Jericho’s Retina
“The house looks lovely in the sun: we want you to come and visit us! The gardens are open seven days a week and you can do lots of walks. There are walks from five minutes to 45 minutes. We have a Walled Garden, an Italian Garden, an Arboretum and lots of fun stuff. It’s poignant for me because having almost lost everything I now want to make a legacy for my children. Sometimes it is overwhelming because when I look at other gardens that are successful and how well they do it, I look at the number of staff they have and I think – it’s just Daniel and me! That’s it at the moment. When you’re in the house and you see all these 12 generations of McCauslands looking down at you, you can’t help but feel they’re watching you. The café and shop are the first building work on the estate in a century.” So says owner Conolly McCausland.
Welcome to Drenagh, one of the three Sir Charles Lanyon designed statement country houses of Ulster. The other two are Ballywalter Park in County Down and Dundarave in County Antrim. In 2014 two of the three were for sale. Dundarave and its 485 hectare estate were sold through Savills to an investor company for around £10 million. Drenagh and its 400 hectare estate went on the market through Simon O’Brien for the same price. It was the end of a centuries’ long era for the McCausland family: the main lender Leeds Clydesdale Bank had withdrawn its support for Drenagh and the associated farm. But the following year, Conolly raised £5 million with the sale of land which more than covered the reported bank debts of £3.2 million. Drenagh was taken off the market.
The Honourable Dorinda Lady Dunleath and Sir Charles Brett and their cohorts spent much of the second half of the 20th century Listing the heritage of Ulster. Walter Girvan compiled the unusually titled North Derry (the accepted norm is Derry City in County Londonderry) List in 1972 to 1974. It’s quite the entry and worth quoting in its entirety for fullness. So here goes. “Drenagh House stands in a commanding position in the centre of well wooded parkland to the east of Limavady. The family home of the McCauslands, it was originally called Fruithill; as at Dundarave near Bushmills, it seems to have assumed a new name with its final rebuilding in the late 1830s. Its predecessor appeared to date from the 1730s; the Ordnance Survey comments that it was ‘an old fashioned looking house, which looks extremely well when seen partly through the trees by which it is surrounded’. It probably was similar to Streeve House and, in spite of extensions, was already by the 1820s thought to be too small, so John Hargrave was asked to produce drawings for an entirely new house. Elevations and plans survive and show a chaste neo Greek design, which bears a resemblance to Seaforde House, County Down. Hargrave was not given the job and there the matter rested until Charles Lanyon arrived in County Antrim as County Surveyor in 1836. The present building appears to be Lanyon’s very first commission for a country seat of major proportions, and it is interesting to watch his progress from the relatively restrained neoclassicism of Drenagh, through the greater flamboyance of Laurel Hill in Coleraine of 1843, to the sumptuous Italianate of Dundarave in 1847. In retrospect, the superb assurance of Dundarave is lacking in the earlier building, although there are typical Lanyon touches.”
Born in Cork in the 1780s, John Hargrave’s office was on Talbot Street in Dublin. He was especially active in the northwest. One of Omagh in County Tyrone’s most prominent landmarks, the Courthouse, is by his hand. One of Omagh’s most obscure buildings is another of his designs, the Prison Governor’s House. He brings the former’s strong string courses and the latter’s polygonal geometry to his design for Drenagh. The house that never was has a long five bay two storey “Elevation of Principal Front” with tripartite windows at either end of the ground floor. The entrance door is also treated in tripartite form with flanking sidelights. Clerestory windows below the cornice light an attic floor. At first it’s hard to reconcile this front with “Elevation towards the Rear” as the latter is narrower, higher with an exposed raised basement, and treated differently with a canted bay window either side of the central three bays. Column and pilaster free, John proves himself to be master of astylar architecture.
Why the McCauslands dropped John Hargrave’s proposal is lost in the mists of time. Sir Charles Lanyon’s executed main block is more regular in footprint, a deeper and narrower rectangle. It is a mirror image of John’s: the ancillary wing stretches to the left, not the right, of the main entrance door. The basement is not externally visible. Both designs have two canted bay windows on the elevation facing away from the entrance although the built version are much shallower.
Back to William Girvan, “The house, of two stories, is of finely dressed sandstone. As at Dundarave, each of the main facades is treated differently. The entrance front is five bays wide, the central bay recessed in the usual Lanyon way. While the lower windows are plain, the upper have shallow surrounds, curving into the string course which acts as a sill. The hipped roof is concealed behind a balustrade, and weight is given to the central bay for blocking out the balusters. A hexastyle portico of unfluted Ionic columns, surmounted by a balustrade, enclose the entrance door, which has a semicircular fanlight and sidelights, an idea reused at Laurel Hill and Dundarave. The double string course between storeys units each façade. The southwest front is more awkward – six bays long; the central two bays step forward and are framed by shallow giant pilasters; the surmounting pediment is not strong enough to dominate. The northwest front is managed better. Canted bay windows rise through the two storeys and frame a French window which has a mock segmental fanlight. A lower block of offices extends north eastwards.”
“The interior plan is similar to both Ballywalter Park and Dundarave. An entrance hall with a shallow dome set on Soanesque pendentives opens into a central hall from which all the reception rooms lead. More intimate in scale than its successors, it has a screen of richly decorated Corinthian columns. For ceiling and overdoor and ornaments Lanyon used classical mouldings. A shallow coloured glass dome lights the room. The effect is Roman in its weightiness. The stair, rising between one of the columned screens, divides at the half landing; it has particularly fine cast iron balusters, clad in ivy tendrils. The stairwell ceiling is richly moulded with a scalloped design, bordering an acanthus roundel. Each of the reception rooms is treated differently; the Drawing Room ceiling is the most splendid with an enriched gilded cornice, containing a device Lanyon used elsewhere in the house and at Bellarena – a continuous pipe, encircled by acanthus leaves; the rest is panelled, with a flower bedecked roundel. The Morning Room and Dining Room ceilings are simpler; a nice original Victorian wallpaper of tangled flowers still hangs in the Saloon. Each room has a lavish marble fireplace, all of different pattern and hue. The first floor bedroom passage has unusual and attractive plaster ribbed vaulting, rising from corbels; on the side opposite the stairwell, the pattern changes to a series of shallow domes.”
“The courtyard behind the house is entered by a shallow segmental archway; above is a pediment with clock inserted. The two storey stable courtyard lies beyond; a simple design of six wide coach arches, the centre two pedimented and stepping forward; the side wings, seven bays long have round headed fanlights over the doors. All is in dressed sandstone. Adjacent to it is a second court of rubblestone: this is probably the stable block of the older Fruithill.”
“The house is surrounded by lawns, enclosed by balustraded terraces. Beyond are well wooded shrubberies and a stately flight of steps leading to a massive balustraded vantage point, which looks over a dell, laid out formally with ponds; under it is a fountain exedra. The remains of the old house have been laid out as a walled garden. The northern gatelodge by Lanyon is an exceptionally refined three bay by three sandstone cottage with minuscule tetrastyle Ionic portico – a foretaste of the big house. It has a fine set of piers and gates. The southern lodge dates from 1830 and is a charming L shaped sandstone cottage with pretty paired Gothick lattice pane windows set in simple reveals. It is known as Logan’s Lodge.”
