Knapton, The Mother’s Lawn

October 9, 2021October 12, 2021 / cuffesboro / 1 Comment

Carrigan says that Knapton was known by the Irish speakers of Kilkenny as ‘Clooinăvomm’ (History and Antiquities of the Diocese of Ossory II 386). The forms ‘Clone John’, ‘Cloghne John’, ‘Clonejohne’ are also found in other 16th century documents. It is not clear what the origin of this placename is, but it must have the appearance of ‘Cluain a’ Mhaim, the Mother’s lawn ’.

With the dissolution of the monasteries during the reign of Henry VIII, church land became the property of the English crown and the land of Abbeyleix was confiscated and granted in 1562 to Thomas Butler, Earl of Ormond, in recognition of his service. However he died without male issue and so by 1637 the manor was again safely in the hands of the Crown. It may be that Knapton was at that stage part of the Ormond estate.

In 1633 Dr Purcell, abbot of Abbeyleix became embroiled in a scandal which was reported to the Vatican. It was alleged that he had ‘abducted and deprived of her virginity’ one Miss Mary Fitzpatrick, daughter of the Baron of Upper Ossory. As the Fitzpatricks were based at Watercastle, very close to the site of Abbeyleix, it seems that the Cistercians’ connection with the locality had not wholly been severed. Purcell was acquitted, with the suggestion that the story had been fabricated to blackmail him.

Knapton is not listed on the Down Survey or in the Books of Survey and Distribution

The surrounding 20 townlands were all defined as Crown Lands in 1641, and had been acquired by Sir William Temple by 1670 – all with the exception of Knapton alone which is listed as 1641 Owner: Land, Unforfeited (Protestant) 1670 Owner: Land, Unforfeited (Protestant)

There is no reference to Clonoyvam or Knapton in the Fiants of Elizabeth I, and no castle is marked on Petty’s map. The probability is that between Ormond’s death in 1637 and 1641 it was granted to a protestant planter, probably from York or Norfolk. Though there is a Knapton just outside York, it is more likely that the name comes from Knapton Hall in Norfolk. Knapton Hall was built around 1500-1530 by Thomas Green. It was then subdivided into parts owned by different members of the same family so the property was known as the Knapton Greens. It was significantly remodelled and an extension was added in the early 1600s. In 1637 it was sold to Bernard Hale, master of Peterhouse College, Cambridge – he left the house in his will to the college who owned it for the next 258 years. Possibly one of the homeless Greens came to Laois after its sale in 1637.

In 1663 the Ormond estate was leased to Sir Edward Massey for ninety nine years. Edward Massey was the fifth son of John Massey of Coddington, Cheshire and his wife Anne Grosvenor, daughter of Richard Grosvenor of Eaton, Cheshire. He may have been a London apprentice before serving in the Dutch army against the armies of Philip III of Spain, who ruled the Spanish Netherlands . In 1639, he appears as a captain of pioneers in the army raised by Charles I to fight against the Scots. At the outbreak of the English Civil War, he was with the King at York, but he soon joined the Parliamentary army. He joined the Presbyterian group in the Long Parliament. He was one of the 11 Members impeached by the Army in June 1647, and took refuge in Holland. He returned in September 1648, but was imprisoned after Pride’s Purge. On 18 Jan. 1649 he escaped and joined Charles II, under whom he served in the Worcester campaign in 1651. He was imprisoned in the Tower, but escaped again in August 1652, and became one of the most active and daring royalist conspirators. As a member of the Cavalier Parliament he was vociferously anti-Catholic. Clarendon described him as “well-meaning, though wonderfully vain and weak”.

With the death of Sir Edward in 1674 the property became the inheritance of his nephew and namesake, yet by 1675 the trustees of the will had sold the manor for £2,500 to Denny Muschamp for a ninety nine year term. From about 1670 until near the end of his life Muschamp acted as secretary and agent to his father-in-law, Archbishop Michael Boyle, primate and lord chancellor, in both Boyle’s private affairs and public duties as archbishop, as lord chancellor, and as one of the lords justices of Ireland.

Knapton may still not be part of the Vesey estate at this stage. In the early 18th century it was the property of the Wallis family, who were of Springmount and also leasing Portrane Castle in Dublin. However as there are leases 40 years later of Knapton from the Vesey family to Wallis (1764) maybe it was already part of the Vesey estate.

Wallis, Pigott & Drysdale

Frances Sadlier Vaughan b 1698 at Golden Grove, Roscrea, m (articles dated 17 May, 1718) Ralph Wallis, ot Springmount and Knapton, Queen’s Co. His granddaughter married Lord Mountjoy and his younger son Ralph’s descendants became the Wallis Helys, subsequently Hely Hutchinson, Earls of Dongaghmore

His eldest son Robert of Springmount and Knapton married Editha, dau of Sir John Osborne of Newtown Anner Clonmel, but had no children. Her uncle Sir Nicholas Osborne had married Mary, daughter of Bishop Smyth of Limerick, so she had cousins by marriage at Borris Castle. Robert died between 22 Sept 1764 and 14 May 1768 (RoD 265.72.170666) and she remarried Herny L’estrange whose family came from Moystown, Offaly, a house that was burnt down in 1925.

De Vesci MS 38,905 [1760s] contains a small bundle of letters to the 2nd Lord Knapton about Abbeyleix estate affairs, principally the letting of Knapton and Boley dating to 1763 and 1765-6 The chief correspondents are Capt. and Mrs Robert Wallis, sub-tenants of Knapton in 1766; the former discusses the furniture and effects in the house and the future of the adjoining meadows, and the latter (who presumably writes after her husband’s death) enquires about sub-letting Knapton to the highest bidder and states that she sees no reason why ‘Mr [George?] Pigott’ (her immediate landlord?) should have the house on any terms but that. Also included in the bundle is ‘An inventory and valuation of the furniture, cattle, corn, hay and brewing utensils of George Pigott Esq. at Knapton, Sept. 9th 1763’, presumably drawn up by him prior to the sub-letting of the house to Robert Wallis

The deed of 14 May 1768 referred to mentions a lease dated 22 Sept 1764 when Lord Knapton leased Knapton to Captain Robert Wallis, lately held by George Pigott, for the lives of Robert Wallis, Editha his wife and of Jane Curtis daughter of John Curtis of Dublin. It recites that Robert had died and Editha was remarried to Henry L’estrange. It gave a new lease to for the lives of Editha and Thomas Pigott capt of the 4th regiment of horse,

The George Pigott is of Chetwynd (d 1773) who married Jane Warburton of Garryhinch. Rather bizarrely his father Emmanuel Pigott married Jane’s sister Judith Warburton, as his third wife. So George’s sister in law was also his mother in law. Hello Oedipus!

George Pigott had a slanging match with Edward Deane of Dangan, Co Kilkenny in the House of Commons in 1746. It ended with a duel in which Pigott killed Deane. .

George is the father of the Thomas Pigott who became Maj.-Gen. Thomas Pigott. Born on 13 October 1734, Thomas married Priscilla Carden, daughter of William Carden (of Lismore, near Ballybrophy) and Gertrude Warburton of Garryhinch, on 13 September 1763. He died on 12 October 1793 at age 58. The de Vesci papers contain “a commission to administer the oath of a justice of the peace to Thomas Pigott of Knapton, who had recently been added to the commission of the peace for Queen’s County, 1772”

For a period in the 1720s it appears that it was part of Griffith Drysdale of Watercastle’s estate. From manuscripts at Kilboy, Co. Tipperary, T. U. Sadleir, Analecta Hibernica No. 12 (Jan., 1943), p150 in 1726 Thomas Drysdale of Roxboro is leasing a mill at Ballyhasty for the lives of Thomas Drysdale, James Drysdale, his son, and Griffith Drysdale then of Knapton. Griffyth Drysdale was a lawyer (Grays Inn 4 June 1688) from a family of mostly clerics. His brother Hugh Drysdale, became Lt Gov of Virginia. His father was also Hugh Drysdale, Archdeacon of Ossory, chaplain to the Duke of Ormond, and his mother was Elizabeth Kearney of Blanchville. When he transferred Moyne to Major Hugh Dysdale of Kilkenny in 1713 he was of Watercastle, and was also of Watercastle in later deeds and is said to have died at Watercastle in November 1731.

Did the 21-year-old John Denny Vesey move into Knapton after Drysdale’s death? So far no deed has been discovered transferring Drysdale’s interest, nor is it yet clear when it became part of the Abbeyleix estate.

Thomas Vesey (1668?–1730), was born in County Cork, when his father, John Vesey, was Dean there. He was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, and became a fellow of Oriel College. In 1698 he married Mary, only surviving daughter and heiress of Denny Muschamp, and through her acquired a considerable estate. On 13 July (patent 28 Sept.) 1698, he was created a Baronet, of Abbeyleix in the Baronetage of Ireland. He went on to become Bishop of Killaloe (1713–1714) and Bishop of Ossory (1714–1730). His son Sir John Denny Vesey, who was born at Abbeyleix in about 1709, was appointed governor of Queen’s County in 1746 and Baron Knapton on 10 April 1750

In Kevin O’Brien’s history of Abbeyleix he writes that the original Abbeyleix House was close to a small bridge on the Abbeyleix Estate still called Dakedok Bridge, which carried an old road known as “The Lord’s Walk” and came from the Mountrath direction, through Knapton and across the Monks’ Bridge. William Laffan’s history of Abbeyleix identifies a survey by Fanton Phelan of 1734 which shows directly across the Nore from the deerpark, a two-story dwelling with three prominent chimneys. Three other structures cluster near the church. The map situates the house somewhere close to the position today of the walled garden.

Knapton is also apparent to the south and it was from this that Sir John took his title when, in the culmination of his career, on 10 April 1750 he was elevated to the peerage as the first Baron Knapton. Within ten years, however, Knapton had been let, and around 1757-60 it was the birthplace of Jonah Barrington, who may also have been a sub tenant of George Pigott. Although one might get the impression from Jonah Barrington’s writings that the Barringtons lived there for generations in Lord Knapton’s lease to L’estrange of 1768 the Barringtons don’t get a mention. Presumably by this date the Vesey family had moved to the old Abbeyleix house shown on Phelan’s map.

Coote in his Statistical survey of 1801 notes that “Knapton demesne is on the estate of Abbeyleix highly ornamented with full grown timber and an excellent house built by the late Col Pigot” which would give it a date of post 1770. The only photo that I have seen shows a 7 bay, two storey over basement house, one bay deep, with a heavy moulding along the base of the parapet, and canted 3 bay windows on either side of a tripartite front door with a fanlight. The chimney stacks are in the back wall, allowing a generous width for the front hall. The 1840 OS map shows a considerable building to the rear, which might have been an earlier house. It is also possible that the original house was on the site of the present Knapton, which is marked on the 1840 OS map as Knapton House and became more a gamekeeper’s cottage, appearing as Knapton Cottage on the 1890 OS map. When the main house was being demolished in 1957 it was said to have dated back to the 16th century, but this seems unlikely. Though no photographs survive of the interior, Desmond Fitzgerald, The Knight of Glin, reported that they were exceptionally fine.

Trying to piece together the history from newspaper advertisements and deeds, Thomas Pigott, Esq of Knapton is mentioned in Saunders’s News-Letter Wednesday 25 February 1778.

in Nov 1787 Lord de Vesci is selling the wood at Knapton

SOI.D BY AUCTION, At Knapton, the Queen’s County, the property of the late Colonel Thomas Pigott, ewes and lambs; Wednesday 23 April 1794 Saunders’s News-Letter.

The builder’s son Sir George Pigott, Baronet, of Knapton (created 3 Oct 1808), married February 15 1794 Annabella daughter of the Right Hon Thomas Kelley[sic) of Kellyville Queen’s County late one of the judges of the court of Common Pleas, and a very rich man. In 1798 Pigott was a lieutenant colonel in Roden’s Regiment of Fencible Cavalry, the ruthless exterminators of the 1798 rebels.

