A Pleasant Tudor Revival House of Medium Size

Jan19

While several hundred Irish country houses were destroyed during the years of the War of Independence and Civil War, many more were subsequently lost over the following decades as owners found it impossible to maintain them in the face of rising prices and falling income. The late 1940s and 1950s were a particularly bad period for these properties. As early as 1932, the Irish Times had noted that ‘the dead hand of the state lies heavily on the great houses. Depleted incomes make their maintenance difficult enough, but high taxation and death duties render the passage of a great house from father to son almost impossible.’ In her 2019 book White Elephants: The Country House and the State in Independent Ireland, 1922-73, Emer Crooke notes that a large number of houses were just abandoned, with the removal of their roofs so that residential rates would not have to be paid. Furthermore, many such buildings that were destined for demolition suddenly became valuable, ‘not as residences, but as commodities. Houses were bought up for demolition by speculators interested in selling off valuable slates or lead from their roofs, while the Land Commission also demolished some houses on acquired lands, from which they could use the materials to build factories, roads and so on. Big Houses had become far more valuable and useful for their parts than when they were standing.’ Hence the enduring spectacle across the Irish countryside of skeletal remains, towering structures of which only the outer walls now remain. Such might have been the fate of Lisnavagh, County Carlow had its then-owners not decided on an alternative option to ensure at least part of the house continues to be a family home.

Lisnavagh has been home to the Bunbury family since the 1660s when they moved to County Carlow as tenants of the first Duke of Ormond before purchasing the property in 1702. A plaque inside the present house shows that the original residence on the estate was built by William Bunbury in 1696. This survived for some 150 years until a new Lisnavagh was commissioned by Captain William McClintock-Bunbury who had inherited the property in 1846 following the death of his childless maternal uncle, Thomas Bunbury. Designs for a new house had been commissioned by William Bunbury from architect Oliver Grace in 1778 but following the client’s untimely death, the project was abandoned. Instead, a year after inheriting the estate, Captain McClintock-Bunbury asked Daniel Robertson to come up with a new scheme and this one went ahead. As with a number of Robertson’s other houses in this part of the country, Lisnavagh was constructed in a variant of the Tudor-Gothic style, heavily gabled and with many mullioned windows, all clad in local granite and finished for the sum of £16,000. The work took two and a half years to complete, during which time the same team of workers built new stables ,haylofts, farm buildings, a schoolhouse, several outbuildings, a walled garden, three miles of walls and a gate lodge. A contemporary report in the Farmer’s Gazette noted that ‘Every stone which was used in the various buildings — in the mansion house, the farmyards, demesne walls, and cottages — was dug out of the land, it being quite unnecessary to open a regular quarry, such was the abundance of stones in the land.’ A long, low building of two storeys, the house’s interior featured an abundance of reception and bedrooms which, by the middle of the last century were proving near-impossible to maintain.

In September 1937 Lisnavagh was inherited by William McClintock-Bunbury, fourth Baron Rathdonnell who, ten years later and in the aftermath of the Second World War, was faced with the challenge of how to look after a very substantial house on a relatively small income. Initially he and his wife, the artist Pamela Drew, put the place up for sale: one potential purchaser was Evelyn Waugh, then travelling through Ireland in the hope of finding a home for himself and his family: he described Lisnavagh as a ‘practical Early Victorian Collegiate building.’ A buyer proving elusive, alternative solutions were sought, with Lady Rathdonnell consulting her uncle, architect Aubyn Peart Robinson of Caroe & Partners, who suggested the house be reduced in size. Beginning in 1951, driven by the motto ‘Rejuvenate the Positive’, this is what happened. While Peart Robinson planned the operation, work was overseen by architect Alan Hope who ran a highly successful practice in Dublin. The decision was taken to keep the part of the house formerly acting as the service wing, not least because this had a basement, and to clear away the rest of the building which had hitherto held the main reception rooms. However, rather than just demolish a large chunk of Lisnavagh, the Rathdonnells had the granite stones of the western gable taken down by hand, numbered and then re-erected to create a new south-facing front. As a result of careful planning, when the project came to a conclusion in February 1954, rather than looking as though it had lost several limbs, the house gave the impression of having always had the same appearance. Outside, a porte-cochère previously only used by household staff became the main entrance, while indoors a library was created in what had been the old kitchen: in its new incarnation, this is today the finest room in the house, with carved oak shelving by Strahan & Co of Dublin, panels of Cordova leather and many family portraits. Lisnavagh might easily have joined the long sad list of lost Irish country houses but thanks to the clever initiative of its owners in the 1950s, it still stands today. Even more importantly, as Mark Bence-Jones noted in his guide to these properties (1978), ‘the surviving part of the house looks complete in itself; a pleasant Tudor Revival house of medium size rather than a rump of a larger house.’

