Storied Homes of Ulster – Jonathan Swift’s Cottage, Kilroot

 The following is part of a series of articles which appeared in the Belfast Telegraph in 1953 under the pen name 'Fina'.

Jonathan Swift’s Cottage, Kilroot

DOWN a country lane that divides two fields and alongside Kilroot railway station stands a curious oval thatched cottage, surely a prototype of the fairy tale gingerbread house. To this quaint dwelling place came Jonathan Swift in 1694 when he was twenty-seven years old, and it was here, towards the end of his service at Kilroot. that he finished his "Tale of a Tub."

Dissatisfied with his life at Moor Park as Sir William Temple's protege, his curious moral sense had made him feel justified in taking Holy Orders. Other employment had been offered to him in the form of a clerkship with the Master of the Rolls in Ireland, and thus the Church was not merely a last resort.

Swift had met King William the Third at Moor Park; the King had promised future favours, and when the prebend of Kilroot, in the Diocese of Connor, became available, the Lord Lieutenant exercised the Royal Patronage and bestowed the prebend upon Jonathan Swift by letters patent.

Beside Belfast Lough, among the dour fisher folk of Kilroot, Jonathan Swift, later to benefit the Irish in so many ways and to become the first settler to think of himself as Anglo-Irish, spent two bitter winters.

There were few adherents of the Church of Ireland in Kilroot, the fisher folk being mainly Presbyterian, and Jonathan Swift's church was usually empty. The unhappy young minister, nicknamed “the mad parson" by the Kilroot folk, would walk the shores of the Lough, his gown flapping in the wind, skimming stones into the sea.

Picture the scene as the wild-eyed young man carried great boulders into church followed by the wondering fisherfolk, then imagine their bewilderment when, having achieved a hearing Jonathan Swift locked the doors and delivered to his unwilling congregation a short and scathing sermon.

His sojourn at Kilroot was not one of unrelieved grimness. He had the attention of families like the Dobbs of Castle Dobbs, and, in Carrickfergus itself of the Clements and of Lord and Lady Donegall. Moreover his near neighbour was a Mr. Waring, a friend of his Trinity days, nephew of the Rev. Roger Waring, rector of Donaghcloney (Waringstown), where Swift's Uncle Adam had a house. Jonathan Swift met and fell in love with Mr. Waring's sister, Jane, whom he promptly re-christened Varina Valina, with a small income of her own, proved to be a rather calculating little flirt who put a number of difficulties in the way of marriage with Swift; she “enjoyed" ill-health; she feared poverty on the £90 a year that made up the stipend of the livings of Kilroot, Templecorran and Ballynure. Indeed, her prevarication quite cured her admirer of love, for he never again forgot himself in passion.

Their correspondence continued spasmodically after Swift's return to Moor Park; then, when Swift came back to Ireland to take his seat in St. Patrick’s Cathedral with an income now of some £200 a year, Varina wrote with greater ardour. Now it was Varina who was anxious for marriage, but a cold and angry letter from Swift, setting out his requirements from a wife and his own shortcomings as a husband, finished the correspondence.

Varina never married, and the next year Stella, now nineteen, came from Moor Park to Ireland — Stella whom Swift is reputed later to have married secretly in the Bishop of Clogher’s garden.

FINA.

Next week — Clougher Palace.

Belfast Telegraph,  3 June 1953.

Storied Homes of Ulster – Dobbins Castle

 The following is part of a series of articles which appeared in the Belfast Telegraph in 1953 under the pen name 'Fina'.

Dobbins Castle, Carrickfergus

Of all the castles that McSkimmin listed in his history of Carrickfergus, Dobbin's is the most easily recognisable. To-day it is an hotel, but its low-ceilinged rooms and warren- like passages retain most of their sixteenth century character. Not many years ago, during alterations to the place, a cavernous fireplace, large enough to roast an ox, was discovered. The great oak beam that forms the chimney-piece of this monstrous hearth, is blackened by the heat of many fires. Adjacent to the fireplace is a cupboard behind which a secret passage runs to one of the bedrooms. This was, doubtless, a way of escape in more troublous times.

