The Demise of a Demesne
Patrick McAleer writes in Townland Names of County Tyrone and their Meanings (1936) that Crevenagh aptly means “a branchy place”. Like most Irish townlands, the name had gone through several variations – Cravana, Cravanagh, Cravena, Cravnagh, Creevanagh, Creevenagh – before landing on Crevenagh. At the heart of the townland is the ever disintegrating Crevenagh House and its ever diminishing estate. The property first appears as Creevenagh House on the second edition Ordnance Survey Map of 1854. A gatelodge, summerhouse, outbuildings and formal garden are also shown on the map.
According to Billy Finn who wrote an essay The Auchinlecks of Ulster for the County Donegal Historical Society Annual of 2011, “The name Auchinleck was derived from the Gaelic Ach-ea-leac which means ‘field of the flat or flag stones’. The first recorded Auchinleck was Richard Auchinleck, who was a witness at a Sheriff’s in Lanark in 1263. Nicholas Auchinleck was uncle and ally of William Wallace (Braveheart) in the ambush at Beg in 1297.” The Auchinlecks would come to Ulster in the early 16th century.
David Eccles Auchinleck (1797 to 1849) was the youngest son of Reverend Alexander Auchinleck and Jane Eccles of Rossory, County Fermanagh. In the early 19th century he bought land at Crevenagh from Lord Belmore of Castle Coole, County Fermanagh, to build a home. He would later buy more land from Lord Belmore and build Edenderry Church of Ireland church three kilometres southeast of Crevenagh House. The church is a simple stone barn structure with a lower apse projection at one gable end and a chimney sized belltower over the other gable end. The online Dictionary of Irish Architects by the Irish Architectural Archive records that a builder William Mullin (or Mullen) designed and built the rectory next to the church in or after 1873. The rectory is a substantial two storey rendered dwelling. Is he also responsible for the church? There are Auchinleck, Darling and Moriarty family memorials next to each other in the sloping graveyard. Other surnames on gravestones include Atwell, Holland, Shelbourne and Somerville.
In 1837 David’s eldest son Thomas was born. He married Jane Loxdale of Liverpool. Thomas, who served in the Devonshire Regiment, died in 1893, leaving Jane a widow at Crevenagh House for the next 28 years. Their son Dan married Charlotte Madaleine Scott of Dungannon (who would become known as Aunt Mado). Dan was killed in action at Ypres in 1914 while serving with the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers. His widow stayed with her mother-in-law until she died in 1921 and then on her own until her death in 1948. Colonel Ralph Darling and his wife Moira Moriarty of Edenderry inherited Crevenagh House from his Aunt Mado. Their son Gerald Ralph Auchinleck Darling (known as Bunny) and his wife Susan Hobbs of Perth, Australia, inherited the house 10 years later.
Sue Darling along with David Harrow wrote a history of Edenderry Parish in 2001. They summarise, “In 1656, John Corry purchased the manor of Castle Coole from Henry and Gartrid St Leger. His great granddaughter, Sarah Corry, in 1733 married Galbraith Corry, son of Robert Lowry, and about the year 1764 assumed the name Corry in addition to that of Lowry. From this union are descended the Earls of Belmore and most, if not all, the townlands of the parish passed to the Belmore family.” Including Crevenagh. A memorial in Edenderry Church of Ireland church to Bunny’s cousin, Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck (1884 to 1981), states, “The plaque, the design of which is identical to the memorial in St Paul’s Cathedral, was erected beside others to members of the Auchinleck family, most of whom were killed in action.” Sir Claude (known as The Auk) was a frequent visitor to Crevenagh House.
Billy Finn explains, “Of course, Field Marshal Sir Claude John Eyre ‘The Auk’ Auchinleck, Commander-in-Chief of the British Army, Middle East and India, was to lead the British forces in the North African desert against Rommel in 1941 to 1942, while his brother Armar Leslie Auchinleck was killed at the Somme in 1916 serving with the Cameroonians attached to the Machine Gun Corps. Sir Claude lived most of his life in far off places like India, spending his final years in Marrakesh, Morrocco, but he never forgot his roots, declaring he ‘was proud of being an Ulsterman’.” He continues, “Whether it was at war or peace, the Auchinlecks of Ulster were ‘always on the alert’ and, even though there is little evidence nowadays of Auchinlecks in the north of Ireland, with the majority of descendants emigrating abroad, they remain one of the most intriguing of all the Ulster Scots families.”
