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Stately Homes and Historic Mansions - Your Thoughts?

JupiterKid

My partner and I have a deep love of architecture, culture and history and therefore perhaps it is no surprise that we are fond of visiting historic houses and their gardens - places like Castletown, Powerscourt, Kilruddery, Emo Court, Rusborough, Westport House, Lissadell and so on.

Up until quite recently many of these historic houses were under threat of demolition or neglect and it took the efforts of groups like the Irish Georgian Society and private owners to invest in them, restore them and open them to the public.

Ireland has only developed a real appreciation of its built heritage in the past 25 years and this reflects how we have matured as a nation.

In the early years of the State, many of these beautiful houses were burned down and destroyed and were often viewed with hatred as the domains of the oppressors.

Do you like to visit historic houses and their gardens? Do you think we should make more efforts to preserve and restore them? Do you think that this is an aspect of Irish tourism that could be developed and promoted more, like we did did decades ago with our natural scenery, our pubs, our castles and ruined monasteries?

Thoughts?

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[Deleted User]

I loathe the fact that the best examples of native forest are invariably in the hands of Protestant landholders/landlords. That is all.

Atlantic Dawn

Once they are open to the public I think it's a great idea. I regularly see tourists taking photo's of georgian doors in Dublin city centre in the same way modern people take photo's of a LaFerrari.

No harm in that.

corner of hells

Deleted User wrote: »

I loathe the fact that the best examples of native forest are invariably in the hands of Protestant landholders/landlords. That is all.

Those Protestants , up to no good as usual.

[Deleted User]

corner of hells wrote: »

Those Protestants , up to no good as usual.

Not at all, just that the descendents of planters have a dominion over the most natural Irish woodlands going back centuries. Which wasn't chopped down for the construction of ships overseas.

DEFTLEFTHAND

Deleted User wrote: »

Not at all, just that the descendents of planters have a dominion over the most natural Irish woodlands going back centuries. Which wasn't chopped down for the construction of ships overseas.

Many of them were ancient Gaelic seats of power.

Reamonn, Redmond Hall in Wexford for instance which was taken over and given to the planter Loftus Family during the Cromwellian conquest.

Irish Home Ruler John Redmond was a direct descendent of the original House.

freshpopcorn

JupiterKid wrote: »

Do you like to visit historic houses and their gardens? Do you think we should make more efforts to preserve and restore them? Do you think that this is an aspect of Irish tourism that could be developed and promoted more, like we did did decades ago with our natural scenery, our pubs, our castles and ruined monasteries?

Thoughts?

I'd rarely visit them.
I'd prefer the gardens to the houses. Oldie worldie/erc wouldn't be for me.
Maybe we should make more of an effort to restore them.
Is there a market for tourism. Yes of course there is. Americans are great and buying into there family history/etc from what I've seen.
However if it was a private investment it may take you years to recoup the money.

ILoveYourVibes

I think you have to find the right balance of the new and the old.

I love beautiful houses and grounds new or old.

Sometimes older houses are falling apart inside and cold etc

If you can blend the two its better. Best of both worlds

BalcombeSt4

JupiterKid wrote: »

My partner and I have a deep love of architecture, culture and history and therefore perhaps it is no surprise that we are fond of visiting historic houses and their gardens - places like Castletown, Powerscourt, Kilruddery, Emo Court, Rusborough, Westport House, Lissadell and so on.

Up until quite recently many of these historic houses were under threat of demolition or neglect and it took the efforts of groups like the Irish Georgian Society and private owners to invest in them, restore them and open them to the public.

Ireland has only developed a real appreciation of its built heritage in the past 25 years and this reflects how we have matured as a nation.

In the early years of the State, many of these beautiful houses were burned down and destroyed and were often viewed with hatred as the domains of the oppressors.

Do you like to visit historic houses and their gardens? Do you think we should make more efforts to preserve and restore them? Do you think that this is an aspect of Irish tourism that could be developed and promoted more, like we did did decades ago with our natural scenery, our pubs, our castles and ruined monasteries?

Thoughts?

They were burned down in retaliation for British forces burning down civilian house, as they believed every small house had a "Sinn Feiner" hiding inside it.

Graces7

Muckross house in Killarney with the Traditional Farm feature ... Kylemore Abbey...

Not for me; for me the really evocative ruined monastic foundation with their history .

Say my name

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Not at all, just that the descendents of planters have a dominion over the most natural Irish woodlands going back centuries. Which wasn't chopped down for the construction of ships overseas.

Do you not think there's a correlation between the two?