The name of Dobbin figures largely in the annals of Carrickfergus. Several of the family became mayors of the town. It seems that as early as the seventeenth century the castle was kept as an inn, although the Dobbins were of good and ancient family.

William Dobbin, who was mayor in 1576, 1580, and 1583, was a friend of that gallant Elizabethan, Sir Moyses Hill, founder of the Downshire family. Sir Moyses, a man of ancient lineage but no fortune, came to Ireland to serve under the Earl of Essex, and having proved himself a most able soldier was made governor of Olderfleet Castle. Around 1600 he was a frequent visitor to Dobbin's Castle, and there he met and fell in love with Anne, William Dobbin's beautiful daughter, then only twenty. This hard bitten soldier of over forty made such an impression on the lovely Anne that she married him, and for several years they lived at Dobbin's Castle. Anne proved to be a good wife and mother, both to her own son, Arthur, and to her little stepson. Peter.

It is interesting to trace the thread that links the Downshire family with this little pre-Elizabethan house in Carrickfergus, High Street. Sir Moyses had built himself a fortified manor in County Down, which he called Hill's Court. The locals re-named it the Hall of the Hills — now Hillhall, and it was to Hillhall that Sir Moyses brought Anne and his two young sons. In his thirty or so years of marriage with Anne he made the Hall of the Hills a happy well managed place. The forty thousand acres were well farmed, the tenants prospered, and the old baronial customs of a yule log at Christmas and a Maypole in the Spring were kept

Let us trace this linking thread a little further, for it takes us to the very heart of Ulster.

When Sir Moyses died, full of years and grace, he was succeeded by his eldest son, Peter, Anne's stepson. Peter rebuilt the old stronghold of the Magenisses, founded a town on the mound that formed the villages, and originated Hillsborough. Peter did not live very long and was succeeded by his only son, Francis. As Francis died without issue, the estate passed to Anne Dobbin's son, Arthur, the child that was born within a year of the marriage of the Carrickfergus beauty to the Elizabethan warrior.

FINA.

Next week — Derrymore House, Newry.

Belfast Telegraph, 20 May, 1953.

Storied Homes of Ulster – Derrymore House

 The following is part of a series of articles which appeared in the Belfast Telegraph in 1953 under the pen name 'Fina'.

Derrymore House

ALTHOUGH built at a time of great classical influence Derrymore House, Co. Armagh, remains obstinately Irish, showing none of the Attic style. It is a quaint, one-storied dwelling built of granite although this is discovered only where the warm amber plaster has been chipped away.

The thick, gnarled stems of wistaria, planted long ago, have crept up the walls and embedded themselves in the shabby thatch that sits upon the house like a beloved and battered hat. A red rose brushes gently against the panes of the long, Georgian windows — the same windows through which Chancellor Corry and Lord Castlereagh might have been seen as they thrashed out the details of the 1801 Act of Union.

Derrymore means "great oak," these lands were probably at one time part of the primeval forest. It seems that for centuries there has been a house at Derrymore, for there are records that a Henry M'Shane O'Neill was living hereabouts very early in the 17th century as life tenant of the lands of Camlough.

The present house was built by Sir Isaac Corry, Chancellor of the Exchequer in the last Irish Parliament before the Act of Union. The story of the origination of the Act in this very house, of the special Dublin road made for Chancellor Corry, and of the Chancellor's duel with Grattan are too well known to be repeated here.

The dwelling is built round three sides of a square, the room known as the Chancellor's room, being at one time the entrance. As the Corrys became more powerful a more imposing entrance, complete with pillared portico, was made at the opposite end.

