Recalling the Age of Enlightenment
“It was a privilege and a pleasure to perform three of the greatest symphonies ever written. Each has a wonderfully strong individual character, culminating in the miracle which is the last movement of the Jupiter Symphony. As a viola player the part writing is remarkable, as enjoyable to play as Bach or Purcell!” Martin Kelly, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, on Mozart’s World The Last Symphonies performed on 26 February 2026 at the Royal Festival Hall London. Inspired by the revolutionary thinking of the Enlightenment, this period instrument Orchestra was established in 1986.
Lady Diana Mosley, the eldest of the Mitford sisters, once said, ““The Jupiter Symphony of Mozart – it was the first really beautiful sublime music I ever heard and I suppose I must have been about 14. Although we only had a windup gramophone growing up we were able to listen to symphonies and so on – my brother Tom was very musical and I suppose he introduced me to great music.”
Nicholas Till observes in Mozart and the Enlightenment (1992), “The 18th century has often been portrayed as an era of extraordinary tranquillity and grace flanked by two violent and turbulent centuries, an age in which social order and political stability allowed the development of an amiable civilisation that combined moderation and manners with critical enquiry and a rational programme of social reform which was conducted with passion tempered by wit. This vision of culture and progress stretched with an apparent unity of purpose from late 17th century England to late 18th century Germany and was known as the Enlightenment, or, in German, the Aufklärung.”
And so to Castlecaulfield without so much as a subtle segue or tangential transition. Although glimpses of the 18th century concepts of the sublime and the picturesque may be found in this County Tyrone setting. Castlecaulfield is a small Plantation village founded in 1610 by Sir Toby Caulfield, later the 1st Lord Charlemont, who administered the O’Neill lands in Tyrone for James I following the Flight of the Earls in 1607. The stone remains of the Castle in Castlecaulfield standing next to a 20th century housing estate are one of the more extraordinary sights of Ulster.
A mansion with murder holes, the Castle was built between 1611 and 1619 by the Planter with grandeur and security in mind. Professor Alistair Rowan notes in Buildings of North West Ulster (1979), “The ruins are in two parts: the L shaped house of Jacobean character built by Sir Toby and at its northwest end a squat and more substantially built gatehouse that may have been part of the earlier Irish bawn. This is a separate block, 22 feet by 40 feet, with a vaulted entrance passage running the depth of the building with small chambers on either side and a round flanker at the northwest corner.”
Alistair writes about St Michael’s Church, Castlecaulfield, in the Parish of Donoughmore, “Built under the auspices of the Reverend George Walker, later the redoubtable defender of Londonderry, about 1680. Originally a plain hall, now cruciform, with a west tower of three stages with stepped battlements. The church presents today an intriguing mixture of 17th century Gothic and the newfangled Classicism of Lord Charlemont. The south porch, dated 1685, has crude Tuscan columns on high plinths, a salient entablature (that shrinks to just a cornice above the door), and two cherubs holding the Bible open at Psalm 24.”
He records that parts of the building were salvaged from the nearby original Parish Church of Donaghmore, built around 1622 and destroyed 19 years later. Most idiosyncratic is a pair of corbel stop heads of bearded stone gentlemen bearing a cartoon like quality. The bulk of the church – transepts, chancel and robing room – date from 1860. The surrounding graveyard rises from the entrance gates past the church and up to the west boundary overlooking fields.
A blue plaque on the entrance boundary wall states: “Reverend Charles Wolfe, 1791 to 1829, Poet Curate of Donaghmore, 1818 to 1823.” He is best remembered for his eight verse poem The Burial of Sir John Moore After Corunna (1817). The patriotic elegy celebrates the valour of the British Lieutenant General who led the defence of the Port of Corunna against French troops in 1809. Killed by cannon shot, there was no time for a hero’s burial but instead he was laid to rest on foreign soil.
“Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,” is the opening line. It closes with, “We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone. But left him alone with his glory.” Charles was full of “zeal and “unaffected benevolence” in his clergy role according to contemporary records. Educated at Trinity College Dublin, his promising church career and creative talent were cropped by unlived experience when he died of tuberculosis aged 31. Charles’ emotional depth and focus on individual heroism mark him as a second generation Romantic poet, departing from the Enlightenment emphasis on reason: “No useless coffin enclosed his breast … But he lay like warrior taking a rest.”
A grand house dating from 1673 on a 14 hectare estate can be glimpsed over the high wall of the graveyard of St Michael’s Church. A gated passageway between gravestones leads through to the avenue. The principal front of the two storey Castlecaulfield House is a symmetrical seven bays with a central boxy porch. Curved flanking battlemented single storey walls elongate the façade, joined to a walled garden to the left and an outbuilding to the right. A date stone of 1785 in the stables suggests the house was probably aggrandised at that time. Two pane sash windows are later Victorian insertions. An irregular west elevation back onto fields. A vast first floor water tank precariously balanced on pilotis is attached to the gable wall of the return wing.
A couple of kilometres southeast of Castlecaulfield, the 22 hectare Eskragh Lough may be a natural lake set in the rolling Tyrone countryside but it looks like part of a landscape that Capability Brown could easily have dreamt up in the desire for the picturesque. And that rounds of this enlightening tour of the sublime Castlecaulfield.
Lady Diana Mosley’s sister, the novelist and biographer Nancy Mitford, once predicted her idea of the eternal Age of Enlightenment, “I firmly believe in a future life which I think will be absolutely heavenly in every respect because naturally of course I shall go straight to heaven and I envisage it as a beautiful park full of divinely pretty houses inhabited by one’s friends and I look forward greatly to it and there will be lots of lovely music like Sir Arthur Sullivan’s The Lost Chord absolutely nonstop booming out from morning to night, ah, how lovely it’ll be.” And hopefully Mozart’s Symphony Numbers 39, 40 and 41 booming out as well. Nicholas Till notes that, “Mozart’s religious faith included a fervent belief in an immortal soul and in an afterlife.”
