Great Irish Houses and Castles [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION T he countryside of Ireland, renowned for the picturesque beauty of its natural landscape, is richly endowed with a fascinating array of houses and castles. The image of Irish architecture abroad has consisted of the ruined abbey, round tower, castle fortress and thatched cottage. This romantic idea of our heritage has until recently ignored the great Classical buildings which are equal to anything comparable in Europe, or indeed the world. Because of a hundred years of peace from 1690 to 1798 a golden age flourished in the eighteenth century which produced some of the finest architecture in existence today. Besides the great Palladian buildings of the late eighteenth century there are many others of equal fascination from the early castle stronghold through to the emergence of domestic architecture and concluding with the multi-turreted dream castles of the Victorian era. The purpose of this book is to chronicle these buildings and examine the various architectural styles as they developed from the arrival of the Normans to the end of Queen Victoria's reign. It was not easy to select the houses and castles. It seemed appropriate to balance key masterpieces like Castletown and Carton in Co. Kildare with less famous places such as Lyons in Co. Dublin and Humewood in Co. Wicklow, and to arrange them in chronological order to present an overall picture. Every house has a story to tell or a legend of some kind attached to it, and each makes its individual contribution to the story of Irish architecture. The interiors provide a dazzling visual feast and our final chapter is devoted to the fine and decorative arts which would have been, and are to this day, found in them. It shows a minute selection in order to illustrate the amount of talent that existed in Ireland in a variety of fields. The choice of subjects has been a personal one. For example, in the sculpture section we have included our favourites that have probably never before been illustrated in colour, such as the O'Brien, Conolly and La Touche monuments. These have been chosen not only for their beauty but also because they are so little known, being cither remote or locked away from view. We make no apology for not having included one single portrait bust or statue adorning a public building. It is a sobering thought to consider the quantity of Irish art and artefacts - silver, glass, furniture, bound-books and so on - that have left the country since Ireland's golden age. Very few of its great houses have been able to retain their original contents. Fortunately, the wonderful stucco interiors have remained intact even if, sometimes, the furnishings are of a later period. It is encouraging, therefore, that in many houses we have come upon in the coursc of our travels we have found that the owners have brought back to Ireland objects of beauty, often of great historical interest, that were made here. The 'Big House' has a long-established place in Irish literature and has becomc familiar through the fiction of