In his introduction to The Military Papers of Field Marshall Sir Claude Auchinleck (2021), Timothy Bowman records, “Sir Claude Auchinleck himself, when relinquishing the colonelcy of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, which he held between 1941 and 1947, identified his Irish origins by stating, ‘My forefathers lived in Enniskillen and Fermanagh for very many years and this makes me all the prouder to have belonged to the regiment.’ In fact Auchinleck’s father had equally firm roots in Counties Tyrone and Wexford and his mother’s family came from Galway. Auchinleck’s ‘Irishness’ can be questioned by the fact that The Irish Times, which had been the newspaper of the Anglo Irish establishment, though it had moved far away from these origins by 1981, did not carry a full length obituary of him and the recently published Dictionary of Irish Biography does not devote an entry to him. Professor Thomas Fraser overstates the contrary interpretation by noting that, ‘Two things stand out from Auchinleck’s background and early life: his sense of identity as an Ulsterman and his commitment to India.’ However, it is clear that Auchinleck spent most of his school holidays at Crevenagh House, near Omagh, County Tyrone, and visiting the house in August 1946 his private secretary, Shahid Hamid, remembered Auchinleck saying, ‘This is where I belong and that is why I am glad to be back here again to see you all.’”
The early 19th century main block of Crevenagh House was built in front of a smaller, lower, earlier house as often happened in Irish architectural aggrandisements. The grey of cement render walls and natural slate roofs contrasts with the red paint of the window frames and doors. The rear wing as it became (housing the kitchen and store) was extended in the late 19th century to include the addition of a plate glass chamfered bay window. The only completely symmetrical elevation is the three bay façade facing the rise and curl of the avenue. All five main windows are tripartite. The window of the polygonal porch (a later addition?) is bipartite. Entrance doors on either side of the porch lead into an entrance hall behind which lies a double return staircase positioned on the axis. There is fine Grecian plasterwork with matching overdoors throughout. It is a complete neoclassical villa plan as the chronicler of northwest Ulster, Professor Alistair Rowan, points out. The windows of the three bay side elevations are symmetrically positioned except for a shorter wall space next to the rear wing. The ground floor middle window on each elevation is bipartite but blind on one half as the window crosses an internal partition wall.
A short distance from the house is the farmyard enclosed on two opposite sides by a high wall and on the other two sides by two storey stables and workshops. The walls are roughcast lime rendered and the roofs corrugated iron and slate giving a vernacular appearance typical of rural Ulster. A walled garden leads off the courtyard through an arch. The walls of the square gatelodge with its pointy roof are also painted white. Dixie Dean writes in The Gatelodges of Ulster Gazetteer, 1994, “Circa 1845. In pristine condition a single storey stuccoed lodge below a hipped roof with big crude paired brackets to the eaves. Its sheeted front door and sash windows of the three bay front gathered under an all embracing label moulding. Built for Daniel Auchinleck …” To the rear of the house is a three bay single storey building with a stone front and other elevations roughcast, similar in size to the gatelodge. Is this the summerhouse identified on the 1854 Ordnance Survey map? Attached to its front elevation is a forecourt enclosed by two metre high cast iron railings.
Bunny and Sue Darling gave their last joint interview at Crevenagh House in 1991. They covered several broad subjects before honing in on their house. Bunny did much of the talking with his wife interjecting at times. “The Famine was an accident waiting to happen. It’s very hard to imagine eight million people living in Ireland. There are four million people now and out of that four million we have one and a half up here and they have two and a half in the south. Of their two and a half four fifths live in Dubin. There used to be twice as many people.”
“It’s very difficult to know where they all lived except when you go out on the mountain – you used to go out grouse hunting when I was young, no grouse nowadays – you can actually see where the farms went higher and higher up the mountain, and little gardens were very carefully walled off. People emigrated and died around the Famine time but it was almost certain to happen because there was too much dependence on one crop. And when that failed three years running things were bound to go wrong.”
