Tag: professor fiona okane

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Architects Architecture Country Houses Design

Oakfields + Drum Manor Cookstown Tyrone

Lambeg

“Ruins in Ireland have always been political in light of the country’s history,” lectured University College Dublin Professor Fiona O’Kane to the Irish Georgian Society London some years ago. “In contrast, they possess an insouciance in English paintings. Ruins can be framing devices to real landscape. But the perception of how Ireland is drawn carries a long shadow. There’s a constant iterative of land.” Nowhere frames a real landscape better than the stone tracery of Drum Manor on the edge of Cookstown, deep in Ulster’s West of the Bann territory.

The Stewart aristo dynasty (family name confusingly Stuart) owned estates across County Tyrone for centuries. Originally called Oaklands, the house was built in 1829 for Major William Stewart Richardson-Brady. Architect unknown. His daughter and heiress Augusta married distant relative Henry James Stuart-Richardson, who later would become 5th Earl Castle Stewart. In 1869. the newly married couple set about remodelling and extending the house into a large rectangular mostly two storey block.

Their architect was William Hastings who designed numerous commercial and residential buildings in Belfast, notably McCausland’s (once a warehouse, now a hotel). There’s a robustness to the architect’s oeuvre, while flexing his design muscle between Italianate, Gothic and – as at Oakfields – Tudor, covering all the revivals beloved of Victorians. Constructed of regular coursed sandstone ashlar, it must have looked as permanent as the Sperrin Mountains when first completed. Oakfields was mostly demolished a century later. The last in the line of the Archibald Closes (linked through marriage to the Stewarts) sold the estate to the Forest Service in 1980.

The south front, aproned by an ornate balustraded sandstone terrace, overlooked a deep valley. The Earl Castle Stewarts’ remodelling was clearly identifiable by its Tudor dressings, especially the row of gables and mini gables popping up above the crenellated parapet supported on machicolations. The Richardson-Bradys’ original house was left unadorned as a plain wing. A four storey square tower (with a five storey octagonal corner turret) attached to the north facing entrance front rose above the main block like the fictional remains of a keep. William Hastings designed two extant gatelodges in an even more castellated style.

A couple of long forgotten newly discovered faded photographs show Oakfields in all its glory. One is of the lake in the valley with the house as a backdrop. Two people are on a canoe beside an ornamental island in the lake: a hatted gentleman is perched on the tip of the canoe while a hatted person (too blurred to be gender identifiable) is holding the oars. Could it be Henry and Augusta? Or Henry and a servant? The other one is a view of the entrance front and boxy bay windowed east front. This photograph clearly shows the two paned sash windows mostly used – a concession to the modernity of its day. A more authentic Tudor style double height traceried window to the right of the porch must have lit the staircase.

Another new discovery is a set of detailed plans for unexecuted works all titled Drum Manor, signed Castlestuart and John McDowell, and dated 1876. The elusive John McDowell was an excellent draughtsman judging by these black ink and coloured pencil drawings. Design for East Elevation illustrates a one and a half storey loosely Scottish Baronial block. Scribbled pencil writing over the drawing states “Coursed ashlar” and “Rubble masonry to frieze”.

The other plans relate to Coach House Range, Farm Offices and Minor Farm Offices – one, one and a half, and two storey stone buildings. An accompanying ground floor plan shows two abutting square courtyards. Scribbled pencil writing states: “Existing walls and buildings coloured in sepia. New erections coloured in pink.” North Elevation of Minor Farm Offices is of a single storey vernacular block with doors and openings labelled Dogs, Pigs, Hens, Laying House and Hens. South Elevation of Minor Farm Offices is labelled Wood, Coal, Tools, Carpenter, Carts and Bull. Sketch of East Front of Farm Offices illustrates a formal neoclassical symmetrical block with a centrally placed tall belltower surmounted by a peculiarly over scaled weathervane, almost a storey in height.

At least the damson’d gardens and rolling parkland under the shade of the ruins remain and are open to the public. A silent drum beats again. Balustrades and buttresses and battlements – those honey coloured ramparts – protecting nothing and housing nobody. Transoms and mullions holding air. Crocketed pinnacles pointing heavenward. Pearl necklaced capitals. Metre high green carpet pile. That solitary damsel’d tower. And yet Drum Manor has fared slightly better than another County Tyrone country house. The only built form that remains on the estate of Pomeroy House is a derelict portion of the stable block outbuilding. An adjacent hardstanding provides a ghostly outline of the house’s footprint encircled by forestry. The demise of a demesne. A little investment and the ground floor skeletal remains of Drum Manor would make a great walled garden.

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Architecture Design Developers Restaurants Town Houses

The Flask Pub + Highgate London

Raising the Roofs

It’s the part of London associated with the dead but there’s also plenty of life in Highgate. England does pubs well and The Flask is an oasis for thirsty – and hungry – travellers. The pub blends in so well with its Georgian neighbours it could easily be mistaken for one of the grand houses. A stone plaque on the five bay three storey redbrick façade displays the date “1663” which must predate the current building. A rabbit warren of bars and dining rooms, some under low vaulted ceilings bending all sorts of modern building regulations, has all the atmosphere of a coaching inn. Highwayman Claude Duval might just swing by for a pint.