About the middle of the 19th century Derrymore passed into the hands of James Richardson, a member of the Society of Friends who had built a model village round a factory at nearby Bessbrook. Mr. Richardson believed wholeheartedly in total abstinence, and had built his model village to demonstrate his theory that when strong drink is absent there is need for no great force of police, and that there is as little use for the pawnshop and the moneylender as for the publican.

It is interesting to note that another great Quaker, Mr. Cadbury, visited Bessbrook before building his own model village of Bourneville.

To-day Derrymore House has been given to the National Trust and much work is being done to restore it to its original beauty. Workmen are busy in a patient re-building of the places that time’s fell hand has decayed. A new thatch of Norfolk reeds is to replace Derrymore’s present battered hat. When all is ready, this historic house will be open to view, complete with the furniture of the period. — Fina.

Next week:— Dean Swift's House, Kilroot.

Belfast Telegraph, 27 May 1953.

Storied Homes of Ulster – Florencecourt

 The following is part of a series of articles which appeared in the Belfast Telegraph in 1953 under the pen name 'Fina'.

Florencecourt

AT the end of the eighteenth century Nash made a survey of the mansions of England, travelling on horseback. My survey of the mansions of Ulster has been made in far greater comfort. Whatever the differences in our mode of travel, I am convinced that Nash would agree that none of the lordly homes he surveyed was lovelier than Florencecourt.

Travelling from Enniskillen on a day when the sky was as tender a blue as an angel's eyes, when the blackthorn was starred with white, when every tree wore green lace and when every hedge and ditch was thickly clustered with primroses, I came to Florencecourt.

The house is in the centre of a green and fertile plain, surrounded by an amphitheatre of blue hills. It is said to be the finest mid-Georgian mansion in Ulster, but more than that, it is a beloved home, bearing the fragrance of a long and honourable past.

There has been little change in its appearance since the house was built about 1736. except that slates have replaced the original oak shingles of the roof.

Stately in the beauty of warm stone, the house overlooks a rolling demesne. A pair of toy cannon guard the great front door of pine on which gleams a fat brass knocker These cannon, taken from an American privateer, are fired to celebrate the coming-of-age of the heir.

The interior of the dwelling is cool and graceful. Many of the ceilings were decorated by Italian workmen; charming cherubs blow out their rounded cheeks on the dining room ceiling, and throughout there is the loving attention to detail found only when workmen are also craftsmen.

Florencecourt was built by Sir John Cole, who was the first Baron Mt. Florence.

Enniskillen owes much to the Cole family. Sir William Cole, who was Plain Captain Cole when the Commissioners of Plantation arrived in Enniskillen in 1609, so protected the town that he saved it from the horrors of the 1641 rising. Sir William, knighted in 1613, the year that he became first Provost and Warder of the Castle, was responsible for warning the Justices in Dublin of the intended rising of October 23, 1641.

It happened that a certain Captain Rory Maguire had invited Sir William, together with other prominent citizens to dine with him. It was Captain Maguire's intention to hold his guests hostages for the cession of Enniskillen. However, a relative of Captain Maguire, Brian Maguire, warned Sir William of the plot, whereupon he hastily departed.

The other guests sensing something amiss, departed also, and the plot was foiled. Sir William despatched a messenger to apprise (he Justices, but unfortunately there was a delay and the Justices did not receive the message until October 22, the day before the rising.

Negotiations are now on hand for the National Trust to undertake the upkeep of Florencecourt, so that there is a distinct possibility that at some time the public may be privileged to view its beauties.

FINA

Next week — Dobbin's Castle. Carrickfergus.

Belfast Telegraph – Wednesday, 13th May 1953

Storied Homes of Ulster – Castlecoole

The following is part of a series of articles which appeared in the Belfast Telegraph in 1953 under the pen name 'Fina'.

