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Marble Hill House + Marble Hill Beach + St John’s Church of Ireland Church Ballymore Lower Dunfanaghy Donegal

Paradise

There are stunning houses with stunning views and then there is Marble Hill House overlooking Marble Hill Beach. The Barclay family clearly had taste. A three bay two storey over basement façade, grey as marble and high on a hill, is early 19th century neoclassical perfection. The central first floor tripartite window is in numerical harmony with the shallow triple inset formed by the two Ionic columns on either side of the entrance door hooded by a pair of pilasters with Soaneian recessed rectangular and circular panels supporting an entablature under a pediment. Roundheaded recesses define the ground floor windows flanking the portico. The slant of the portico pediment runs parallel with the hipped roof. Overhanging eaves are supported on paired console brackets. A materials palette of shades of grey is calming: ashlar, cut stone, render, slate.

Marble Hill House has an L shape plan. The longest elevation, all four bays, faces the coach house and outbuildings, enclosing a south facing garden hidden from public view. The substantial mid 18th coach house is almost as large as the house. It’s formal architecture: a two storey symmetrical façade confidently handled. A pair of central double height carriage doors under a fanlight is set in a shallow pedimented breakfront. On either side are three bay portions each with self contained symmetry. Both portions have a central arched carriage access (now fully glazed) and two first floor circular windows like architectural games of noughts and crosses.

Due to the sharp decline of the land, the coach house becomes three storey to the six bay rear elevation. This south front has a French look with its projecting eaves course supporting a hipped roof, arch heads to the upper floor windows (except the middle two) and a metal walkway wrapping round the first floor leading to garden level heading north. A row of carriage doors under fanlights opens off the lower ground floor into a walled courtyard. The grey materials palette continues: coursed stone, render, slate. Built by the Babington family, the distinguished neoclassicism of the coach house suggests the accompanying house (demolished by the Barclays) was of considerable merit.

A late Victorian three bay single storey gatelodge completes the three centuries of built form in this bucolic landscape on one of the most northerly tips of Ireland. It may be symmetrical but the gatelodge has an Arts and Crafts rusticity thanks to cottagey casement windows, a canopied porch supported on timber posts on the south elevation and a Roshine slate roof. The roof and porch canopy rest on sprocketed eaves with exposed rafter ends. Locally quarried Roshine slate is usually seen in vernacular buildings of this era. A bow window protrudes from the west elevation.

In 1987, Doe Historical Committee published A Guide to Creeslough-Dunfanaghy, “In the year 1894 a young barrister from Dublin, Hugh Law, married Charlotte Anne Stuart, daughter of the Rector of Ballymore. Hugh was the son of the Lord Chancellor of Ireland. He bought Marble Hill House, a stately Georgian mansion that stands in idyllic surroundings overlooking Marble Hill. It was a happy marriage. Hugh, a man of independent means, did not have to practise his profession. Instead, he entered politics as a member of the Irish Parliamentary Party, and was elected MP. Hugh was best known for his hospitality towards artists and men of letters … including William Orpen, Patrick Pearse and William Butler Yeats.” Marble Hill House, coach house and gatelodge are currently being restored and will be available to let for short stays. The band of trees blocking views of the strand have been removed.

It’s reckoned to be the finest Georgian church in Donegal. It certainly has the largest Venetian window in the County. St John’s Church of Ireland Church stands on a hill accessed off a bend in the road between Creeslough and Dunfanaghy nearly opposite the road down to Marble Hill Beach. Dating from 1752, the church is attributed to Michael Priestley of Derry City on stylistic grounds. The raised quoins and heavy rustication of the Gibbsian arch headed window surrounds are similar to the architect’s distinguished Lifford Courthouse built six years earlier. Doe Historical Committee records that the church was built for £300 gifted by the Board of First Fruits.

