Fair Ground
Our first glimpse of Richmond House was from the hanging gardens of Cappoquin House. Just two of the many fine estates we are popping into along the Blackwater River Valley. When the owners die they must barely notice the difference to their surroundings, such is the paradisal allure of west County Waterford. It’s a late afternoon (or evening as southerners like to say) drive by shoot of this Georgian box standing a mere 480 metres from the west bank of the Blackwater River.
Richmond House earns a paragraph in A Guide to Irish Country Houses by Mark Bence-Jones, 1978, “A three storey late Georgian block, five bay front with Doric porch, three bay side. Eave roof on bracket cornice. In 1814, the residence of Michael Keane; in 1914, of Gerald Villiers-Stuart. Now a guesthouse.” Small world – smaller in this valley – the Keanes still live at Cappoquin House and the Villiers-Stuarts at Dromana House.
All is serene, all is calm, except for the roar of engine and screech of brakes. We’ve an hour to cross county lines for dinner in New Ross. Not so easy comes, easy goes today. Long a restaurant with guest rooms, Richmond House is thankfully free of superfluous signage. The simplicity of the green lawn and pale skin coloured architecture speak for themselves. Doric, that most grounded of the classical orders, is used for the tetrastyle portico, the central portion now glazed to form a porch. And we’re off.
