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Category: Country Houses
The Royal and Imperial Academy’s Study Leave Part I
Before the quips of Oscar Wilde there were the quotes of Horace Walpole. Take, “The world is a tragedy to those who feel but a comedy to those who think.” Or, “The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and in a thousand things well.” His description of Twickenham, “Dowagers as plenty as flounders inhabit all around,” might have come straight from the script of An Ideal Husband. But Horace was a century earlier, destined to be forever ahead of his time.
The man who added a consonant to a style. The man whose house became an architectural genre. The man who loved cats. Horace Walpole was the son of Sir Robert Walpole, Britain’s first Prime Minister. He stretched the term ‘polymath’ to its very limit. Strawberry Hill Gothick was his contribution to the lexicon of architecture. Its origin was his summer villa Strawberry Hill which was both a private retreat and a house for show. A maison de plaisance.
Strawberry Hill, created over the latter half of the 18th century, was “The castle of my ancestors”. Or at least the ancestors of his imagination. Aware of his status as landed gentry rather than aristocracy, Horace boldly set out about designing a house with the help of friends such as Robert Adam to elevate his social standing. Medieval revival meets idiosyncratic charm. Carcassonne comes to TW1. Phallic finials, pepperpotted polygonal perpendicular verve, cusped lights, quatrefoils and crenellations, it’s a sugary confection, a castle dipped in wedding cake icing.
Horace desired theatrical effect, nostalgic ambience and what he called “gloomth”, not historical accuracy. He dream that, “Old castles, old pictures, old histories and the babble of old people make one live back into centuries that cannot disappoint one.” To this end, after spending half a century filling Strawberry Hill to the rafters or at least rib vaults, no stranger to self publicity, he published a catalogue A Description of Strawberry Hill. Half a century later, the collection was posthumously dispersed in a 24 day sale. Lost Treasures is an exhibition of some of his collection returned on loan to its original setting. For the first time this century, it is possible to enjoy the vision of the man who put the gee into ogee.
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Zürich + Swiss Cottage
The Moon Under Water
Romantic, feminine, elegant, unconventional, dreamy. You are about to enter another world. One of ghostly passageways and arresting narratives. One steeped in fantasy and subliminal presence. A demanding duchess? A languid lady? An actress, aristocrat or model? Maybe all three. You decide. Sometimes the moon rises above water, beyond the line of beauty. A vision emerges, a dress made in memory of Cecil the Lion.
- Credit: Lissan House
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China in Your Hand
Belleek Manor, or Belleek Castle as it’s now called, is unique and we don’t apply that word obliquely. Surely it must be the only example of 19th century Gothic Revival meets 20th century Medieval Revival in the country. Certainly it’s the only case of this hybrid style in Ballina, County Mayo. Two distinct (in era and nuance) building extravaganzas by two extraordinary (in talent and obsession) characters come together in this west of Ireland setting.
First glimpse is of baronial grandeur. After a long drive through forestry, the house is revealed behind a balustraded forecourt propped above a grassland bowl. Sir Francis Knox-Gore set out to impress his wife who came from Lissadell, the neighbouring county’s most palatial country house. He lavished £10,000 on their John Benjamin Keanes designed marital home; hopefully Her Ladyship approved. His descendants must have: the Knox-Gores lived here from 1831 to 1940. After being used as a tuberculosis hospital, it lay empty until Marshall Doran bought the house and its immediate 20 acres.
Marshall, who died in 2007, was a Great Gatsby type adventurer. Born Jack Fenn, the Liverpudlian ran away to join the American Merchant Navy, changed his name and made a fortune which he invested in transforming Belleek Manor into Belleek Castle. It only cost £5,000 to purchase but that was just the start of the spending spree. Jack Fenn’s Courtyard Café in the former stables – anyone for deconstructed scone or spicy avo and egg? – is named in his honour. His son Paul now runs the hotel. There are 10 guest bedrooms. But hang on. The interior! Wow! Where to begin?
It’s definitely the sole instance where, under one roof, we’ve come across Spanish Armada salvage, Cistercian abbey pieces, Venetian caryatids, samurai armoury, woolly mammoth tusks and Grace O’Malley’s fourposter. It all makes the taxidermised last wolf of Connaught look almost commonplace. As we wander through the rabbit warren of labyrinthine museum rooms, subterranean Aladdin’s Caves, taking in the visual feast we leave it up to the story boards on the stone walls to continue the narrative, the story of how a manor became a castle:
“Tall, handsome, barrel chested and powerful, young Marshall was an accomplished athlete and earned under 18 championship medals in boxing and swimming. At 16, Marshall already radiated charm and was most enthusiastic about girls. He fancied a gypsy trapeze artist from the circus and so signed on to be a highflyer. After a few exciting moments on the high wire and a fallout with the gypsy, Marshall thought it prudent to reposition his career, and moved to a shooting gallery at the fair.”
“To supplement his earnings he went on the ‘knock’ calling door to door, buying gold and silver. This triggered a lifelong passion for things old – antiques to fossils, and everything in between. Still 16, in Liverpool, Marshall stowed away on a ship bound for America, the first of countless ocean passages. In 1998, then aged 82, Marshall took part in a survey for The Geological Curator magazine.”
“Marshall’s passion for antiques required that he find a place to store them. He attempted to buy Rozel Fort, a beautiful property dominating the cliffs at Rozel in Jersey, but was gazumped. So he decided to build his own castle at Flicquet Bay in Jersey. In 1961, Marshall decided to buy a second castle, this time in Ballina, County Mayo. He commenced the monumental task of converting the former manor house into a fine hotel and medieval museum – Belleek Castle. As an avid collector he threw away nothing, everything was of value.”
“In 1961, Marshall bought Belleek Castle. Visitors would find him swinging hammer and chisel on immense blocks of timber, a red bandana tied around his again against the perspiration, holes in his trousers and worn shows from toes protruding. He worked alongside other stonemasons, and taught his tradesmen proper adze technique, and how to use a drawknife to age and fashion wood in the medieval style.”
“On his time off, he combed Europe’s auctions and shops, amassing what is thought to be the finest collection of armour, weaponry and fossils in Ireland. As an avid collector he could never pass up a bargain. Some of these bargains remain in this room today where he left them – he called it his Junk Shop.”
“Fortunately for us today, many of his original papers survived and his collection of books remains intact. Many treasures have been discovered, from the original sales catalogues to the receipts for payment. On 30 April 1973, Marshall attended an auction at Christie’s in London. He bought 16 items that day all of which are listed in this catalogue as being from a sale of items from the Tower of London.”
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Louder Sang that Ghost
Really, it’s the perfect Georgian box in the perfect grouping in the perfect setting. Coopershill House took 19 years to build; over 240 years later the house and estate are still in great shape. Dr Roderick O’Donnell succinctly states, “Coopershill is a classic Irish Georgian house – dead symmetrical.” Dr Maurice Craig observed it was “built of locally quarried ashlar, it has a fine bold cornice, as have nearly all Bindon’s houses.” Bindon, Francis Bindon. Coopershill was first attributed to this Irish architect by the Knight of Glin. Much more anon.
Deane Swift generously described Francis (they were friends) as “the greatest painter and architect of his time in these Kingdoms”. His designs tend to group the windows together towards the centre of the façade, leaving a mass of masonry on the corners. This occurs on the façade of Coopershill and at the country house he designed in County Kilkenny, Woodstock. It lends a certain monumentality to the architecture. Coopershill is designed to be seen from all angles: it’s a standalone cubic block devoid of wings, every elevation symmetrical, the house with no back.
A bit like Castle ffrench in County Galway. Coopershill may once have had parapets like those of Castle ffrench. “We recently visited Florence Court in Enniskillen,” says Simon O’Hara. He inherited Coopershill a few years ago from his parents. “I think the main block is about the same size as Coopershill.” These two houses share more than their massing in common: both have heavy rustication, a Gibbsian doorcase and a first floor Venetian Room. This is named after the Venetian, or Palladian, or Serliana window over the entrance door. At Coopershill, amusingly, the sidelights and semi-circular arch over the central light are blind. Inside the Venetian Room, it appears as a regular rectangular six pane over six pane sash window.
There are another two blind windows on the narrower west, or side, elevation. Unlike the entrance, or north, front, they don’t have wooden frames and glazing so are less convincing. “We repainted them to retain the symmetry of the architecture,” he records. But it is the similarity between the two principal elevations, the north (entrance) and south (river facing) which is most striking. They’re virtually identical. It’s a game of spot the difference: the end bays of the south elevation are closer to the corners giving more regular spacing to the window sequence. This even distribution lendsit a more conventional Palladian appearance; the grouping of bays on the north front make it look a little idiosyncratic, somehow more Irish.
The doorcase of the north elevation is replicated on the south except for glazing replacing the door itself. Under this central window, the wall looks unfinished. Could steps have once been there? Or was this elevation originally intended to be the entrance front? “The house took so long to complete,” Simon reckons, “that changes were made during the course of construction. It’s strange how the landing cuts across the Venetian window on the south front. A flying staircase would solve that design flaw!” Indeed a flying staircase like that at Woodbrook, County Wexford, wouldn’t interrupt the landing window. It’s a quirk and a charming one at that. The slope of the land from north to south would reveal the full extent of the basement save for the rubble wall. Below the wall is a kitchen garden which is put to good use for the Monsieur Michelin worthy top notch top nosh dinner:
- Killybegs crab tart
- Atlantic Coast monkfish with mustard and tarragon sauce, garlic and soured cream celeriac potato
- Selection of Irish cheese including Cashel Blue
- Lemon posset with raspberries, strawberries and shortbread biscuits
- Coffee and homemade fudge
Candlelit dinner is served in the dining room which looks out towards Kesh Mountain. Owner and Chef Christina O’Hara reminds us that “all the vegetables are from the kitchen garden” and “everything is cooked on the Aga”. At some stage an Irish rhubarb appears with a hint of curry. Nasturtiums add a dash of colour to the pale monkfish. Silverware, glassware, Wedgwood and Mrs Delaney coasters and placemats perfect the table arrangement.
Before dinner, Simon leads a tour of the top and bottom floors. “We’re slowly recolonising the whole house.” His parents spent £100,000 replacing the roof which is cleverly designed to capture rainwater between the two valleys and funnel it down to ground level. The second floor contains family as well as guest accommodation. The first floor – the Venetian Room, the Pink Room, the Blue Room and so on – is all given over to guest accommodation. Simon knows his stuff: he’s President of Ireland’s Blue Book which promotes the country’s finest historic hotels, manor houses and restaurants. Vintage travel luggage labelled “ABC” is piled high in a hallway. “Arthur Brooke Cooper”.