“Things weren’t bound to go as dreadfully wrong as they did because when you read one terribly good book called The Great Hunger written in 1962 by Cecil Woodham-Smith they were actually exporting grain from down in the south while they were importing maize here. Of course nobody would eat maize – Kellogg’s Cornflakes and corn on the cob hadn’t been invented. People were just handed maize to make flour but it wasn’t in the nature of Irish people to eat that sort of stuff even if they were starving. That made it worse – it must have been simply horrible. The effects of the Famine depended on what the landlords were like. Some of them weren’t even in Ireland and it was left to an agent to look after things. In the end it depended on what sort of people they were and how much land they had.” Sue added, “The Auchinlecks had 5,000 acres.”
“Then the Land Acts came along to try and provide land for peasants because unfortunately by the Brehon law which is the Irish law you divided and divided and divided land. So out of the little plot of land, say half an acre, the two sons then had to have a quarter of an acre each and you go on until people were trying to farm a postage stamp. You couldn’t do it. To try and correct the Brehon law they had the Land Acts and took the land away from the landowners and paid them some sort of recompenses for the land. This took away the rental income, the land, and then the land was divided among the tenants so they got more land and they didn’t have to pay rent anymore.” Sue commented, “The landlords were paid handsomely actually. They were pleased with it at the time. The money got spent, mainly on horseracing and gambling!”
Bunny then started reminiscing about his youth. “I was born in the rectory at Cappagh about nine miles from Crevenagh in 1921. When I was a boy I used to be very impressed with my important relations living here. I stole fruit out of their garden with some trepidation that my own relations would catch me doing so because it’s quite hard to get into the big walled garden. In those days they had two gardeners. It was a wonderful garden like a showpiece with a beautiful border running up the middle. There’s two and a half acres of it and they had every kind of tree. Each flowerbed had little hedges round it. All that’s gone because you couldn’t keep that up nowadays.”
“My father was a colonel; I and my brother didn’t get on terribly well with my father. Almost to spite him we both joined the navy when the war started. I volunteered from school and I joined up as a boy seaman at 18 in 1940 and served in the navy through to 1947 so my adolescence disappeared chasing Germans and Japanese. I had a wonderful cook’s tour of the world because we always went east and my job was to be a sailor and also an air pilot. I flew spitfires from aircraft carriers so it was all very exciting – whenever you weren’t terrified!”
“You don’t believe that anything can happen to you in those circumstances. When I was still 18 I flew an aeroplane into a hillside and broke everything: both my arms and both my legs and my pubis and my pelvis and my hip was dislocated and fractured. So the doctor came and put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘You needn’t think about flying again. You’re not going to walk again.’ I didn’t believe that and I was actually flying three months later. Of course it came back on me when I was 65 and had the usual hip operation. You don’t believe you’re going to get hit or that you won’t recover. Coupled with that when you’re that young you have a death wish that you wouldn’t mind dying cos it would be quite pleasant to die before you’ve done any harm. It’s a sort of very curious attitude to have, especially if you’re flying.”
“When the war ended I had no money at all because there was no backup from my father. My father was pretty badly off – he had by then moved into Crevenagh House and he hadn’t got money to go with it. I went to Oxford University where I had three scholarships waiting for me and read law. The scholarships were in Classics – Greek and Latin – but I changed to law mainly because I thought being a barrister was the only thing that couldn’t be nationalised. The Labour Government were just getting in for the first time.”
“Then the next stage in being a barrister is very uncomfortable because you don’t earn anything straightaway. You do nowadays, more than then, but then you didn’t earn anything for years. The only thing I had in the way of means was a scholarship which was £4 a week and so I lived on £4 a week in London and I can tell you that’s very difficult. I did a little bit of jobbing gardening and got the free rent of a potting shed at the bottom of a garden in Lancaster Gate, Paddington. It was a tiny little potting shed: you had a little table, a bed, a chest of drawers and a bookshelf and with a one bar electric cooker I used to cook and live there. Nowadays you wouldn’t be able to live on £80 a week. That would be the equivalent of £4 a week I think. However I got through the stage of what is called pupillage or apprenticeship to be a barrister. By a sheer fluke I was offered a chance of specialising in shipping law – ship collisions and salvage. I ended up as leader of the Admiralty Bar in England which is the top place in the world for shipping law. That why I couldn’t do it in Belfast.”
The conversation moved onto the origins of the Auchinleck family in Ulster. “The Auchinlecks came here in 1625 I think, the first record of them being in Cleenish which is now Ballinaleck. The first Auchinleck that came over was Rector of Cleenish. They came from Scotland; of course it’s a Scottish name. They go on from there mostly in Fermanagh working for the Belmore family. They bought the land for this house from the Belmores actually and curiously the Belmores were thinking of this site rather than Castle Coole for their major house. And it wasn’t quite as ridiculous as it sounds because this is up on a hill here and the river curves round below us – a lovely site looking across to mountains. You can’t see the river now because of the railway embankment and then the flood bank land was vested for playing fields.”
“It was a lovely site and it was a mile out of the town. Omagh has now grown round us so we’re a little island of green among housing estates like Thornlea which all ring our boundaries. Everyone around us presumably are millionaires while we remain very poor except we’ve got nice green land round the house. The Auchinlecks having started in 1625 in Ireland wouldn’t really count as Irish I suppose but it’s very hard to become Irish if you start Scottish. I can say while I’ve got a beautiful English accent I’m half a Kerryman cos the Moriartys came from Dingle.”
“The house is a military house because this is an Auchinleck house. It’s not a Darling house. And the reason I’m here is because my grandfather was a very poor curate and he used to make money by special coaching for children and looking after them in the summer holidays. So he came here to do that for the Auchinlecks and married one of the two daughters of the house. Well, the son of the house was Dan Auchinleck and he went off to World War I and got killed pretty well at the beginning in 1914. So that left his widow here from 1914 until 1948 and no male heir so when she died in 1948 my father inherited because he was the only male heir through his mother and that’s how the name changed from Auchinleck to Darling. It’s essentially a military house because nearly all the Auchinlecks were soldiers, the most famous one being Field Marshal Auchinleck who was a field marshal in World War II.”
And then the house was talked about in detail. “I think the marriage to the sugar heiress made it possible to build this house and then they were a family of some note. It was built in about 1810 or 1815 or thereabouts. It was built onto an existing farmhouse. Pictures we’ve got of it show it was just bare ground round the farmhouse where all the trees are now. So it all started from that. The trees are now over 100 years old. I’m beginning to wonder how long they will go on living. All those wonderful beeches all round the house.”
“There have been very few changes to the house. There was a bit built on really for guest rooms and odd things including a bathroom. The only bathroom in the house despite all its grandeur was in the annex bit where Mrs Bell lives now. We have a tenant there now because we don’t need all that room. That used to be the only bathroom – it was downstairs and it wasn’t in the main house! Apart from that there haven’t been any real changes in the house. We had to buy a new roof the other day. Fortunately I was in my full earning period as a QC so were able to afford it with a little help from the Listed Building people. The Listed Building people are rather tiresome because you think you’re going to get a lot of money out of them. Then they come and say what they want and so you end up finding the whole thing is much more expensive than you thought. So the money you get out of them really goes on doing the extras they insist on.”
“The house is unchanged from those days and architecturally one of the three main features is a thing called Wyatt windows. The windows are very very broad centrally and on each side of the main window is a little window and that is an architectural trick to make the house not look too tall. Because it is in fact quite tall – you can see that from the ceiling heights. It has the advantage that it make the house look very attractive outside. It has the disadvantage that there are an awful lot of windowpanes to leak draughts through.”
“And then the other quite exceptional feature is the mahogany doors and that was a quirk of fate. They came from Demerara with an heiress who was associated with the sugar business in Demerara. And then the third feature is a marble floor in the hall depicting the Seven Ages of Man right through from a puking infant to a decrepit old man like myself! We keep it covered with carpet. Those are really the three features of the house; otherwise it’s more or less a standard Georgian house. It is a good one – it has very thick walls; it’s very well constructed.”