Castlecoole

IN 1656 John Corry, a Belfast merchant, purchased Castlecoole from Henry Gilbert. For “eight hundred and sixtie pounds sterling" he bought the "castle, toune and lands" of Castlecoole. The deed set forth that there were:— ‘One Castle. one capitall messuage, 200 messuages, 200 cottages, two water mills, one Done (dower house), 200 gardens, three orchards, 600 acres of land, 300 acres of meadow, 800 acres of pasture, 500 acres of wood, 500 acres of furze and heath, 600 acres of moor, 500 acres of turbary and 600 acres of mariss, with the appurtenances.”

John Corry restored the dwelling, but in the lifetime of his son, Capt. James Corry, it was burned. In 1689 Governor Hamilton ordered its destruction as being an outpost that was in danger of falling into enemy hands.

Captain James Corry was singularly unfortunate. He had raised a force to fight for the Protestant cause, but for complicated reasons the townspeople of Enniskillen turned against him and he went to England.

His son John served King William and Queen Mary both in Ireland and in Flanders and eventually Captain James was able to prove his fidelity to the Crown and to obtain some compensation for the losses he had sustained. He built a Queen Anne house to replace the devastated dwelling.

Armar Lowry-Corry, great, great grandson of the original John was created Baron Belmore in 1781, Lord Belmore, taking advantage of an alteration to the public road to Dublin, was able to add greatly to the demesne. The new public road ran along the foot of a hill in Goregonnell townland known as Standing-stone, and about this hill a pleasant tale is told.

An enormous stone, two or three tons in weight, stands on the highest part of the hill, and tradition has it that a giant, wanting to stride from the Cuilagh Mountains to Toppid Mountain used the rock as a stepping stone.

The first Lord Belmore commissioned James Wyatt to design the present Castle. He purchased his own materials, the Portland stone being carried to Ireland in the brig “Martha," chartered for the purpose. It was landed at Ballyshannon, carted by oxen to Lough Erne, conveyed to Enniskillen by lighter, and finally carted to Castlecoole.

When we contemplate this regal place, almost mathematical in its Grecian precision, it seems miraculous that all those difficulties were overcome. Gleaming in the sun this princely house is in a most princely setting, the severity of its Attic grace softened by the greenness of the surrounding landscape.

As the building was acquired by the National Trust in 1951. It is possible for the public to visit the main rooms. The treasures are so numerous that only a few can be mentioned. Much of the furniture was designed by James Wyatt, and made on the premises. The piasterwork throughout is wondrous in its grace and formal delicacy, The saloon and drawing room have a distinctly French air, being rich with gilt and brocade.

Delicate Aubusson carpels cover the floors in dining and drawing rooms, and many exquisite pieces of rare Dresden and Sevres china are displayed.

The wonderfully wrought staircase ascends to a lobby, serving the first floor bedrooms. On one side of this lobby is the Bow Room, now a museum, in which Wyatt’s original drawings are to be found. On the other side is the State bedroom, prepared for George IV when he visited Ireland in 1821 to open Kingston Harbour. The monarch never slept in this room, but it remains just as it was prepared for him. The red flock paper is still on the walls, the Spode china rests on mantlepiece and dressing table and three steps lead up to the fabulous gold and crimson canopied bed.

Next week — Florencecourt, Enniskillen.

Belfast Telegraph, Wednesday, 4th May 1953.

Storied Homes of Ulster – Richhill Castle

The following is part of a series of articles which appeared in the Belfast Telegraph in 1953 under the pen name 'Fina'.

Richhill Castle

Richhill lies off the Portadown to Armagh road. Pleasant Georgian houses form three sides of a square at the top of a hill, and Richhill Castle faces them.

The castle proclaims its age; two wings project from each side of the entrance in the Jacobean manner, their Dutch gables echoed by smaller gables in the central part of the house. Inside, there is a richness of black oak. From the fine wide hall a splendid staircase rises, broad enough to allow the sweeping skirts of the ladies of the 17th century to pass uncrushed.

The seven-foot thick walls could unfold many tales could they but speak; they might even tell the truth about the passage reputed to run from the cellars to the Inn. How many confidences must have been whispered in the deep windows!