“Look at the architectural detail,” he observes, pointing to the swirl marking the juncture of the doorcases and skirting boards in the staircase hall. A pair of niches (a Francis Bindon motif) add more finesse. The basement is more or less still used for its original purpose. Although perhaps the servants wouldn’t have had a billiard room… A state of the art washing machine stands next to its cast iron Victorian forerunner. The wine cellar has historic earthenware pots from Hargadon Bros on O’Connell Street, Sligo. That pub is still going strong.
The two Desmonds (Fitzgerald and Guinness) were known to arrive unannounced at country houses to investigate their architecture. They certainly did at one other O’Hara house. The Knight of Glin wrote a piece called “Francis Bindon (c.1690 to 1765) His Life and Works” for the Quarterly Bulletin of the Irish Georgian Society April to September 1967 (10 shillings). He makes a convincing case that Coopershill was very likely designed by this architect.
“Perhaps Bindon’s very last mansion is Coopershill, County Sligo, although like most of these houses, no documentary evidence exists for it. Tower-like and stark, of similar proportions to Raford, it is made up of two equivalent fronts composed with a central rusticated Venetian window and door, and a third floor three-light window. The fenestration is reminiscent of Castle’s demolished Smyth mansion in Kildare Place, Dublin. Coopershill is sited particularly well and stands high above a river reminding one of the feudal strength of the 17th century towerhouse. As at Raford, the roof is overlapping and 19th century.
The history of the building of Coopershill is an interesting and typically Irish phenomenon for the house was finished in 1774 though started in about 1755 for Arthur Brooke Cooper ‘before engaging in the undertaking, had provided for the cost a tub of gold guineas, but the last guinea was paid away before the building showed above the surface of the ground’. Cooper had to sell property, and it took eight years to quarry the stone. This 20 years of planning and building explains the extraordinary retardé quality of the house considering its recorded date.”
The Knight isn’t gushing in his summation of Francis’ architectural talent: “With the major exceptions of the Curraghmore court and Castle Morres, the Bessborough quadrants and Newhall, his ventures into the architectural field are not particularly distinguished. As he was a gentleman amateur, moving in the best circles in Dublin, he obtained commissions from his friends and relations. He made the most of his connection with the professional Richard Castle and was quite happy to borrow many ideas from him. His houses are mostly in the south and west of Ireland, an area in which Castle had no connections, so theirs was probably a dovetailed and friendly relationship.”
His critical tone continues, “On looking at the photographs of his buildings… one cannot help noticing the solid, four square somewhat gloomy quality of many of them. They are often unsophisticated, naïve and clumsily detailed but they nevertheless amount to a not unrespectable corpus, worthy to be recorded and brought in from the misty damps that surround so much of the history of Irish Palladianism.” He considers there’s one exception: “If it is his, the forecourt at Curraghmore is certainly his masterpiece.”
Desmond Fitzgerald introduces his piece by writing, “The name of Francis Bindon is today occasionally heard of either as a dim portrait painter to be found in the footnotes of Swiftiana or as the occasional architectural collaborator of Ireland’s most prolific Palladian architect, the German Richard Castle. What role he played in the partnership remains somewhat obscure, but Bindon’s name after those of Sir Edward Lovett Pearce and Castle ranks third in importance in the chronological history of the Irish Palladian movement… Bindon’s documented oeuvre is small but I shall seek to show that a number of houses that cannot be stylistically ascribed to Pearce or Castle probably can be given to him. He designed possibly only one public building [Mountrath Market House], but practised as a portrait painter.”
Coopershill survives amazingly intact. “It was a secondary house for most of the 19th century,” explains Simon. “Annaghmore was the principal O’Hara seat.” So while Annaghmore was much altered, Coopershill remained untouched by Victorian aesthetic enthusiasm. To cut and paste William Butler Yeats’ poetry: Coopershill is an ancestral house surrounded by planted hills and flowering lawns, levelled lawns and gravelled ways; escutcheoned doors opening into great chambers and long galleries. Perfection.
- Credit: the Irish Georgian Society Dublin
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Heir B+B
Sounding like a tongue twister, Cooney, Collooney and Coolaney are villages in rural County Sligo. There are two major country houses on the edge of Collooney: Markree Castle and Annaghmore House. Until recently Markree was owned by the Cooper family. Charles Cooper rescued the demesne from demise by dereliction, successfully securing the castle’s future as a hotel.
Emerging out of the wooded driveway into the low autumnal glow, that breath before twilight, the stable block at Annaghmore comes into view ahead of the house. The intense assault of this place is immediate, evocative and sensory; it’s another world, a world full of magic things. The stable block is an accomplished symmetrical design. A plaque under the clock facing into the quadrangle declares “1864”. The clock hands don’t move. Like everything at Annaghmore, the stables are serene, unsullied. There are plans to sensitively convert one range into cottages to let.
Annaghmore is the home of the O’Hara family who are relatives of the Coopers. Other O’Hara houses in County Sligo include Newpark in Ballymote and Coopershill in Riverstown. O’Harabrook in Ballymoney, County Antrim, is, as its name suggests, another O’Hara seat. Fortunately for country house fans, Durcan and Nicola O’Hara rent out a bedroom to guests. And what a bedroom! Their half acre room has great windows with dandelion yellow curtains framing the endless countryside. Well, 1,100 acres anyway of estate. The en suite bathroom shares the same panorama.
“Annaghmore Time is 20 minutes ahead of Greenwich Mean Time,” explains Durcan, referring to his ancestors’ tradition. A sign in the library, propped against the blood red painted walls, lists the daily agenda for prayers, breakfast, luncheon and dinner, all of course set to Annaghmore Time. But really, it feels like time has stood still in this west of Ireland country house. Mysterious, beautiful.
A drawing in the drawing room apparently shows the Georgian house, or an earlier proposed remodelling, which was evidently more modest than today’s sprawling pile. It illustrates a two storey three bay hipped roof main block with ground floor tripartite windows on either side of a columned porch. Two single storey two bay hipped roof wings with round headed windows augment the entrance front. Either way, “It looks much more manageable!” laughs Durcan. The house certainly must have been much more manageable until an ancestor commissioned the distinguished architect James Franklin Fuller to jazz things up.
“The architect was very young. This was possibly his first commission,” he surmises. That could help explain the exuberance of scale. The house was transformed from a villa to a mansion. One of the most interesting interventions is a sweeping staircase lit by a tall stained glass window. The staircase swoops into a bow with an overhead fanlight of leafy plasterwork. The seafoam green painted walls are filled with family portraits. One is of “Reverend Hitchinson Hamilton, Eldest Son of the Very Reverend John Hamilton, Dean of Dromore and Frances his Wife, Daughter of the Right Reverend Bishop Hutchinson, died July 1st 1778”.
“There was an earlier 1600s house,” Durcan continues. “It was between the current house and the stables. All the driveways intersect at that focal point.” His grandfather demolished most of one wing of the fulsome house, leaving behind a ground floor room which is now the games room. Mid 20th century French doors open onto a terrace, a cool heaven undisturbed by the silent falling of the leaves. At night, bats dart and swoop past its great windows.
A conveniently positioned plank acts as a drawbridge for their 20 year old cat to climb over the dry moat that surrounds the basement. Two orphan sheep mow the lawns. Five dogs accompany walks through the 10 acre walled garden. Back in Uncle Charlie’s day, Durcan relates, there were 20,000 acres and a full complement of staff. Uncle Charlie lived the dream. One photograph in a corridor shows the merry bachelor with his pack of hounds; another, his polo team. The dream faded when he died in 1947. The greenhouses and formal planting in the walled garden are a distant memory. But the main rooms of the house are all still fully used and fires are lit throughout, from bursting dawn to some new moon. Translunar paradise.
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The First September
The architect James Franklin Fuller sounds like he’d have been good craic at a dinner party. When not bashing out High Victorian melodramatic novels, bragging of his descent from Charlemagne or boasting of his wife’s connections to Napoleon, he was busy embellishing Ireland with a string of rather fetching future tourist attractions. Ashford Castle, Farmleigh, Kylemore Abbey and Park Hotel Kenmare are probably the best known ones.
He also worked on two country houses in the west of Ireland: the design of Mount Falcon and the redesign of Annaghmore. Quite the eclectic, Mr F ensured they’re not wildly similar. The former is asymmetrical and vaguely castellated. The latter is symmetrical and strongly neoclassical. They both have plate glass sash windows and grey stone walls. Fast forward a generation or two: Mount Falcon has had an extension added; Annaghmore, a wing demolished.
Mount Falcon is freeform baronial, an Irish take on a Scottish tradition. All 32 of the bedrooms are available to paying guests (Mount Falcon is now a hotel). Mark Bence-Jones in A Guide to Irish Country Houses calls Annaghmore “late Georgian”. Esteemed architectural historian Dr Roderick O’Donnell retorts, “It’s lazy to just call Annaghmore ‘late Georgian’. It’s not. The remodelled front elevation is Victorian Greek Revival – the Greek order used is a giveaway.” The house was once joyously named Nymphsfield. Only one of the many bedrooms is available to paying guests (Annaghmore is still a private house).
“A few months after opening my offices I discarded the regulation copying-press and the regulation letter-book,” James Franklin Fuller confessed in his autobiography. “The ‘correct’ thing to do with letters received, was to preserve, docket and to pigeon-hole them… whereas nine out of 10 of them went into my wastepaper basket immediately after receipt . . . I kept no ledgers or books of any sort: I could not see the least necessity for them.” Clearly, admin was beneath him. It’s a wonder that any buildings can be attributed to him, never mind such a variety.
Mount Falcon retains its original internal fittings: cornicing, fireplaces, panelling and even servants’ bells. There are spacious reception rooms but it’s more fun to eat in the intimacy of the square tower: table for two only. Mount Falcon has, aptly, a resident falcon. Phantom is sitting balanced on the back of a chair in the dining room. “Falcons follow a matriarchal pecking order,” explains her falconer. “They respond more respectfully to female humans than males.”
Females play defining roles in the history of Mount Falcon. The house was commissioned by Ultred Knox in honour of his wife Nina Knox-Gore of nearby Belleek Manor. It was completed in 1876. Major and Constance Aldridge bought the estate in 1932 and opened the house as a hunting lodge. Connie was one of the founders of the Blue Book, Ireland’s leading guide to hotels of distinction. In 2002, Mount Falcon was taken over by the current owners, who include the local Maloney family.
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Early Autumn
The War is over, the party’s begun. It’s a sepia tinted festival for the upper echelons. Goodwood Revival is all about the fashion dancing racing. Every September the West End comes to West Sussex as the Earl of March throws open his estate for a three day race meeting. Punters become actors as it’s staged in period costume to create the romance and glamour of Post War racing. Cutting lots of dashes in vintage threads, halcyon days have returned. The weather is glorious.
