Pacata Hibernia
Y’all, armed with a Country Life article by Christopher Beharrell titled A Microcosm of Munster, published on 14 July 1977, this tour of the intriguing County Cork town of Youghal takes a route roughly south to north, following the western coast of the vast Blackwater Harbour and ending by crossing the bridge over Blackwater River into neighbouring County Waterford. First impressions of Youghal are good: Lighthouse Road wends its way along the picturesque water’s edge. Pairs of large Victorian villas high up on on the inland side of the road, some castellated, overlook Youghal Lighthouse. Completed in 1852 to the design of engineer George Halpin, the lighthouse marked Youghal’s growing importance as a port. The opening of the Cork and Youghal Railway eight years later allowed the town to develop in tandem as a resort.
In Christopher’s words: “The Blackwater, rivalling the Shannon among the great rivers of southern Ireland, flows out into a wide estuary between the Counties of Cork and Waterford. At its conclusion, on the western shore, lies the town of Youghal, some 30 miles east of Cork and 48 miles southwest of Waterford. Youghal itself rose to prominence from the 12th century as an Anglo Norman port, although the Danes, realising its advantages as a seaside raiding base and outport for the rich monastic settlements of the Blackwater valley, had occupied the site probably from the mid 9th century.”
Blackwater River swells into a massive basin before narrowing into Youghal Harbour. The shoreline opposite Youghal Lighthouse is dotted with grand detached houses surrounded by fields. One three bay two storey rendered house is mysteriously flanked by larger scale single storey single bay exposed stone ruinous wings. Keeping west coast of the harbour, Dublin scale late Georgian townhouses form the next concentric ring heading towards the medieval heart of the town.
One of the most prominent buildings on the main road running through Youghal is South Abbey National School. Built in 1817 as a Church of Ireland chapel of ease, this Tudoresque rendered building has a street facing crenellated gable over a pointed arched window with limestone transoms and tracery. Slim octagonal towers rise are attached to the corners of this elevation. A crenellated boxy porch topped by corner obelisks projects from the street front. At the opposite end of the building an entrance tower with a crenellated parapet rises above the pitched roof of the nave. The nave elevation has four similar pointed arched windows. A floor was later inserted when the building was used as a parish hall creating two layers of internal space each measuring 185 square metres.
A sign hanging in a vacant shop window on South Main Street tells, “The remarkable story of Jack Foley”. He was born in Youghal in 1865 and appears on the 1891 Census as an able seaman working aboard the Octacillius, then docked at Swansea. Jack signed on to the Titanic in Southampton where he was then living as a storekeeper. As the ship was sinking in 1912, Jack along with two other crewmen took charge of Lifeboat Four, guiding dozens of women and children to safety as they awaited rescue from the Carpathia. He continued working at sea, later serving on the Majestic, before his death 22 years later. A few shop windows away, a cat sleeps curled in the morning sun, nonchalantly unaware of its nautical antique backdrop.
There’s no ambiguity to when the historic centre begins: half a kilometre north of South Abbey National School a six storey building (four floors over a double height arch spanning North Main Street) marks the spot. Designed and built by local developer William Meade, Clock Gate Tower replaced an earlier structure which was one of four gatehouses forming part of the town’s original fortifications. It was previously used as a prison. Clock Gate Tower is well restored although the floorspace doesn’t appear to be occupied. Perfect as an Irish Landmark Trust property!
One of the town’s most extraordinary survivals is also one of its most understated. A stone doorway surround with spandrils, first floor slit window and lintel floating over a 20th century window on an otherwise unadorned gabled façade are the only external clues of past ecceslesisatical glories. Over to Christopher: “On the other side of Main Street and further south, there is an interesting survival of a street facing gable from the conventual buildings of a Benedictine priory founded around 1350 as a dependency to the wealthy priory of St John at Waterford. The south wall remains, built into a passage inside the electrical shop, and in it are set an original piscina and aumbry.”
