Lack of the Axial Aesthetic
Ever since featuring it in the August 1995 edition of Ulster Architect, we have returned to Lissan House on numerous occasions down the years. Over a decade ago, we recalled the contrast between this Irish estate and English equivalents. On a visit to Polesden Lacey near Dorking in Surrey, the lawn had resembled a scene from a Baz Luhrmann movie. In sweltering heat, an alfresco jazz band had serenaded hordes of picnickers, sightseers and sunbathers. Another jaunt was to Calke Abbey near Swarkeston in Derbyshire. Once England’s least known country house, even on a misty day the car park was full and the adjacent fields had been turned into an overflow. Tours of the house were timed to avoid overcrowding.
Not so Lissan. While across the water, brown sign hunters in their Hunters queued to see how the other 0.1 percent had once lived, this County Tyrone estate has been peacefully free of picnickers, sightseers and sunbathers on all our visits. Admittedly both National Trust houses mentioned are close to conurbations while Lissan House is just over five kilometres from Cookstown, population circa 12,000. “I hope you felt privileged to have it all to yourselves,” begins Nicholas Groves-Raines. His architectural practice was responsible for the restoration of the house. “Lissan is a hidden, secret place and that is part of its great charm. It is well off the main tourist routes, the M1 and M2, and away from the tourist centres such as the north coast and Belfast, making it harder to entice visitors. However it is used by the local community and on a number of occasions they have even had to employ overspill parking for events.”
He explains, “The works recently completed at Lissan are only a first phase of a larger scheme to redevelop the demesne and bring all of the derelict buildings back into use as funds allow. In the next few years, it is hoped that Lissan will become a much more lively place whilst retaining its unique character. It would be good to firmly place Lissan House on the tourist map of Northern Ireland.” Lissan had its 15 inches of fame back in 2007 when the last owner fronted a campaign to win funding on the TV programme Restoration. In the end it lost out to Manchester’s Victoria Baths. Again a case of population density influencing situations.
Nicholas decided to specialise in conservation after witnessing the needless destruction of historic town centres and buildings in the name of modernisation. “I am an accredited conservation architect but work on a variety of projects including newbuilds,” he says. Born in County Down in 1940, he trained at Edinburgh College of Art. Nicholas and his Icelandic architect wife Kristín Hannesdóttir have bought and restored a succession of historic properties in the Scottish capital as their family home: Moubray House (1972), Peffermill House (1980), Liberton House (1997) and Andrew Lamb’s House (2010).
“Newhailes, just outside Edinburgh, is like Lissan,” Nicholas continues. “Now run by the National Trust for Scotland as a visitor attraction, it too was used as a family house until recently. Newhailes is a time capsule from the 18th century, having changed little from that period. Like much of Lissan, it remains pretty much as it was when the Trust acquired it. The house hasn’t been ‘restored’ as such, having only had essential repairs carried out to preserve it for the future.”
The exterior of Lissan House has changed fairly radically though. Out, mostly, went the casement windows. The one shade of grey of the walls disappeared. Nicholas relates, “Early photographs show the house had sash and case windows until the late 19th century. A few sashes had been reused in the buildings, so we did have good examples of the original detailing to work from. The modern casements were constructed from inferior quality timber and were not weatherproof due to poor workmanship and rot. They were crudely fitted into the former sash boxes that were still built into the walls. The majority were beyond repair and so a decision had to be made about what form the new windows should take. Sashes were installed to match the originals. The few windows that are not now sashes were mostly part of a late 19th century extension.”
The cement based render also dated from the late 19th century. “It was in poor condition and holding dampness in the walls,” he tell us. “There was ample evidence of the original lime render and off white limewash remaining in sheltered areas, backed up by early photographs that confirmed the house had previously been lighter in colour. The new lime render and limewash allow the walls to breathe and should protect the house for many years to come. Limewash helps to prolong the life of lime render.” The late Dorinda Lady Dunleath once recalled her childhood visits, “I used to go to dancing classes at Lissan. It was always so cold!”
Despite its size – 20 plus bedrooms – Lissan House is provincial rather than grand, almost devoid of architectural ornament. “The Staples family were originally industrialists rather than landed gentry,” says Nicholas. “Early visitors to the house mention a noisy forge nearby where locally mined iron was worked. Lissan started out as a much smaller house that was extended again and again over the centuries as money and tastes dictated. Unlike many mansions it was not built in a single phase to the designs of a professional architect or master builder. It is an accumulation of its varied history.” Lissan House Trustees now look after the house and estate. Several doorcases with shouldered architraves are evidence of a mid 18th century rebuilding. The only celebrity architect associated with Lissan, Davis Ducart, is thought to have designed the lake and Chinoiserie bridge around the same time as the rebuilding.
In her last interview before she died in 2006 aged 82, last in the line Hazel Dolling née Staples explained to us, “The roof at one time rose to a huge peak in the sky and is now double pitched and has given a lot of trouble over the years as there is only one downpipe for all the rainwater. This was quite a common arrangement in old Irish houses. The huge stones in the walls make it very difficult to introduce water pipes. One simply meets solid rock and has to try again. The lime plaster was over two inches thick and was made with horse hair.”