If it was skivied out to all and sundry. There'd be no woodlands as they'd be chopped down straightaway for revenue and the land turned to the plough for "improvement".
It might leave sour grapes for some but it preserved those woodlands up till now and this is coming from someone who's "thankful" the local big house was burned or else we'd be tenants now to a landlord with thousands of acres.

whisky_galore

[Deleted User] wrote: »

I loathe the fact that the best examples of native forest are invariably in the hands of Protestant landholders/landlords. That is all.

We would have chopped it down, replaced it with Sitka spruce or shoved a few bungalows and McMansions in there.

Poor Uncle Tom

JupiterKid wrote: »

My partner and I have a deep love of architecture, culture and history and therefore perhaps it is no surprise that we are fond of visiting historic houses and their gardens - places like Castletown, Powerscourt, Kilruddery, Emo Court, Rusborough, Westport House, Lissadell and so on.

Up until quite recently many of these historic houses were under threat of demolition or neglect and it took the efforts of groups like the Irish Georgian Society and private owners to invest in them, restore them and open them to the public.

Ireland has only developed a real appreciation of its built heritage in the past 25 years and this reflects how we have matured as a nation.

In the early years of the State, many of these beautiful houses were burned down and destroyed and were often viewed with hatred as the domains of the oppressors.

Do you like to visit historic houses and their gardens? Do you think we should make more efforts to preserve and restore them? Do you think that this is an aspect of Irish tourism that could be developed and promoted more, like we did did decades ago with our natural scenery, our pubs, our castles and ruined monasteries?

Thoughts?

Not all of them are going to be suitable for tourism. The ones that are should be maintained for that purpose.

With a bit of imagination and ingenuity the others could be developed into multi-family homes. imo, there's nothing sadder than something not being used for its intended purpose, like a classic car in a showroom, it just lacks the spark,

Let those houses live again, not with one family lording it over all, but with 15 families bringing up children in a really suitable setting.

whisky_galore

BalcombeSt4 wrote: »

They were burned down in retaliation for British forces burning down civilian house, as they believed every small house had a "Sinn Feiner" hiding inside it.

Most of them were burned in the Civil War, burned down by The Boys to prevent the Free State using them as barracks, to settle old scores or punishment for real or imagined informers. Soft targets in most cases.

Mad_maxx

Bantry house is one of the lesser known ones, visited there not so long ago, loved it, beautiful gardens too

Hamsterchops

JupiterKid wrote: »

My partner and I have a deep love of architecture, culture and history and therefore perhaps it is no surprise that we are fond of visiting historic houses and their gardens - places like Castletown, Powerscourt, Kilruddery, Emo Court, Rusborough, Westport House, Lissadell and so on.

Thoughts?

We too love old stately homes, have visited many over the years both here and in England. Shame so many real gems were lost during the 'not so enlightened' times of the 1920s when historic architecture & heritage wasn't given s second thought. Customs House also comes to mind ...

Rows Grower

Lyrath Estate Hotel in Kilkenny is well worth a visit for anyone who hasn't been.

Ger Roe

Kilmacurragh House in Wicklow stands runined in the grounds of the Wicklow 'branch' of the national botanic gardens (see what I did there?). The well maintained gardens contain many unique plant and tree species that are not suited to the Glassnevin site and thrive in the particular local Wicklow conditions.

The gardens are spectacular, having been relatively recently reclaimed and restored, but unfortunately the impressive former estate mansion is a dangerous wreck. I took a really interesting guided tour there recently (free) where the history of the house and gardens was explained. It was a great pity to hear of the history of the house and to see it's present condition, cordoned off for fear of collapse.

The guide said that while the OPW has plans to restore it, there has been very little progress in recent decades and just minor 'stabilisation' works have been carried out. The guide said that that most of the preservation has been carried out by spiders holding the roof up with their re-enforced cobwebs

Sad to see that a potential historic treasure is being allowed to literally fall into ruin. It's too easy to loose our built heritage, all we have to do is .... nothing, and we are really good at that.

In the meantime, take a trip to the garden of Ireland and see it while you still have a chance. Kilmacurragh gardens are well worth a look on a sunny afternoon.

Say my name

Not sure how much credence this holds.
But there was an interview years ago on the local radio station with a geopathic stress "expert". He went with his instruments or whatever he uses on the ruins of Castleboro House, co.Wexford.
He said he picked up zero readings inside the house which he never experienced anywhere before.
He reckoned a lead lining must have been used in the foundation.

Irish Praetorian

sugarman wrote: »

Absolutely, there were several beautiful houses and in one case a monastery that dated back several hundred years demolished in the 60s/70s around where I live to make way for modern housing estates.