“We are a food and design led company in that we like healthy, tasty and well presented food as well as practical and sustainable design,” explains Carol Murphy, Head of Marketing for Priory Coffee Company. “We were brave enough to open in Youghal in July 2017 when many people were saying they weren’t sure about the location. Youghal and its people have been super to us. We believe in sensitively repurposing old buildings and working with other local businesses and suppliers. Our building in Youghal is dated from 1350 and is called The Priory hence the name of our company. We worked closely with planners and conservation officers who have been very supportive.” It has since expanded to outlets in Fermoy, Mallow, Riverstick and two in Cork City.
A blackboard hanging on the long wall of the upper floor café contains nuggets of history and health: “Youghal folklore says that the first potatoes in Ireland were brought into the town from Virginia by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1585. Potatoes are naturally fat free and low in salt. They contain more vitamin C than an orange. The Irish potato market is valued at €195 million to the Irish economy. The average annual Irish consumption of potatoes is 85 kilograms per person compared to 35 kilograms globally.” Sir Walter Raleigh, who had been granted land around Youghal in the Plantation of Munster, was Mayor 1558 to 1589.
The blackboard also contains details of suppliers to Priory Coffee Company: “Le Caveau are specialty wine merchants. Set up in 1999 in Kilkenny, they specialise in importing artisanal wines sourced directly from small family operated vineyards from around the world. The wines truly reflect their region of origin and they deliver the right balance of purity, natural freshness and drinkability.” And, “Kush Shellfish is a family run Irish Seafood business based in Kenmare. Their organic rope mussels are grown in Class A water in a special area of conservation in the deep clear Atlantic waters of Kenmare Bay.”
If the Priory could easily be overlooked, Red House a few doors down is an eyecatching piece of exuberant architecture even though it’s set back a full neighbouring building’s depth from the pavement behind cast iron railings. The two storey plus attic façade is built of Dutch orange brick painted a pinkish hue which contrasts with whitish limestone dressings of quoins, dentilled cornicing and a string course to form a highly distinctive geometric composition. A hooded doorcase’s arched outline is matched by a semicircular pedimented dormer on either side of the tall pediment lit by an oculus over the three bay breakfront. This grand seven bay wide building was most likely designed by the Dutch architect Claud Leuventhen for the landed Uniacke family who also lived at Mount Uniacke, a country estate 12 kilometres inland to the west of Youghal. Period features fill the 633 square metres of accommodation over three principal floors.
“Main Street offers the only extant examples of the type of medieval domestic building indicated on the 16th century Pacata Hibernia Map,” explains Christopher. “Of the several castles built in the town, the 15th century Tynte’s Castle remains. It is a strong square tower with embrasured walls, rather featureless, and now in poor condition.” Tynte’s Castle stands diagonally opposite Red House. Like Clock Gate Tower, this three storey building doesn’t appear to be in active use but is in good condition. The Victorian tripartite windows on the first and second floors along with the wide timber doorcase have been restored. Again, perfect as an Irish Landmark Trust property! Overall, Youghal is in a better state than its description almost half a century ago in Country Life.
The next turning on the left along North Main Street leads to the town’s two most renowned buildings. Church Street rises up a hill lined with three storey Georgian houses and a two storey building bearing the alarming plaque “Protestant Asylum” to open into one of Ireland’s great townscapes: St Mary’s Church and Myrtle Grove. Back to Christopher, “St Mary’s became a collegiate church in 1464, when the 8th Earl of Desmond placed it in the care of the Fellows of the College of St Mary, which he had built beside it. This College, although not strictly a university, was perhaps the first non monastic teaching establishment in Ireland, and the building, even when it ceased to function as a college, played an interesting part in their town’s later history. The warden lived in a house on the other side of the church, now known as Myrtle Grove, which despite its Elizabethan features and later associations with Sir Walter Raleigh appears from a deed dated 1461 to have been built about the same time as the College.”