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Decent Lodgings

Jan16

The former gate lodge at Ballyhaise, County Cavan (for the main house, see Mixing the Orders « The Irish Aesthete). Thought to have been designed by William Farrell and to date from c.1840, the single-storey building stands opposite the main gates and directly above the river Annalee. It is of five bays, the three central ones being recessed behind a charming wrought-iron trellis screen. Formerly a gift shop, the lodge is currently being restored to serve as a community space and coffee shop.

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Death of a Salesman

Jan12

Until relatively recently, across Ireland every country town would have had an hotel. It was the place where local weddings and similar social gatherings might be held, as well serving as a venue for business meetings, gatherings of societies like the Rotary or Lions Clubs, and occasional clandestine encounters. But what helped to sustain these hotels on a day-to-day basis, what kept the bar humming in the evening, filled bedrooms at night and ensured breakfast would be served in the morning were members of a now-vanished breed: the commercial traveller.

Commercial travellers, otherwise known as travelling salesmen, were once a common sight throughout the country. Almost incessantly on the road, they moved from one urban centre to another, seeking to persuade individuals or retail outlets to buy the products or services of the company they represented. Their numbers were sufficiently great for the Irish Commercial Travellers’ Federation to be founded in Cork in 1919; in the middle of the last century, this body was sufficiently important to have its own publication, The Traveller.
While there were a handful of products being offered for sale by women – the Avon Lady who sold cosmetics and the like – commercial travellers were overwhelmingly male, and the profession gained a reputation for being somewhat libidinous: all those men on their own with an hotel bedroom at their disposal. Timothy Lea’s saucy Confessions of a Travelling Salesman was published in 1973, and the same year saw the release of the rather lame film, Secrets of a Door-to-Door Salesman. However, the end was soon nigh for commercial travellers: tellingly, in 1981, the Irish Commercial Travellers’ Federation was absorbed into the Sales, Marketing & Administrative Union of Ireland. Various factors have been given for the decline and eventual disappearance of a once-widespread occupation. Improvements in communication and transportation made the traditional role of a travelling salesman who physically visited customers over long periods less necessary for mainstream businesses. More recently, computers, and the internet have created direct online ordering systems, thereby allowing retailers to view and order stock directly from manufacturers, and making the role of the commercial traveller redundant. In addition, the rise of large retail chains has led to a corresponding reduction in the number of independent outlets that once relied on travellers. All of which hastened the demise of the travelling salesman.

A recent visit to two towns less than six miles apart, one on either side of the border, both of which have hotels which were once thriving but which are now empty and in poor condition. In Clones, County Monaghan, the former Lennard Arms which stands in a prominent position at the junction of MacCurtain and Analore Streets and with a bold double canted bay fronted façade facing The Diamond, dates back to 1860. According to the National Built Heritage Service, the building ‘has been an institution in Clones since it commenced trading and endures as an important landmark in the town.’ That was written in 2011, and since then the hotel has ceased trading and fallen into its present sad state. Meanwhile, over in Newtownbutler the handsome Lanesborough Arms Hotel on Main Street first opened for business in 1820 and serves as testament to the prosperity of the town at the time. Of five bays and three storeys with a free-standing Tuscan porch, it closed for business in 2004 (the interior of the adjacent pub was removed and reinstalled in the Ulster American Folk Park, County Tyrone). A fire believed to have been started deliberately caused major damage to the building in 2016 and its condition has only grown worse since then.
The Lennard and Lanesborough Arms Hotels were both the kind of premises which have once provided hospitality to commercial travellers, and one wonders whether the disappearance of this formerly reliable class of guest was a factor in their closure. Each town suffers from the blight of dereliction (see top pictures for Clones and bottom ones for Newtownbutler), providing further evidence that once-thriving urban centres in all parts of Ireland have experienced serious decline across recent decades. With the loss of their clientele, do these once-thriving hotels have a future? In Clones, plans have been announced by the local authority to renovate the Lennard Arms as a heritage centre. Alas, no such opportunities in Newtownbutler for the Lanesborough Arms which, together with many of its neighbours along Main Street, continues to stand empty and neglected.