George Pigott was still at Knapton 1803 but in 1809 – “Sir George Pigott then of Kellyville is letting Knapton for up to 3 years”. In 1810 was still trying to let Knapton but was now resident in Warwick.

According to Leet’s directory (1814) the tenant was Mrs Morton, widow of John Morton, a surgeon, of Rockbrook, Ballyroan.

On the tithe applotment survey of 1826 Sir George Pigott is the occupier.

By 1830 he and his family had moved to Paris.

The Pilot reports:- The Earl of Pembroke, who passes his time more at Paris than any where else, is notorious for being an obstinate ninny, amid who out of mere opposition to his father, married a Sicilian Princess, more fair than wise or good! The owner of Wilton has neither the spirit, or fortitude, or sense, or generosity, of the celebrated Anne, Countess Dorset and Pembroke. But what does this matter if he pleases the daughters of Sir George Pigott, and lavishes his money upon the fair Josephine? There are some who say, that he is a brilliant specimen of our old aristocratic families.

Pigott died in Paris in 1844 “ PURSUANT to a Decree of the High Court of Chancery made in a cause Pigott against Pigott, the creditors of Sir George Pigott, formerly of Knapton, in Queen’s County, in Ireland, and late of Paris, in the Kingdom of France, Baronet (who died in the mouth of May 1844)”

On Saturday, June 2nd 1827 , at Brussels, at the hotel of the British Ambassador, William, son of Sir George Pigott, of Knapton_, in the Queen’s County, Bart., to Harriet, only child and heiress of the late General Jefferson, of Dullingham House, Cambridgeshire, and of the Viscountess Gormanstown. Freemans Journal 1763-1924, Wednesday, July 04, 1827

By 1827 the resident of Knapton was Hon & Rev Arthur Vesey, brother of the Viscount de Vesci. Vesey had married Sydney Johnstone of Armagh in 1810 and they had 10 children.

At Knapton, the Hon. Mrs. Vesey, of daughter. Saturday 17 October 1829. This was Louisa Catherine, their 10th and youngest child.

Saturday, December 08, 1832 died hon & Rev Arthur Vesey, brother of the Viscount de Vesci, at Knapton

In 1842 there was a sale of furniture on the instructions of the Hon Mrs Vesey

John Vesey, 2nd Viscount de Vesci, was married to Elizabeth Brownlow from Lurgan, and it was her nephew William Brownlow who next lived at Knapton. William’s entry in the County Families is succinct:- m- 1835 Charlotte, dau. of Mr. and Lady Charlotte Browne. Educated at Harrow ; is a Magistrate for Queen’s co., and a Dep. Lieut, for Co. Monaghan ; was formerly in the Army, and A.D.C. to Earl Amherst when Governor-General of India.

A Soup Kitchen

Through the exertions of William Brownlow, Esq , of Knapton House, assisted by K, L. Swan, Esq., and other gentlemen, a soup shop is about to be opened in Abbeyleix, and a large amount of subscriptions have been received for this truly good purpose. Kilkenny Journal, – Wednesday 30 December 1846

William Brownlow, esq. Napton, Abbeyleix 1847 Dublin Almanac

Any old parchments?

When in 1815 the Brownlow estate devolved on Charles Brownlow, afterwards Baron Lurgan, the Book of Armagh passed (with other MSS.?) to a younger brother, the Rev. Francis Brownlow of Knapton, as residuary legatee and then to his son William

In 1853 William sold the ninth-century manuscript to the Rev William Reeves charging the large sum of £300 which Reeves paid from his own limited resources, to prevent the manuscript being sold to a private collector or going abroad. Archbishop Beresford subsequently reimbursed him and presented it to the library of TCD.March 15, 1873 at Knapton, Queen’s County, Charlotte, wife of William Brownlow, Esq., and daughter of the late William and Lady Charlotte Browne died.

In 1874 William Brownlow moved into Martin’s Hotel, Baggot Street.

In 1875 Charles Colley Palmer,(1845-192) JP, DL of Rahan, Co Kildare was in residence – His brother Hamilton Palmer was renting Farmleigh.

Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 1875 Palmer, CC JP DL

Hamilton Palmer selling up estate of Mrs Palmer (Elizabeth Emily Anne Nugent) who died at Knapton 19 July 1897.

War games

In August 1899 11,00 soldiers took part in army manoeuvres at Abbeyleix, part of the Boer War training. Field-Marshal Lord Roberts arrived at Abbeyleix Station by the 11.30 train on Tuesday. and at once proceeded to headquarters at Knapton House. where, with others of his staff, he will reside throughout the struggle. Kilkenny Moderator – Saturday 12 August 1899

A Renaissance RM

In 1906 Murray Hornibrook RM (1873-1949), arrived. Botanist, art collector, tennis player and private secretary to George Wyndham the Attorney General of Ireland, he seems to have been something of a renaissance man.

He was the son of William Hornibrook of Kinsale (1827-1904) and Rosina Jane Murray (1843-1889) He was born in Hampstead, London on 10 Jul 1873 and died at Villa Louis Ondre, Etretat, France on 9 Sep 1949. He had 7 siblings and one half-brother from his father’s 1st marriage to Anne Smyth (1831-1860).

He was awarded the Royal Humane Society Medal 15 November 1900, for saving the life of Miss Christy at Kilkee, County Clare, Ireland. On 7/3/1906 Murray Hornibrook was married at the Chapel Royal, Dublin Castle to Gladys Thornley Thomson (1888 to 1965) only daughter of Sir William Thomson, M. D., M. Ch., LRCSI., Hon. Surgeon to H.M. the King in Ireland. Gladys’ mother was Margaret Dalrymple Stoker, Bram Stoker’s first cousin.

Princess Margaret of Connaught, Crown Princess of Sweden and granddaughter of Queen Victoria sent congratulations on Gladys’s engagement:

“The best thing I can wish you is to be as perfectly happy as I am…”

“I am sending you a tea set of Swedish china which I hope you will like & often use, it will be sent off soon, & I hope will arrive before the wedding, but parcels take such ages from here I don’t feel very sure.

With again my very best wishes,

Believe me

Yours sincerely,

Margaret

In 1905 he was still living in London and in 1906 he is shown at Knapton. In 1926 and 1928 he is living at Ryde House, Guildford, Surrey.

He was well known for his collection of dwarf conifers at Knapton. His book ‘Dwarf and Slow-growing Conifers’ (1923), revised and enlarged in 1939, records about 500 forms, and became and remains the standard reference work.

He left Ireland in 1922 and donated the bulk of his plants at Knapton House to Botanic Gardens at Glasnevin. His departure was probably hasted by the fact that his cousin Henry Hornibrook of Kinsale, Henry’s son Samuel and his nephew Herbert Woods were abducted by the IRA in Cork in 1922, Their bodies have never been found. In the Irish Times Wed, Jun 2, 1999, Kevin Myers wondered what happened to their killers? Did they go on to high office in Ireland? Did they found well-revered political dynasties? Myers goes on to discuss his interviews with late 20th century provos wo would seek absolution from certain priests for bombings and shootings knowing that an Our Father or Hail Mary would be the maximum penance, but reserve their sexual peccadilloes for priests, who might frown on murder but had no problem with lust and fornication.

Waltzing O’Donohue

By 1936 it was the home of John O’Donoghue, an all-Ireland waltzing champion, who was fined 2/6d for an unspecified transgression in July 1936.

Heartiest congratulations are extended to Mr. John O’Donoghue, Knapton House, Abbeyleix, and Miss Ciss Bannon, Pallas House, Portlaoighise, on having achieved 1st prize in the All-Ireland Old Time Waltzing Competition organised by the Irish Labour Party. The competition, which was the final of numerous eliminating contests, was held in the Four Provinces Ballroom, Dublin, on Easter Sunday night and attracted entries from practically every county in Ireland. In winning the much coveted trophies (two large silver cups and 25 guineas), Mr. O’Donoghue and his partner, “have proved what many of their friends have known them to be —first-rate dancers. Leinster Leader – Saturday 19 April 1947

When the main house was demolished in May 1957, the range of stable buildings at the rear, including the old carriage house, was retained, re-roofed and used as farm buildings.

The latter lost its roof in a severe accidental fire around 1962, after which the historic buildings, and the adjoining walled garden, were neglected. In 2020 the present Viscount de Vesci was considering redeveloping the existing buildings including the Old Carriage House into tourist and holiday accommodation.

THE ISLAND, ABBEYLEIX

October 2, 2021October 2, 2021 / cuffesboro / Leave a comment

A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS by Daniel Byrne Rothwell

The remains of The Island in 1980. The remaining outbuildings consisted of a large barn and what was originally two small houses at the end. The door of one of them was blocked up and these were converted to a four roomed house where Thomas Youell lived at the end of his life.

The Island, Abbeyleix is said to have been so named because it was bounded by roads on every side. Although stories about its acreage in Thomas Youell’s time vary, it supposedly contained about 100 Irish acres or 162 statute (English) acres.

The Island appears to have been occupied by the Claxtons at one time as a William Claxton of Island, Abbeyleix, was buried on 30 December 1809. He was almost certainly one of the Claxtons of Corbally, Abbeyleix. (https://clugstonfamilytree.wordpress.com/claxton/) and may have built the house at The Island which was lost in a fire. Only ruins remained in the early 20^th century. The Claxtons are believed to descend from James Claxton of Sigginstowne, Co. Kildare, who left land in Portarlington to his second son Samuel.

The late Sadie Bennett said that her family, the Galbraiths, had once owned nearby Tunduff Park, until one of them lost it in a card game to Joseph Dobbs of Abbeyleix. A branch of the Galbraiths later lived at Corbally, Abbeyleix. Anne, the Widow Claxton, (1823-1912), was boarding with the family of George Galbraith of Corbally (1850–1914) at the time of the 1911 census. Family tradition relates that the house at The Island accidentally burnt down and that an old lady had been the last occupant. This possibly was the Anne Claxton who was living with the Galbraiths at Corbally. A James Claxton (1842-1903) who is thought to be Anne’s son, was also farming at Corbally.

The Leinster Express of 21 March 1835 lists a William Galbraith of Ballybrit and Humphrey Galbraith of Finnard as having interests in Tunduff. Humphrey Galbraith was married to Jane Bereton, a great grandaunt of the Tomas Youell who occupied The Island at the beginning of the 20^th century.

Strange enough, Tunduff Park was badly damaged in a fire during the time of the Dobbs. The story is that an elderly servant went to bed and the unfortunate old lady left her candle burning as she slept. The Dobbs repaired the house by taking out the floorboards and joists of the top floor and removing the dormer windows, reducing the house from three to two stories. As a result, the existing bedrooms now have very high ceilings, as they incorporate the lost upper rooms.

SERVANT BURNT TO DEATH, The residence of Mrs. Dobbs, Tunduff Park, near Abbeyleix, was totally destroyed by fire on Friday morning of last week, and servant named Bridget Gunn (otherwise Coffey) perished the flames. Mrs. Dobbs, her daughter, Miss Ina Dobbs, and the servant were the only occupants of the house. It appears that sometime about one o’clock in the morning Mrs. Dobbs was awakened noises the servant’s bedroom, which was on the same landing as her own and that Miss Dobbs. She went out the landing, and when she tried enter the servant’s room she was driven back by burst of Same. She then dashed across the landing, and alarmed Miss Dobbs, and they both succeeded in getting safely out of the house. They gave the alarm to Master Richard Dobbs, who, with another youth, slept in tent not far from the residence. The boys summoned what help was in the vicinity, and cycled into Abbeyleix for further assistance. A large number of men turned out, but the fire ad made great headway, and, owing to the scarcity of water, nothing could be done to save the house. The greater part of its contents was destroyed, only few pictures and small articles of furniture being got out uninjured. A search was made in the debris for the remains of the servant, and a small portion of the body, badly charred, was discovered. The deceased was an elderly woman, and bad been many years in the service the Dobbs family.
Saturday 18 September 1915 Weekly Freeman’s Journal

The house also suffered a crack in the gable wall, which appeared at the same time as the local papers reported that an earthquake had been felt in the area back in 1852. The house was also occupied by the IRA on 22 July 1922, as they mined the road and lay in wait for Free State forces. There were some causalities in the ensuing battle of Tonduff.