Grey roughcast rendered walls and a grey cut stone bellcote and a grey slate roof anchor the design in this rocky coastal terrain: Muckish Mountain is the dramatic backdrop. That Venetian window (all 92 panes of it) faces east across Marble Hill Beach towards Sheephaven Bay. A more normally sized Venetian window (with a modest 42 panes) lights the west elevation of the porch. The small vestry with latticed windows was added in around 1853 to the northeast. It was designed by Joseph Welland who was responsible as architect for the Board of First Fruits for several churches in northwest Ulster such as St Patrick’s Church of Ireland Church in Gortin, County Tyrone. Isabella Stewart, wife of the local Anglo Scots Irish landowner Alexander Stewart, demanded a tenants dodging privacy tunnel was burrowed from the church to her nearby residence, Ards House.

Inland Fisheries Ireland promotes 53 places in County Donegal for sea angling. In clockwise order from the south: Mullaghmore Head; Mullaghmore Harbour; Bunduff Strand; Mermaids Cove; Tullan Strand; Creevy Pier; Rossnowlagh Beach; St John’s Point; Black Rock Pier; Fintragh Strand; Shalwy Pier; Trabawn; Tralore; Teelin; Silver Strand; Glencolmcille; Loughros Point; Dawras Head; Portinoo Pier; Illanafad; Termon Point; Burtonport Pier; Cruit Point; Kincaslough Pier; Bunbeg Harbour; Magheraclogher Point; Bunaninver; Ballyness Pier; Dooros Point; New Lake Estuary; Ards Friary Pier; Downings Pier; Derrycasson; Pollmore; Tra-Na-Rossan Bay; Glashagh Strand; Fanad Head; Portsalon Pier; Rathmullan Pier; Buncrana Pier; Dunree Head; Lenan Pier; Pollan Bay; Doagh Isle; Trawbreaga Bay; Portronan Pier; Portmore Pier; Bunagee Pier; Culdaff Strand; Tremone Bay; Kinnagoe Bay; Moville Pier; and Carrickaroy. Marble Hill is closest to Portsalon Pier.

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Cavanacor House + Cavanacor Gallery Ballindrait Donegal

Weathering Well

An anaemic sun blurred against a bleached sky casts no shadows over the house or garden. Close the cast iron gates and the four hectare estate folds in on itself. Set back from the coast, it’s a rural idyll, but no immunity to destruction is granted in this intense climate. Just a few kilometres away, a sandstorm is rushing through Marble Hill Beach like a suspended granular mist. The Wild Atlantic Way lives up to its name.

The walls of Cavanacor House are soaked in five centuries of history enveloping five centuries of furniture. Owner Eddie O’Kane squeezes half a millennium of stories into one hour of erudition. An apron of outbuildings, converted to an art gallery, clambers up a hill behind the house. Between the outbuildings and back of the house stands a one bay two storey building. Except it’s not a building, it’s a fragment. An attached tower of exposed chimneybreasts provides a clue.

“It used to be the tip of the return wing. The previous owner Miss Clarke demolished the middle section of the wing in the 1960s to reduce rates.” In so doing she unintentionally created a framing device of the garden. “Around the same time, the house was rendered. Only the separate part and outbuildings are still roughcast.” The house was the seat of the same family up until Miss Clarke bought it, but surnames changed from Tasker to Pollock (later shortened to Polk) to Keyes to Humfrey through marriage. It’s the ancestral home of the 11th American President James Knox Polk.

Walking round to the front, past the double pile gable, the five bay two storey symmetrical façade gives the impression of a distinguished Georgian house, belying its even older origins. No doubt that was the intention. A Doric columned doorcase with a rectangular fanlight is set in a square monopitched porch. Why have one fanlight when it’s possible to have two? A further fanlighted doorcase flanked by splayed walls inside the porch draws visitors into the entrance hall.

“An 1820 estate map in the entrance hall shows the house without a porch. But an 1880 map does show it.” Clearly a later addition. ‘The place where King James crossed’ is marked on the earlier map. Prior to the Siege of Derry, on 20 April 1689 Protestant armies amassed on the flat plains of Cavanacor along the strategic route of the Deele River. James II visited Cavanacor as the guest of owner John Keyes. Simultaneously, John’s brothers were inside Derry City, getting ready to defend the walls against the King’s troops.