She recalled, “The farmyard was beautifully designed with its fine stables, large barns, byres and turf houses, all well shingled. The turf house is still a great feature of the demesne to this day; all the buildings have fine arches and walnut trees stand in the centre, planted so as to keep the visiting carriage horses cool, as flies disliked the pungent smell of walnut. In good summers they provide great nuts for eating and pickling. The yard and the four and a half acre walled garden were planted with hedges, fruit trees and flower gardens. A fine well shingled summerhouse no longer exists but many years ago someone built huge greenhouses. One was heated for lemons and melons, one for peaches and nectarines, one contained the vines.”
“It is very quiet in the house at night but I know all the creaks,” Hazel shared. “I live in a flat at the very top of the house which has the most wonderful views in every direction. There is a delicious smell of sandalwood or incense at times. When my husband was 90 he used to see all sorts of people sitting in rooms including undertakers in tall stove pipe hats. Visitors talk of people walking around in the night when no one is astir. I have a friend who has seen Lady Kitty here, Sir Thomas Staples’ widow, who made off with all the Lissan Plates. She said she was wearing a beautiful pink silk dress.”
Nicholas ends, “Lissan is unique and contains relics and remnants from all of its past, some of which are probably still hidden.” The house is full of charming quirks. The bow windowed Coachman’s Room joined to the early 19th century Tuscan porch by the arched canopy of the porte cochère. The Long Passage wing – tongue and groove panelled on one side, glazed on the other – linking the first floor of the main block to the stable yard resembling a train carriage suspended midair from the outside. The four storey cylindrical tower housing the secondary (spiral) staircase with a clock over its column of windows. An amber paned bay window bulging out from the Ballroom, a Victorian extension. The lean to glasshouse has long gone.
Hazel talked about the origins of the largest reception room: “My ancestor Sir Thomas, 9th Baronet, was much given to entertaining and for his musical evenings he built the beautiful Ballroom attached to the east of those, overlooking the Lissan Water and the Cascades and the Water Gardens. The Ballroom had Chinese wallpaper, central heating and a sprung floor, and was furnished in black and scarlet. Guests were required to put up with chamber music all day and half the night and this wasn’t to everyone’s taste. Very little of the wallpaper has survived but the huge marble fire marble is still intact and reliefs of Greek horses in a frieze over the massive double doors to the Library and the Blue Room. The room is glazed in orange and white glass, and in late summer, overlooks a steep bank of willow herb which falls down to the river and, in the evening light, fills the whole room with a beautiful rosy pink. The room was originally lit with candles and oil lamps but in 1902 when the water turbine was installed very attractive hanging electric lights with small green shades were bought to hang from the central dome.”
Most extraordinary of all – charming quirkiness taken to a whole new level – is the staircase which spreads horizontally and diagonally and vertically across and sideways and up the cavernous entrance space, with more dog legs than Crufts and more landings than Heathrow. Debo, 11th Duchess of Devonshire, referred to the staircase leading to her private quarters in Chatsworth, Derbyshire, as “a granted moment of privileged access”. The privileged access of Lissan is now shared with the public.
Jeremy Musson wrote up Lissan for Country Life in the 12 March 1998 edition. He states, “Sir Nathaniel Staples’ remarkable folie de grandeur was the vast Piranesian staircase, a dramatic, if eccentric, rearrangement of the 17th century staircase, which rises to the full height of the roof. The sketch of the original staircase by Ponsonby Staples, Sir Nathaniel’s youngest son, shows it coming out into the Hall’s centre, the set of triple balusters on each level were included and imitated in the new staircase, presumably built by an estate carpenter. Some were incorporated into the shelves above the Hall’s chimneypiece. The ceiling of part of the Hall and the Library were redone in pitch pine.”
Hazel for the final time, “The large Parlour, wainscoted in oak, has a very handsome staircase with 604 handmade balusters or banisters as they were called, all slightly different and some even put in upside down. There are 65 steps to the top of the house and five lands. Records refer to pretty closets and good garrets on the top floor of the house but some of these over the Hall were removed when the floors rotted away and the Hall now opens right up to the roof.” Jeremy surmises that more than half the house’s books, part of a huge library sold in 1900, were kept on the staircase and landings.
Lissan House is a rare survival of an Ulster country house last revamped in Victorian and Edwardian times. Mourne Park House outside Kilkeel in County Down (which also had a remarkable staircase) was another survivor which we knew well before it was badly burnt in 2013. A mid 20th century photograph shows a Staples wedding at their house Barkfield in Formby, Lancashire. It was recently restored by new owners. A Staples owned country house in County Laois, Dunmore near Durrow, was demolished around 1960. The 100 hectare Lissan Demesne is far enough from Cookstown to not be under threat of development. Soon, we will learn Lissan House can be hired for major fashion shoots.
