In the 19th century when Barmeath was crenelated and castellated for ornamentation, a wing was added with rooms for servants, a kitchen, chapel, store rooms etc. There were cellars below. When I was a child it was called The Old Nurseries so I suppose children lived there too.
I used it for roller skating and I have found other children in large houses (essential with gravel drives) have also availed themselves of great expanses of floor boards. For instance Prince Jonathan Doria Pamphilj at the Palazzo Doria Pamphilj in Rome. These days, at least when I visited as a tourist, he has a high-end Italian sports car parked up, an expression I find very common. Drinks parties, ice creams on sticks, tissues, McDonald’s, Maseratis, y fronts, books by Lee Child, Pilates, price comparison websites, Tesco and Guards ties (Brigade ties are most desirable) are all common. Nicky Haslam is not common. Years ago my “boss” at work said he envied me having an OE and a Brigade (he said Guards) tie. I told him I seldom wore them but I was certain he, like Michael Heseltine, would if he could. My uncle used to wear an OE tie to church in Dunleer after a recent funeral. It was suitably sombre and there was no chance of it being recognised he correctly opined.
The Old Nurseries were not built as sturdily as the main house and it was deemed wise to unroof most of it as well as removing the interior. “Unroof”, is that really a word? I hadn’t heard of it until I saw English Heritage use it this week. Upon investigation I find unroof was first used in 1598.
There is no shortage of unroofed dwellings particularly in Ireland. Indeed it is rare for The Irish Aesthete to write about anything with a roof. In England I suggest Lowther is the most spectacular example. I knew it well forty years ago when I was a referee at the carriage driving trials there.
The style is not unlike Barmeath; a sham castle. Not surprising as, like Barmeath, it was tarted up in the early 19th century and Lowther Hall became Lowther Castle. It was unroofed in 1957.
The powerfully evocative impression created by an unroofed and disheveled great house is an under-rated architectural experience, and restoring them all would deprive future generations of that exquisite blend of horror, imagined violence and other lives. A newly sheveled great house like Lowther can no longer convey quite the same spine-shivering intensity, and while it laudably achieves something else – new, creative and inspiring – I still mourn the re-sheveling.
Disheveled is a new one for me, thank you. Tomorrow’s post will be about another unroofed house.