Susan Carter (Mrs James Bennett of Cardtown House) acquired the property after he husband died in 1939.

Tunduff Park. The portico was added by the late Leo Bennett

George Galbraith’s aunt, Ellen Galbraith (1829–1905), lived at Raheenabrogue with her husband Robert Case (1841–1912). Robert, described as a ‘member of a very old Protestant family’ was known locally as “Protestant Case” due to his tendency to argue the merits of Protestantism with anybody. However, following his wife’s death, he is reported as having taken to drink in his grief and living between his sister-in-law, Sarah Galbraith’s house, and ironically, Miss Bridget Kennedy’s Temperance Hotel in Abbeyleix. Miss Kennedy was Catholic and it seems that Robert converted in the hope that she would marry him. He named her anyway as his principal beneficiary in his will. Robert Case died 2 April 1912 and the Freeman’s Journal (27 June 1912) reported how the will was unsuccessfully contested.

Robert’s will was witnessed by William Gillespie, who was lost with the Titanic on 15 April 1912. William was born in Carlow in 1880 and his father Richard, after serving his time as an NCO in the army, moved to Abbeyleix Demesne where he was a clerk. William became a law clerk and later worked for Abbeyleix Carpet Factory, which made the carpets for Titanic. He was travelling to Canada on company business when he lost his life on the ill-fated ship.

Some of the Case family are recorded in the 1826 tithe as resident at The Island, although with just a few acres. The later Griffith Valuation shows part of The Island occupied by a Mary Burnes, or Burns, who was renting from a Susan Kelly.

1826 Tithe Applotment for Island, Abbeyleix. Thomas Case senior, Elizabeth, John, Thomas Junior, Fenton and Thomas Junior.

Thomas & Fenton also at Rathmoyle. The name of Andrew Galbraith is listed under observations, which may indicate that he was the immediate landlord.

Robert’s brother, Humphrey Case (1835-1928), became agent and land steward for the Poe family of Blackhill. (A branch of the Claxtons later lived what had been Poe’s house at Blackhill). Humphrey Case was a grandson of Thomas Case (1765-1856) who had taken up a tenancy on the de Vesci estate in the late 1700s. Thomas is interred in the same grave at St Michael and All Angels, Abbeyleix, as his nephew, Dr Samuel Walker MD., (1799–1871) of Raheenabrogue.

Humphrey Case was married to Margaret Wright (1838–1931), member of a family from Portarlington and related to the Wrights of Ballymorris House. Her twin sister, Elizabeth Wright (1828-1939) also married a land steward, James Rothwell (c.1831-1929). These were both mixed marriages as this branch of the Wrights, who are believed to originate with the Wrights of Foulksrath Castle and Castlecomer, were a Catholic family.

James Rothwell came from Co. Wexford. His grandfather, Samuel Rathwell of Ballybrennan House, Bree, Wexford, had been co-owner with the Veros of an estate in excess of a 1000 acres. He had married Elinor Vero, sister to Charles Vero J.P., who had reconstructed the tower house at Ballybrennan, Bree, into a Georgian villa before he was killed in 1798. Samuel Rothwell was also land steward to the Veros.

Elinor and Charles father, John Vero (d.1758) from Galway, had married Mary Colles of Collesford, Sligo. Her parents were Dudley Colles (d.1736), son of Captain William Colles, Provost Marshall of Connaught (1647–1693) and the heiress to Ballybrennan, Dorcas Byrne or Birne, great granddaughter of Cromwellian Quartermaster James Byrne or Beirne of Boyle, Roscommon, who had served in Coote’s Regiment and who had received 1214 acres in the barony of Tireragh, Sligo for his efforts.

It is likely that the Rothwells had previously been agents for Barry Colles (1697-1785), Exchequer Attorney, who owned an estate at Coolcullenduff, Kilkenny and the entail to Ballybrennan. His brother William Colles (1702-1770) of Kilcollen, Kilkenny, set up the marble works at Millmount, that produced many marble chimneypieces for Irish country houses. This is almost certainly how two branches of the Rothwells came to be in the Coolcullen area, almost certainly granted tenancies by their Ballybrennan kin. According to local lore a Rothwell built Prospect Hall at Mothel, Kilkenny. The Tyndalls later occupied the now demolished Prospect Hall, where they were employed as stewards whilst maintaining their own small estate in Wexford.

The Rothwells of Ballybrennan lost all of their estate to the Veros in July 1828 in a case heard before Judge Moore. Samuel Rothwell of Ballybrennan’s nephew, John Vero or Varo (1785–1830) had been born in Shoreditch, London, where his father, William Vero had worked as a shoemaker. In the contest for the lands of Ballybrennan, Carrignaneen, Ballybrittas, Tomfarney and Ballyaeden, comprising 1086 acres, John Vero was determined to prove that he was the rightful heir.

The court case followed a complex line of descent of Ballybrennan from the Byrnes and through various members of the Colles family until it was conveyed from Charles Vero to Neptune Vero. It then apparently came via a deed of 1770 to John’s father William Vero the shoemaker, who was described as having lived in obscurity in London, where he married Susannah Ellis. Following the murder of Charles Vero in 1798, William emerged to claim the property. William was described as ‘addicted to drunken habits, sensual, and ready for any present gratification.’ He was also unpopular as a landlord and in 1805 he lost a case after bringing an action against every one of his tenants, for ‘combination, fraud and collusion,’ whatever that involved. Beginning an affair with servant Catherine Behan, William publicly declared that his children were illegitimate and turned his wife, Susanna Ellis, out of their house. She was soon followed by their only son, John Vero who had stuck up for his mother. William placed an advert in the Wexford Herald warning against giving Susanna credit.

John Vero commenced his case by claiming that his uncle, Samuel Rothwell, manipulated his father, William Vero, to procure a lease from him in 1815 and he complained that the Rothwells had gained the support of the ‘whole tenantry.’ But this is perhaps not surprising considering that William had sued all of them back in 1805. Neither was it surprising that Samuel Rothwell wanted some security of tenure. The complexities of succession and entail were followed during the trial before the nature of the deeds effected by William Vero was at last discussed. It was established that William had indeed worked in Whitechapel and Petticoat Lane under the surname of Varo and had that married under this variation of the surname. It was at first claimed that he was 80 when he died but it was later established that he was in fact about 70. Strange enough the how and why he had become a shoemaker in London was not discussed.

The counsel for the Rothwells described how after William Vero showed up in 1798, he had received great attention and kindness from his brother-in-law, Samuel Rothwell. William Vero agreed to give Rothwell a lease for a tract of land for three lives when his existing lease expired but then in 1801 he gave Samuel a lease, to commence in 1806, for thirty-one years. The lands were so poor according to Samuel, that it was hardly worth his while to till them. Then, in 1811, on the marriage of one of Samuel’s children, he invested money to improve them and by doing so he increased the value. In 1813, Samuel obtained a new lease but in 1815, William Vero then wanting money, offered to sell Samuel his interest in part of the estate for the sum of £300 plus an annual sum of £30. However, it was now questioned as to whether William Vero, as “tenant entail,” ever had the power to make such leases. It was pointed out that if the jury found against the Rothwells, they would lose the lands and the £300 that Samuel had paid in good faith for the title.

It was further questioned as to whether or not William Vero was indeed the same person as William Varo and whether or not the certificate of marriage was genuine. Also, if it was correct that whilst in London William Vero had been “called Varo by the cockneys” and for this reason had written his name as Varo. Since 1811, Susanna Ellis had lived nearby, on a sum of £40 a year that William gave her and had made no protest. William’s nephew, John Vero of Verona, supported the Rothwells, saying that he heard William Vero assert that Susanna was not his wife on several occasions and in another deed of 1823 William had conveyed his interest in the estate to his nephew, John Vero of Verona, ignoring his alleged son John. In November 1824, William in his will had made reference to ‘the children of Susannah Ellis,’ and avoided calling her his wife. John Vero the nephew then gave evidence that the documents from Shoreditch were not in his uncle’s handwriting. The prosecution alleged that John was biased because he would receive an annuity of £200 a year. Michael Ronan stated that William Vero said of John, “By G–, he is not my son; I was never married to Susan Ellis.” In the will William had bequeathed 5 shillings each to John Vero and his other children by Susanna Ellis. A Mr Stock gave evidence bizarrely declaring “nothing was more natural than when William appeared in Ireland that he should declare that woman as his lawful wife, being as she was, “so far removed from the station to which she then arrived; besides she was one of the prettiest girls in England.” Mr Scott spoke to the court about William Vero’s “compunctious visitings.”

Judge Moore was satisfied that the identity of William Vero alias Varo was genuine and his marriage too and what interested him was the deed of 1815, conveying the property to Samuel Rothwell, which he concluded “destroyed” the former lease of 1813. He accepted that Samuel Rothwell had improved the land and he asked the jury to consider if the leases Rothwell last obtained reflected their full improved value. It may seem unfair that Moore suggested that Rothwell should have paid Vero more money for work that he had paid for himself, but the jury had little option except to conclude that the price Samuel Rothwell paid did not reflect the improved value. And so on this one issue, the Rothwells lost Ballybrennan.

However, a question remains as to the identity of Judge Moore. Was he the Judge Arthur Moore of Moore Valley and Lamberton Park? Judge Arthur had a niece, Elizabeth Moore, the only child of his recently deceased brother, Pierce Moore of Poolsbridge, Stradbally, and the granddaughter of Anne Vero who married Francis Marsh. Anne was a first cousin to William Vero the shoemaker. If it was Judge Arthur Moore who heard the case then he would certainly have known of this relationship which surely brings the trial into question, his directions to the jury and whether he should have heard the case.

John Vero died just a couple of years later in 1830 aged 45 and his son Christopher (1810-1885) lived in Cork off the rentals from Ballybrennan. It was put up for sale in four lots in 1850 as an encumbered estate but the sale of the first two lots cleared all debts and so Samuel Rothwell’s great nephew Christopher retained Ballybrennan until his death when it was sold to Robert Disney Jones. Robert’s son John Jones then sold it to another branch of the Rothwells, generally known today as the Rothwells of Bunclody. They were distant cousins of the first Rothwells of Ballybrennan. Hence the two branches of the same family are often confused. Even more so as both branches had similar naming patterns and both had married into the Warrens of Monart.

On 28 December 1901, John William Rothwell (1876-1904) of New Deerpark purchased Ballybrennan. He was the son of a Samuel Rothwell of Deerpark (1836-1890) and grandson of John Rothwell (1807-1893) of Carrickduff, High Constable of Carlow. John William died aged only 28. His son Samuel Rothwell should have inherited it but he died aged only 18 on St Stephen’s Day 1920, leaving two sisters, Eliza and Annie. Annie retained the property until the 1970s.

Some of the first Rothwells of Ballybrennan went to Canada, where they were partners in Dawes Brewery. John Thomas Rathwell (1863–1915) (Rathwell and Rothwell are interchangeable spelling variations of the surname) became Mayor of Lachine. John Rothwell, a son of the Samuel who lost Ballybrennan in 1828, took up a farm in Monart Wexford. He had two sons, Samuel (1836-1882) and James (c.1831-1929) who both became land stewards in Laois.