This Anglican and Episcopalian church is filled to its antique scissors truss rafters with effigies, not least the flamboyant tomb of Sir Richard Boyle, 1st Earl of Cork, richest Irishman of his day. Pure 17th century bling! Below the Chancel East Window outside, the gravestone of English journalist Claud Cockburn (1904 to 1982) and his second wife, an Anglo Irish artist Patricia Cockburn née Arbuthnot (1914 to 1989), is close to the entrance gates. In 2024, his son Patrick Cockburn published a biography Claud Cockburn and the Invention of Guerilla Journalism. He records Claud being educated at Oxford alongside his cousin Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene. After a career in sharp edged political journalism – he once described Lady Nancy Astor MP as “a vigorous if not very profound personality” – Claud settled in Ireland with Patricia.
Patrick recalls, “When it came to food and drink and general comfort, we lived well in Ireland, though our day to day way of life was closer to the first half of the 19th century than the second half of the 20th. Claud and Patricia had moved into our beautiful but dilapidated Georgian country house, called Brook Lodge, when they arrived from England in 1947 … the ancient town of Youghal was a mile away on the estuary of the Blackwater River on the coast of East Cork.”
Howley Hayes Cooney Architecture’s 2024 Conservation Report states, “Myrtle Grove is one of the oldest examples of an unfortified residence in the country, and is both a Recorded Monument and a Protected Structure. A similar house appears on one of the earliest surviving maps of Youghal, known as Pacata Hibernia, which is thought to represent the town around 1585 during the time of the Desmond Rebellions. Architectural merit lies in the pleasing Elizabethan style and aesthetic, and the interiors of the house are also relatively intact, with 16th century oak panelling and carved Elizabethan fireplaces throughout the first floor.” There are 226 Protected Structures in the town.
It also states, “The history is equally rich, with possible ties to the neighbouring Church of St Mary and the former College, and previous residents such as Sir Walter Raleigh. Since it was constructed, the house has served continuously as a home to many generations. The combination of these various layers of significance, the great age and the rare Elizabethan interiors, probably make Myrtle Grove the most important middle sized house in Ireland, and arguably a place of international cultural significance.” Like Red House, it’s got wonderfully tall chimneys. In recent years, the Irish Georgian Society has contributed towards restoration of its historic windows.
The two storey plus attic Myrtle Grove and its two storey gatehouse can be glimpsed over the stone boundary walls of St Mary’s. Christopher describes what lies beyond and above the hillside graveyard, “The extent and shape of the enclosing walls is not traceable in the town today, but the sizeable stretch which remains at the back on the west side is worth a visit because there are not many Irish towns which still preserve a stretch of medieval walling, and because this reach includes one of the 13 defensive towers.”
Lasting impressions of Youghal are good: not least Mistletoe Castle. This romantically named extraordinary sight lies 1.2 kilometres south of the border of Counties Cork and Waterford and is the most northerly building within the town boundary. If the symmetry of Red House and the tower that is Tynte’s Castle and the crenellations of South Abbey National School and the pointed arched windows of St Mary’s Church were thrown into an architectural blender, Mistletoe Castle may well appear. It’s a skinny rich seven bay country house dating from the 1770s which was given its dramatic Dracula meets Rapunzel meets cardboard cutout Gothic Revival makeover six decades later. The road facing front jumps between two, three and five storeys to deliver a gigantic crenellated crenellation roofline.
Sam Maderson of Keystone Masonry based in Tallow, County Waterford, completed a four year apprenticeship at Weymouth School of Stonemasonry, now located in Poundbury, Dorset. He then won a year long scholarship with The Prince’s Foundation to study the restoration and conservation of historical buildings. His career working in stone began two decades ago restoring his family home, a historic coach house in Cappoquin, County Waterford. Sam and his team of masons worked on the recent restoration of the limestone and rendered Mistletoe Castle. Built as the summer residence of the Villiers-Stuarts of Dromana House in Cappoquin, County Waterford, it gleams even under a rain cloud which suddenly appears upon departure from Youghal.