The dungarees and headscarves of Land Girls are everywhere – but wait – did Carmen Miranda just stride by? Pill box hats, poodle skirts, herringbone tweed, penny loafers: everyone has gone to town (and country). The War may be over but there are still plenty of military uniforms to be worn with panache. Five fashion shows a day compete with just as much dressing up off the catwalk. Shops along Fashion Parade offer the chance to update or rather backdate one’s wardrobe even more. Dressed to the Nines (teen Forties, Fifties and Sixties), it’s like wandering through the film set of Brideshead Revisited. Is that Aloysius in a pram?
After inspecting vintage cars being repaired in the Paddocks enclosure and watching a few races from the Grandstand, one can join in the action on the fairground rides Across the Road. One can get one’s skates on and join in more action at Butlin’s Ballroom Roller Rink. After all that action, there’s always pie + mash at the Spitfire Café followed by the movies at Revival Cinema.
Wait again – the best action is yet to come! Goodwood Revival doesn’t just reverberate to the howl of potent engines and the roar of RAF displays. Inside the Richmond Lawn Marquee, there’s the beat of Big Band sounds accompanied by synchronised boogying, twisting and turning to the Charleston, the Jitterbug, the Shim Sham. The band plays Tired of Being Tossed Around and everyone ups their moves. Suddenly the wild girls of St Trinian’s take the dancefloor by storm, led by their Vice Headmistress swigging from her hip flask. Screw lacrosse. She’s got the moves. Who needs a jasmine and rose G+T at the Bloom Gin Garden when you can BYO?
And now, a message from the Earl of March’s father, the ‘Station Master’, 11th Duke of Richmond: “Goodwood Motor Circuit was created immediately after World War II by my grandfather Freddie, the 9th Duke of Richmond, and the first race meeting was held here on 18 September 1948. I remember coming here as a boy to watch the likes of Graham Hill and Jack Brabham race. After the circuit was closed to racing in 1966 (due to my grandfather’s safety concerns), I grew up determined to bring it back, and we finally succeeded in that aim in 1998, when we staged the inaugural Revival. It is a particular delight for me, then, to welcome you to the 2018 Goodwood Revival: the 20th anniversary of our annual ‘step back in time’ and 70 years since motor racing at Goodwood first began.
Our celebration of the anniversary this weekend sees us host a parade of dozens of former Revival winners: from Ludovic Lindsay at the wheel of ‘Remus’ right up to victorious car and driver pairings from this year’s event, we will have a huge variety of winners on the circuit. We’ve also produced an anniversary book, Twenty Glorious Years, which you’ll find on sale in the Goodwood Shop.
Aside from our own anniversary celebrations, we’re also remembering Rob Walker – the most successful privateer team owner in Formula I history, and a regular entrant (and winner) at Goodwood. Look out for his distinctive Scots blue and white race livery around the Paddocks as well as in our special Rob Walker Racing Track Parades over the weekend. And, as many of you will know, this is the centenary year of the Royal Air Force, so we’re paying tribute with a special RAF themed Freddie March Spirit of Aviation. During the War, a fighter base, RAF Westhampnett, was built on the Goodwood Estate, and played a key role in the Battle of Britain. Later, the Motor Circuit itself was created using the base’s perimeter track. I’m very proud of the Estate’s historic links to the RAF and delighted to have the RAF Benevolent Fund as our official event charity.
It’s thrilling that the Revival has reached its 20th anniversary. The success of the event is a testament to the great support we’ve had over the years from our entrants, drivers, riders and mechanics; from our sponsors and partners; from the members of the Goodwood Road Racing Club, which is also celebrating its 20th anniversary; and of course, from you, our enthusiastic guests. I hope you all thoroughly enjoy the weekend.”
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Royal Female
Lavender’s Blue are familiar with royalty. This summer, (the royal) we have met The King of Tory Island, The King of Nigeria, The Princess of The Congo (dancing queen), The Queen, Princess Alexandra, Prince Charles (again), the Duchess of Cornwall, Prince William, Princess Anne, Prince Andrew and Prince Edward. Queen Áine is new to us. Greetings. She died a couple of thousand years ago. Goodbye. It’s been a dizzying journey from the Wild Atlantic to glitzy Africa Fashion Week London via snazzy Windsor Chapel to rural Clogher Valley in furthest flung County Tyrone. It’s an even more dizzying journey up Knockmany Hill to Her Late Majesty’s tomb.
“Augher Clogher Fivemiletown!” rhymed the County Tyrone schoolchildren of yore. A lot more yore ago there was Queen Áine. Reputed to be over two millennia old, this passage grave (cairn) is lined with 12 massive upright stones (orthostats). Three of the stones are engraved with designs of Boyne Culture (Neolithic period of Boyne Valley). She was celebrated as an ancient Irish deity, a goddess of the Tuatha Dé Danann race. Queen Áine shares her tomb with Queen Báine, the wife of the 1st century King Tuathal Techtmar.
Knockmany Hill once formed part of the Cecil Manor Estate. The Department of Agriculture bought the land in 1911, demolished the William Farrell designed big house, and planted a forest. Cecil Manor was a great box of a house, with that spare wall-to-window ratio typical of the architect’s august output. The wooded climb up Knockmany Hill makes the views from the top all the more exhilaratingly revelatory. Far below, from a distance Clogher Valley looks like a giant two-tone green quilt.
“The loss of Ireland’s great houses, most of them Georgian, is a baffling instance of state carelessness,” remarked Christopher Hart lately, critiquing the storyline of Brian Friel’s play Aristocrats. Chartered Building Surveyor and Irish Georgian Frank Keohane laments, “In southeast England there are not enough country houses to go around. It’s different in Ireland. We have one of the lowest population densities in Europe. I go up and down country lanes and get extremely dispirited by the ruins of country houses.”
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Notes on a House
It is one of the most romantically situated country houses in Ireland, picturesquely positioned on a peninsula off a peninsula. Buncrana Castle is perched on the edge of its namesake town, looking serenely across Lough Swilly towards the Atlantic Ocean. The serenity of its setting is matched by the serenity of its architecture. “Indeed this is a building of note,” remarks heritage architect John O’Connell. He in turn refers to the words of the late Dr Maurice Craig, who writes about Buncrana Castle in Classic Irish Houses of the Middle Size, 1976. John drew many of the floorplans illustrating this seminal book.
Dr Craig describes an architectural characteristic that the house shares with a few others, “The type of small cubical wing, usually lower than the house, which stands advanced from the main block at each end, and overlaps it by the thickness of one wall which is common to both house and wing, has a long history. It resembles the musical device in which the last note of one phase is the first note of the next. In plan, if not in silhouette, it appears as early as Jigginstown (1637), and by the time of Waringstown, County Down, it is fully established. Buncrana, County Donegal, though sharply contrasted in other ways, is an example from the very early 18th century.” He captions a closeup photograph of its façade: “Doorcase with a tablet commemorating the landing of Wolfe Tone at Lough Swilly in 1798.”
Three years earlier, Hugh Dixon’s An Introduction to Ulster Architecture was published: “By contrast with Waringstown House or Berwick Hall, Buncrana Castle, built by Sir John Vaughan between 1716 and 1718, is a competent and assured piece of architectural design; it may indeed be found rather dull because of this. Each window balances another. Each has its own area of wall to occupy, neither too large nor too small. The introduction of a half-basement raises both the height and the importance of the ground floor. The front door is approached by a gentle flight of narrowing steps, and decorated with a moulded frame topped by a curving open pediment. The three central bays are given a discreet prominence by being advanced slightly from the main block, and the monotony of the blank side walls of the wings is relieved by arched niches.”
Mark Bence-Jones summarises ownership history in his 1988 revised tome A Guide to Irish Country Houses, “A very distinguished early 18th century house, built circa 1716 by George Vaughan, close to the shore of Lough Swilly. Two storeys over basement; seven bay centre block with two storey one bay overlapping wings. Doorway with scroll pediment. Panelled interior. Axial approach by a six arched bridge over the river, near which stands an old towerhouse of the O’Dohertys, Lords of Inishowen; and through a curving forecourt. Originally the house was surrounded by elaborate gardens and terraces. By circa 1840, Buncrana belonged to a Mrs Todd; it later became the seat of Alexander Airth Richardson, son of Jonathan Richardson, MP, of Lambeg, and his wife Margaret Airth. It is now falling into decay.”
In 2002, Howley Harrington Architects won an RIAI award for the repair of Buncrana Castle’s complex roof. The practice’s scholarship was praised by the Institute. Over to James Howley, “The castle has been described by several historians as having been built in 1718, probably because of the date stone that survives above the entrance door. During our survey we discovered that the building was much older, probably dating from the early 17th century, with a significant programme of alteration and extension in 1718. The triple stack roof from 1718 is not only one of the oldest surviving roofs in the country, but many of its large section timber members were reused floor beams, complete with joist sockets, salvaged from an earlier house. Quite remarkably the original roof covering, consisting of pegged stone slates, was intact, though in a very poor state of repair. The stone slates were quarried locally and the individual slates were graded from eaves to ridge, and in addition to the pegs were bedded in lime and sand. Another remarkable feature of this roof is that apart from the stone capped front ridge, all other ridges to the main roof and flankers were made of lime and sand. Although this roof had been leaking for over 40 years, during which time inappropriate and ineffective cement and bitumen repairs had been carried out, it had survived for an astonishing 280 years.”
The architect continues, “It became immediately apparent that the roof structure was of great cultural significance and had to be retained and repaired, and that the very beautiful grey-green stone slates should be salvaged and reused at least on the principal east facing roof and flankers. A programme of extensive repair and replacement was carried out to the roof structure, where approximately 10 percent of the rafters and 70 percent of the main structural members including purlins ridge and valley beams were saved. The rainwater disposal system was replaced in cast iron and many new sliding sash widows were installed. The building, described as ‘derelict’ in the 1970s and 80s, is now dry, and ventilated, its future secured. The varied colours and textures of the stone faced roofs are extremely beautiful and the only example of stone slate roofing we know of on a major building in Ireland.”
A flick through the entries in A Guide to Irish Country Houses shows two more examples of houses with the “small cubical wing” identified by Dr Maurice Craig. Castle Cor, County Cork, and Cahir-Guillamore, County Limerick, both have single bay projecting attachments. Like Buncrana Castle, or at least like its rebuilding as so recently identified by James Howley, these two houses are early 18th century. But Buncrana Castle, in style and location, really is unique. Dr Craig clearly enjoyed musical metaphors and to borrow his tone, the building’s designer realised to fruition that harmony is the result of good counterpoint.