Samuel Rothwell was friends with Laois antiquarian Daniel O’Byrne who recorded an archaeological discovery made by Samuel in 1856 when he was working as steward on the Doyne estate near Timahoe. In the same year, Samuel married Frances Wills, daughter of Robert Wills Gent., of Garryglass. The story of the Wills family of Garryglass is that they were a branch of the wealthy Sandford Wills family who were disinherited from the family fortune when Casper Wills of Willsgrove, Roscommon, discovered that they had been double baptizing children at both the Protestant and Catholic churches in Stradbally. The couple had two children and emigrated to Canada.

His brother James (c.1831-1929), already mentioned above as marrying Elizabeth Wright, had a difficult life as a land steward at that time as it was not uncommon for the Whitefeet, and the rival Blackfeet, secret societies, to make death threats to try and force a tenancy to be given to one of their own. Thus Samuel often left jobs overnight. He worked at Grantstown, and later at Raheenabrogue eventually retiring to The Tiles, Abbeyleix. He and Elizabeth had twin sons, James William (1867-1954) and John Henry Rothwell (1867–1945).

John Henry Rothwell married Catherine Youell (d.1928). She was the daughter of Brereton James Youell (1810-1884), clerk and schoolmaster.

The head of the Youell family was Brereton’s brother, Thomas Lewis Youell Esq., (1818–1874) of Tierhogar House, Lea, near Portarlington. The Youells were Huguenot in origin and had evidently known the Wrights for a long time. In the early 1800s, both families had land holdings around Portarlington, William Youell at Deerpark, Lea, in 1825 and by the time of the Griffith Valuation George Youell held lands at Tirhogar, Ballymacrossan, Droughill, Cooltedery and Ballymorris, where a branch of the Wrights were then living at Ballymorris House.

Another of Brereton’s brothers, Surgeon George Youell, had served in the 54th foot regiment and was in the Crimea, Gibraltar, and the West Indies before his death at Bermuda on 9 September 1864.

It was one of Brereton’s sons, and John Henry Rothwell’s brother-in-law, Thomas Youell (1846-1917) who purchased The Island, Abbeyleix, although it is unclear when this happened, as he is recorded as living with his sister and brother-in-law at Tonduff at the time of the 1901 census. John Henry Rothwell had married Catherine Youell on 7 September 1897 and it is unknown if Thomas Youell was already at The Island. It may be, that as Abbeyleix Golf Club opened on part of The Island in 1895, that Thomas Youell purchased the farm at this time. There were also a number of County Council cottages, built by the council on land belonging to The Island that they purchased along the Portlaoise Road frontage.

Thomas and Catherine had a brother, Brereton Jasper Youell who was a Petty Sessions clerk and auctioneer in Ballinamore, Leitrim. He died in 1911 and most of his children had followed their brother, Rev. William Wesley Youell (1868–1928), a Baptist minister, to California, USA. But a couple of Brereton’s sons remained in Ireland. One of them, Frederick George Youell (1870–1960) was a member of the grand Orange Lodge of Leitrim becoming secretary in 1902 and also serving as master for a time. But in 1912 he was raising money to renovate the Catholic curate’s house in Ballinamore and in 1914 he was an Irish Volunteer, going on to become a notable member of Sinn Féin by 1917. There is no evidence to suggest that the Orange Order ever expelled him. His other brother, Edgar, who also remained in Ireland, was evidentially of a similar mind, an Anglo-Irish Protestant nationalist. He helped Fred to organise a concert in 1904, in aid of a Mrs Morahan, an evicted Catholic shopkeeper. The songs at the concert included The Croppy Boy, The Rising of the Moon and a Nation Once Again.

Thomas Youell, as said was unmarried and his sister Catherine and John Henry Rothwell had no children so between them they decided to make Edward Robert Rothwell (1910-1989) the third son of John Henry’s brother, James William, their heir. On occasion, the young Edward (Ned) and his uncle Thomas Youell, stayed over at The Island. What had been two farm servants houses at The Island had been converted into a small four roomed house, but Thomas, when he was there, used just the one room to live, eat and sleep in. There was fine drive leading from what had been the house to the Portlaoise Road, coming out at Tonduff and the young child was convinced that he could hear the sound of horse’s hoofs on it at night. Thomas Youell told him not to worry as the noises were not being made by the living.

Thomas died on 8 August 1917. James Rothwell went to The Island soon after, where Thomas Youell had a hiding place, a lose stone in the wall that concealed a hollow space in which he kept money and his will. It was empty, someone had taken them. Thomas’ death certificate gave his occupation as gardener, as indeed he was one of several relations employed in James Rothwell’s gardening business. Catherine Youell Rothwell died in 1928 with the family’s claims upon The Island still ignored.

The disappearance of the will was a problem but at least Thomas’s sister, Catherine Youell Rothwell was still alive and could be demonstrated as one of the next of kin. However, the residents of the County Council cottages bordering The Island, quickly put in a request to the Land Commission to divide the land, each hoping for a share of it. After this happened, James suspected that one of them had taken the will but he could not prove it. They each became grantees of a few acres, however, the most part of the farm was given to a stranger. Thus The Island joined the properties confiscated by the Land Commission and neither Rothwell or Youell got an acre out of it. The Island had no mansion, and did not consist of 1000s of acres, not even half of that, so why the Land Commission considered it worthy of their attention remains a mystery. The trouble about The Island continued for years, and, as was said locally, “there was shooting over it.” One night a small mob gathered outside The Tiles chanting insults. But the first farmer who occupied The island under the Commission became scared of the situation and he left The Island. The Commission then gave it to a man called Denis Lyons who came from Mountrath. He stuck it out even though a grave was mysteriously dug for him inside the road gate of The Island.

The Leinster Leader of 25 January 1936, reported upon a claim made by Gaze and Jessop, auctioneers of Portlaoise, against Denis Lyons of The Island and his brother Martin Lyons of Mountrath for goods and services owing to them.

In 1962, following Denis Lyons decease, Oliver J. Flanagan asked about the future of The Island in the Dáil (Dáil Éireann, 1 March 1962), enquiring if the Land Commission had acquired the Lyons Estate “for the relief of local congestion.” Michael Moran, Minister for Lands, told him that the Commission were making enquiries about the property. O.J. Flanagan brought up the subject again, just over a year later, on 23 April 1963, when he asked why the Land Commission had withdrawn proceedings in regard to the Lyons Estate, remarking that The Island was now for sale by public auction. Michael Moran replied that the Commission had served notice of withdrawal because they considered that the price fixed by an appeal tribunal would make purchase inexpedient.

The Land Commission came about with the remit of fixing rents in accordance with the Land Law (Ireland) Act of 1881. With the Ashbourne Act of 1885, it developed into a purchasing agency that was to assist in the agreed transfer of farmland from landlord to tenant. It was boosted by the Wyndham Land Act of 1903, which provided government finance to buy out freeholds, with the former tenants, having become owners, paying back the capital over a period of 68 years. It was eventually responsible for the transfer of some millions of acres but as early as 1908 it was already seen that it was hard to make small farms economically viable and that a considerable degree of rural poverty was being brought about by the Commission’s policy of creating very small farms by breaking up large estates. Additionally, there was a further problem in so far as they had begun to identify larger farmers as “landlords.” When exactly The Island was seized by the land Commission is a mystery, because their files containing thousands of historic documents are not publicly available. This may relate to the considerable body of folklore that land were improperly ceased and that agents of the Commission granted lands to themselves or relatives.

However, they were above the law as the Dáil decreed on 29 June 1920 that claims to land would not be considered until after the end of the war and it gave force to this by effectively saying that to pursue such a claim in a court of justice, could be considered as a treasonable offense.

Dáil Éireann – Volume 1 – 29 June 1920

DECREES. – CLAIMS TO LAND—DAIRY, AGRICULTURAL AND RESIDENTIAL HOLDINGS.

The MINISTER FOR HOME AFFAIRS moved: WHEREAS it has come to our knowledge that claims to farms of land (Dairy and Agricultural and Residential Holdings worked by the Occupiers) have been and are being made in parts of the country, such claims being based on the fact that the claimants or their ancestors were formerly in occupation of the property so claimed. “AND WHEREAS these claims are, for the most part, of old date, and while many of them may be well founded others seem to be of a frivolous nature and are put forward in the hope of intimidating the present occupiers…

WHEREAS it has come to our knowledge that claims have been made and are being made in various parts of the country to farms and holdings which are being used and worked by the occupiers as Dairy, Agricultural and Residential Holdings, and that such claims are being based on the assertion that the claimants or their ancestors were formerly in occupation of the property so claimed. AND WHEREAS these claims are, for the most part, of old date, and while many of them may be well founded others seem to be of a frivolous nature and are put forward in the hope of intimidating the present occupiers.

NOW IT IS DECREED BY DAIL EIREANN IN SESSION ASSEMBLED:

1. “That the present time, when the Irish people are locked in a life and death struggle with their traditional enemy, is ill-chosen for the stirring up of strife amongst our fellow-countrymen; and that all our energies must be directed towards clearing out—not the occupier of this or that piece of land—but the foreign invader of our country.

2. “That pending the international recognition of the Republic no claims of the kind referred to shall be heard or determined by the Courts of the Republic unless by written licence of the Minister for Home Affairs.

3. “That in the meanwhile claimants may file particulars of their claims with the Registrar of the District Court in which the property is situate.

“AND IT IS FURTHER DECREED:

“That any person or persons who persists or persist in pressing forward a disputed claim of the nature above referred to shall do so in the knowledge that such action is a breach of this decree, and IT IS ORDERED that the forces of the Republic be used to protect the citizens against the adoption of high-handed methods by such person or persons.”

The notion that of it being a treasonable offence to press a land claim or to pursue the matter through the courts was re-enforced by Dáil Eireann’s winding up act of 1923 and a subsequent amendment act of 1924.

For the purpose of this Act the authority of all Parish and District Dáil Courts outside the City of Dublin shall be deemed to have been withdrawn on the 30th day of October, 1922, and the authority of all other Dáil Courts shall be deemed to have been withdrawn on the 25th day of July, 1922.

The Commission stopped acquiring land in 1983 although it was still dealing with outstanding matters into the 1990s when it came under the Department of Lands, and was finally dissolved on 31 March 1999 in accordance an act to dissolve it that had been passed in 1992. It files remain closed and held by the Department of Agriculture and housed in a warehouse in Portlaoise. To gain access to the apparently unindexed files, one had to first prove ownership of the property you wish to research. If you do that, then you have to pay them to search their unindexed and uncatalogued files. If they do manage to locate a file, it is then forwarded to a solicitor acting on behalf of the State who will determine if you can see the file. Why they remain closed and treated as state secrets in a democratic republic remains a mystery and a painful restriction to historians and researchers seeking primary source material.

Farmleigh, Abbeyleix

August 7, 2021January 13, 2022 / cuffesboro / 5 Comments

A childhood home of the artist Francis Bacon

William Pigott, son of Colonel Pigott (of Knapton), Chief Engineer of the Ordnance and member for Midleton has married to Miss Brereton of Springmount, Queens County with thirty thousand pounds Her sister is the lady of Sir John Allen Johnson, bart. Anthologia Hibernica 1793 The young Pigott boys were well connected locally – their mother was Priscilla Carden from Lismore at Ballybrophy (of the Templemore Cardens), and both their grandmothers were Warburtons of Garryhinch, Portarlington. Soon after William married both his parents died. His bother George married Annabella Kelly from Kellyville, a very wealthy lady. William and Martha Pigott disappear from history very quickly. Burke’s notes that they had children, but so far no records have been found that mention them.