Or a glass of Champagne. She may have had a vested interest but a chalk message on a blackboard in The Flask quotes the sage words of Lilly Bollinger, “I only drink Champagne when I’m happy and when I’m sad. Sometimes I drink it when I’m alone. When I have company I consider it obligatory. I trifle with it if I am not hungry and drink it when I am. Otherwise I never touch it – unless I’m thirsty.” A faded print of Queen Anne hangs on the ladies’ lavatory door; Henry Prince of Wales beckons the gents.

Opposite The Flask is The Grove, an early 18th century suburban residential development in leafy environs. Poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Leigh Hunt; spy Anthony Blunt; singer George Michael; musicians Annie Lennox, Yehudi Menuhin and Sting; actors Gladys Cooper, Robert Donat and Jude Law; and model Kate Moss have all called The Grove home across the ages. It’s the sort of Georgian enclave that can only be found in London’s classier outlying villages such as Blackheath, Clapham and West Dulwich.

Across the road, or is it down the hill, or maybe over the brae – Highgate’s attractiveness is matched only by its confusion of layout – stands Lauderdale House. Vicky Wilson writes in London’s Houses, 2011, “An unattractive pebbledash building with an uninspiring five bay Georgian entrance front, a surprisingly unthought-out arrangement of windows on its long southeast side and a fine Doric colonnade at the back, Lauderdale House is nevertheless endowed with a history – both architectural and social. One of the few surviving large timber framed London houses, Lauderdale was built in 1582 by Sir Richard Martin, Warden and Masterworker of the Royal Mint, for his younger son Richard, probably with a rich bounty of Spanish gold earned from financing Sir Francis Drake’s circumnavigatoin of 1577 to 1580.”

She summarises the evolution of the house: “The Martins’ home was designed to be a U shaped plan around a central courtyard. The long southeast flank was probably divided into three rooms with a traditional great chamber on the first floor; the present entrance hall in the northeast wing was probably a dining room. A single storey building at the open end of the courtyard, connected by a corridor to the dining room, contained the kitchens. The construction is timberframe infilled with wattle and daub, with the larger upper floor frame resting on projecting joists, a method known as continuous jetting. The slight projection of the the upper floor today and the asymmetrical fenestration on the long front are the clearest clues to the building’s Tudor origins.”

Professor Finola O’Kane of University College Dublin has a slightly more positive view of the house, “Lauderdale House is an attractive, rambling, not very distinguished looking building which conceals a much earlier timber house. It has a few vestiges of its early garden including a parterre and mount. St Paul’s Cathedral could be seen from the garden. This is a suburban house closer to the City than the West End. Highgate wasn’t very fashionable in the 17th century and it really only got going in the 18th century.”

Both commentators criticise its mostly casual appearance resulting from a Georgian cloak draping over a Tudor frame. The lawn front is symmetrical from the first floor five bay jettied projection upwards. A second floor Diocletian window is surmounted by a pediment and flanked by half gables. The garden backs onto Waterlow Park which in turn abuts Highgate Cemetery. Lauderdale House is now an arts and education centre. Sunbathers catch rays between crawling ladybirds and fluttering white butterflies. A sky of awnings provides respite from the summer heat. An ice cream parlour is handily located off the lawn front.

Northwest of Lauderdale House is the former residence of the 19th century explorer Mary Kingsley. She was brought up in Avalon, a late Georgian two storey over basement redbrick villa with an elegant prostyle Roman Doric porch. The only window on the façade is over the porch. Four blind windows complete the balanced elevational composition. Wide windows capture views of the Capital on the garden facing south front. Opposite Avalon is a long single storey redbrick block with a double height centrepiece. A plaque under the central pediment reads: “Anno 1722. The si almes-houses founded by Sir John Woolaston being very old and decayed were pull’d down and these 12 built in their room together with a schoolhouse for the charity girls at the sole charge of Edward Pauncfort, one of the governours and treasurer of the Chapell and Free School of Highgate.”

In contrast to its Georgian neighbours, Holly Village is very High Victorian Gothic. An archway on one side and a gateway on the other side linked by holly hedgerows provide tantalising glimpses of 12 highly ornate large cottages grouped around a green. Built in 1865 by the property developer William Cubitt to the design of Henry Astley Darbishire, the four villas and four pairs of semi detached houses are – to use modern property parlance – highly spec’d, from Portland stone to teak wood. Gated developments are very Highgate: luxuriously appointed apartment and housing schemes behind cast iron railings would arrive in the 20th century on nearby Hillway.

Another piece of non neoclassical architecture is the Catholic Church of St Joseph on Highgate Hill. It is known locally as “Smoky Joe’s” after the high church religious order which runs it. The Passionists built the current monastery and chapel in 1858 in a Neo Romanesque style to the design of Albert Vicars (potentially some nominative determinism going on with that surname). The powerful white gone grey brick complex with copper domes over a dominant octagonal tower and smaller octagonal corner turrets dominates the townscape southeast of Lauderdale House.

The cemetery can wait.

Postscript: we know many of you missed out on the limited first edition of our bestseller Sabbath Plus One. But fear not: Daunt Marylebone may have sold out but north London’s top independent literature retailer House of Books in West Hampstead is now stocking the second edition. And the most flattering compliment of the month comes from said retailer about the 30 year old opening portrait in the fabric covered hand stitched 300 GSM paper heavyweight book, “That’s still you!”