“James II dined on the lawn under a sycamore tree. It was an exotic type of tree back then. The sycamore was introduced late to Ireland. The tree had a 24 foot circumference. We were driving home on Boxing Day 1998 during the Great Storm. It was like a disaster movie. Lights were going out as we drove through villages. Trees swaying. We just got back in time to Cavanacor to see the massive sycamore tree burst asunder.” That wild Atlantic weather. “My son Eamon is an artist. He made an art piece out of the shattered tree.”

Eddie is also an artist. He studied painting at Belfast’s renowned Art College (now part of the University of Ulster). His wife Joanna studied sculpture. Art and architecture are a family theme. Joanna’s father was John Lewis-Crosby, Director of The National Trust of Northern Ireland from 1960 to 1979. John was also Chairman of the Ulster Architectural Heritage Society in the 1980s.

“The very old glass in the windows is rippled. I’ve noticed when I’m painting indoors it gives a quality of light different from modern glass.” Lugged doorcases on either side of the entrance hall lead through to the main reception rooms. Straight ahead, a pair of arches is separated by a panelled screen. One arch outlines a corridor; the staircase ascends through the other.

“I enjoy doing detective work. Look at the join in the staircase handrail. I think the stairs originally continued below the screen down to the servants’ quarters in the basement.” One of Eddie’s paintings of the garden hangs in the dining room. “The garden looks Victorian with its profusion of foliage. But when there’s a drought, a ghostly path appears through the grass. It looks like an early herb knot garden.”

Eamon O’Kane’s exhibition Exploring Architecture is on show at the Cavanacor Gallery. One section features acrylic paintings of Eileen Gray’s house in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin. “Eamon is fascinated by Le Corbusier and Eileen Gray’s professional jealousies. They produced great art and architecture amidst their turbulent personal lives.” Corbu bragged, “Less is more!” Eileen yawned, “Less is bore!” White walls and flagstone floors provide a sense of calm to the gallery, whatever the weather is outside.

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Shandon Hotel + Marble Hill Beach Dunfanaghy Donegal

A Country Kilometre

There’s a wee drop of aul’ rain in Lifford and it’s bucketin’ in Letterkenny so it is, but by the time we get to Marble Hill the sun is splittin’ the trees. It’s gone from Baltic to boilin’ so it has. All in good time for a dead on wee bite of lunch in Shandon’s overlookin’ the empty beach with not a wee’ne in sight. It’s dead posh. Not like the Carrig Rua Hotel in Dunfanaghy which is dunderin’ inn. Anyone up for a wee trip in Bert’s boat later on Killahoey Beach?

Running out of Ulsterisms it’s time to enjoy a celebratory pescatarian feast in Shandon Hotel which has had the greatest revivification since avocados were mere vegetables or fruit or whatever they used to be. There are views and there are views and there’s the framed golden strand of Marble Hill with the white tipped frothy spray of waves almost lapping up to our table. Across the water on the far side of Sheephaven Bay lies Downings.

Next stop the jolly town of Dunfanaghy. It’s all abuzz around the august Market House. “This Building was erected by Alex Rob Stewart of Ards House AD 1845,” marks a plaque between its first floor windows. On the ground things are more relaxed. There’s a coffee bar, antiques store and yoga venue. And a farmers’ market in the Diamond in front of the Market House.

Opposite the Diamond is McAuliffe’s Craft Shop. It has evolved over four generations of the same family since opening in 1920 as Sweeney’s Drapery. Romantic Stories and Legends of Donegal by Harry Percival Swan, 1965, is one of several local interest books for sale. It opens with, “Donegal calls you. Situated in the North Western corner of Ireland it is one of the most fascinating playgrounds in these islands. It is part of the nine Counties of Ulster, and is the largest County in the Province (1,865 square miles). Donegal belongs to Eire, but is separated from it by County Fermanagh. Donegal’s key note is variety.”