It has been suggested that William built Farmly (later the spelling changed to Farmley and then Farmleigh) . His bother George who was living at Knapton was advertising a 70 year lease on Farmly in 1809. In it we learn that the house had only just been finished and was designed by Richard Morrison, father of William Vitruvius Morrison and architect of Ballyfin. Maybe William and Martha Pigott had died before the house was finished. It was already complete when the Grand Jury map of Laois was drawn up, which was printed in 1809. The house was a superb Morrison villa, and unlike Hyde Park, Bearforest or St Clerans, his better known villas. The stuccoed 3 bay facade, the hipped roof hidden behind an ashlar parapet with a central dormer peeping out (possibly a later addition), the square headed doorway and sidelights under a shallow arch, with a niche and narrow sidelights above it. No quoins or plat bands, the only decoration of the facade are a pair of simple stuccoed circles or tabulae in relief on the blank wall between the ground and first floor windows. There appear to be a pair of obelisks on the parapet above the windows and the chimney stacks are rather uncomfortably stuck on the side elevations, very similar to his unexecuted design for a house in Laois (Architecture of Richard Morrison, Irish Architectural Archive, p 183). The joy of the house would have been the salon, its great bow looking south to the Slievedaragh Hills. I suspect that the plan was not dissimilar to the design for a hunting lodge for Lord Belmore

From The Architecture of Richard & William Vitruvius Morrison, Irish Architectural Archive p184 – the possible plan for the first floor at Farmleigh

Leet’s directory in 1814 lists Mr J Thomas as the occupant.

Colonel Thomas Cass of the 9th Regiment, Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry was born in Farmly, in 1821 . In his boyhood he left bis native land with his parents and emigrated to Boston. In Griffith’s valuation there was a Philip Cass who was farming 16 acres and living in a slated house at Rathmoyle, Abbeyleix, so I suspect that Col Cass’s family were tenant farmers on the estate rather than renting the big house.

Lewis’s Topography lists George Roe of Farmly in 1837, who presumably took on the lease at the time that it was for sale in 1829. George Roe had married Caroline King sister of Sir Robert King of Charlestown who himself had married (20.09.1810) Elizabeth Rowe (d 01.03.1863) dau of Ebenezer Rowe of Ballyharty, Co Wexford, which had made me think that George Roe (whose name was also spelt Rowe on occasion) was not connected with the other Laois Roes. However David Orr has pointed me to an announcement in The Freeman’s Journal – Thursday 17 February 1820 “On Monday last in St Thomas’s Church, George Roe Esq Barrister at Law, second son of John Roe Esq of Beckfield, in the Queen’s County, to Caroline third daughter of the late Robert King, Esq of this city.“

William John, youngest son of Major Law Dundas, of Thornbury, in the Queen’s County, married to Caroline Grace, only child of George Roe, of Farmly, in said county. Saturday 16 January 1841

8 Jan. 1863, George Roe, Esq., late of Farmley, Abbeyleix, Queen’s County, died aged 69 years.

At that stage it was rented the son of Thomas Cosby of Stradbally – Rev. William Cosby (d 1872) and his wife Dora, nee Jephson. His widow remained on at Farmley for a while, but died at Brockley, The Hill, Monkstown in 1893 at the age of 86.

Around 1880 Farmleigh was leased by Hamilton William Palmer. Born in 1846 he was the son of William Lambe Palmer of Rahan, Co Kildare. On 26th February , 1876 Lieutenant Hamilton William Palmer retired from the army , receiving the value of his Commission . He married Henrietta Frances, d . of Robert Smyth , Esq ., D.L., of Gaybrook , and widow of Capt. George Macartney , D.L., of Lissanoure Castle , Co Antrim.

Coleraine Chronicle – Saturday 27 September 1890 Robbins and McCartney—At Abbeyleix Church, by the Rev. Brabazon Disney, assisted by the Rev. T. Trotter, Alexander Gisbourne J. Robbins, 10, Westbury Place, London. to Helen Margaret, eldest daughter- of the late George Travers McCartney, Lissanore Castle, County Antrim, and of Mrs. Hamilton Palmer, Farmleigh, Abbeyleix.

Rose McCartney was still at Farmleigh Abbeyleix when she was a member of the Watercolour Society of Ireland 1901-2, and the gardener at Farmleigh was a John Toole (and advertising Black Oats for sale) However in June 1905 H W Palmer had let Farmleigh “for a term”. He had moved to Ardilea, Dunlaoghire

A bad egg and a Bacon

In 1911 Farmleigh was to let again and Palmer was back in residence, with a parlour maid, a house maid and a cook, . The census reports that the house had 8 windows on the front and more than 13 rooms . FARMLEIGH HOUSE , within one mile of Abbeyleix , for one year or longer , from June 1 , 1911. The House is nicely situated on an elevation in well – kept grounds , approached by carriage drive with gate lodge. (Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic News – Volume 75 – Page 220) The tenants were Winifred and Walter Bell. Winnifred was well connected and a renowned party hostess, entertaining the Agha Khan on one occasion. Her first marriage was to John Loxley Firth. He was a Justice of the Peace and a member of the Firth family from Sheffield who made their wealth in the steel industry (Thomas Firth & Son, initially supplying Samuel Colt with iron and steel and later moving into gun casings and artillery pieces). They lived in Hope (a Derbyshire village). John and Winnifred had children, however he died young and she remarried to Walter Loraine Bell of Woolsington Hall, Northumberland who was a Master of Foxhounds of the East Galway and then The Duhallow. A nasty piece of work, in 1905 he had been sentenced to a month’s hard labour for appalling cruelty to a cat. The details of the deeply unpleasant case are reported in North Devon Journal – Thursday 27 July 1905. Walter also horsewhipped both his animals and his children. In 1913 he was declared bankrupt, and at the same time was conducting an affair with the wife of Brigadier General Cotgrave, sailing off to America with her (using his wife’s money) while her husband was soldiering in India.

In 1916 Winnifred divorced him. On 6th June 1917 she married Chief Inspector Kerry Leyne Supple of the RIC and they lived together at Farmleigh (and also at Straffan Lodge).

In 1918, her daughter Christina Winifred Firth, moved in with her family – her husband, the Austalian born Major Eddy Mortimer Bacon, a rather unsuccessful horse trainer, 5 children, Harley, Ianthe, Winifred, Francis and Edward, and Nanny Lightfoot. The young Francis Bacon enjoyed spending time with his cherished ‘Granny Supple’. He loved adventures with Chief Inspector Supple, escaping from IRA ambushes. On one occasion Kerry Supple, was driving the 11 year old Francis home across the Bog of Allen. “The IRA had dug a pit in the road to ambush automobiles. Supple and Francis leapt out of the car and set off across the fields in the darkness, all the while surrounded by cries and flashing lights.” Supple led Francis to the nearest big house, where they were questioned at gunpoint before being allowed inside.

He loved the house with its beautiful curved rooms, and the bow windows the memory of which he later suggested as the likely origin of the curved backgrounds in so many of his compositions. The OS map shows the plan of the curved saloon at the back of the house. He was always to like great houses, their spaciousness and the wide views over open country. Supple retired in 1920 and the couple moved back to England, where he died on August 14 1921. The Bacons left Farmleigh in June 1921 just before Francis Bacon’s 12th birthday.

In the 1940s it was the home of Edward Patterson who bred horses with his black stallion, Samson. Remembering her time spent living at Farmleigh nearly 80 years ago, before the family emigrated to Canada, his daughter recalled:-

Its interior features were absolutely marvellous. We were left on our own and explored everything – the barn yards, fields, etc. etc. It was very exciting, running through the rooms exploring everything. The display of daffodils primroses and rhododendron bushes box hedges and the woods where the rooks chattered and nested. To me it was magical in every way.

You entered the large marble hall with four pillars (two pairs on either side) and intricate carvings on the ceilings, a large fireplace with huge mirror over the mantel. The ceilings had the same pattern as the marble floor.

At the back of the hall there was a very large beautiful oval room with a fireplace and windows and perhaps a smaller room on the right hand side, but I do not recall that .

On the left of the hall was what we called the kitchen It had one large window with a seat which one could open and store items in. At the end was a fireplace with a bread oven . It had a stone or concrete floor and was originally the dining room. Then to the left there were stairs going down to the basement (cellar) where there were large stoves, lots of cupboards and a place where the turf could be loaded into. There were a few dumb waiters and bells for all the different rooms. We spent many hours playing the basement and climbing into those storage cupboards.

From that landing on the main floor — still on the left side – one went up a flight of stairs to the landing and continued to the bedroom floor There was a W.C. there and 4 bedrooms and another stair up to two large rooms on both sides which we understood as servants quarters. On the bedroom floor was a very large closet under the stairs going up to the servants quarters I read someplace that Francis Bacon’s nanny locked him in there while she had relationships with men

We found a small door in one of the rooms on the top floor and took candles and walked between a very deep drop and a small edge which we walked along If our mother only knew! how frightened she would have been we could have fallen or set the house on fire. We were told these were for the chimney sweeps and also to hide people but we just took it all in and never feared.

On the left hand side there was a very old beech tree with huge chains in it to keep it up right and wooded area with oak trees etc. on the right hand there were the box hedges etc and a round driveway with lots of flowering trees daffodils etc and across the lawns was more daffodils etc and the forested area (not large) Also there was a “dug out” area around the basement to let the light in.

There was a gate house, not in use and Iron gates and other buildings around that were in poor shape.

The yard was surrounded with high stone walls and before you entered there was a large cistern which held water The yard had carriage houses, barns, milking sheds and servants quarters over top of the barns The two orchards were also surrounded by stone walls and had two separate areas containing all kinds of apples and fruit trees ;gooseberries etc. which we just loved.”

In 1957 the Land Commission acquired it from Lord de Vesci. However there were tales that few of the farmers in Boley wanted it as it was horribly haunted. Two top hatted men in tail coats were said to patrol the front avenue and locked shed doors were often found mysteriously open. The year before one of the timber haulers had been drowned in a sunken tank which was normally covered. Silent carriages drawn by headless horses were seen as well. The house was demolished at the end of 1958.

Noreville, Abbeyleix

July 31, 2021July 17, 2021 / cuffesboro / Leave a comment

Noreville is an attractive 2 storey late 18th Century farmhouse, behind Fruitlawn, 2 miles west of Abbeyleix.

The earliest reference to Noreville is in a deed of 17 June 1793 (479.292.306321) The lease was of Bellbrook for three lives, one of which was John Bell of Noreville. In 1847 John Bell died of fevler at Carrick on Shannon, son of the late John Bell of Noreville Dublin Evening Packet and Correspondent – Tuesday 23 March 1847

The Woodcocks, a Quaker family, were the next occupiers. Thomas and Francis Woodcock are at Noreville in 1837 ( lewis)

Freeman’s Journal – Tuesday 07 June 1842 On the 1st instant, at Noreville, Queen’s County, Mrs. Goff, aged 91, relict of Robert Goff, Esq., Borrmount Wexford (why were the Goffs in James Gethings’s house?)

Francis Woodcock of Noreville wrote his will in 1844, which was proved in 1848, his estate being worth £200.

WOODCOCK, FRANCIS, of Noreville, Queens Co. Ten pounds to his old servant Judith Burgess, and remainder in toto to wife Mary Woodcock, including annuity from second Clonmel Company. Executors : Wife, William Walpole of Ashbrook. Dated I2th of 1st month, 1844 Witnesses : Robt. Perry, Rob. Rhodes. Proved in Prerogative Court, 6th January, 1848.

The executors were quick off the block – General Advertiser for Dublin, and all Ireland – Saturday 18 March 1848 NOREVILLE, QUEEN’S COUNTY….. To be SOLD, the Interest in HOUSE. OFFICES, and the LANDS of NORE VILLE, Application to James Perry, Dublin ; Richard Neale, Mountrath, Mary Woodcock, on the premises.