The demesne at one time enclosed part of the primeval forest. About 1610 the area was known as Muldory, and Francis Sacheverell of Leicester was granted an undertaking there.

He is known to have resided in the Manor House in 1618. Sacheverell’s daughter married a gentleman by the name of Richardson, and he It was who built the castle and gave it the name of Richhill.

The castle has associations with King William. There is still to be seen "King William's stump," the remains of a giant beech to which the warrior King is said to have tethered his horse whilst he slept, when on his way to the Battle of the Boyne.

Dolly Munroe, famed Dublin beauty, graced this place with her loveliness after her marriage to one of the Richardsons in 1775. Goldsmith referred to Dolly's beauty in his poem, "The Haunch of Venison." He wrote:
       “Of the neck and breast I had to dispose.
       “Twas a neck and breast to rival Munroe's.”

Before her marriage Dolly had been courted by the Viceroy of Ireland Lord Townsend. So anxious was he to secure her that he sent his coach, complete with six running footmen, to call at her house three times each week.

Another of the lady's admirers was the Provost of Trinity. When he died he left her all his prints, saying that they would grace her boudoir far more successfully than they had graced his library. The lady's portrait hangs in the Irish National Gallery. Should her ghost return, she would find her old home sadly altered. Only one wing is inhabited, and the beautiful wrought iron gates have disappeared. They stand, a testimony to the craftsmanship of a bygone age, at the Governor's residence in Hillsborough.

Next week – Castle Coole, Enniskillen.

Belfast Telegraph, Wednesday, April 29, 1953

 

Storied Homes of Ulster – Carrick Blacker

The following is part of a series of articles which appeared in the Belfast Telegraph in 1953 under the pen name 'Fina'.

Carrick Blacker

CARRICK BLACKER reveals itself from a distance by the characteristic clump of dark cypresses which usually surround a large country house in Ulster. Concealed from the road, it lies between Banbridge and Portadown. The house is approached by a long and graceful avenue of trees, its Flemish bond brickwork standing rich against the darkness of the cypresses.

There is sadness and a feeling of mortality about Carrick Blacker. The little whispering airs have crept about the place, nibbling away, here a little of the brickwork and crumbling there some of the stonework, so that only a shabby shadow of splendour now remains.

The heavy iron-studded door with its great black knocker and handle is as strong as it was in the days of William and Mary; nobility there is still in the fine gables, and the elegance of well-proportioned windows, but the finials from the gables and parapet are lying on the lawn, and the gracious garden is quite overgrown.

Built in 1692, the house was the seat of the Blackers, who claim descent from Blacair, King of the Danes, and founder of Dublin in the tenth century.

It seems strangely apt that Col. Blacker should at one time have had in his possession two ancient weapons, found in a nearby bog, attributed to the Danes who fought in a battle hereabouts in 941.

These are not the only relics of the past, for the house once contained the saddlecloth and gauntlet used by King William at the Battle of the Boyne.

The walls of Carrick Blacker would stand forever, but the roof is sadly dilapidated. It was almost a relief to turn from the decaying house to the neat and well-kept farm buildings which stand beside it. An enormous and ferocious bull glared from a pen opposite the kitchen quarters of the mansion. Gleaming white tiles lined the dairy walls, contrasting strangely with the mouldering parapets.

Houses like Carrick Blacker are woven into the very fabric of Ulster's history, unequalled examples of their period and style, and everywhere they are falling into decay.

FINA.

Since brass, nor stone, not earth nor boundless sea,
But sad mortality o'er-sways their power
Flout with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O how shall summer's honey breath hold out
Against the wreckful siege of battering days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays?

O fearful meditation! where, alack,
Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid?
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back,
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
O, none, unless this miracle have might,
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.

(Shakespeare)

Next week – Richhill.

Belfast Telegraph, Wednesday, 22nd April 1953.