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Taken to Court

Jan9

After Monday’s exploration of Kilmainham Gaol, here is its immediate neighbour, the neo-classical ‘Sessions House’ designed by William Farrell and opened in 1820. Faced in granite, the main entrance is of two storeys and has a pedimented three-bay breakfront with arched windows on the first floor. Below, the rusticated ground floor has blind doors flanking the entrance, while on either side are single-bay outer bays with tripartite windows on the first-floor and blind equivalents below them. Inside the building, the rear section is given over to a double-height, galleried courtroom with Diocletian window above the judge’s bench. To the front is a similarly double-height entrance hall lit by the aforementioned three arched windows on the facade.

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Lasciate Ogne Speranza, Voi Ch’intrate

Jan5

One of the most visited sites in Dublin, Kilmainham Gaol is today primarily known for being the place where in May 1916 fourteen key figures in the Easter Rising were executed by firing squad. Yet this was only one incident in the building’s history, which goes back to the late 18th century when ideas of prison reform and the provision of better accommodation for convicted criminals led to the construction of the gaol in Kilmainham. It replaced an earlier prison a little further to the east in an area called Mount Brown: a parliamentary report on this premises in 1782 noted that not only was the building ‘extremely insecure, and in an unwholesome bad situation with narrow cells sunk underground, with no hospital’ but in addition, ‘Spirits and all sorts of liquors were constantly served to the prisoners who were in a continual state of intoxication.’ The ‘New Gaol’ as it was initially known, was intended to improve conditions for prisoners, with single cells and the opportunity of exercise in open yards.

As opened in 1796, Kilmainham Gaol was designed by Sir John Trail, an engineer thought to have come to this country from Scotland and employed first by Dublin Corporation and then by the Grand Canal Company to work on the completion of this project and bring fresh water to the city. Although dismissed in 1777 after the standard of work on the project was found to be defective and the expenditure to have exceeded estimates (a not-unfamiliar tale in Ireland), Trail continued to flourish and, as engineer to the Revenue Commissioners, was responsible for designing twin octagonal lighthouses on Wicklow Head in 1781. The following year he was appointed high sheriff of Co Dublin and later knighted. In 1787, he was given the task of coming up with the design for a new gaol, which by the time of its completion almost a decade later, had cost the Grand Jury of County Dublin some £22,000. At the time, both the gaol and its surroundings looked very different from the way they do today. Built on a rise above the river Liffey known as Gallows Hill, it was then surrounded by open fields, the intention being that fresh air would be able to circulate through the prison. As first constructed, the building looked somewhat different from what can be seen today. Facing north, Trail’s facade was centred on a three-bay breakfront with long wings running back on either side to create a U-shaped prison. Each of the wings held cells while the main block was used by the gaolers. Enclosed behind high stone walls, a series of yards to the rear were used for exercise or various activities. The main entrance was at the front, incorporating vermiculated stone work and a number of writhing forms: what precisely they represent – snakes? dragons? a hydra? – and who was responsible for this carving remains unknown. Directly above it was an opening with a gallows and this was where public hangings took place: the last such event occurred in 1865.