The purchaser was Richard Moore Connell, a solicitor who had been living in Armagh in 1844. . In 1862 it ended up in the Landed Estates Court on the petition of John Waldron, but was bought back by his daughter at the auction on 17 January 1863, though they had to have an auction of their furniture and effects on 28 April. The stress was too much, and Richard Connell died in August the following year.

In May 1873 she was advertising the lease for sale, and in 1874 Dr Walsh, Medical officer bought it. He was then appointed to Ballinakill and moved there in 1876. It took him two years to find a buyer for Noreville, but it was eventually bought by Richard Senior, for whose family it became an ancestral home. There were several Seniors around Colt and Ballyroan. A marriage in 1847 to Ann Doxey introduced the Hercules Christian name to the Senior family.

The earliest Senior I have found in the immediate area was Richard Senior who in the mid 18th century was leasing property from Lord Mountrath, and lived at Moorfield House, near Mountrath, which he was leasing from John Bagot. His son Richard Senior (1793-1883) JP, was a bachelor and Moorfield then became the home of the Shortt family, though James Fitzmaurice Shortt died there Christmas 1883 of typhoid at the age of 44., having only married Margaret Gabbett of Ennis in June of 1879 . In the 20th century it was the home of the Smith family. There were was also a Richard Senior from Ballinrally, near Castletown, who moved to Longford Lodge at Mountrath, and had a family.

Millbrook, Abbeyleix

July 28, 2021July 17, 2021 / cuffesboro / Leave a comment

Millbrook House Abbeyleix — Millbrook Abbeyleix in 1995

With over 15,000 acres in Laois alone to manage in the 1870s, and with the agents changing fairly regularly it may not be too surprising that Allworth, Millbrook, Norefield, Fruitlawn, & Blackhill are a few of the houses identified as agents’ houses for the Abbeyleix Estate. The Bells were early agents in Abbeyleix. Stewart & Swan of Dublin seem to have become overall agents in 1806, and Graves Chamney Swan probably built Allworth House about then.

Because of the association of John Warde with Bellbrook (father of Frances Warde, the founder of the Sisters of Mercy in the USA) a lot of emotional, ill informed, quasi-historical codswallop has been written about humble Irish Catholics being dispossessed by arrogant British Protestant aristocrats. Though I hesitate to criticise a nun (lest I am sent off to scrub wimples in a laundry), in her account of the Warde family Sister Kathleen Healy seizes the wrong end of every stick that she can find with which to beat the cruel oppressor! Her interpretation of the Warde’s ownership of Bellbrook has been repeatedly regurgitated, with varying degrees of filtering, in everything from Ireland’s Own to the Dictionary of Irish Biography.

James Bell, of Greatworth, Northamptonshire, a Quaker, settled in Mountmellick in 1658. His grandson Thomas born at Mountmellick, 1672; d. Dublin , 1758; had ten daughters and four sons. Thomas (1709-1786) the 4th son had a timber yard in Dublin and was also a property developer. In the 1760s he moved back to Laois. In 1772 when Thomas was living in Durrow his son Gamaliel Bell was advertising his father’s timber yard on Ushers Island. Galamiel was first married to Elizabeth Watson of Carlow and then to the widow of Thomas Bewley of Mountrarth. Gamaliel was also a successful merchant and property developer and dealer.

The de Vesci papers contain a bundle of correspondence of the de Vesci agent, Capt. H. C. Fitzherbert, about the Rev. William Lyster’s lease of the Abbeyleix mill with abstracts of leases and sub-leases of the mill and mill-race back to 1774, which is apparently when Thomas Bell built and ran the mill.

In 1778 he was still giving his address as Belview, Thomas Street, Dublin. In 1783 a long lease on Belview, Dublin is advertised and he has moved to Laois; Bellbrooke, the seat of Bell esq, is shown on the 1783 Taylor & Skinner map. On Thursday 29 January 1789 Bellbrook, Abbeyleix is available on a long lease. In December 1792 Gamaliel is still at Bellbrooke (Dublin Evening Post – Saturday 08 December 1792) trying to let or sell it.

Gamaliel Bell selling Bellbrook — For sale in 1789

On 17 June 1793 there is a deed 479.292.306321 between Gamaliel Bell of Bellbrooke and William Byrd of Aghmacart, gent. Byrd leased, for £455, the dwelling house, offices, gardens and lands of Bellbrooke. The lease was for the lives of John Bell of Noreville and of William Ardile, eldest son of John Ardile of Dublin. (Noreville is an attractive and extant 2 storey late 18^th Century farmhouse, behind Fruitlawn).

On 9 Jan 1799 there is a deed 56.526.338462 from William Byrd to John Ward of Abbeyleix of a yearly rent charge of £50 on Willlowbrook, otherwise Bellbrooke, at that time in the possession of John Ward.

Around 1808 John Warde sublet Bellbrook to Fleming Handy till 1810

Fleming Handy is off! His claim that the house was “not more than 10 years built” is seriously inacurate – it was more like 35 years built!

Fleming Handy 3rd son of Samuel Handy of Bracca Castle (also known as Coolalough House, Westmeath married Miss Kirkman of Dalkey in 1802. When their daughter was born in 1807 they were living at Ralph’s Grove, near Ballyroan. By Tuesday 29 March 1808 he was living at Bellbrook but letting land in Mayo (Dublin Evening Post). In 1809 and 1810 he was advertising Bellbrook for rent

QUEEN’S COUNTY to be LET, for three young lives, renewable for 23 years, the HOUSE of BELL-BROOK, with large Garden and Seven Acres of choice Land, delightfully situated in Abbeyleix. The House in the modern style, not more than ten years built, has been lately much improved, and is in the best of repair; Offices convenient and good; the Garden well stocked with Fruit Trees. The Furniture, which is new and fashionable, will be given on valuation. Bell-Brook is within three miles of Ballinakill, three of Harrow and even of Maryborough—a fine sporting country!— Application by letter (post paid) to Fleming Handy, Bell Brook, Abbeyleix or Mr. Hodge 16 Camden Street, Dublin.

In 1810 John Warde’s wife Jane Maher, died of complications following the birth of Frances.

On 28 May 1819 there is a deed 741.259.504794 in which John Ward sells his lease of Bellbrook to Sir Robert Staples, who has already been renting it for a year (presumably for his son Edmond). In it it refers to a deed of the 12 May 1797 between William Byrd and John Ward. Bellbrook is 800 yards from the Staples home at Knapton.

In 1819 John Ward, farmer, of Abbeyleix, is a creditor of Henry Kingsmill, an insolvent debtor. Dublin Evening Post – Tuesday 15 June 1819. The de Vesci papers also note a fine on the estate of the Bell family of Bellbrook in 1819.

With his eldest son Daniel, John Warde is said to have moved to Dublin in 1819 to seek work. His second son William emigrated to England and his third son John entered Maynooth as a seminarian, but died in 1820. The girls went to live with their mother’s family the Mahers of Killeany near Annegrove Abbey. Although this rather attractive farmhouse is not marked on the 1840 or the 1890 OS Maps, it is in the townland of Killeany. Helen Warde died at the age of 18 around 1824. John Warde himself died in 1826 and Frances went to Dublin, where she lived with friends and is said to have mixed with the wealthy Catholic middle class. She joined The Mercy Sisters in Baggot Street in September, 1828 and founded the Order of Mercy in the United States in 1843. Of the Warde ancestors there is curiously little information.

There are many suggestions that Bellbrook then became a school, but it was almost certainly the home of Edmond Staples and his wife, whose son Robert was born in 1723. The school was in fact at Norefields, next door, about 200 yards from Bellbrook.

We know that the Rev B and Mrs Johnson were at Bellbrook from 1827 to 1833, when they spent £600 the house. “At Mill-brook, near Abbeyleix, the lady of the Rev. R. Brooke of a son. Published: Tuesday 02 February 1836”. By 1838 the Rev Brooke was the curate of the Mariners Church in Dun Laoghire.

By 1840 Hamilton Lyster, of Norefields is in possession of Millbrook and working the mill. His grandson Hamilton Lyster Reed (1869-1931) who was born on 23rd May 1869 in Dublin, and was son of Sir Andrew Reed, KCB, CVO, Inspector-General, Royal Irish Constabulary, and Elizabeth Mary Lyster, was awarded a VC in 1900 during the Boer War. His mother was Mary Hamilton of Birr, and his father lived at Croghan House, near Birr.

The 1840 OS map showing the original Millbrook

In 1870 Millbrook became the home of the agent Henry Gorry Fitzherbert, whose mother was Frances Vesey, and grandfather was the Reverend Hon. Arthur Vesey, vicar of Abbeyleix. When he married Mary Emily Vansittart of Driffield (whose aunt was TE Lawrence’s grandmother!) in 1876 a new house was needed. The original house had been at the easterly corner, near where there is now a pedestrian gate. The new house was built at right angles to the original house, at the opposite end of the site. The architect chosen was William Isaac Chambers who later designed Britain’s first purpose-built mosque in Woking, Surrey. There is also a letter in RIBA files by R Rowe which condemns Chambers as unreliable and claims that he left for Edinburgh to escape debts in Cambridge and ends, “I could tell you more, but refrain”. Chambers own house in Grove Park, Rathmines is an amusing melange of terracotta and rubbed red brick. Millbrook cost the Abbeyleix Estate £1800 to construct. Sadly no images of the original Bellbrook House have yet been located. However the present Millbrook had (before they were stolen in recent times) several modest late regency grey marble fire surrounds which were clearly from an earlier house, as was a white and brown marble surround of about 1780 that came from a curved room and had been installed in the morning room at Millbrook.

Chamber’s drawing room at Kensington Lodge

Giles Fitzherbert of Woodbrook and his siblings spent some of their childhood at Millbrook with their great uncle Cecil Henry FitzHerbert, their father having been killed in WWII

From 1950 when he married Susan Anne Armstrong-Jones, daughter of Anne Messel, Countess of Rosse (and sister in law of Princess Margaret), it was the home of John Vesey prior to his succession as 6th Viscount de Vesci in 1958. In 1967 it was bought by Dan Bergin, who had sold the shell of Castlewood, Durrow, to the Blakes. In recent years it has sadly suffered from vandalism and neglect.

Norefield

July 24, 2021July 17, 2021 / cuffesboro / Leave a comment

Noefields was apparently built by the de Vesci’s on the site of the old town soon after the new town of Abbeyleix was constructed. The exact dates when de Vesci created the new town are not clear. It was not marked on Taylor & Skinners Map of 1783, but was fully established by 1820. Norefield is shown on the grand jury 1809 map. There is a lease of Abbeyleix Mill to John Lyster of Norefield dated 1818 in the de Vesci papers. John Lyster (1794-1882) married Frances Kimmins in 1818. By 1870 he was a Justice of the peace and owned over 1500 acres.

From The National Inventory of Architectural Heritage Five-bay three-storey over basement Georgian house, built c.1810, with single-bay two-storey flanking wings. Renovated and extended to rear, c.1985, comprising single-storey over basement return to accommodate use as guesthouse. Double-pitched slate roof with clay ridge tiles, red brick chimneystacks and cast-iron rainwater goods on iron brackets. Nap rendered walls, painted. Square-headed window openings with limestone sills and replacement three-over-six and six-over-six timber sash windows, c.1985. Round-headed door opening with limestone doorcase with keystone and urn and replacement timber panelled door, c.1985, with sidelights and fanlight. Interior comprises door opening with flanking timber fluted pilasters; timber panelled internal shutters to window openings; carved timber architraves to internal door openings; timber panelled internal doors. Set back from road in own grounds; tarmacadam forecourt to front; limestone steps to entrance with wrought iron railings. Detached rubble stone outbuildings with half-dormer attics to site. Gateway to site comprising limestone ashlar piers with cast-iron gates. The simple doorcase with sidelights and a fanlight that almost looks as if was slipped in as an afterthought. The style would have been very old fashioned if it was built at the beginning of the 19th century.