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Rhymes with Rivers
At the Irish Georgian Society London: we do like our very private houses: the longer the laneway the better. Sprivers House in the Weald of Kent ticked both boxes and then some. We were the second visitors ever as guests of the owners who run a wedding business from the house. First box well ticked then. Ancient trees reach over the laneway so lavishly that our coach couldn’t fit down the drive. The Society discovered on foot how long the laneway is: very. Second box very well ticked then.
Local historian Andrew Wells has studied Sprivers House and its past owners: “Alexander Courthope encased the two storey hall house in pink Flemish bonded brick, adding hung tiles to the first floor of the gabled west front. He built the new east extension as the principle five bay elevation, one bay deep, with a pedimented doorcase with Doric pilasters, the three central bays more closely spaced with pedimented dormers in the hipped roof above, the middle one segmental.” This work is recorded by “AC 1756” on the keystone and imposts of the round headed stair window to the north. “AC 1746” on bricks above the stable house door prove it to be a decade earlier.
Andrew is on a roll: “Internally the impact of the outer hall is the heraldry of the Courthope and related families contained in excellent rococo plaster cartouches, beneath an enriched modillion cornice continued throughout the Georgian house. The panelled inner hall contains a restored Chinese Chippendale staircase with a ramped handrail, beneath a gadrooned cornice and deeply coved guilloche bordered ceiling. The panelled drawing room and dining room have wooden chimneypieces with scrolled friezes.”
Robert Courthope flogged the house at Christies in 1946. It is now owned by the National Trust who rent it to the current occupiers. Sprivers House has barely changed in a couple of hundred years, passing unscathed through Victorian times. A 15th century moat reveals it to be a truly historic site. The 21st century luxury of our coach: after a very long walk down the laneway: transported us back to London and back to life.
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Meon
“The man’s the work. Something doesn’t come out of nothing.” Edward Hopper. Snow on snow on snow a frozen memory, the encasement of ice long melted, The Summer House is in season, so this season, never out of season. The beyondness of many things is brought to life in this photographic overload. It’s the pixilation of our lives, the exposition of our times. Carefully carving our cadences, breaking bad boundaries, our writing may be opaque – at times – but like a lucid camera, our keyboard never lies. We’re an atelier in transit, arbiters on the move, forever reordering hierarchies.
The Irish novelist Edna O’Brien believes “memory and language are the two best things a writer has”. We couldn’t agree more. Although we’d add camera too.
“Must the winter come so soon?
Night after night I hear the hungry deer
Wander weeping in the woods
And from his house of brittle bark hoots the frozen owl
Must the winter come so soon?
Here in this forest neither dawn nor sunset
Marks the passing of the days
It is a long winter here
Must the winter come so soon?” Vanessa by Samuel Barber
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Entertainment Value
These houses were built for entertaining. Samarès Manor is the only historic estate open to the public in Jersey. To that end, there’s plenty of entertainment to be had! You can tour the house; eat, drink and be very happy in the Herb Garden Café which breaks out under a verandah; stay in The Barn, The Forge, The Coach House or Farmhouse Apartments; walk the grounds; shop in the shop; and get married on the lawn.
The grounds are rich and varied. There’s the Japanese Garden with a pagoda and lake. The Walled Gardens contain the Herb Garden; Rose and Lavender Garden; and Fruit and Vegetable Garden. There’s the Willow Labyrinth and an ancient dovecot, or “colombier” as it’s called in Jersey French. In 1924, English businessman Sir James Knott, founder of Newcastle Pearl Shipping Line, bought the 5.7 hectare estate for £100,000 as his retirement home. He employed 40 gardeners to create the gardens. There are still eight gardeners employed on the estate.
The current 72 year old incumbent (Sir James’s widow Elizabeth remarried and had a son), Seigneur Vincent Obbard, lives in a first floor apartment in the house. Samarès Manor is long and low and colonial looking with green shuttered windows. Its architect is unknown. The island isn’t renowned for record keeping. “Much of Jersey’s history is conjecture,” says our Blue Badge guide. While there’s been a house here since 1250, the building today is mostly 18th century.
The low ceilinged three bay entrance hall has yellow walls and a stone flagged floor. “Historically, the Seigneur had the right to salvage. Legend has it that this Italian stone floor came from a wreckage!” There are photographs of The Queen dating from the 1980s and 90s on the bolection fire surround. “The Seigneur pays her a homage in Jersey French each time she visits the island.” The atmospheric three bay dining room is accessed off the hall. It has Grinling Gibbons style carved panelling. Two jib doors cut into the panelling lead through to the service quarters. The ceiling is smoky brown. The brown furniture is, er, brown. Even the wooden chandelier is brown.
“Dong! Dong! Dong!” Grandfather clocks chime at random times throughout the house.
An English oak staircase leads up to a short long gallery. The spacious drawing room is on the first floor and has a higher ceiling due to the particularly low vaulted chapel below. Three bays wide by four bays deep, the drawing room is two rooms combined. A Corinthian pilastered and columned screen decorates the join. It’s pure ocean liner plush with a deep piled carpet, sofas, club chairs and a painted Steinway mini grand. “Look at this painting of the island of Brecqhou. It shows it before the Barclay brothers built their huge house.” The twins live in a castle designed by Quinlan Terry on one of the smallest of the Channel Islands.
“Boom! Boom! Boom!” A marquee is being set up outside for a wedding. Somebody’s testing the speakers.
Gothic pointed windows on the front elevation announce the presence of the ground floor chapel to the outside world. Vincent Obbard hosts a carol service in the chapel each Christmas. It’s actually the undercroft of what was a two storey Norman building. The tour is complete. Our guide explains, “’Salse Marais‘ means ‘salt marsh’ in Jersey French.” The name evolved into Samarès.
“We are family!” The wedding band has arrived.
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The House Where Time Doesn’t Stand Still
Kent is pleasant in spring. Well, yes it is, but it’s jolly pleasant in summer too. Especially past the commuter belt, heading for the Weald. Even more especially when it’s one of the prettiest places in the county. Pevsner states, “Matfield grew as a main road hamlet in Brenckley parish. Matfield Green is its heart. Elongated triangle of grass surrounded by pleasant cottages. On the north side, beyond the duck pool, stands a perfect early Georgian group.” Matfield House takes prime position.
Local historian Andrew Wells identifies Matfield House as one in a series of brick baroque houses in early 18th century west Kent. The others are Milgate Park, Bearsted, 1707 | Bradbourne House, East Malling, 1715 | Smiths Hall, West Farleigh, 1719 | Finchcocks, Goudhurst, 1725. The latter is like Matfield House – it’s also seven bays wide – but with an additional floor and three bay wings. Andrew thinks the architect of Finchcocks might be Thomas Archer. If so, it would make sense that Matfield House is also by him.
Pevsner’s description of Finchcocks says the house “represents the moment when the country house style of Vanbrugh and Archer was slipping down the scale into the hands of local master builders”. So the houses could equally be judicious applications of pattern books.
Back to Pevsner: “Matfield House, the centrepiece of the group, was built for Thomas Marchant in 1728 (initials and date on the rainwater heads). Seven bays by two. Two storeyed, over a basement. The basement sandstone, the red brick, reddish brown on the front, blue headers at the sides. The façade must have been designed by the same man as Finchcocks. The giant Tuscan pilasters, set in from the angles and carrying pieces of white entablature with triglyphs, and the round headed centre windows played off against segmental ones at the sides, are enough to establish that. It is a compact, well calculated design, especially in the quick rhythm of close set windows in the three centre, slightly projecting, bays. Plain parapet, breaking forward between the windows. Three pedimented dormers peep over it, stressing the centre once more. Plain square chimneystacks at the ends. Elaborate lead downpipes. Doorcase, up five steps, on fluted Doric pilasters.”
Indoors, Pevsner notes, “The hall reaches through the depth of the house, and out of it rises an ample staircase, richly endowed with fluted Corinthian colonnettes fluted and one loosely twisted, and all with Ionic capitals tilted to the angle of the handrail. Carved tread ends. Large but self effacing wing of 1884 at the back. Contemporary garden walls and clairvoie. Stables towards the rear. They are plainly of the same date as the house, in spite of 1779 on the weathervane. Charming clock turret, very much too large. ‘Mind the Time’, it says under the clock. The clock face in a surround curving up to a point in the middle, a typical shape of the 1720s. Further east a lower barn to match.”
The current owners John and Sarah are the third generation of the Garthwaite family to live in the house. They’ve worked hard to make a building coming up to its tricentenary fit for modern day use. Most radically a copper clad extension designed by Nicholas Kidwell was added to the Victorian wing, replacing 1930s service quarters. “This cube extension has been added to the western side,” explains Sarah, “and greatly extends the daily living accommodation. It gives a more open and inclusive aspect to the garden, demonstrating what may be accomplished when refurbishing historic structures for modern living.”
While discreetly designed, the copper cladding blending in well with the brick, the extension allows for dramatically semi-alfresco living when the glazed doors are pulled back. “For the first time in its history,” she adds, “the kitchen wing of the house now relates to the garden. Vestiges of the former separation of family and staff can still be seen in the retained internal architectural features and frosted glass of the windows approaching the kitchen, along with the restored call bells.”
“Most of the rooms of the 1728 house have been combined in pairs to make them more usable,” Sarah notes. “We firmly believe in contemporary comfort when it comes to bathrooms!” she suggests. The master bedroom en suite preserves the panelling by having freestanding bathroom pieces. Water for the bath surprisingly spurts out from the ceiling.
Of the original 30 odd acres, there are still 13 attached to the house. It’s like an estate in miniature, gardens in the garden of Kent. Surrounding the “perfect early Georgian group” is a walled garden, decorative pool, swimming pool, croquet lawn and neoclassical seating. Around the corner from Matfield House is The Poet, the best gastropub in Kent. Yep, Kent is pleasant all year round.
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Brighton Rocks
The seaside town is pretty raucous but a mere five minute taxi drive inland takes you from the crazy coastline to the peaceful Preston Manor where all is leafily calm: serenity prevails, tranquillity reigns. The house exudes more than a whiff of colonialism thanks to a generous splattering of shutters and a liberal smattering of verandahs. Mount Vernon-on-Sea. A squat steeple pops its pointy head over the garden wall. Preston is Brighton’s suburban answer to Belfast’s Malone, Bristol’s Clifton, Frankfurt’s Sachsenhausen.
Country Life covered Preston Manor a couple of years after it opened as a museum. The article included 18 pictures of the gardens, the exterior and the interior. A further 15 were left unpublished. They are mainly photographs of individual items of furniture as well as a few alternative exterior views. Country Life reports: “Little is known of the origin of the furniture in the house.” The magazine goes into more detail about the owners and architecture of Preston Manor.
