Il Pirata (Italian tapas), Jasmine (bring your own Indian although a free digestif is served – it’s never dry in Belfast) and Horatio Todd’s (a lively bar cum brasserie named after a dead pharmacist). Belfast prides itself on local chains. Clements (coffee), Greens (pizza), Little Wings (more pizza) and Streat (more coffee) to name a few. The #keepitlocal campaign garners plenty of support. Back in the day, Deanes behind the City Hall was The Place To Go. Chef turned restaurateur Michael Deane’s empire now spans Deanes Meat Locker, Deanes at Queen’s, Deane + Decano, Deanes Deli Bistro, Eipic and Sexy Love Fish. It’s even spawned a tour Dine Around Deanes (‘January to March sold out!’ screams the website).

The greening of East Belfast (not a political pun) continues to grow. New allotments on the Newtownards Road (who would’ve thought?) | East Belfast Mission’s vertical garden clinging to the Skainos Building, also on the Newtownards Road | Comber Greenway – the city’s answer to New York’s High Line. Quick city centre interlude. Still recovering from a driveby sighting of the shocking Waterfront Hall extension (wrong place, wrong shape, wrong materials, plain wrong – see the Ulster Museum for a lesson in How To Extend Well) squashed along the River Lagan, it is joyous to behold the new Queen’s University Library. Designed by Boston architects Shepley Bulfinch in association with local architects Robinson Patterson, it’s pure Ivy League architecture. The buttressed elevations and tapering tower are a suitably dignified addition to the campus.

Down the East Coast to cool Woburn House (no deer, not that Woburn). County Down’s very own Woburn is in the mould of a trio of mid 19th century Italianate villas-on-steroids in Newtownabbey: Seapark House, Carrickfergus (Thomas Jackson designed) | The Abbey in Whiteabbey (a Lanyon special) | Abbeydene in Whiteabbey (‘Jackson’s office or Lanyon’s office? Not without hesitation I vote for the former,’ pondered Charlie Brett in his 1996 guide Buildings of Antrim). Turns out Woburn is by neither of these Irish greats. The house sprung up in the 1860s to the design of John McCurdy of Dublin. Woburn’s tenuous connection to Ormiston is that it’s state owned. It was last used as a training centre for prison officers and now lies bleakly empty. Up to the 1950s, Woburn was the seat of the Pack-Beresfords until death duties necessitated its sale. It would be great to see both buildings even better connected, restored as single houses. That would be one helluva twist.

Woburn House Millisle © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley