Before setting out on any journey, I look to see what sites might be explored en route, and prepare a list in advance. Sometimes the results are disappointing, but sometimes there over a hedge, or an old ruin in a nearby field. Astonishingly, there continue to be more places to be investigated. The sheer diversity of buildings on our small island and the quality of our historic architecture continue to excite me. The Irish Aesthete has a future as well as a past. A former Vice-President of the Irish Georgian Society, Robe rt O ’ By rne is today one of Ireland’s best-known writers and lecturers specializing in the country’s historic houses and gardens. He is the author of more than a dozen books, among them Hugh Lane: A Biography, Luggala: The Story of a Guinness House, Digging New Ground: The Irish Country House Garden 1650–1900, Left without a Handkerchief and Romantic Irish Homes. For many years he has been a contributor to Apollo Magazine, The Burlington Magazine and the Irish Arts Review. During 2021/22 Robert curated a number of events, including exhibitions, lectures and a conference, all on the theme of Ireland’s country house gardens for the Irish Georgian Society. In autumn 2021, his series on the same subject, Ireland’s Historic Gardens, was shown on RTÉ 1 television.
the lilliput press
www.lilliputpress.ie ISBN 978-1-84351-886-0
6 2 – 6 3 s i t ri c r o a d , arbour hill, d u b l i n 7 , ir e l a n d w w w. l i l l i p u t p r e s s . i e
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B u i l d i n g s o f I r e l a n d, L o s t an d F o u n d
are unexpected, always welcome, delights: a house spotted
The I ri s h A e s t h ete :
Inspire d by his passionate inte re st
‘A poignant cri de coeur for the neglected treasures of our architectural heritage. O’Byrne’s passion is evident within every word of prose and well-posed photograph.’
Man c hán Magan
T h e I ri s h A e s t h ete :
RO B E RT O’BYRNE
Buildings o f I r e l a n d, L o s t an d F o u n d
LILLIPUT
RO B E RT O’ B Y R N E
in Ireland’s architectural heritage and its preservation, in 2012 writer Robert O’Byrne established The Irish Aesthete, a blog and social media phenomenon dedicated to sharing and showcasing the treasures of Ireland’s built environment. Ever since, architects, designers, historians and indeed those who are simply interested in the unique history of our Island’s architecture have flocked from around the world to The Irish Aesthete for insight, fascination and delight. This book was born from O’Byrne’s tireless work charting the hidden glories of Ireland’s buildings. In this true everyman’s guide, Robert has set out to highlight these landmarks, and to demonstrate how readers young and old can enjoy them. Each photograph in this book was taken by the author using nothing but a simple phone camera, showing readers that they too can engage with the past in vibrant new ways. Robert’s collection of photographs, covering everything from grand country houses to ancient monasteries, now runs to over 100,000 images and covers all 32 counties in Ireland. This new volume contains some 150 from his own selection of his best work with each photograph accompanied by illuminating descriptions and anecdotes.
The Irish Aesthete:
Buildings of
I r e l a n d, Lost and
Found RO B ER T O ’ B Y RNE
T h e L i ll i p u t P r e s s , Du b l i n
First published 2024 by
T HE L I L L IPU T PRESS 62–63 Sitric Road, Arbour Hill, Dublin 7, Ireland www.lilliputpress.ie Copyright © Robert O’Byrne, 2024 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the publisher. A CIP record for this title is available from The British Library. ISBN 978-1-84351-886-0
The Lilliput Press gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Arts Council /An Chomhairle Ealaíon. Set in 11.5 pt on 16.5 pt Bembo Monotype Pro by Niall McCormack. Cover Design by Niall McCormack. Printed and bound in the Czech Republic by Finidr.
I n t r o duct i o n In September 2012 I began a blog called The Irish Aesthete. The reasons for my doing so are no longer clear, but they certainly involved a desire to share a long-standing passion for Ireland’s architectural heritage which it seemed to me then – and still seems to me now – has been insufficiently celebrated and cherished. Gradually, and somewhat surprisingly, The Irish Aesthete developed a following, both within Ireland and overseas, and then spawned a presence on various other social media outlets like Facebook and especially Instagram. From the beginning I recognised that, given the subject matter, my text needed to be accompanied by pictures. However, having never before taken photographs, indeed having never even owned a camera, I used my mobile phone. I still do and, as the quality of these devices has improved over the years, so too, I hope, has the quality of my pictures. But my amateur status remains: I’m a writer who takes photographs, not a photographer who writes. In 2022, to mark ten years of The Irish Aesthete, I gave a digital set of all my photographs to the Irish Architectural Archive on
Merrion Square in Dublin, a marvellous (and, by me, a muchused) repository of wisdom and information, which for many more years than myself has done so much to promote better understanding of this country’s historic architecture. Many of the pictures in this book featured in an exhibition at the IAA held to coincide with that donation, but not all because since that date I have visited further sites and photographed them. The pictures here are a cross-section of the very many (over 100,000) that I have taken over the past twelve years, covering everything from country houses to cottages, from ancient monasteries to garden follies. Consistent posting on social media several times a week means I have always been on the lookout for new (or rather old) material. Before setting out on any journey, I look to see what sites might be explored en route, and prepare a list in advance. Sometimes the results are disappointing, but sometimes there are unexpected, always welcome, delights: a house spotted over a hedge, or an old ruin in a nearby field. Astonishingly, there continue to be more places to be investigated. So, this is a record of buildings visited to date, but by no means exhaustive. There are still lots of properties and parts of this island which still wait to be explored. The sheer diversity of places on our small country and the quality of our historic architecture continue to excite me. The Irish Aesthete has a future as well as a past.
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To Paula Bennett with Much Appreciation and Thanks
I
C o u n t ry Houses La rg e and Small
Ab b ey Le i x , Coun ty Laoi s June 2016 Abbey Leix was designed in 1773 by James Wyatt for Thomas Vesey, Lord Knapton (later first Viscount de Vesci). As originally built, the house was an elegant three-storey classical mansion of seven bays, the three central bays under a triangular pediment. In the middle of the nineteenth century the third Viscount de Vesci and his wife Emma, a daughter of the 11th Earl of Pembroke, added a great classical library and a conservatory, extending the eighteenth-century library to twice its length. Their architect was T.H. Wyatt (descended from a cousin of James Wyatt). These alterations gave the building a more pronounced Italianate character through added features such as stone details, Gibbsian window surrounds, emphatic quoins and balconies. The most notable external work was the addition of a balustrade parapet running around the attic, thereby masking dormer windows on an additional storey to provide staff accommodation. Portland cement render applied to the exterior drew these changes together, giving the impression of a unified composition. At the same time as alterations were being made to the building, Lady de Vesci embarked on redesigning the gardens to its rear. Here, a series of elaborate formal terraces was introduced. It has been proposed that the design of these terraces was inspired by those at Alupka in the Crimea, the palace of Lady de Vesci’s Russian maternal grandfather, Prince Worontsov, although more likely they were the invention of Abbey Leix’s chatelaine. In the mid1990s the house and estate were sold to Sir David Davies, who embarked on a thorough restoration of both. More recently, Abbey Leix was bought by Irish entrepreneur John Collison. 2
Bally b rittan Castle, County Of faly April 2015 Originating as a tower house built by the O’Connor family, Ballybrittan Castle has been in use as a residence for more than 500 years and illustrates the evolution of architecture in Ireland between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries. A watercolour by Irish architect Sandham Symes from c.1837 shows the house with the castle behind but does not reveal the middle section of the building, probably constructed in the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century. In the late 1550s the building and surrounding lands were confiscated from the O’Connors and granted by the English crown to Sir Henry Warren, in the era’s Tudor plantation of the newly-created Offaly. Although twice married (one of his wives, Alicia, was a daughter of Adam Loftus, Archbishop of Armagh and first Provost of Dublin University, Trinity College) Warren had no children. He was succeeded by his nephew Anthony, who by his marriage to Mary Preston, daughter of the fourth Viscount Gormanston, brought the property into that family. However, for their support in the royalist cause in the 1640s, the Prestons lost their lands, including Ballybrittan, to the Cromwellian Commonwealth. While they successfully petitioned Charles II for the restoration of their lands, by the late seventeenth century Ballybrittan had passed into the ownership of the Barnewall Family, Barons Trimleston. They remained in possession of the property until 1867 when it was sold through the Landed Estates Court to Robert Elliot. Ballybrittan last changed hands at the beginning of the present century and has since undergone a thorough restoration.