Little has changed in the intervening 80 odd years. The ivy has gone and the grey render on the entrance front has been painted white. The two glazed panels in the entrance doors are now solid. That’s about it outside. Moving indoors: more Edwardian, less Georgian. More cluttered, less staged. Otherwise it’s a game of spot the difference. The interior is atmospherically charged: creaking, sloping floorboards weighed down by history. Servants’ bells line a basement corridor and are labelled: Front Door | Front Door Steps | Back Door | Hall Right | Bedroom No.5 | Library | Dining Room | Stanford Sitting Room | Hall Left | Cleves Room | Bedroom No.2 | Bedroom No.1 | Bedroom No.4 | Drawing Room | Nurses Room.
Here are extracts from the Country Life article: “Preston Manor is the youngest in date and the most domestic of public museums. By the wish of the donors, the late Sir Charles Thomas-Stanford and his wife, their house at Brighton, with its fortuitous accumulation of household furniture and ornaments, is preserved very much as they left it, and at its opening in 1933 nothing was in the house except their possessions. It looks still a house that is lived in; most of the furniture is still in the same rooms as in the donors’ day, and even their little personal possessions, boxes and ornaments are either in their original places or preserved in cases in the actual rooms in which they were on view.
Preston (‘Prestitone’) is listed in Domesday as one of the eight manors belonging to the bishopric of Chichester. The original manor house may have been built at the same time as the church of St Peter, in the middle of the 13th century; and two doorways of Caen stone in the semi basement of the present house are assigned to this date.
Sir Charles Thomas-Stanford’s public work for Brighton is well known. He was Mayor from November, 1910, to 1913, and Member for Brighton from 1914 to 1922. In the words of one who knew him well, ‘the same breadth of imagination which enabled him to seize the opportunity of acquiring Lewes Castle for the nation and showed itself in his public work in the large schemes which he initiated or supported, as for instance the acquisition for the towns of Brighton and Kemp Townlands‘, showed itself in his final benefaction to the town. In 1925, Sir Charles Thomas-Stanford made provision that (subject to the respective life interests of himself and his wife) Preston Manor and four acres of the adjoining land should best in the Corporation of Brighton in perpetuity, to be used for the purposes of a public museum and public park, the ‘house preserved as a building of historic interest to the public, and to be used exclusively as a museum devoted to the preservation of objects linked up with the Borough of Brighton and the County of Sussex, and as reference library containing works relating to subject objects’.
He died on March 7th, 1932, having willed to Corporation, among other things, all his ‘books, documents, ancient deeds and papers relating exclusively or principally to the County of Sussex or any part thereof.’ Lady Thomas-Stanford continued to live in the manor until her death in November of the same year; and by her will she left to the Corporation of Brighton ‘such pictures, clocks, furniture, fittings and other effects in Preston Manor as the Director of the Public Library, Museum and Art Gallery may select to be retained at Preston Manor… in order that future visitors to Preston Manor may have a correct idea of the appearance of the house as it was at the time when it came into the possession of the Corporation’.
Preston Manor is a pleasant two storeyed building, with its north, or entrance front assuming a Regency air (very suitable to the Brighton neighbourhood) with its glazed verandas, which date from the 1905 alterations. As shown in a sketch (1818) and a painting dated 1841 (which hangs in the house), it consisted of a central block and small flanking wings, each with its separate roof at a slightly lower level. About 1867 the porch on the south, or garden, side was added, faced with knapped flints, and having the arms of Anne of Cleves and the Bennett-Stanford family carved in panels. On the south side the tower of the church is seen projecting into the manor garden.
In 1904 a new wing (which includes the present dining room) was built at the west end of the house, on the ground floor of which had been a brewery; and the entrance hall was also widened to the east by the inclusion of a room known as the Stucco Room. The drawing room, easily the finest room of the house, retains its coved ceiling and stucco ornament, dating from the mid Georgian rebuilding under the Westerns. The late 18th marble chimneypiece is a later addition, and the pedimented surrounds to the two old mahogany doors were built-in in 1923.
The staircase leading to the first floor also dates from the Western rebuilding in 1739, and on the staircase walls are hung pictures of the Manor and its surroundings as they were in 1841, 1845 and 1875. Next to the 1875 pictures hangs the original watercolour drawing of the picture showing the removal of a mill in 1797 from Regency Square, Brighton, to Dyke Road, by 86 oxen belonging to William Stanford of Preston and other gentlemen. The library (which before the 1905 alterations was the dining room) is reached through a door at the eastern end of the entrance hall. It housed the greater part of Sir Charles Thomas-Stanford’s general library (since purchased by the Corporation) in addition to the collection of Sussex works now on its shelves. It contains a late Georgian bookcase bought from Wincombe Park in Wiltshire. A door to the right of the library leads to the morning room, Lady Thomas-Stanford’s sitting room, which is furnished with 19th century rosewood and mahogany.”
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Macha’s Twins
Benburb Manor in County Tyrone – red brick, chamfered bay windows, high gables – is like a suburban Belfast villa on steroids. It was built in 1887 to the design of the prolific architect William Henry Lynn when he was in his late 50s. The house is a more restrained version of Castle Leslie and that County Monaghan mansion isn’t exactly externally ostentatious. Perhaps breaking away from his professional partner Sir Charles Lanyon allowed Wills to rationalise his style. Or maybe it was just tight purse strings of his client James Bruce, a Belfast businessman. Stone bands are the only tiny flash of exuberance. James had bought the estate from Viscount Powerscourt 11 years earlier.
Benburb is now a wonderful asset to the community, a hidden highlight of this far flung edge of Ulster. In 1949 the house was bought by the Servite Fathers as a priory. This has broadened into the Benburb Centre, a “house of healing and reconciliation”. Over the years poets (Seamus Heaney) have taught and artists (John Vallely) have wrought works and theatre directors (Tyrone Guthrie) have sought solitude here.
The village – all one street of it or maybe two at a push – is lined with delightfully quaint estate cottages. On a balmy Sunday morning in Benburb, there’s the clink of coffee cups in the stables courtyard café; the singing of hymns from the open door of St Patrick’s; the prayerful footsteps of visitors on retreat treading through the forest; the rush of water far below; and the sound of silence at the Hermitage.
“The Benburb Manorial Estate. Descriptive Particulars of Sale, with Plans and Conditions of Sale, of an Exceedingly valuable and highly important Freehold Manorial Domain containing altogether about 9,290 A. 1 R. 25 P. A splendid Investment in rich Agricultural Land, of which it may be said hardly one Acre is uncultivated. It is also exceedingly well adapted to Residential Purposes, and many Sites for the construction of a Mansion as a central and appropriate Residence for so important an Estate. Benburb is, with the exception of a few Acres, all within a Ring Fence, and is situate between the Towns of Armagh on the South, Dungannon on the North, Moy on the East, Auchnacloy and Caledon on the West, within 40 miles of Belfast, well served by lines of Railway, so as to render it accessible from the parts. The lands are chiefly in arable and grass, well watered and undulating, and the Property as a whole does not differ materially from a well circumstanced Estate in the English Midlands, excepting that the cultivation of Flax here receives primary attention. It is intersected by good hard Roads, and divided into convenient Farms with excellent buildings and cottages.
The Village of Benburb is a neat and clean dependency, and is quite of a model character. The ancient Castle and the Manor of Benburb are included, and the whole Property produces more than £9,000 per annum, which magnificent Rent Roll, lately adjusted under a friendly arbitration (where it will remain until another increase is required), offers a specially well secured Income. The Sporting is excellent, and is reserved to the Landlord. Hunting can be obtained within a short distance. The Blackwater bounds a considerable portion of the Estate, and is a capital Salmon River; and as a whole it is confidently offered as a splendid Investment in Land, adapted to the large Capitalist who seeks such an outlet for his money to produce a higher return than can be found in the soil of England.
To be sold by Auction, by Messrs E and H Lumley at the Mart, Tokenhouse Yard, Lothbury, London, on Tuesday, the 22nd day of August, 1876, at two o’clock precisely – in One Lot, unless an acceptable offer be previously made by Private Contract. John Sloan, at the Village of Benburb, will show the Property. Printed Particulars of Sale, with Conditions and Plan, may be obtained of Robert Dixon, Esq, Solicitor, No.5, Finsbury Square, London; Messrs S S and E Reeves and Sons, Solicitors, No.17, Merrion Square East, Dublin; George Posnett, Esq, Enniskerry, County Wicklow; at the Imperial and the Royal Hotels, Belfast; the Gresham and the Shelburne [sic] Hotels, Dublin; the Charlemont Arms Hotel, Armagh; Morris’s Hotel, Dungannon; the Imperial Hotel, Cork; at the Auction Mart, London; and of Messrs Edward and Henry Lumley, Land Agents and Auctioneers, 31 and 32, St James’s Street, Piccadilly, London.”
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Town + Country
Fox News
Snow fun keeping the wolf from the door.
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Weekending
One man’s folly is another man’s fort. It’s something of a Tardis, a Marino Casino for the South Downs. The Summer House is really a compact three storey villa disguised as a gothic folly. A delightful conceit. The garden front in particular, when viewed from afar, is dressed up as a toy fort. Only the side elevations display the full extent of the building: the attic hidden behind the quatrefoil punctured parapet and the lower ground floor concealed behind the grass mound.
There are two entrances on the façade. One is up a triumphal flight of steps; the other is through a grotto arched under the steps. Where’s a hermit when you need one? Indeed, a hermit was found for an especially authentic party a while back. From a distance, at least with an unhealthy dose of Impressionistic myopia, the flint walls appear to be made of pebbles and shells.
The Summer House sits in the centre of a landscaped park. Just as carvings aren’t carvings unless they’re Grinling Gibbons and carpets aren’t carpets unless they’re Aubusson, so parkland isn’t parkland unless it’s Capability Brown. Fortunately not only did young Lancelot design this park (and lake) but he might even have had a hand in the house itself.
It was built in the late 18th century as a bath house for the Norman Irish 11th Earl of Clanricarde. Running beneath the building is a canal, a tributary of the River Meon, which originally fed the windowless lower ground floor bathing pool. The octagonal pool room is now, with great aptness, a bathroom. The octagonal Chinese wallpapered dining room above benefits from a canted bay window. Stalking light, drawing with light, the dining room overlooks a 200 metre long terrace which overlooks That Park which overlooks the Meon Valley which overlooks Old Winchester Hill. This weekend it’s Narnia.
The internal arrangement lends more than a certain sense of country house grandeur. Meals are carried on trays up a double height staircase hall (with a little detour via the drawing room) connecting the lower ground floor kitchen to the dining room. The enfilade of piano nobile reception rooms separates the lower ground floor master bedroom from the top floor guest rooms. Positive negative space.