Within a matter of just a few decades, Kilmainham Gaol had proven to provide insufficient space for the numbers of prisoners being sent there and in 1840 a block of thirty cells was added to the west wing. However, the onset of the Great Famine led to a further rise in admissions (being in gaol which provided accommodation and food, no matter how inadequate either, was preferable to starving on the streets), and in 1857 an architectural competition was held for enlarging and remodelling the building. The eventual winner was John McCurdy, now best-remembered for having also designed the Shelbourne Hotel a few years later. At Kilmainham, McCurdy oversaw the demolition of the east wing and its replacement with a new three storey over basement, bow-ended block. Inspired by the 18th century social reformer Jeremy Bentham’s ideas for a Panopticon prison, the ninety-six cells here ran around a central glazed atrium, making it easier for warders to see what was going on while also offering a light and airy space within the prison. At the front of the building, two bow-fronted wings were added, thereby creating a courtyard: that to the east held the prison governor’s apartments, and that to the west the Stonebreakers’ Yard (which is where the 1916 executions took place). Ironically, towards the end of the 19th century, the number of criminals being jailed declined, and as a result, the official Prisons Board decided to close some gaols, including Kilmainham, which closed in 1911. Three years later, with the outbreak of the First World War, it found a new use as a military billet for new army recruits, and as a military detention centre. In the aftermath of the failed Easter Rising, as already mentioned, 14 key figures, half of whom had been signatories of the Proclamation of the Republic, were brought to Kilmainham Gaol and there executed. With the onset of the War of Independence, the buildings were once more used by the British government to house Republican prisoners and then, with the subsequent Civil War, it was likewise employed by the Free State authorities to imprison and sentence their Anti-Treaty opponents, several of whom were executed. In 1924, with the Civil War at an end, the gaol was emptied of prisoners, an official closing order being issued in 1929, after which it was left to moulder. By the 1950s, large sections of the site were in a ruinous condition but then a voluntary group, the Kilmainham Gaol Restoration Society, boldly took the initiative to rescue the building, with work beginning in 1960 and being sufficiently complete to open to the public in April 1966, marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Easter Rising. In 1986, the property was transferred to state care and has since been the responsibility of the Office of Public Works

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Looking Forward

Jan1

The Irish Aesthete wishes all friends and followers and Happy, Peaceful and Prosperous New Year. Looking forward, later in the spring, a new book of photographs from this site is due to be published. It will include all four sites seen here today: can you identify them, and say what they have in common? All will be made clear in due course…

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Looking Back

Dec29

Looking back over posts during 2025, the Irish Aesthete seems to have featured a lot of castles. Some of them are the real thing, dating back to the Cambro-Norman period, such as those above: Castlecarra, County Mayo (see Difficult to Locate without a Guide « The Irish Aesthete), Greencastle (see A Noble and Commanding Appearance « The Irish Aesthete)and Dundrum Castle (see Boldly and Picturesquely Seated « The Irish Aesthete), both County Down.

Some of them while commonly named castles, are actually tower houses from the late-medieval period, such as Balief Castle, County Kilkenny (see Beyond Balief « The Irish Aesthete) and Ballinlough Castle, County Offaly (see A Picturesque Eye Catcher « The Irish Aesthete) and Synone Castle, County Tipperary (see In Circles « The Irish Aesthete).

Some of them have been repaired or are undergoing restoration, like Barryscourt Castle, County Cork (see Reopened « The Irish Aesthete), Bremore Castle, County Dublin (see A Work in Progress « The Irish Aesthete) and Drimnagh Castle, Dublin (see Showing What Can be Done « The Irish Aesthete).

And finally, some are 19th century reimaginings of an ancient castle, such as Castlewellan, County Down (see A Somewhat Institutional Air « The Irish Aesthete), Johnstown Castle, County Wexford (see This Magnificent Building « The Irish Aesthete) and Belfast Castle (see Time for a Makeover « The Irish Aesthete). Are there further examples to be discovered and investigated in the year ahead? Without doubt, the answer is yes and the Irish Aesthete looks forward to doing so in 2026…