“In the library there is about three feet underneath and right in the centre of the house there’s a very nice cellar you can get down to and in the cellar there is a well so that in those days there were thinking of defended farmhouses. That was to be the last defence – you got your water right down in the centre of the house. All the fireplaces are marble originals. The library has a good one. The grate is not the original grate – it’s a Devon grate for burning turf. You would’ve had a more ornamental one with vases but this has been converted to burn turf. We now burn logs as we’ve plenty of firewood. We harvest them in October to last us through the year. It’s cold and damp if you don’t live in the house. If you do live in it it’s fairly easy to keep it warm. You just have to remember not to leave the doors open on damp days or even on a cold day. The cold will come pouring in and run right through you.”
“There was a tennis court outside the library window. It was always pointing the wrong direction for the sun. It’s very hard to keep a grass court in Omagh. Tennis was governed by the weather, not like hunting which was governed by the breeding season, because only humans play tennis and they breed all the time and they don’t have a set season for it! When I was a boy I think there were 18 grass courts in the Omagh Tennis Club and the ladies of Omagh had a rota as to who would provide the tennis tea once a week. This was a great kudos, a great social occasion, and each lady in turn tried to have bigger and better cakes! You wouldn’t dare go there without your long white flannels – no shorts. Your decent shirt with buttoning arms and some kind of blazer or dark coat. And then you must not go with your shirt open. You had to have a little silk scarf which you made into a tie and tied it over so that it filled in your shirt. Well if you didn’t go like that people would say, ‘What’s wrong with that boy there; he doesn’t seem to know how to dress? We won’t ask him again.’ Things were like that in those days.”
“I had a kinsman who was a well known peer from round here, very eccentric in many ways. There were trains in Omagh; we all travelled by train up to Belfast and the Liverpool boat and so on. He used to turn up in a rather ramshackle but very grand for those days Austin and his attendant would get out with a large wicker hamper and that was taken into his first class carriage. But his next brother used to go into the second class carriage with a small package of sandwiches. Well, this same man was at one of those tennis teas where everyone else was behaving extremely well and somebody asked, ‘Would you like some cake, my lord?’ He said, ‘Yes certainly, would love it, I’ll have that big sticky one.’ So someone handed him the plate and instead of having the slice had the whole cake! He was a huge man. His descendants are extremely nice people and don’t eat complete cakes. They’re still around.”
Societal changes were discussed too. “That kind of lifestyle was really finished in World War I and staggered on in a fairly broken back way until World War II and then I think if you look in England or anywhere round Ireland it really all came to an end. If you want to live in this house you have to do it yourself. You buy as many machines as you can and hope they will do the work which people used to do. When I was a boy if you wanted to get a cook or a housemaid you only had to go to Donegal and you would have queues of people wanting to do the work. Nowadays you could put advertisements in the Con for domestic work and everybody would say not for me! That’s not specially Omagh; that’s just a big change in society. A whole generation of men were killed in World War I. It was a very foolish war and an awful lot of people were killed which took the heart out of the families who were in these houses and that applied to Ireland as well.”
“In spite of being neutral, Irish on both sides made an enormous contribution to the World War II and an even bigger one to World War I. In the hall that’s a Zulu shield from the Anglo Zulu War. They were all decimated defending and spreading the Empire and that’s really why there are no Auchinlecks left now.” Sue confirmed, “Everyone in this family was either in the army or the church. They spent their lives and made no money.”
Social mixing came up as a topic. Sue explained, “Generally speaking the class of people who lived in these houses integrated greatly. We’ve lovely stories: we’d Maggie Duncan from Drumnakilly who spent her whole life in this house and she told stories of how Mrs Auchinleck who was a great fisherwomen would occasionally get the gillie and the kitchen would be cleared and the gillie was very good on the squeezy – the accordion – and they would dance. Mrs Auchinleck was a widow here for years but young officers would come out and they would take a turn and they’d all have a dance in the kitchen. I think they integrated in a very nice way but there was a complete society in a house like this. It would have had an enormous amount of retainers and there were a lot of houses like this. Also, there was no transport – you had to make your fun where you were.”