By 1820 Norefield was the Abbeyleix Institution. Under the patronage of the de Vescis Abbeyleix became briefly a centre of education to almost rival Portarlington’s classical schools.

The Abbeyleix Pestalozzian Institute had as one of its terms of admission a fee of ten guinea’s entrance and one hundred guineas per annum which was to be paid quarterly in advance. Considering this high fee and the fact that de Vesci himself sent his two sons, Thomas and John William, to the school, it is reasonable to assume that the Abbeyleix Institute was concerned only with the education of a privileged class. However the 2nd Viscount was an advocator of the Pestalozzi principle that pupils of all classes were to be given access to schooling, and so he became involved with the education of local children who had both upper and lower class, Catholic and Protestant backgrounds. This theory of education centered around Pestalozzi’s demand that the functions of the body be brought into harmony with the activities of the mind and heart. At the core of Pestalozzi’s argument was the notion that practical education or physical education was essential for the education of the whole person. He regarded gymnastics as an essential part of the liberal education of man, saying that, ‘In relation to the body it assists man in the independent use of his physical powers and their best possible use; in relation to his morals it enables him to make the spirit govern the flesh.”

The president of the Abbeyleix Pestalozzian Institution was Viscount de Vesci, while its visitors are listed as Rev. James Dunn, Rev. Robert Daly, John Synge Esq., Mr. Sergeant Lefroy (the youthful Innamorato of Jane Austen) , James D. La Touche Esq. and Charles E.H Orpen Esq. The objective of the institution was to provide a school where parents could place their children, with the expectation that the good principles which they would have taught at home would also be impressed upon the children’s minds at school.

In a report from the commissioners of Irish education 1826-27, reference is made to a further two schools established by Lord de Vesci at Abbeyleix. The first is the Abbeyleix parish school where Joseph Dobbs, a Protestant, was appointed by Lord de Vesci as master. The number of pupils in attendance at this school at the time of the report was recorded as eighty five, forty of whom were Roman Catholics and the remainder Protestants of the established church. The school opened in 1814 and was mixed.

In May 1822 the Irish Papers report on” a singular conspiracy formed at Abbeyleix School, about fifty miles from Dublin, by seven or eight of the pupils, for poisoning the master and conductors of the school, blowing up, or otherwise destroying the mansion, and flying to Italy. Some of these romantic children are said to be detained in custody, and a senior barrister has been dispatched to Abbeyleix. “

The headmaster was the Rev Matthew Eaton, whose family were agents for the Wandesfordes at Castlecomer and descended from Theophilus Eaton of Goresbrige. The art teacher was Edward Hayes and his son the artist Michael Angelo Hayes was born whilst he was teaching in Abbeyleix. Louis Du Puget, a Swiss pedagogue trained by Pestalozzi was a disciplinarian and may have prompted the mutiny.

In January 1831, when applying for the headmastership of school of Meath and Ardagh [at Mullingar), Eaton mentions his long experience as a clergyman, consisting of 30 years in the Church of Ireland; noting also his past work as headmaster of a school of Abbeyleix, established for ‘the sons of the upper ranks of Society in Ireland’

A girl’s school was opened in August 1824, under Mrs Suffield and Miss Cramer, in a house on the Ballacolla road next to Rose Lodge, and they did not move out till March 1831, by which time the Rev Johnson was in residence at Bellbrook. It seems that the Ladies’ Academy was at The Heath, where Dr White lived in recent times.

After Matthew Eaton resigned in 1831 the school struggled on briefly under the Rev Mr Treyer before John Lyster returned , pre 1835. The Lysters remained there for most of the 19th century, flourishing as millers, property dealers, businessmen and landlords. The last Lyster resident was John Lyster who died at Norefield aged 88 in 1882.

John Lyster’s older brother, Philip, emigrated to Canada in 1831. Newry Examiner and Louth Advertiser reported 09 September 1835:- “Last week a cow, the property of Mr Lyster of Norefields had three calves.”

As a miller he was not popular during the famine. Three sacks of oatmeal, the property ot Mr John Lyster, of Abbeyleix, were plundered from the carriers on the high road at Clonad, within two miles of Maryborough. December 14, 1847

The Lysters leave Norefield — The Lyster’s sale in 1894

In 1895 it was let to Albert Edward Meredith Carlton, headmaster of the Preston School 12 boarders were accommodated at Norefield. By 1901 it was the home of Lt-Col. Arthur Bor “Served many years in West Indies and on West Coast of Africa; served in the Sofa Expedition 1893-94, for which he has the medal” – ‘The Family of Bor of Holland and Ireland’ in ‘Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica’. The Sofa Expedition was not, as it may sound, an expedition for the remote control, but a rather over zealous attack in Sierra Leone against the Mali troops who had themselves been pushed back by the French forces (which sounds like European colonists fighting over African mineral resources).

Bor wedding at abbeyleix — A Bor wedding in 1902

His brother was the vicar of Abbeyleix, and his sister was married to Frank Rothwell, the son of Richard Rothwell RHA. Colonel Bor had moved to Bournemouth by 1910 where he died in 1913

The next tenant was Mark Burns-Lindow, The Burns Lindow family owned Ehen Hall, Cleator and Irton Hall, Eskdale. Iron ore mine owners, they acted as JPs, served as High Sheriffs of Cumberland, & as Conservative MPs. As a younger son after his amy career was over Burns Lindow became the master of the South Union Hunt in Cork and bred and trained horses at Norefield. To avoid IRA attention he removed to England in September 1921.

Norefields acution sale 1921 — Major Burns Lindow heading back to England

It then became home to Cecil Fitzherbert, whose father was living at Millbrook, to which they moved after his mother died in 1928. Fitzherbert had been a pilot in the First World War, initially with the Royal Navy Air Service, and then with the Canadian Airforce. In 1916 he married Kitty Lowndes whose family were of Hassall Hall in Cheshire.

LG B Rogers lived there for about 3 years and from 1931 it belonged to the Fitzpatricks who sold it in 1938 to the Wisons who owned BAT leathergoods, luggage manufacturers in Mountmellick. Charlotte Elizabeth Wilson sold it in March 1959. Later 20th century owners include Thomas Maher and Pedar Maher, the Abbeyleix Fianna Fail TD, who then sold it to Dessie Lalor, the noted MFH.

Fruitlawn, Abbeyleix

July 21, 2021October 9, 2021 / cuffesboro / 2 Comments

Abbeyleix’s Worsted Factory

Fruitlawn is a charming late 18th century house (circa 1790) with a 3 bay 2 story façade, a fine cut stone doorcase with a cobweb fanlight, and an attic floor with narrow windows slipped in under the eaves on the side elevations.

Though in 1796 there is a James Leech is listed as a flaxgrower in Antrim, I think that James Leech of Fruitlawn may be more local. They were certainly in Abbeyleix when James’ father died in 1792. By 1817 Mr James Leech was receiving Linen for bleaching on the Kilkenny Bleach Green at Fruit Lawn. It may have been built as a millers house by Lord de Vesci, and Leech recruited to run the mill. The Fruitlawn Worsted Factory was across the field to the North. It is noted on the 1839 OS map as a worsted factory, but is more specifically described as a worsted spinning factory in the 1840 valuation. Powered by a modest 15ft x 9½ft waterwheel off the River Nore, it was operated by Messrs Alan and Thomas Leech. Samuel Lewis, writing in 1837, noted that it employed about 200 people in the combing, spinning and weaving of wool. Are there any companies with 200 staff in Abbeyleix in 2021?

Saunders’s News-Letter – Wednesday 13 May 1829 reported the death of George, 5th son of James Leech of Fruitlawn. The old churchyard in Abbeyleix has more on the family:-

William Leech deptd this Life March 7th 1792 Aged 74 years. Also Anne his Wife I February 15th 1803 Aged 85 years

To the memory of James Leech late of Fruit Lawn in the Queen’s County who died on the 17th of November 1838 in the 78th year of his age and whose remains are here deposited together with those of his Sons – George who died on the 5th of May 1829 aged 25 Years; James who died on the 19th of December 1834 aged 34 Years; William who died 31st October 1847 in the 54th year of his age also Catherine the beloved wife of James Leech on the 28th October 1852 in the 79 year of her age

Sacred to the Memory of George Leech of the City of Kilkenny who departed this life March 14th 1832 in the 76th year of his age. His mild gentle and unobtrusive virtues I evinced that he had learned of and to the last I trusted in the Blessed Merciful Redeemer of Mankind who was meek and lowly in heart. This Tomb is erected by his affectionate & Much afflicted Wife Mary Ann Leech

In 1847 during the famine years some men entered the cow house of Allen Leech, of Fruitlawn, loosened the cattle and turned them into the yard. Mr. Leech’s watchmen having given the alarm, the marauders decamped. In that year his son Allen junior was born. Allen snr died at the age of 84 in 1868. It is not clear who was running the mill during Allens minority, and by 1906 it had closed down.

Allen Leech died in 1912 and the lease was sold to Captain William Vanderkiste. The founder of the Vanderkiste family in Ireland was Freegift William Vanderkiste. His unusual forename was a happy portent for his descendants. William Vanderkiste moved with his wife and family to Limerick in the 1820’s to take up an appointment as Comptroller of the Port of Limerick. One hundred years after his wedding day, his daughter Sophia Vanderkiste was given the title deeds to the houses of 1, 2 and 3 Pery Square, as part of her Tontine ‘winnings’ in 1913. In 1922, with the civil war in full swing, Captain Vanderkiste decided it would be safer to move to England.

The next tenant was J P Kelly who was agent for Batchelors tinned vegetables, supplying farmers with pea and beans. The mill was demolished in the 1940s, it is said so that it could be de-rated. Te attractive modern house with its symmetrical wings and Diocletian window that is now on the site incorporates part of a dwelling which stood on the west gable of the former mill.

In The Irish Press Thursday, June 09, 1955 Mr Kenny (which is possibly a typo for Kelly) is offering Fruitlawn on 7 ½ acres was for sale for £1000 ono. A year later James O’Reilly has sold Fruitlawn according to Nationalist and Leinster Times September 22, 1956

January 17, 1959; C Hefferman is selling Fruitlawn on 8 acres for £1000 and it was bought by John Delaney.

Paul and Edwina Cheetham lived at from 1969 to 1981 and when I first visited it in 1980 it had a host of damp problems and was in need of a fairly serious refurbishment. It was for sale on about 1 acre for £35k. It then became the home of Ann and Bruce Wallace, whose son Andrew now has Granston Manor, before being bought by Liz Verekeer, whose father Lord Gort had restored Bunratty Castle and lived in Lough Cutra Castle. Liz achieved a certain fame for the four poster beds she produced for spoiled pets! Garden designer Arthur Shackleton then bought it and created a home in the old yard buildings and an amazing 1 acre walled garden.

The house and remaining lands were sold in 1998 for €350,000. Gary and Michi Owens turned Fruitlawn into a very 21st century house with geothermal heating and other such basics. The Owens were serial restorers, who went on to be finalists in the 2018 “Home of the Year “ competition for their restoration of a mill in West Cork. They sold it in November 2006 for €1.4 m (Oh clever people, the last years of the Celtic Tiger! The crash was in October 2008).

The Leech family were at Fruitlawn for over 100 years, and then in the last 50 years it has been sold 10 times. It is interesting how often this happens. So often the idea of living in a beautiful house in the country seems like a perfect dream; but once your dream turns into reality it often becomes a nightmare!

Blackhill or Bellview

July 17, 2021November 14, 2021 / cuffesboro / 6 Comments

Ancient relics and agents

At Blackhill there lies a famous old stone which a druid and his people used to worship at before the time of Saint Patrick. The stone itself is in a wood which covers all the hill and is now standing upright in the midst of a bunch of thorns on the top of the hill. It is now only about four feet above the ground and is very hard to find. (duchas.ie).

