A Distant Other Place
Alistair Rowan writes in Buildings of North West Ulster (1979), “The seat of the Story family since 1697, almost completely rebuilt in a plain minimal Italian style by Lanyon, Lynn and Lanyon in 1863. It is a large scale rendered villa L shaped. Three storey tower in the angle with an Italianate hipped slate roof. The old house had a five bay two storey front of which Lanyon kept two bays, building the tower and south wing before the rest. The yards behind the house have handsome barns of 1748 and 1858, one with a late 18th century brick vaulted end.”
The rebuilt house is sober, restrained, undemonstrative, far removed from Lanyon Senior’s palazzos. Befitting for a rural residence in the landlocked County of Tyrone. Dignity over decoration. Plainness over ostentation. Smaller versions of Corick House with chamfered bay windows, whether rendered or brick faced, would spring up in suburbs of Belfast and Ulster towns. To that effect it would become more influential than the practice’s grander designs. The towers and bay windows of Barden Towers in the fashionable east Belfast area of Ballyhackamore, three decades later, had their genesis in the early work of Lanyon, Lynn and Lanyon, who in turn drew on British taste for the Italianate. Cue the campanile. Enter the acanthus leafed cornice.
Drawings signed Lanyon, Lynn and Lanyon Architects dated 28 January 1863 illustrate that originally a gabled porch was proposed on the east elevation. The three storey tower containing the main entrance door must have been a later idea. The balanced but slightly asymmetrical south elevation (the two windows to the right of the bay window are wider spaced that the two windows to the left) was built in line with the drawings. The irregular north elevation is hidden behind trees now and the equally irregular west elevation is hidden behind recent extensions.
A Specification of Work for “making alterations and additions to Corick House, Clogher, for the Reverend William Story” accompanies the drawings. One clause states, “The works to be completed immediately on the signing of the contract, and to be completed on or before the 1st day of April 1864.” A further clause states, “The whole of the work is to be executed in the most substantial and workmanlike manner, with materials the best of their several kinds.”
Corick means a confluence of streams in Irish Gaelic: it was part of the lands granted to the Bishop of Clogher in the 1610 Plantation of Ulster. The townland is where Fury Rover rising in County Armagh joins the Blackwater River flowing through County Tyrone. John Story arrived in Corick in 1697 from Northumberland a the behest of the Bishop of Clogher to become his land agent. In 1994 Jean Beacom bought the house and immediate grounds of two hectares. The Story family gone, a new chapter began. Two years later she opened the house as bed and breakfast accommodation with nine bedrooms. Her grandchildren continue to run the property which is now a 43 bedroom hotel.
In a county lacking coastline and multiplicity of tourist attractions, Corick House Hotel is a welcome hospitality highlight. Nuptuals keep the wolfish debt collector from many a country house’s door and Corick is no exception. Banqueting rooms, a spa and wedding party accommodation fill new wings and converted outbuildings. The reception rooms and bedrooms of the original house are still enjoyed for their original purpose. Views from the well kept demesne are glorious. The ancient St McCartan’s Protestant Cathedral of Clogher can be seen across the valley from the sloping Victorian Walled Garden.