Back to Bunny. “There was a room out the back called the servants’ hall and it had a great big table and at each end would have been the housekeeper and the butler and they were the head and foot of the table and then all the other people who worked in the house would be lined up on each side of the big table. They would’ve done very well on the class of food they got and they had their own rules. The same kind of thing as in that film Upstairs Downstairs – that was happening here as well except it wasn’t downstairs, it was on the same level.”
Sue again. “This Maggie who we were very fond of – well, my husband’s aunt and uncle were in charge of Springhill for The National Trust and they invited us over in spring when the house wasn’t open to have afternoon tea with them. I took Maggie and her friend Mrs Tracey who lived up in the top of the town. It was the most memorable tea party because Mr Butler showed them all round the house. We went into the different rooms and they would look at the fireplaces in Springhill and they would say, ‘My goodness, that would have been a good hour’s work at seven o’clock in the morning, cleaning that fire and getting it all ready for the next day!’”
Bunny once more. “Dear Mrs Tracey was a very keen Roman Catholic. She lived on that very steep hill that goes up from John Street to the Church of Ireland church. A little cabin. It must have been incredibly difficult to live there: very noisy, very hard to keep it clean or anything. I think it’s either tumbled or there’s some sort of café there now. Maggie was a very staunch Protestant; I think she would’ve been a Paisleyite probably. Come Christmas day we always had Mrs Tracey. We had to collect Mrs Tracey to share Christmas dinner with Maggie and they got on like a house on fire. Mrs Tracey had a mischievous sense of humour; great great fun. It depends on the family too. Some families were nice and integrated as my wife was saying and treated the people who worked for them well. Other families, usually because they weren’t quite sure of themselves, were pretty nasty.”
Country house pastimes were another topic. “Entertainment was various forms of shooting and fishing which according to how well off you were you could find. My favourite place for fishing was Loughmacrory Lough and I used to bicycle out the whole way to Loughmacrory and spend a day fishing there and then bicycle back. In those days you found your own fun because you were prepared to bicycle 12 miles. You didn’t wait till you could own a car or for your parents to drive you out there.”
“There were dances in Omagh usually with orange squash and with very severe controls on behaviour. If you were caught kissing somebody you would probably be kicked out. Of course there was the County Cinema and the Star Ballroom Cinema next door to our bakery, The Model Bakery. The back regions of the Tech are where the Star used to be. The Star had slightly more risqué films. A risqué film was a film that showed somebody’s knee more or less. The County was very reliable and posh. You used to take an expensive seat in the gallery for one shilling and one penny I think it was in old money. But if you were really bust you could all go in a gang and take a ninepenny seat down below. It was actually a very nice cinema run by Mr Donaghy. Once a year the circus used to come; it used to be a great annual event. You might possibly go up to Belfast for the pantomime in the Grand Opera House once a year.”
“I myself having two grandparents who were clergymen, entertainment at the rectories was entirely composed of Biblical quizzes, Biblical boardgames, Biblical this, that and the other. The result was I learnt my Bible terribly well but it wouldn’t sound very exciting to a child nowadays although the boardgames were the same old boardgames only about Biblical characters.”
“Of course there was the hunt, the Seskinore Harriers, which was going strong and with luck you could get some sort of pony and go out with the Seskinore Harriers. They had a point to point once a year at Strabane – a very ramshackle affair really. I remember once we were going to one jump and there were two old ladies wearing black shawls as they did in those days. There was a manner of dressing where people dressed in black dresses and wore black shawls. And two of these ladies were walking across from one jump to another and one of them said to the other, ‘Come on over here Maud and by the grace of God we’ll see a corpse!’ And that was the sort of thing you might see – someone breaking their neck at any moment but that was more important really than the result of the horse race!”