The Bath House | The Dower House | The Gardener’s House | The Summer House. A perennial eyecatcher. It’s not summer this weekend but rather very late winter: spring solstice. Snowfall has brought monochromatic elegance, a binary gamut. White noise, white mischief, white magic. Perfect for capturing indecisive moments, framing representations. Everything is more defined, more sculptural: a temporary white phantasmagoria. “I hope you enjoy working in the art world,” beamed Julia Korner, Fine Art Consultant and Agent, Maritime Specialist and Lecturer at the BADA vernissage a few days previously. One man’s folly is another man’s forte.
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Russian Unorthodox
Lavender’s Blue. A Vision | A Residence | A Blog. Our Gesamtkunstwerk. A decade of collecting and arranging. Irish country house attic style. So where better to celebrate in print than The Irish Times? Better again, The Gloss supplement. An A3 splash in Ireland’s glossiest A1 publication. Style Editor Aislinn Coffey gets it: “Your project and home was such a breath of fresh air, I adore it!” Virtuosic studies in light and shadow. Nothing’s really ever black and white (unless like us you’re under contract for the technicolour snaps). All things considered really, Lavender’s Blue is worthy of a retrospective at the Grand Palais. Clearly, we were an oversight by the National Gallery’s Monochrome exhibition gallerist.
Why the name Lavender’s Blue? Apart from being good with colour and enjoying the paradoxical phrase (surely lavender is purple to the masses?), there are geographical reasons for the naming of the vision that became a house that became a collection of essays that became a lifestyle that became an obsession that became a romance. This part of Battersea, back in its rural Surrey days, was awash with lavender fields. Nearby Lavender Hill and Lavender Sweep pay testimony to its perfumed history. Sweet. Oh and the Marillion song is pretty nifty too.
Step inside, and the rooms could be anywhere (or at least anywhere pretty decent); there are no visual references to its location in southwest London. Unless you count an 18th century threaded collage of Kew Palace. The street facing windows are opaque while the rear of the house reveals itself only onto a private cobbled trellised courtyard overlooked by absolutely nobody. A little piece of secret London. There are subtle hints of the Ireland of yore: a diorama of the long demolished Antrim Castle in the hallway; a framed envelope from the Earl of Kilmorey in the drawing room. But really it’s an international collection: no antiques stall or flea market or second hand shop or vintage pop-up was safe from plundering for the last 10 years. Amsterdam, Belfast, Bilbao, Brussels, Buenos Aires, Dublin, Lisbon, Paris, Paris again, Rotterdam and of course Savannah.
The naïve mirrored mini portico is one of several purchases from Savannah. We visited the Deep South’s finest after devouring Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. The events in John Berendt’s book happened yonks ago but Savannah is still oh so magical. Meeting antiques dealer Charlie Brown, he gave us fragments of a chandelier from Jim William’s home, Mercer House. Jim was the central protagonist. The chandelier was smashed to myriad pieces when he shot his lover dead. We’ve slotted the crystal pieces into a standard lamp. Perfection.
The tiny mirror framed with horns is also from Savannah. The tinted photograph of General Lee came from an antiques arcade. It’s faded so his features can only be seen from certain angles like a shimmering ghost. “The family were glad to rid of it!” the dealer proclaimed. “He’s a bad omen!” Despite being swathed in bubble wrap, the picture split down the middle in our suitcase, hopefully dispelling any malignant spirits in the process. En route to Savannah we simply had to stop off in Atlanta for “Funday Sunday”. Margaret Mitchell’s flat where she wrote Gone with the Wind was a must-see. It’s also a late 19th century building – roughly the same size as Lavender’s Blue.
It may all look a little shambolic but there’s method (occasionally) and sanity (mostly) in the madness. Chicness amongst the shabbiness. Collections within collections include 18th century wax silhouettes hung in a group in a dark corner of the drawing room. “Darker again!” we ordered our ever patient decorator. And so he added another layer – or was it four or five? – of purple paint to the drawing room walls. At night, and even during the day, the walls merge into the charcoal grey ceiling. Antlers cast mysterious shadows by night. A tiny internal window over the recessed bookcase yields yet more mysterious lighting.
The bedroom is all about pattern. More is more. So very Sister Parish. Sanderson wallpaper covers the walls and ceiling while a Christian Lacroix shirt has found new life stretched across two square canvases. Nothing is coordinated – matching is just too bourgeois. Ok, the blue and white theme of the kitchen is pretty controlled but that’s all. And we’ve got to live up to our Delftware. It’s an eclectic collection, a layered timeless look, nothing too contrived or designed. The collection is complete, right down to the Argentine spoon embellished with Evita’s face and the majolica vase next to the piano. We’re resting on our laurels in the courtyard. Ah, the courtyard. So very Lanning Roper. Scene of lively summer lunches (Selfridges catering) and even livelier autumn soirées (more Selfridges catering). So very Loulou de la Falaise. Mostly with Annabel P, Lavender’s Blue intern amanuensis, on overtime. It’s getting greener and greener and greener. Grey Gardens watch this space. Sorry neighbours.
So what do the literati and glitterati have to say? Their quotes benefit from a touch of upper class case dramatic effect and a dash of well placed irony. “The place has great panache,” says Rupert Thomas, Editor of The World of Interiors. His predecessor Min Hogg, now Editor-at-Large, thinks it’s “lovely”. “Your rooms are a triumph,” believes architectural historian Dr Roderick O’Donnell. “They’re brilliantly decorated.” Artist and country house doyenne Amanda Brooke agrees, “What a triumph your understated flat is.” Jacqueline Duncan, Principal of Inchbald School of Design, thinks it’s “Bohemian”. Reverend Andy Rider, Rector of Christ Church Spitalfields, calls it “Baronial”. Astrid Bray, MD of Hyde Park Residence, loves it: “Wow! Quite a place.”
“LOVE it!” breathes model Simon Duke, simply and succinctly. Loving is a theme. “LOVE it!” repeats neighbour Emma Waterfall, MD of Cascade Communications. “Especially the William Morris inspiration in the bedroom. Fab.” Ok. “LOVE the purple!” raves interior designer to the stars Gabhan O’Keeffe. Still focusing on the drawing room, Nicky Haslam, man about town and interior decorator, is a fan: “That room is EVERYTHING I love!” Lady Lucy French, girl about town and theatre director exclaims, “I LOVE your interior design! Stunning!” The final words must go to conservation architect extraordinaire John O’Connell. “Very brave, very Russian, very YOU!”
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You Might As Well Live
“Yawnsville, dahling, yawnsville!” Known – among many things – for her catchphrases, Lady Colin Campbell is never ever dull. And she doesn’t tolerate dullness in others. Certainly not in her castle in Sussex, at any rate. “The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity,” Dorothy Parker once said. Lady C would give Mrs P a run for her money in the quips department. “Oh do put that on the internet!” winks Her Ladyship. Not an early riser, at least not today, she appears makeup free, her high cheekbones unadorned. Traces of confetti on the driveway suggest it’s been a busy weekend.
“I’m me whatever – I’m not playing for the gallery. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and, as you can see, I’m not dead yet!” Lady C gleefully describes her various fundraising activities as “whoring for Goring”. A stint on one celebrity TV programme famously helped pay for the castle’s dome preservation. “My friend Carla, not being English, thinks outside the box and suggested covering the dome with a layer of cling film and carpet protector.” Very Parkeresque: “Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves.” Although when confronted with a 10 metre python in one episode she did exclaim, “I’m not prepared to jeopardise my life for the entertainment industry!”
“Goring Castle was built by the Shelley family for the poet Shelley,” she explains. “It was sold by his wife Mary who, you know, wrote Frankenstein. I saw the potential immediately and I thought it would be possible if I got my Jamaican workers – which I did. I knew what they were capable of – I am Jamaican!” Percy Bysshe Shelley drowned in Italy aged 29. The building is a less compact English version of Northern Ireland’s Castle Ward. Dracu Gothic to the north; Greco Palladian to the south. Either the architect John Biagio-Rebecca or the client had adventurously diverse taste. Or maybe bipolar. “It self evidently hedges its bets with no attempt at unity!” remarks Lady C. As Dotty observed, “Creativity is a wild mind and a disciplined eye.”
“Let’s whizz round the outside,” enthuses the châtelaine. “The gothic front looks more like the original Arundel Castle than Arundel Castle itself. The horseshoe staircase on the classical front was bought by the former owners, the Somersets, on a trip to Italy. It cost £30,000. That’s £8 million today. Beyond belief! They could’ve just done it up much cheaper! Above the stairs is the beautiful Shelley coat of arms made of Coade stone.”
Alas, Dorothy Parker’s aphorism resonated with the found state of the castle: “The only dependable law of life – everything is always worse than you thought it was going to be.” Nothing that a few million quid wouldn’t fix, though. “I bought the castle three and a half years ago and after the first year moved in. Mid restoration! The east wing collapsed into the wall. I took down the outside bread oven. Hideous beyond belief! There have been times when I wished I could stop,” Lady C recalls, “and there have been times when there has been too much for me to do. It has been frenzied at times – there are neverending demands, neverending things to do, and lots of problems. But I have always enjoyed it.” She benefits from Dotty’s “keen eye and magnetic memory”.
“It’s worth the trouble. It’s a magnificent building. It’s absolutely beautiful. It’s laden with history.”
The castle with its obligatory west wing is a sprawling 1,450 square metres. That’s the size of 16 three bedroom houses. An elegant sitting room framed by Doric columns opens onto the terrace under the external staircase. Above, three interconnecting staterooms span the length of the piano mobile. “Its architect understood light and the light here is just fantastic,” Lady C observes. On cue, late morning sunlight gilds the curve of the oval staircase hall. A family staircase leads up to top floor private apartments for Lady C and her two sons. Hopefully there’s plenty of storage for Her Ladyship’s five tiaras and couture wardrobe. She affirms, “Just because I happen to have come from a privileged background doesn’t mean I’m not human, even though many people may think I’m not!”
Two springer spaniels, Totty and Nicky, follow their owner around the place. “It’s very different when you’ve inherited furniture. Interior designers want to cover everything with the same fabric. So American. I went to school in New York but I’m not a New Yorker! We have a licence for people to get married here. Very pretty, but of course, the weather…” Her mobile rings. Instead of Dorothy Parker’s “What fresh hell is this?” she answers, “Hi honee. Hi, where are you? We’ll get there, my son!” Dima is busy on a computer on the top floor. That’s several storeys and hallways and lobbies and corridors away.
Lady C reflects: “Well I would say that there are times in life when you realise that if you put in the graft you get the reward. Effort requires effort.” It’s the end of Lady Colin Campbell’s bold and brilliant, wild and whacky, fast and furious tour. “Appreciation, my dear,” her eyebrows arching, “is a wonderful thing.” What would Dotty do? “Tomorrow’s gone – we’ll have tonight!” And there’s more from the original New Yorker, “Oh, life is a glorious cycle | A medley of extemporanea.” We step out of the recessed gothic porch into the rest of our lives.