Taken for Granted, compiled by Alistair Coey and Richard Pierce in 1984 for a specialist audience, was described by its authors as “a celebration of 10 years of historic buildings conservation”. The entry for Drenagh confirms, “Charles Lanyon’s first large country house commission. Built in 1836 on the site of an earlier house dating from the 1730s. The house is neoclassical two storeys of finely detailed ashlar sandstone with three different main elevational treatments. A balustraded parapet conceals the roof. The interior is planned around a large central hall lit by a circular leaded light. Phase one: grant assistance of £263 given towards repairs to leadwork. Approximate cost of work: £640. Carried out in 1976. Contractor: Dickie and Hamilton, Coleraine. Phase two: grant assistance of £1,400 given towards repairs to chimneys, roofs, rainwater goods and stonework. Redecoration of remedial items. Approximate cost of work: £2,868. Carried out in 1978. Contractor: Dickie and Hamilton, Coleraine. Phase three: grant assistance of £250 given towards repairs to leadwork including clocktower. Approximate cost of work: £513. Carried out in 1980. Contractor: Dickie and Hamilton, Coleraine. Phase four: grant assistance of £680 given towards treatment of wood rot and subsequent reinstatement. Approximate cost of work: £1,363. Carried out in 1980. Phase five: grant assistance of £3,800 given towards repairs to leadwork. Treatment of extensive dry rot and repairs to internal plasterwork. Approximate cost of work: £7,615. Carried out in 1981. Contractor: William Douglas, Limavady. Timber treatment: Rentokil, Belfast.”
The footprint of the main block is deeper than in it is wide. Perpendicular to the five bay southeast facing entrance front, the southwest front is a generously spaced six bays. An even number is unusual: an odd number of bays allowing for a central feature is conventional in classical architecture. Sir Charles Lanyon came to own it though: Ballywalter Park has a six bay garden front (excluding the wings) and Dundarave has a six bay entrance front. The Entrance Hall of Drenagh leads into a central Corinthian columned Hall naturally illuminated by a circular rooflight. The triple flight staircase rises to one side of the Hall. The architect was a master of the flow: the main reception rooms – Billiard Room, Morning Room, Library, Drawing Room, Salon and Dining Room (going anticlockwise) – all open off the Hall.
On the first floor, a continuous bedroom corridor circulates around the void over the circular rooflight. Still going anticlockwise, Work Room, Blue Room, Balcony Room, South Room, Green Room, Rose Room, Orange Room, Monroe Room and Bow Room all have glorious views across the gardens and parkland. The footprint of the wing, which is formed around a courtyard and stretches towards the stable block, is as large as the footprint of the main block. The storey heights of the wing are much lower as befits its status. Drenagh is built on a grand scale: the Drawing Room measures 11 metres into the bay window by 6.6 metres wide. The Orange Room above it measures 6.7 metres by 6.6 metres. To put that in context, at 44.22 square metres the Orange Room is just shy of the recommended size of a one bed flat in the 2021 London Plan which is 50 square metres.
There are lots of other residential properties on the estate. Bothy Flat, Clock Flat, Laundry Flat and Upper Garden Flat are in the wing. Forester’s Cottage, Garden Cottage, Logan Cottage, Kitty’s Cottage, The Pheasantry, Shell Hill Cottage, Streeve Hill and Yard House are standalone buildings. Killane Lodge is a gatelodge: the main house in miniature. So the farmland continues to be farmed and the estate dwellings tenanted.
Conolly launched Drenagh as a wedding venue in 2012. A ceremony for up to 60 guests can be held in the house or a marquee in the Walled Garden for a maximum of 200 people. He says, “The romantic Moon Garden and the elegant Morning Room are inspirational places for couples to tie the knot. We can accommodate 16 overnight guests in the main house and 12 in the wing. Drenagh can also be rented and is proving popular, especially for American guests. Our housekeeper will look after arrangements.” Helicopter flights can be arranged to pick up guests arriving at City of Derry Airport and set them down on the lawn outside the house. Or a limousine can be despatched.
A lot has changed since 1991 when Conolly’s mother and stepfather took the first steps towards estate diversification by opening the house to large group tours and for bed and breakfast as part of the Hidden Ireland group. Back then the Italian Garden was a mass of bamboos. The remote northwest of Northern Ireland has some catching up to do with the touristy east coast. There are no National Trust country houses nearby. The nearest country house, Bellarena, which was partially remodelled by Sir Charles Lanyon, remains unopen to the public. Drenagh fills the cultural void, flies the heritage flag, and provides fabulous quiche in The Orangery café inside the Walled Garden.