Finally, the ongoing connection to Omagh came up for discussion. “I used to come back to Omagh whenever I could. I only retired from the bar a year ago. My father died in 1958 so from then onwards we’ve been managing this place from a distance bar holidays. We were very lucky to have two women working for us who lived here and the pensioner Robbie Stockdale lived in the gatelodge. We put Crevenagh House on the market because we hadn’t got very much money and we were only offered the probate amount of £7,000 for the whole lot which was ridiculously low.” Sue recalled, “I’ve spent six months of the year here every year for a long time. It’s a very different outlook. I found it a total culture shock between living in London and living in Omagh. I found it very easy to get on with people in Omagh. The English are very law abiding. The law can fit in with your life here. I’m Australian. I love going back to Australia too and they come over here and visit. We’re almost professional guides with all our visitors!”
Two years after this interview took place, Bunny Darling was appointed High Sheriff of County Tyrone. Another role he had enjoyed was as Admiralty Judge to the Cinque Ports when the Queen Mother became Lord Warden in 1979. Her Majesty’s residence attached to this role was Walmer Castle in Kent. Bunny died in 1996 and seven years later, Sue put Crevenagh House on the market for the first time in its history and moved to England to live near their children Patrick and Fiona. The house and what remained of the estate were bought by a local businessman. As for the destiny of the lots? Lot 1a Crevenagh House is still structurally intact with the ground floor windows boarded up. Its grounds including the walled garden are overgrown. The gatelodge (excluded from the sale) is burnt out soon to disappear forever. The summerhouse is derelict but not beyond repair. Lot 1b Stable Block is burnt out but the shell could still be restored. Lot 2 Hill Field has been developed for housing. Lot 3 Orchard Field is under development for housing. The Omagh throughpass runs through Lot 4 The Holm and the remainder of this land is now a car park and playing fields.
Savills’ and Pollock’s auction catalogue states the following. Lot 1a Crevenagh House (12.56 acres): “A tree lined avenue leads from the public highway to the house which faces south and west over its own grounds. The Georgian house, built circa 1820 for the Auchinlecks, is a fine example of a period residence, set in rolling lawns and woodland. The house has remained in the same family ownership since it was built. There is a self contained and separately accessed staff or guest accommodation to the rear of the house. To the south of the stable block there is a south facing walled garden of approximately two acres surrounded by a brick wall, stone faced on the exterior. The southern boundary is formed by a pond.”
Lot 1(b) Stable Block (0.25 acres): “The stables are located within the grounds of Crevenagh House and provide an opportunity to purchase and develop attractive stable buildings and a yard for residential purposes. Planning permission was granted on 26 October 1999 for conversion into three residential units.” Lot 2 Hill Field (9.84 acres): “An area of south sloping pasture land divided into two fields. The fields are zoned for housing within Omagh development limits: Omagh Area Plan, 1987 to 2002. A planning application has not been submitted and prospective purchasers should rely on their own inquiries of the Planning Authority.” Lot 3 Orchard Field (8.92 acres): “This area of approximately nine acres lies to the east of Crevenagh House and is bordered by woodland. The south facing lands are not presently allocated for development but there may be longer term potential.” Lot 4 The Holm (9.73 acres): “This field, with access from Crevenagh Road under the old railway bridge, is bordered by the Drumragh River. The lands are presently used for agricultural and recreational purposes. Parts of this Lot will be affected by the new road throughpass but a portion of the remainder may have some development potential, subject to planning approval.”
Is Ashford the Los Angeles of Ireland? No. But it does have its very own Bel-Air. Mansion, not zip code. Originally called Cronroe, Bel-Air in County Wicklow not surprisingly got its name from an early 20th century American owner, clearly feeling homesick. The original name lives on in nearby Cronroe Lane. Right from the get go, it’s had a back yard for dilettantish partying. In the 18th century, fairs were held on the real estate. Tents erected, punch and whiskey sold, and a good time had by all. A forerunner of Glastonbury or Electric Picnic. These days, the party is more likely to be indoors.
Missing from Mark Bence-Jones’ Irish country house guide, here’s the architectural summation. The current house harks back to 1890. Period. Typical of the twilight moments of the 19th century, extreme Victoriana is clearly on the wane allowing the early plainer trappings of Edwardiana to emerge. Red brick has given way to grey render. Detailing is concentrated on the entrance: a gabled campanile rising past the hipped roofs forms a pyramidal silhouette. The timber panelled double front door below a large plain fanlight is framed by floral capped columns. Segmental arched two pane sash windows are either single, in couples or threesomes. Some are set in canted or boxy days. Stepping inside, the timber staircase takes off with great gusto. Not quite Lissan House in County Tyrone; nevertheless a flight of fancy.