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Stag Party
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Hey Good Lucan
Heir today, gone tomorrow. Around 3,000 Irish country houses have “done a Lord Lucan” (the not so lucky 7th Earl) and disappeared over the last century. Finnstown House in his erstwhile squiredom ain’t one of them. It opened as a hotel in 1987 and for the last decade has been run by Jim Mansfield. The Dublin businessman has a penchant for antiques; there are plenty of period rooms to fill. No Victorian dining room is complete without a taxidermy hostess mirror.
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Fortissimo
Anglicisation from Gaelic is to blame in some instances (The Argory is a case in point) but quite a few Irish country houses have intriguing names. Jockey Hall and Shandy Hall (the latter in Dripsey) sound fun. Whiskey Hall sounds like too much fun. Bachelors Lodge and Hymenstown are presumably miles apart. Mount Anne or Mount Stewart anyone? The mildly unnerving Flood Hall, Fort Etna, Spiddal Hall and The Reeks. Is Sherlockstown worth investigating? Zoomorphic zaniness: Fox Hall, Lizard Manor, Lyons, Mount Panther and Roebuck Hall. Elphin – Castle? Place names too. Bungalo begs the question: is it full of single storey residences?
Lots of houses without so much as a battlement are called castles: Beltrim Castle, Castle Coole, Castle Grove, Castle Leslie. Castle ffrench joins this list although there are ruins of a tower house on the estate. The double consonant lower case doesn’t disguise the fact the name originated somewhat unsurprisingly in France. The ffrench family were part of a Norman landing in County Wexford in 1169. In time, they became one of the 14 Tribes of Galway. Their single consonant upper class case cousins owned French Park in County Roscommon.
Castle ffrench is a star of Maurice Craig’s seminal work Classic Irish Houses of the Middle Size. He notes its plan is virtually identical to Bonnettstown’s in County Kilkenny, despite the 90 mile 40 year gap. A notable feature of both pretty Big Houses is the pair of staircases side by side, like slightly asymmetric Siamese twins. A thin wall between the pair once segregated the classes’ ascent and descent (for richer, for poorer). One is dressed in plasterwork; the other bare. Landings pressed against the four bay rear elevation provide interesting mid storey variations in window positions. Both stairwells are lit by tall fanlight topped windows identical on the outside – only the family one has internal panelling.
The front elevation is more conventional, the grouped middle three bays of a five bay composition gently projecting. Urns and finials sprouting from a solid parapet dot the horizon. A three storey over basement (hidden to the front | semi exposed to the sides | for all to see to the rear) limestone block, this house is the epitome of Irish Georgian style. It even has an archetypal fanlight set in the entablatured triglyphed pilastered fluted rosetted doorcase. Conservation architect John O’Connell calls the building “very accomplished” and recognises the influence of the architect Richard Castle. A niche in the entrance hall is marginally unaligned with the ceiling plasterwork above. A signal that the house is the work of a builder with a pattern book or two at his disposal? Or simply plastered on a Friday afternoon?
Castle ffrench rises above an unruffled patchwork quilt, a landscape of interlocking greens, quieter than Pimlico Tube Station on a Friday evening (are Pimlocals like Peter York too posh to push onto public transport?). So silent. Rural aural aura. Within the vale beyond The Pale. A mile long drive and 40 acres keep the populace at bay. Augustine days of yore aren’t so distant… Indoors, there’s a hooley! The plasterwork, at any rate. The stuccodores’ genius charges towards zenithsphere in the entrance hall and landing (of the family staircase). Neoclassicism and rococo blend and blur in mesmerising jigs and reels of fables and foliage ribboned round Irish harps and ffrench French horns. Wreathes and sheaves and sickles, the whole shebang.
Lady Fifi ffrench (stutteringly fitting phonetics or what?) and her husband John were the last of the original family to reside at Castle ffrench. Sheila and Bill Bagliani, the current owners, have sensitively restored this knockout property, subtly preserving its patina of age. Bertie the Labrador and Sally the Westie run amok through the grounds. Sheila, a talented artist, has a top floor studio to kill for. No really. All stairs lead to a second floor central corridor spanning the full width of the house. This corridor might not have the ornate plasterwork of the spaces below but it’s very much defined by a series of blind and open arches like abstract vaulting. A forerunner to Sir John Soane’s streamlined style. At one end, a door opens into a softly lit corner room with views to die for. There are flowers and canvases and a ghost – a previous owner refuses to leave and who could blame her? – in the attic.
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The Portrait of a Lady and Gentleman and Artists as Young Men
Dia dhaoibh ar maidin. There really aren’t many left. A study of the 39 (what an odd number, why not 40?) country houses featured in the book Irish Houses and Castles with its strangely coloured plates, published in 1974, reveals just 13 remain in the hands of the same families. So which ones have been so lucky? Ballinlough Castle, County Westmeath | Bantry House, County Cork | Beaulieu, County Louth | Birr Castle, County Offaly | Dunsany Castle, County Meath | Glin Castle, County Limerick | Kilshannig, County Cork | Lismore Castle, County Waterford | Lough Cutra Castle, County Galway | Mount Ievers, County Cork | Leixlip Castle, County Dublin | Slane Castle, County Meath | Tullynally Castle, County Westmeath. Like Hen’s teeth.
Not so much “Where are they now?” as “What are they now?” They’re not all sob stories. Some have never looked better. Sir David Davies has brought a new lease of life to Abbey Leix. Crazy but true. The London launch of a book by William Laffan celebrating the estate’s rebirth was held with great pomp and happenstance at Lindy Guinness’s Holland Park villa mansion. Nancy Mitford’s cousin Clementine Beit’s old house Russborough looks in pretty good nick, even if restoration comes at the price of paintings disappearing. And nobody’s blaming terrorists this time… John O’Connell has worked his magic at Fota Island, the first residential restoration of the Irish Heritage Trust. And there are high hopes that the Hughes brothers, the new owners of Westport House, despite contending, conflicting lights, will preserve one of the last Richard Castle designed houses for the nation. It’s hard to keep up with Bellamont Forest: it’s seriously serially for sale. Luttrellstown Castle might be corporately owned but Eileen Plunket’s ballroom would still give Nancy Lancaster’s Yella Room a run for its money. Christie’s recently told us Stackallen, which appears in later versions of the book, has been “enriched” since it was bought by the billionaire Naughtons in 1993.
Although Clonalis in County Roscommon doesn’t feature in Desmond Guinness and William Ryan’s book, it has been associated with the same family for millennia rather than centuries. Clonalis is the ancestral home of the O’Conors, Kings of Connacht and erstwhile High Kings of Ireland. The most ancient royal family in Europe, no less. Just to be sure, their ancient limestone inauguration stone dating from 75 AD stands proud outside their front door. While the O’Conors’ possession of the land can be traced back over 1,500 years, the house is relatively recent. No surprise they call Clonalis the ‘New House’. In the very grand scheme of things it’s practically modern. Construction was completed in 1878, the year its English architect Frederick Pepys Cockerell (yes, a descendant of the Clapham diarist and a friend of the O’Conor clients) died aged 45. Like most Victorian practitioners he was versatile, swapping and entering epochal stylistic dalliances with ease. Eclecticism ran in Fred’s blood: his grandfather Samuel Pepys Cockerell did design the batty and bonkers Indocolonial Sezincote in the Cotswolds. A rummage through the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography one evening in the O+C Club reveals the architect’s Irish connection: he married Mary Mulock of King’s County (Offaly). “A genial, charming, and handsome man, knowledgeable in literature and the arts, his premature death was widely regretted,” records author David Watkins.
Tráthnóna maith daoibh. Fred’s 1 South Audley Street, 1870, the Embassy of Qatar for donkey’s years, is an eclectic Queen Anne-ish Mayfair house with just about every ornament imaginable thrown at its burnt red brick and terracotta façade. Arabesques, brackets, corbels, friezes, masks, niches, putti… he really did plunder the architectural glossary… augmenting the deeps and shallows of the metropolis. If, as architect and architectural theorist Robert Venturi pontificates, the communicating part of architecture is its ornamental surface, then the Embassy is shouting!
His country houses show more restraint. Predating Clonalis by a few years, his first Irish one was the neo Elizabethan Blessingbourne in County Fermanagh. Clonalis is loosely Italianate. Terribly civilised; a structure raised with an architectural competence, spare and chaste. Happens to be the first concrete house in Ireland, too. A few years earlier he’d a practice run in concrete construction at Down Hall in Essex. A strong presence amongst the gathering shades of the witching hour, a national light keeping watch. Every house has a symbolic function, full of premises, conclusions, emotions. Clonalis rests at the far end of the decorative spectrum from 1 South Audley Street. Venturing a Venturesque metaphor: it talks smoothly with a lilt. Symmetrically grouped plate glass windows, horizontal banding and vertical delineation are about all that relieve its grey exterior. An undemonstrative beauty. Rising out of the slate roof are high gabled dormers, balustraded parapets and tall chimney stacks. The central chimneys are linked by arches – whose identity lie somewhere between function, festivity and topography – creating a two dimensional Vanbrughian temple of smoke. Clonalis isn’t totally dissimilar albeit on a grander scale to another late 19th century Irish champion, Bel-Air in County Wicklow. Especially the three storey entrance towers (campaniles, really) attached to both buildings.
Pyers and Marguerite O’Conor Nash accept paying guests (heir b+b?) under the auspices of Hidden Ireland. Furnishings read like a chapter from Miller’s Guide to Antiques: Boulle | Limoges | Mason | Meissen | Minton | Sheraton. If painting and art measure the refinement of sensibility, as Isabel Archer believes in Henry James’ The Portrait of a Lady, we’re in good company. Who needs money when you know your Monet from their Manet? Ding dong dinner gong. Variations of Valkyries veer toward Valhalla. Suavity bound by gravity. A patrician set of gilt framed ancestral portraits, provenance in oil, punctuate the oxblood walls of the dining room. Plus one (romantic dinner). Plus three (communal dining). Plus fours (we’re in the country). Plus size (decent portions). “Farm to fork,” announces our hostess. A whale of a time. Tableau vivant. Our visceral fear of dining on an axis is allayed by a table setting off centre. Phew. Triggers to the soul, spirit arising, the evening soon dissolves into an impossibly sublime conversation of hope and gloss in the library, while at arm’s length, Catherine wheels of a pyrotechnic display implode and disintegrate like embers in the fire. Beyond the tall windows, a flood of summer light had long waned, and the heavy cloak of dusk, to quote Henry James, “lay thick and rich upon the scene”.