Blackhill seems to have been built by Galamiel Bell around 1790 and called Bellview. There is a lease from Lord de Vesci to Samuel Leigh of Black Hill in 1806, but that seems to refer to the mill at Beechfield. By 1832 Galamiel’s son William Bell (1779-1860) was living at Bellview. He married m. 1st Esther Foxall (d. 1820) and had 13 children He then married Charlotte Crown and had 5 more children. I am not sure quite how 20 people lived in Blackhill!

His daughter Eleanor (1808 – 1875) married Ebenezer Shackleton of Belan Lodge. Described as a woman of rare charm, both in person and character, of cultured literary tastes, and came of Quaker stock, she is buried in Ballitore.

His son Thomas emigrated in 1833:- We are authorised to contradict the statement that Thos. Bell, Esq., second son of William Bell, Esq., of Bellview, Abbeyleix, was about depart for America with his lady, in spite of the earnest entreaties of their distracted parents. The fact being that the young couple have the full concurrence of their families and friends in departing for a country where they have every fair prospect of succeeding in the objects which they have view. Dublin Evening Packet – Tuesday 17 December 1833

His son Zachariah (1808-1864) moved to Dublin, and William (b 1804) moved to London and became a Doctor. He returned to Clonmel where his son William Abraham Bell was born in 1841. W.A. went on to become a doctor, real estate and industrial developer in Colorado, returning to England to become Lord of the Manor of Bletchingley. His father returned to his homes in England – Hertford Street , Mayfair , and Merlin, Eastbourne where he died before seeing his granddaughter Hyacinthe Bell become the Countess of Glasgow. Her grandson’s decoration of the family seat, Kelburn Castle, is unique.

His son George Robert served in the Royal Navy for 30 years, seeing action in the Crimean War, and retired as a Captain, and then joined the Dublin Steam Packet Company.

Like Norefield, Blackhills had a variety of occupiers, many of them cogs in the machinery of the British Empire. In 1834 it is advertised to let. The Dublin Morning Register – Friday 19 August 1836 notes the Rev John Delany is of Blackhill, though this may have been just the townland. In 1847 it is on the market again. In Griffiths Valuation of 1850 Francis Hetherington is actually the occupier of Blackhill House, a tenant of Lord de Vesci, and William Bell is in Bellgrove. It would be great if this was the Francis Hetherington who was gardener to the 2nd Earl of Charlemont, of Marino. He convened a meeting of fellow gardeners in the Rose Tavern, Donnybrook, on 30 September, 1816, and thus founded what is now the RHSI. The first formal meeting of the Horticultural Society of Ireland was held on 1 January 1817. In January 1839 Francis Hetherington, farmer, of Abbeyleix, is registered as a freeholder. His death in Abbeyleix, at the advanced age of 105, took place in 1868.

His daughter Mary Anne Hetherington married Henry Sheppard, a medical student, in Abbeyleix in 1847. His son Francis (1820-1886) married Frances Dobson (1840-1879) and in 1876 Francis Hetherington had 142 acres at Blackhill, though it would appear that he was no longer living at Blackhill because in 1856 and 1860 William’s son Arthur Bell is offering Blackhill to let again as he was intending to emigrate. On 13 Sep 1862 The Farmers Gazette reports on “a useful saw mill, constructed by amateur, Mr. Arthur Bell, Belleview, Abbeyleix. It was driven by one of Garrett’s five-horse power steam-engines ; but Mr. Bell informed us that he had a small two-horse power engine, which he found sufficient.”

In 1867 there are letters in the deVesci papers to the 3rd Viscount de Vesci from Arthur Bell , about his (unfulfilled) plans to emigrate to New Zealand, and about repairs to Bellview carried out with the help of a loan from the 3rd Viscount . Arthur seems to have found a leasee in the form of Samuel John Benwell (1845-1895) from Coolacrease, Cadamstown who sold the lease in 1871, and returned to Coolacrease. It is said that it was the land at Coolacrease that Benwell sold to the Pearsons that resulted in the IRA murder of the Pearson brothers on July 7 1921. Strangely when Benwell married Arabella Casson of Ballyknockan in July 1874 he was still giving his address as Bellview.

It is often difficult to determine where people actually lived – Francis Hetherington’s death certificate of 1886 gives his address as Blackhill. When Arthur Bell married Susan Madden, the daughter of the Rev Samuel Madden of Attanagh in October 1854 he gave his place of residence as Bellview (aka Blackhill House). However I suspect that he was actually living at Bellgrove. When his daughter Selina Grace Bell was born in 1865 he just gave his residence as Abbeyleix. His son Charles D’Hautville Bell succeeded his uncle, Capt George Robert Bell, RN, as the Marine Superintendent of the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company, founded by their neighbour Richard Bourne of Springmount. Peter Selley has shared another detail on the Bells – Arthur and Susan Bell (née Madden) had another daughter, Charlotte Jane Bell, born in Abbeyleix, Laois, in 1858. She emigrated to USA where she trained as a nurse. In 1887 she married Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen. She died under slightly suspicious circumstances in 1892. Crippen remarried and came to England. In 1910 he was hanged for the murder of his second wife. He was the first suspect to be captured with the aid of telegrams, when the Captain of the Montrose, on which he was escaping to Canada, recognised him and telegrammed Scotland Yard.

Benwell’s deparure in 1871. His father was George Thomas Benwell, b 1810 in London and d 1897 at Coolcrease

London Evening Standard – Thursday 15 April 1880 announces at Blackhill, Abbeyleix, the birth of a son to James de Courcy Hughes, Captain, Royal Queen’s County Rifles, only surviving son of the late James Freeman Hughes. The Hughes family came from Ballinrobe, but James was brought up at The Grove, Stillorgan, which was in recent years a bowling alley called Leisureplex! When they married in September 1878 they were living at Tigroney House, Avoca and moved to Blackhill in 1879. Only 27 years old, James died of fever in January 1884 and his widow left Blackhill in 1886.

Sir William Hutcheson Poe (1848-1934) had lost his leg at the Battle of Metemneh in Sudan in 1895. In 1896 he married Mary Adelaide Domville, heiress of Santry Court and Heywood House and they moved into Blackhill House, moving to Heywood after her mother died in June 1890. His brother Admiral Sir Edmund Poe then moved into Blackhill. Kittie Deegan of Abbeyleix has a story of the Admiral’s ghost! The Headless Coach is so called because the horses are headless. It generally appears at midnight. It has been seen by several people on different nights. The people say they feel terrified when they hear the furious driving of the horses, and all animals shiver and run off the road. The figure of the man on the drivers seat can be plainly seen, and he uses his whip. He is dressed in black with a tall hat and the horses and coach are jet black. The coach starts on its journey from Blackhill avenue and on down the Balladine Road, up the town. and on to the Ballyroan road as far as “Oatlands” avenue. Here it disappears When Sir Admiral Poe was dying it was seen for the first time outside his own house. One of the servants say that he was seen in it, and when they went to his room he was found dead. Unfortunately for the complete veracity of this story the unhappy admiral died at St Raphael on the Côte d’Azur on 1 April 1921. But maybe they didn’t go to his room and find hm dead, just received a telegram to say that he was dead.

Col Senator Sir William Hutcheson Poe at Leinster house

FREE STATE PATROL ATTACKED. On Thursday night a party of Free State soldiers were subjected to a fierce attack of machine gun and rifle fire while patrol-‘ ling in the environs of Senator Colonel Poe’s residence at Blackhill, about four miles from Abbeyleix. They took cover and returned the fire, the attackers fleeing after about ten minutes, during which time fire was continued. Blackhill House is at present tenanted by Miss Banks, whose residence was recently burned. Senator Poe for months back has been the victim of several attacks, his motor having been burned and his property in many ways injured. Their son Hugo was declared to be of unsound mind in 1929. Whilst they were still living at Heywood there is a tale of a hunt ball and Hugo, who was not allowed to attend, stood on the landing throwing his father’s wooden legs into the throng below. He also delighted in riding a stallion which he would encourage to mount any mares when out hunting, to the consternation of the mares and their riders.

By 1930 the Abbeyleix estate was letting Blackhill to Lt Col Kenlis Edward Nangle (1871-1950) and his wife Sybil Barnard Slater Nangle, whose youngest son Henry Nathaniel Milo Nangle was killed in a mid air collision between two DART planes, training over Scotland the following year. Mrs Nangle had been born at Eglish Castle, Birr, now a tragic ruin Col. Nangle was born in Rangoon, the grandson of Edward Nangle who set up the Achill Mission during the famine.

The next tenant was Major William Augustus Cecil Kinsman, DSO, OBE , born 15 April 1878, son of Harold John Kinsman, Colonel, Royal Artillery, and Emily Anne, daughter of Reverend R Fitzgerald, Ballydonaghue, of Tarbert, County Kerry. He joined the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, as a Second Lieutenant, 21 April 1900. He served in the, South African War, 1899-1902, and was dangerously wounded; He was mentioned in Despatches [London Gazette, 29 July 1902]; received the Queen’s Medal with three clasps, and the King’s Medal with two clasps. In the First World War he was Assistant Inspector of Recruiting, Irish Command. Major Kinsman married, in 1909, Frances Elizabeth, daughter of R J Newell, of Monkstown, County Dublin. He died in Dorset in 1959. After the Kinsmans left Sir Hugo Poe and his nurse moved back to Blackhill where he died in 1959.

After Major Evan Talbot Trevor Lloyd sold Gloster in 1958 he and his family moved into Blackhill where he died in 1964.

Gay Kindersley & Mary Annesley at Lepordstown

Later occupants included the beautiful Mrs Mary Annesley, (I believe the daughter of Maj. Donald Ramsay MacDonald of Hollymount, Carlow) who left having been snapped up by a Scottish Laird.

So what of the building now known Bellgrove, named on the 1890 OS survey, marked but not named on the 1840 survey and lived in by William Bell in 1850.

Dublin Mercantile Advertiser- Monday 29 November 1830 has Samuel Mosse of Belgrove Abbeyleix signing a petition as a “Friend of The Union”. In later life Mosse was a linen miller in Dublin, so might have been associated with the flaxmill at Beechgrove. The existing 3 bay 2 storey farmhouse with a fully hipped roof, harled with plaster quoins, looks to be no older than late 19th century. The Claxtons of Bellgrove (the Claxton family history, which traces the Laois Claxtons to the 17th century Valentine Claxton of Kerry is at https://clugstonfamilytree.wordpress.com/claxton) have farmed at Blackhill for several generations and in 1962 made one of the most important Bronze age finds in Laois, a sword, an axe and a spear, which are now in the National Museum, and for which he received the princely reward of £20.

From The Nationalist & Leinster Times January 1984 (& it’s Bellgrove not Bellbrook).

The old OS maps do throw up some interesting questions – who was Nellie Millea, whose name is commemorated in a well at Blackhills Cross. Why is the motte near Beechfield called Mount Thomas? What was the monument of Monument Cross, just past Tonduff?

Answers on a postcard please!

More Minor than Major

Lesser Laois Houses

Abbeyleix

THE ISLAND, ABBEYLEIX

Farmleigh, Abbeyleix

A childhood home of the artist Francis Bacon

A bad egg and a Bacon

Noreville, Abbeyleix

Millbrook, Abbeyleix

Norefield

Fruitlawn, Abbeyleix

Abbeyleix’s Worsted Factory

Wallis, Pigott & Drysdale

A Soup Kitchen

Any old parchments?

War games

A Renaissance RM

Waltzing O’Donohue

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A childhood home of the artist Francis Bacon

A bad egg and a Bacon

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Abbeyleix’s Worsted Factory

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Ancient relics and agents

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