I dont know what the government were thinking in that period, knocking rows and rows of Georgian housing down in inner city Dublin for mass soviet style concrete blocks of apartments.

Not to mention, DCC destroying the oldest and most persevered Viking settlement in Europe to build there own concrete bunkers / head quarters on Wood Quay.

I'm all for the preservation of historic remains such as the Viking settlement at Wood Quay or many of these historic homes in rural locations. They are an integral part of our understanding of the past as well as fine resources for both historians and tourists alike.

But I do not have the same conservative attitude when it comes to the more mundane construction of Dublin city centre, simply because those buildings have passed a certain milestone of years or have a certain quaint aesthetic appeal. Cities are to be lived in, and we cannot seriously lodge complaints on the one hand about the horrors of inner-city traffic, sky-rocketing rents and poor quality civil infrastructure, whilst at the same time treating the physical construction of the city as some kind of sacred immutable masterpiece that must never be disturbed.

I'll offer an example of this; part of my doctoral research involved consulting a historical archive located not far from St. Stephens Green, in one of those lovely terraced Georgian Houses that we like to wax lyrical about. The middle of our capital city and it was about four stories high in total. The interior was exactly what you would expect of a former residence converted to civil use; a mishmash of passageways and closets connected to a number of enormous rooms. The room I ended up in was an elegant sitting room with a fireplace, with a ceiling so high it could have fit the guts of another floor within. Meanwhile, out back, was a disused gravel pit of a garden, comprising about 60% of the total footprint of the property. It doesn't surprise me and it shouldn't surprise you to learn that a 3 bedroom apartment not far from that place today costs about 5k per month in rent.

Again, I restate, we cannot hold both the deferential attitude to the architecture of the past whilst still seriously asking why are so many young professionals going to emigrate, why traffic and public transport are so problematic and why there is such pressure on wages. Now I do not for one second believe everyone can or indeed ought to be living 5 minutes from St. Stephens Green, but I do think it's the perfect example of how failures in infrastructural policy as causing serious and deep problems in the country.

Now when it comes to remedying the situation I don't want anyone to think I'm somehow ruling out the complications of anything from high taxes to greedy landlords or indeed government mismanagement. I'm certainly not going to make the case that a single brick of Georgian construction should be replaced by some brutalist Soviet monstrosity - although if any of you want an example of what an acquaintance called 'decaying Soviet era grandeur I suggest you look at the National Archives next to the Dail. But I do think we need to wean ourselves off the idea that the only 'real' Dublin buildings are the ones with semi-elliptical fanlights.

Mad_maxx

Rows Grower wrote: »

Lyrath Estate Hotel in Kilkenny is well worth a visit for anyone who hasn't been.

Was underwhelmed by that place

El_Bee

Deleted User wrote: »

Not at all, just that the descendents of planters have a dominion over the most natural Irish woodlands going back centuries. Which wasn't chopped down for the construction of ships overseas.

It's the only reason why they still exist, if they were in Irish Catholic hands they'd have been sold off to be "developed" long long ago.

Church on Tuesday

I find them interesting, almost like time capsules of Irish History.

They are part of our architectural history as well as, in most cases, a reminder of our colonised past.

The fact that many are open to the public for educational and recreational purposes is a good thing for the generations to come.

bodhrandude

A thing I noticed in the last twenty years is that some of these stately homes and mansions make terrific festival sites, look at Stradbally House the site for Electric Picnic, Ballinlough Castle for the Body&Soul Festival site and Curraghmore House and estate in Portlaw, Waterford for the All Together Now festival.

JPCN1

A guide to Irish Country Houses is a great reference book but very sad to see how much we've lost in the last century.

Pulling down a Georgian block to put up the terrible ESB building was nothing short of vandalism.

Your Face

I read History and I visit these places when I can.
The history of these places and those who lived in them, are often more complicated than many think.

[Deleted User]

whisky_galore wrote: »

We would have chopped it down, replaced it with Sitka spruce or shoved a few bungalows and McMansions in there.

Well, standard Irish inferiority complex aside, many of the great buildings of Britain weren't exactly cherished by our supposedly more cultured overlords:

Destruction of country houses in 20th-century Britain

Rows Grower

Mad_maxx wrote: »

Was underwhelmed by that place

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

branie2

Very interesting places to visit

whisky_galore

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Well, standard Irish inferiority complex aside, many of the great buildings of Britain weren't exactly cherished by our supposedly more cultured overlords:

Destruction of country houses in 20th-century Britain

Yawn.