“Yes, that’s the bore of comfort,” complains Lord Warburton in The Portrait of a Lady, “We only know when we’re uncomfortable.” We’re happy to embrace boredom in that case. Like the other three guest bedrooms, ours is light and airy thanks to a cream carpet, summery colour scheme and deep penetrations of natural light. Touches of 19th century grandeur (a marble chimneypiece reassures us this was definitely never a servants’ wing) blend with 21st century luxury. Our bedroom would meet with Lord Warburton’s chagrin: carefully curated completely accomplished comfort. Actually, the niches for turf set into the marble fireplaces of the dining and drawing rooms suggest the O’Conors always had one eye on grandeur, the other on comfort. “Blessingbourne has similar fireplaces,” shares Marguerite. “This season is opulence and comfort,” Kris Manalo, Heal’s Upholstery Buyer, informs us at a party in 19 Greek Street, Soho. Clonalis is bang on trend, then. “And £140 Fornasetti candles to depocket premium customers.” They do smell lovely. We’re digressing.
Donough Cahill, Executive Director of the Irish Georgian Society, reminded the London Chapter of the recent fire at the 18th century villa Vernon Mount in Cork City. “’A study in curves’ is how the Knight of Glin described this classic gem,” lamented Donough. “A great loss. The community are heartbroken and we too are heartbroken.” It’s a reflection on the rarity and fragility of Irish country houses and makes the flourishing survival of Clonalis all the more remarkable. A former billiard room is now a museum of letters and papers from family archives, one of the best collections in private ownership in Ireland. Correspondence from the likes of William Gladstone, Samuel Johnson and Anthony Trollope is displayed in mahogany bookcases next to the harp of Turlough Carolan, a renowned 17th century blind musician. Oh, and a pedigree of 25 generations of The House of O’Conor Don hangs on the wall, starting with Turlough Mor O’Conor, High King of Ireland, who died in 1150. One ancestor brought a certain captive named Patrick to Ireland. And the rest, as they say, is history. Our patron saint. A Catholic chapel is discreetly located to the rear of the house. “There are only three such private chapels in Ireland,” remarks Marguerite. “The other two are at the Carrolls’ house in Dundalk and Derrynane, Daniel O’Connell’s house . Tread carefully. Thin places. “There is really too much to say.” Henry James again. Tráthnóna maith daoibh.
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Offaly Grand
It’s funny how many Irish terraced houses are painted jolly colours (their quoins often highlighted in even brighter hues) while country houses are usually grey. Even though Birr Castle is cheek by jowl with William Street, it’s no exception, being faced in ashlar. The building appears hewn out of an escarpment like architectural topography. Perhaps that’s what happens when built form has weathered 350 years. There is more stone on display in Birr than most Irish towns, particularly on the houses lining Oxmantown Mall.
It’s a Georgian garrison town,” suggests Marguerite O’Conor Nash, châtelaine of Clonalis in County Roscommon. “Birr is really a planned town, a bit like Castlepollard in County Westmeath or Westport in County Mayo.” The Hillsborough of the south. “Birr is a very good town indeed,” offers conservation architect John O’Connell. Why is it not better known? Where are the coachloads of architectural aficionados? The answer lies in a comment uttered by the late Ivy Cavendish-Bentinck, 7th Duchess of Portland. She complained on a visit to Birr, “It’s not on the direct line to any other place!”
Lost in the heart of Ireland, Birr nonetheless has royal connections. Anne Parsons, 6th Countess of Rosse and mother of the current Earl was also the mother of the royal photographer Tony Armstrong-Jones (half brothers) and consequently mother-in-law of Princess Margaret. Her London home in Holland Park is now the Linley Sambourne Museum. A coffee table book about set designer Oliver Messel is in the library of Birr Castle. On the coffee table. He too was a relative – Anne’s brother.
There was decorating drama when Princess Margaret and the newly titled Lord Snowdon honeymooned in the castle. The 6th Countess enthusiastically wallpapered a bedroom for their arrival. Unfortunately she chose a room above the boiler. Imagine HRH’s surprise to be woken in the dead of night by sheets of wallpaper sliding down the walls before collapsing over the four poster. “Tony…!”
Lord Rosse, the 7th Earl, may have turned 80 last year but his standards, unlike the wallpaper, haven’t slipped. Dining at Birr Castle is still a formal affair. Lord R sits at the bay window end of the long table opposite Lady R. Female VIPs sit either side of the Earl; male VIPs, either side of the Countess. Overseen by Damian the Butler, Lady Rosse is served first, then female VIPs, then male VIPs, then whoever’s stuck in the middle and finally, a hungry Lord Rosse. Presumably guests brush up on Debrett’s.
The dark room of the pioneering photographer Mary Rosse, 3rd Countess, was only discovered in the castle in 1983. Hidden in a maze of corridors and tunnels with three metre thick walls in places, it’s not that surprising the world’s oldest dark room in existence lay untouched for 100 years. Across the parkland, beyond the star shaped moat cum haha, stands the world’s largest telescope (or at least it was for a century) built by her astrologer husband. Birr Castle is full of record breakers (Ireland’s oldest cookbook; Ireland’s tallest treehouse; the British Isles’ tallest tree before it came a cropper) and it’s not even Guinness owned!
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Holland Days Source
Neither a Monday evening nor (apropos to an Irish shindig) drizzly weather could possibly dampen spirits. Not when it’s a party hosted by the dashing Sir David Davies and the lovely Lindy Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood last Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava the artist otherwise known as Lindy Guinness. And it’s probably worth mentioning the setting: the mid Victorian splendour of Lindy’s Holland Park townhouse city mansion.
International banker and businessman Sir David is President of the Irish Georgian Society. In between rescuing companies and country houses, Sir David leads a high profile social life (he counts Christina Onassis among his exes). Like all the greats, he once worked at MEPC. This party is all about the launch of a book on his Irish country house Abbey Leix. And Averys champers served with prawns and pea purée on silver spoons.
Two vast bay windowed reception rooms on the piano nobile of the Marchioness’s five storey house easily accommodate 100 guests. One room is hung with her paintings. Renowned Anglo American fine art specialist Charles Plante is an admirer: “Lindy Guinness brings forth abstraction in painting that mirrors the cubism of Cézanne and Picasso. Her works are irresistible.” It’s hard not to notice the staircase walls are lined with David Hockney drawings. Lucien Freud was Lindy’s brother-in-law and old chums included Francis Bacon and Duncan Grant.
The party’s getting going. Interior designer Lady Henrietta Spencer-Churchill is admiring the garden. Sir David’s glamorous sister Christine and her son Steffan are chatting in the hall. They’re from Ballybla near Ashford County Wicklow: turns out they’re big fans of Hunter’s Hotel. Writer Robert O’Byrne is talking to designer, artist and collector Alec Cobbe in the drawing room. “I still live in Newbridge House when I’m in Ireland,” confirms Alec. BBC3 Radio broadcaster Sean Rafferty is busy playing down his former illustrious career in Northern Ireland where he’s still a household name. “You must visit my cottage in Donegal.” A party isn’t a party without Nicky Haslam. Perennially topping Best Dressed Lists, the interior designer extraordinaire smiles, “I didn’t realise I was such an icon to you young guys!”
Fresh off the treadmill finishing the definitive guide to Russborough, a mighty tome on another Irish country house, Abbey Leix was erudite architectural historian William Laffan’s next commission. Sir David Davies bought the estate from the Earl of Snowdon’s nephew, Viscount de Vesci, for £3 million in 1995. William’s book celebrates the restoration of the house and its 1,200 acre estate.
“Thank you to Lindy for inviting us to her home,” he announces. “It’s very much a home not a museum. Someone asked me earlier was this my house. I wish it was! The only thing better than a double first is a double Guinness! Lindy is a Guinness by birth and a Guinness by marriage. And thank you to William for all the hard work. I asked him to write 100 pages and three years later he’s written hundreds of pages! The photographs are beautiful but do make sure you all read a bit of William’s great text too!”
The Knight of Glin’s widow Madam Olda Fitzgerald, mother-in-law of the actor Dominic West, is present. Sir David continues, “Desmond Fitzgerald was a great inspiration to me. Bless him, bless the Irish Georgian Society. I feel very honoured to follow in his footsteps as President. There are three other people I wish to thank without whom the restoration of Abbey Leix wouldn’t have been possible. John O’Connell, the greatest conservation architect in Ireland. Val Dillon, the leading light of the antiques trade. John Anderson, former Head Gardener of Mount Usher Gardens and Keeper of the Gardens at Windsor Great Park. I had to prise him away from the Royals!”
“Bravo!” toasts the Marchioness. She also owns Clandeboye, a late Georgian country house in Northern Ireland. Its 2,000 acre estate is famous for yoghurt production. The party is a resounding success: the launch is a sell out. A (fine 18th century) table stacked high with copies of William Laffan’s Abbey Leix book at the beginning of the evening is laid bare. Fortunately a few copies are available at Heywood Hill, Peregrine ‘Stoker’ Cavendish 12th Duke of Devonshire’s Mayfair bookshop.
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The Miniaturist
Over dinner at Ashbrooke House, the very neoclassical dower house of the very neoclassical Colebrooke Park, the notable Fermanagh architect Richard Pierce remarks that, “Of course, William Farrell designed Regency gothic buildings too. St Patrick’s Church of Ireland in Monaghan is an example of his Regency gothic work.” Stylistically versatile, in other words.
Next to the triumphal arch is Colebrooke Park’s principal gatelodge. Kimmitt Dean gives it a mixed review in Gatelodges of Ulster, 1994: ‘In stuccoed brickwork with its fair share of Tuscan pilasters rather a poor relation of the chaste example at Ely Lodge. Single storey building on a T plan, its three bay front elevation dominated by a bow shaped hall projection. With its high ceilings and entablatured parapet concealing a hipped roof, it is truly an ungainly design. All the openings have classical surrounds but inexplicably the front door head does not line up with the rest. To compound an already unworthy design the pair of chimney stacks rise together diagonally in the most incongruous Picturesque manner. These chimneys are located at the junction of the back return and the main block, a favourite ploy of Farrell’s which he first employed in the two lodges for Ely Lodge…’
Stylistically eclectic, in other words. With a bulbous porch bursting forward to enthusiastically greet guests, this microcosmic mansion has a Grecian air save for the jolly Tudorbethan chimneys which met with Emmett’s consternation. Batty and delicious, Colebrooke Park Triumphal Arch Lodge is now an Irish Landmark Trust holiday home. John O’Connell – architect of among many other things the Montalto restoration, The Carriage Rooms and The Wallace Collection – calls it, “A very special holiday let.” And then some. The gatelodges of nearby Ely Lodge might still be there but the main house suffered a rather ignominious fate. It was blown up in 1870 to ensure the 4th Marquess of Ely’s 21st birthday went with a bang (demolition for structural reasons was the alternative less amusing excuse).
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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.