It all really got going in 1716 when Sir John Eccles, the Collector of the Port of Dublin, arrived. He was descended from the Scottish Barony of Eccles. Settling down, his son Hugh built the original house in 1750. An Eccles generation or two later, Cronroe was sold to Julius Casement in 1862. After it was burned down in the 1880s, Julius built the present house. A rather better known relative was his cousin Sir Roger Casement. Roger spent many summer vacations at Cronroe. Outbuildings and stables with light Gothick touches appear to predate the house.
In 1934 its American owner Nicholas Burns took over. Despite selling the house to the Murphy family just three years later, the name stuck. Tim and Bridie Murphy converted Bel-Air into a hotel and riding school with the help of their three daughters Ena, Ita and Fidelma. In 1980 Fidelma and her husband Bill Freeman took over. A third generation of siblings Aileen, Margaret, Noni and William now run the show. It’s perfect for a house party; no carriages required. Disco in the drawing room. Speakeasy in the library. Encapsulation of feeling in the bedroom.
William Murphy explains, “This is a home rather than just a hotel. It’s full of history too. There are ghosts – but they’re all good! The painting over the hall fireplace is of Lady Casement. She appears to be watching everything going on around her. My mother was redecorating a bedroom and uncovered Roger Casement’s signature under the wallpaper. She had his signature certified – it’s protected now in a glass display on the wall. The poet Seamus Heaney was a regular at Bel-Air and spent time writing here. We’ve a 200 acre farm and 50 horses.”
It’s still very much a country house so Bel-Air although it stopped operating as a hotel in 2019. Not even a modern extension. The same can’t be said for an Eccles manor north of the Black Pig’s Dyke. Ecclesville in Fintona, County Tyrone, was the seat of another branch of the Barony. Two refined early Georgian main elevations were placed at right angles to each other like Castle Grove in County Donegal: a six bay slightly asymmetric entrance front and a five bay symmetric garden front. Breakfronts, dentil corniced setbacks and ground floor windows set in blind segmental arches gave rhythm and subtle character. The interior was equally fine, especially the plasterwork in the interlinked drawing room and music room.
The last owner of Ecclesville was the rather jolly cross dressing multi barrelled man about town Raymond Saville Connolly de Montmorency Lecky-Browne-Lecky. His chauffeur driven two toned green Austin 16 was often spotted around Fintona and nearby Omagh. Clad in his trademark mauve suits, a penchant for performing convinced him to convert a barn into a theatre. He died in 1961 aged 80, leaving his estate to the nation. Three centuries of heirlooms were auctioned by Ross’s Auctioneers of Belfast raising £23,500. No buyer was found for the house and after a stint as a nursing home, it was demolished in 1978. Traces of Ecclesville still remain. The name lives on in the Ecclesville Equestrian Centre built on the estate. Its entrance piers and sweep of railings are mostly intact. A salvaged stone Eccles family arms dated 1703 which was placed over the front door of the house is on an outbuilding.
At the top of Church Street in Fintona, rising out of the overgrown cemetery of the medieval ruins of the old Church of Ireland church is a statue of a female clinging to a cross. On its plinth are the words: “In memory of my beloved husband John Stuart Eccles of Ecclesville County Tyrone who died 24 April 1886 aged 38 years. Eldest son of the late Charles Eccles Esq who died 4 November 1869. Also of my two infant boys. This monument is erected by his sorrowing widow. ‘Suffer little children to come onto me and forbid them not; for such is the Kingdom of God.’” The widow is buried beneath the statue: “This tablet has been placed here by Rose and Dosie Eccles in memory of their beloved mother Frances Caroline Eccles who died 12 February 1887.” A stone dog guards her final resting place. Down the hill of Church Street, an old photograph of Ecclesville stands on the mantlepiece of Jack’s coffee shop. Bel-Air and Ecclesville: two houses, an overlapping family history, sashes and Casements, two fates.
