Abstract
Professor Dooley continues his exemplary explorations of Ireland’s country houses and their aristocratic owners, though in this case without the aid of an extensive collection of estate papers. In his introduction, Dooley builds upon the pioneering work of Toby Barnard and Maurice Craig, among others, who from the 1970s onwards attempted to bring legitimacy to the sensitive subject of the Big House in an Ireland, still reeling from its colonial history. He discusses the evolving state of the current historiography, aided in no small way by the History Department of Maynooth University, before focussing on the social, economic cultural and political role of Castle Hyde in County Cork, from its early days to its renovated state in the twenty-first century.
In Chapter one, Dooley describes the scenic beauty of the Munster Blackwater landscape which attracted the attention of admiring travel writers in the nineteenth century. Walls then surrounded 1,000 acres; now reduced to less than 200 acres. However, the Georgian mansion retains its imposing architectural structure at the end of the remaining avenue. Some ruins of its predecessor, Carraig an Éide, remain as a folly, and as evidence of the lengthy presence of the Hyde family who had, under Elizabeth I, appropriated the property from the Gaelic Mlawny family in 1588.
In October 1598, Owen MacRory O’More laid siege to Castle Hyde and held it until recaptured by Arthur Hyde the following August. Hyde’s grandson, Arthur III, ensured the family’s wealth by establishing iron works in the Fermoy area. Also serving as a high sheriff of Cork, he furthered the family’s social and political status. Arthur IV began construction of the eighteenth-century Castle Hyde, when defensive tower houses and castle structures were replaced on a grand scale. The building appears to have been modified in the 1740s by Arthur V, and again thirty years later by his brother John. Allegedly redesigned by Davis Ducart, in the Palladian style, questions arise from its depiction by Nathanial Grogan in the 1770s, as a house with a single service wing: artistic licence perhaps, rather than accurate representation.
By 1812, the estate, under John II, had lands in Cork (approximately 6,000 acres), Tipperary (3,760) and Kilkenny and Limerick (1,400). Rental income of around £8,000 was considerably boosted by the sale of 100-year old trees for £10,000 and some younger trees and fir. Contemporaries praised Hyde as an improving landlord. He employed Abraham Hargreaves, an admirer of Ducart, to remodel and enlarge Castle Hyde, with the estimated cost between £30,000 and £40,000. While front and side facades were preserved, much of the interior was gutted, though some original rooms on the west of the house still retain early eighteenth-century lugged doors and window architraves. No inventories survive. Unperturbed, Dooley draws on his own prior research, suggesting that furnishing and contents would have resembled other contemporary houses of its class.
The Hyde family fortune declined through a combination of extensive borrowing, renting to middlemen and the agricultural downturn that accompanied the Famine. As no existing estate papers show the financial straits John III found himself in, as landlord, during the famine years, Dooley again improvises, using papers of neighbouring estates to build a picture. John III had also inherited debts of around £136,000. The Irish Poor Law of 1838 obliged landlords to pay full rates on holdings valued at less than £4 to finance workhouses, and Hyde, like other heavily encumbered landlords, was advised to consolidate small holdings. His agent, Robert de la Cour, recommended no tenant be allowed to rent less than twenty acres. Consequently, scores of poorer tenants and cottiers were evicted.
In 1846, the agent recommended that Indian meal be offered for sale on the Hyde estate, to alleviate the growing hunger: but it was too late. Fermoy was one of the worst areas affected by the potato blight. Its workhouse was built to accommodate 800, but by March 1847 housed 1,800. Between November 1846 and early May 1847, a weekly average of forty people died in the Fermoy workhouse. By 1851, John Hyde III was bankrupt.
A crowded auction house witnessed the sale of Castle Hyde by the Encumbered Estates Court on 5 December 1851. The Famine had brought to light the true extent of the financial situation of many financially overstretched estates. The Castle Hyde estate was divided into thirty-four lots for sale. Buyers included Hyde’s land agent, landowners, merchants, solicitors and some occupying tenants. Lot 16, already under control of the Court of Chancery for some time, included the mansion house and demesne of over 800 acres. It was sold for £19,000, to an unscrupulous solicitor, investor and Member of Parliament, John Sadlier. Following exposure of Sadlier’s embezzlement, political corruption and death by suicide, Castle Hyde came into the Landed Estates Court and sold, in 1861, for £23,000, to Sir Henry Wrixon-Becher.
Descendants of Elizabethan settlers, this family expanded their property acquisitions following the Famine. On Henry’s death in 1993, his brother John inherited. Another brother, William, was the last of the family to live in Castle Hyde until his death in 1914. Castle Hyde freehold was purchased by a relative, through marriage, of William Hyde, for £3,600 in 1918. Farm buildings and 120 acres were bought by a local solicitor, W. J. Magnier, for £3,900, and is now Coolmore Stud.
Within two years, the castle was again sold. Margaret McGill, housekeeper to its new owner, Robert Wood, ran Castle Hyde as a guest house for most of the 1920s, though much of the building remained unused and derelict. Henry Laughlin, a successful American publisher, stayed periodically from 1927. On the market again in 1931, Laughlin’s low bid of £2,000 for the house and 150 acres was accepted and for fifty years the Laughlin family used the house as a summer retreat. Commandeered in September 1940, it was used as a temporary barracks by the Irish National Army until spring 1944, for which compensation of £4,900 was claimed and £2,500 paid. After 1988, Castle Hyde was owned by a succession of proprietors unwilling to invest in maintenance.
In the final chapter, Dooley brings the reader up to date with the ownership of Castle Hyde. In 1999, Irish-American dancer, Michael Flatley, bought the dilapidated mansion for around €4 m and is estimated to have spent another £30 m on restoration and renovation. This was not achieved, however, without periodic conflicts with planning authorities tasked with implementing the Planning and Development Act of 2000, to maintain the historical integrity of Castle Hyde. Following decades of neglect, Flatley saved Castle Hyde from dereliction, the destiny of many other such houses, lost before their value to the nation was realised through the admirable efforts of influential people like Professor Dooley himself. Efforts were made to restore original floors, ceilings, windows and decorative plasterwork throughout, with many other original features being retained. Ireland’s rapid loss of country houses has turned minds towards encouraging investment in preservation and restoration. This may best be seen, Dooley suggests, in the Irish Georgian Society’s Newsletter description of Castle Hyde, as a ‘spectacular home…renowned as one of the greatest restoration projects in Ireland’ (Issue 8 (2013), p. 27 and 32). It continues to be an asset to the built environment of Ireland, and its history is now securely documented.