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Happy Christmas

Dec25

The Irish Aesthete wishes all friends and followers a Happy and Safe Christmas

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Little Changed

Dec22

The origins of the Baker family in Ireland are unclear, but it would seem that Thomas Baker, an Englishman, came here and settled, likely in the first decades of the 17th century. Based in Knockordan, County Tipperary, he came to rent large areas of farmland in the vicinity, running to more than 3,730 acres, from local Roman Catholic owners. Disaster befell both them and their tenant in 1641 with the onset of the Confederate Wars: in the case of Baker and his family, they were besieged by the rebels and, following his death in February 1642, forced to surrender everything they had, down to their ‘wearing apparel’, before the family – a widow with six children – were turned out of doors. As for the owners of the land that Baker had rented, they too lost their property, divided up following the Down Survey in the following decade. However, because Thomas had loaned money to some of his landlords on the security of mortgages they had taken out against the properties he rented from them, his son Walter was able to lay claim to some of what had been lost and, in the years after the Restoration of 1660, the Bakers regained outright some of what had once been held only in leasehold. Thereafter they seem to have prospered and in October 1704, William Baker, a great-grandson of the original Thomas, purchased from Charles Blount – a grandson of one of the Down Survey commissioners – the lands on which Lismacue House now stands for the sum of £923. The original residence, long since gone, was one of the largest in this part of the country and with five hearths incurring a tax of 10 shillings, according to the 1665 hearth-money records.

Approached at the end of a long avenue of lime trees planted in the mid-18th century by Hugh Baker, the present house at Lismacue replaced an earlier residence elsewhere on the estate. This building was commissioned in 1813 by Hugh’s grandson William from Kilkenny architect William Robertson. However, the owner was not able to enjoy his new home for long because a short time later he was murdered. As reported by the Rev. William Burke in his History of Clonmel (1907), ‘The event, however, which stirred the county to its depths was the murder of William Baker of Lismacue. Returning from Cashel Sessions, November 27th, 1815, he was met by two men at the gates of Thomastown Park and shot through the head. Though a reward of £5,000 was offered, and though scores of suspected persons were lodged in the bridewells, the secret which was known to hundreds, was long kept and the efforts of the Crown baffled.’ Eventually, it seems, two men called Keating and Maher were imprisoned in Cahir where the former ‘through connivance or otherwise’, obtained some whisky which apparently loosened tongues. Their conversation being overheard, Keating was subsequently induced to give evidence, and Maher was hanged. Since the murdered man had no children, Lismacue was then inherited by his nephew, Hugh Baker who was still a minor at the time. He and his wife Marion Conyers were responsible for finishing the interiors now seen in the house. After his death in 1868, he was succeeded by his son, also called Hugh, but when the latter in turn died in 1887, the family almost lost everything as a result of needful land sales. Fortunately, the third Hugh’s widow, Frances Massy, remarried and her second husband, Major Ralph Bunbury, was able to buy Lismacue and the surrounding lands for what was described as a ‘low price’ so that the Bakers could continue to live there. Eventually, following the major’s death, his siblings transferred the place ‘on generous terms’ to one of the third Hugh’s sons, Charles Conyers Massy Baker. Today, Lismacue continues to be occupied by his descendants.

Designed in a mildly Tudorbethan style, Lismacue’s exterior is ornamented with hood mouldings over the windows, and dainty crenellations and pinnacles along the roofline. Of two storeys over-basement, the facade is three bays wide, the centre bay distinguished by a single-storey limestone Gothick porch supported by columns. A service wing to the immediate north looks as though it concludes in a chapel, since the gable here holds a large arched window with Gothick tracery. However, this is illusory, since the interior is divided into several floors. Inside, the same restrained use of Gothick ornament prevails, but the overall tone is late Georgian classical. Many of the main reception rooms still contain wallpapers first hung in the 1830s and indeed, the charm of Lismacue is precisely that, ever since built, successive owners have never been in a position to undertake largescale alterations. Little changed since first constructed, in spirit and style, it still retains the style and spirit of an early 19th century Irish country house.

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Pathetic Residue

Dec19

A gate lodge, almost all that remains of Ballywilliam, a former estate in County Limerick owned by the Maunsell family from the mid-18th century onwards. The main house here has long gone but this pathetic residue serves as a memory of what was once here. In his guide to the lodges of Munster, J.A.K. Dean ascribes the building’s design to Charles Frederick Anderson, and suggests a date after 1824 when Ballywilliam was inherited by George Meares Maunsell. A wonderful example of neo-classical design, the building has a pedimented breakfront supported by Doric columns, all in crisp cut limestone. Flanked by a curtain wall, pedimented projections extend the single-storey lodge to accommodate three rooms, that in the centre having a brick-vaulted ceiling, the floor below now covered in detritus.

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