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K i ll i ne e r , Coun ty Lout h May 2016 In the mid-1830s George Harpur, a merchant based in Drogheda, County Louth, who had made his money in the salt trade, bought an estate called Killineer a few miles north of the town. Following his purchase, Harpur commissioned a new residence from an unknown architect on a site a little below an earlier house dating from the eighteenth century. Of two storeys over a basement, its successor has a six-bay rendered facade centred on a Tuscan portico, deep windows admitting ample light into the ground floor reception rooms. When Killineer was offered for sale in 1918, the auction notice advised prospective purchasers: ‘Everything that taste or comfort could suggest for the embellishment of the house and demesne was done by the late owner regardless of expense.’ George Harpur had also laid out gardens at Killineer, beginning with a series of formal Italianate terraces that descend from the front of the main building. Eventually these reach a long serpentine stretch of water, created from what was shown on earlier maps as a relatively small pond. A series of islands on this lake help to break up the vista so that the prospect constantly alters as one wanders along paths meandering on either side. To the immediate east is a woodland garden, rich in ferns, mosses and other moisture-loving plants, while to the north-west is a great laurel ‘lawn’, a piece of nineteenth-century garden design once common but now more rare: that at Killineer is today the largest in the country. Fortunately, Killineer’s present owners keep the place in marvellous repair, so that the taste and comfort described a century ago continue to be manifest. 6
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Ancient Monuments
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T r i m b le stow n Castle, C ounty M eat h November 2018 Baron Trimlestown is one of the oldest titles in Ireland, created in 1461 for Sir Robert Barnewall. The family were of Norman origin, their ancestor, Sir Michael de Berneval, landing in Cork in 1172. Rising to power in the Pale, they gradually acquired substantial land holdings in County Meath. Here in Trimblestown they erected a mighty castle, probably in the fifteenth century, perhaps around the time that the title of baron was granted to Sir Robert Barnewall. The core of the building climbs three storeys, with a massive square tower in the southwest corner. The main block is some 114 feet long and 40 feet wide, internally dominated by a two-storey vaulted great hall that faces towards the River Trimlestown: the exterior of this side is marked by corner buttresses. Considerable alterations to the building were undertaken in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when a large addition was made on the northern section of the site. It is likely that at this time towers similar to those facing the river were demolished and a modern house built, the most notable feature of this being a large bow with views to the east. This may have happened around 1797 when the 14th Lord Trimlestown, then aged seventy, married a woman less than a third of his age: the suggestion is that she got a new house in return for an old husband. Soon afterwards, her husband also inherited Turvey, County Dublin, from a distant cousin and in due course the family moved there, leaving Trimblestown Castle to slip into its present decay.
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Ball i ndoon Ab b ey, Coun ty Sl i g o May 2021 Dedicated to the Virgin Mary, Ballindoon Priory, County Sligo was a latecomer to the company of Ireland’s religious houses. A Dominican foundation, it was established on the banks of Lough Arrow in 1507 by one Thomas O’Farrell under the patronage of the McDonaghs, who were then the most powerful family in the area. The interior of the church is dominated by a remarkable two-storey, triple-vaulted archway. The arches on the ground floor are all the same height but only the centre one provides access from nave to chancel, those on either side probably once holding altars (that to the south has since been blocked). The central arch above is much higher than its neighbours and may once have contained a cross or crucifix although it also has a hole in the ceiling to allow the suspension of a bell rope from further up the tower. This floor, effectively a gallery, is lit by exceptionally tall, narrow windows set into the north and south walls. Reached by an unusual external staircase, the top of the tower is thought once to have contained accommodation for whoever lived on the site, since no domestic ranges were ever constructed around the building (the land to the immediate south of the church drops steeply down to the lakeshore). Both the east and west ends of the church have splendid traceried windows.
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Ballyadam s Castle, County Lao i s September 2021 Like so many other similar buildings in Ireland, the history of Ballyadams Castle, County Laois, is often unclear. At least part of the castle may date from the thirteenth century, although its name appears to derive from one Adam O’More who lived here some 200 years later. Certainly by the start of the sixteenth century the castle was in the possession of the O’Mores, then a dominant family in this part of the country. During the upheavals which then followed, in 1551 it was granted by the Earl of Desmond to the Welsh-born John Thomas Bowen, known as ‘John of the Pike’ since he always carried one of these weapons and, according to legend, did not hesitate to use it. The Bowens remained in occupation thereafter, although this was threatened in 1643 during the Confederate Wars, as the third Earl of Castlehaven recorded in his memoirs. When he arrived to attack the castle, Sir John Bowen warned that wherever the earl trained his guns, ‘I will cover that, or any other your Lordship shoots at, by hanging out both my daughters in chairs.’ Castlehaven demurred and Ballyadams continued to be home to further generations of the same family. It was likely Sir John’s son William who added a large, twostorey house to the rear and one side of the house, indicating the Bowens now felt secure in their property. At the start of the eighteenth century his only surviving child, Katherine, married Pierce Butler from County Tipperary. In 1759 their grandson sold Ballyadams to Garret Fitz David Butler. Members of the same family still own the building.
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