Abandoned Ireland

The following four page article appeared in the Sunday Tribune newspaper 15th Feb 2009.

If these walls could talk...

To some they're derelict eyesores but to others such as photographer Tarquin Blake, they're elegant relics from a bygone era begging to be explored. Join him and Michael Freeman for an antiques roadshow through some houses on the hill.

In the 18th-century drama The Duchess, which came out last year, Keira Knightley plays Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. Georgiana was a scandal-prone aristocrat famous for her domestic arrangements: she and her husband lived in a ménage à trois with her friend Lady Elizabeth Hervey, who – as well as enjoying bed-hopping affairs with numerous aristocrats including a cardinal – happened to be the mother of the owner of Glyde Court, Tallanstown, Co Louth.

Today, the family's manor house at Glyde lies in a depression on the edge of a wood, almost invisible from the road. It isn't signposted, or even named on recent maps. The only reason we're here at all is a tip-off, saying that the abandoned mansion might be worth exploring. And it is: though the trees that flank the house are encroaching into the rooms, and its corridors are clogged with rubble, the big crumbling building is beautiful. Lady Elizabeth did her family some favours.

Glyde Court

The tip-off about the house came to Blake, a part time photographer based in Co Cork. Blake (full name Tarquin Blake, but he stopped using the first part because it was a liability at school) is the driving force behind Abandoned Ireland, a website dedicated to recording historic buildings that have been left untended, and are falling into ruin. In person, he is a man in his mid-30s wearing dark, expensive outdoor gear and walking boots, with the look of somebody in his weekend clothes.

"I'm trying to document abandoned buildings across Ireland," he says. "And the buildings that I'm interested in are those which have either historical, architectural or social importance. I feel they're important places, which are basically just left there falling down. There's nobody interested in trying to preserve them. So what I'm trying to do is just get a record of them, as they stand today."

As it stands today, visiting Glyde Court is a little like going through the looking glass. Rounding a curve in the rutted path, you suddenly come upon it: a huge, palatial mansion. All at once, the muddy track is a grand driveway. Ivy covers some of the building's front, but not enough to obscure the arched doorway; and above, a large balcony area with an ornamental stone railing. The house stretches back in bay after bay of delicately proportioned sash windows that look over the sunny fields. The windows are empty of glass, but the wooden pane dividers are intact, like the skeleton of a leaf.

Glyde Court

Most of Blake's project is exploring these abandoned manor houses that lie dotted across the countryside. Many were burnt out during the Troubles of the 1920s; of these, he says, "all you get left is the walls standing". But others were occupied until relatively recently. Glyde Court falls into this second category. Homes like this, Blake suggests, were probably abandoned simply due to lack money. "The place would have been deteriorating over the years, and just became uninhabitable. I guess the owners might have even gone down to just living in a couple of the rooms of the house. Then finally, as the conditions worsened, they couldn't maintain even those."

The house has a strange, Marie-Celeste feeling. "Look at this!" says Jess, Blake's sometime companion in the Abandoned Ireland explorations, as we pick our way through one room. She holds up a newspaper, dated 1979.

In the warren of small back rooms, the ceilings bulge and sag but remain intact, so the interiors have some protection from the weather. Bookcases still rest against the walls. Several sets of stairs lead up to the rickety first floor – but Blake urges caution. Is there an element of danger to exploring these places, I ask. "There is, yes. But as I visit more of these places, I'm just getting a bit more comfortable with finding my way over rotten floors, and avoiding dodgy floorboards, and that kind of thing." I take his advice and leave the upper floors to the ivy.

Glyde Court

During the week, Blake works as a software engineer. (When asked what exactly he does, he says he's "in automation".) If he has spare time in the evenings he researches these abandoned buildings and, when he has three or four in the same area, he sets out at the weekend to make a day of exploring and photographing them.

How did he get interested in the ruins? "I guess it started a few years ago", he says. "I saw a couple of old cottages in west Cork, overgrown and the roof all collapsed, and just walked up to them and had a bit of a look. And I found it interesting, trying to figure out the history behind the place. And then back at the beginning of 2008, I noticed the old Cork asylum there on the side of the hill" – part of the old Our Lady's Hospital complex, on the outskirts of Cork city – "and just decided to walk up and have a look around that. I found the door open. And I was surprised to see the place sort of fallen down and just left there, rotting. And no one seeming to care about it. After that I started being more aware of these buildings, and actually trying to find them."

And find them he does. For each house we are to visit, he has satellite photographs, scans of 19th-century maps, and a photocopied entry from an ancient directory of country houses giving architectural details: all neatly stapled together into a kind of dossier. Some of his houses he locates on these maps or in history books; others, such as Glyde, are recommended by visitors to his website.

In Glyde's huge reception rooms at the front of the building, where sections of elegant moulding still cling to the mossy walls, it's not hard to imagine the tea parties of two centuries ago. Elizabeth Hervey's son Augustus Foster, the first Baronet of Glyde, probably didn't spend much time at the house – he was a diplomat, not a very good one, who eventually committed suicide in England by cutting his own throat in a fit of temporary insanity. But thanks to Elizabeth's romance with the duchess and the duke, the family's fortune was made regardless, and the Fosters became a notable line. A 1907 William Orpen portrait of the fourth Baronet Foster and his family is part of the National Gallery's collection.

All the metal fittings are gone from the Fosters' old home now; genuine salvaged antiques like these are big money these days, and Glyde Court's door handles are possibly ornamenting the master bedrooms of Dublin 4. But the occasional relic remains. In the main stairwell – a room at least 30 feet high, where the actual staircase litters the floor and only its track can still be seen ascending the walls – a decorated wrought-iron box sits squatly amid the fallen steps. Vegetation sprouts from it, so it looks rather like a garden planter. But Blake knows better. "It's a stove," he says. An ornamental iron heater, fuelled by peat or coal.

In the extensive stables at the back of the house, too, we find harnesses and yokes for drawing carriages. In the wine cellar there are numerous empty bottles, but only one still has the remains of a label; it's whiskey, marked 'Newry'. The wine cellar is guarded by a rusted but formidable-looking iron gate. "What's this for?" asks Jess. "To keep the servants out," Blake replies.

Glyde Court

He says that public reaction to the project has been very encouraging. "The feedback I've had on the website has been entirely positive. I had the current Lord Ashtown congratulating me on my documentary of Woodlawn House, Galway – his former family home. He was a bit surprised, I think, to see how fast the place was deteriorating. Dereliction was creeping up on the place a lot faster than he'd thought."

Dereliction comes quickly to abandoned houses. Leaving Glyde to disappear again among the trees, our next destination, is Stephenstown House, nearby in Knockbridge. Stephenstown, a local landmark, was sold off in 1974 by the Fortescue family – its owners for more than 200 years. A 1982 photograph shows the house with roof intact and glass still in the windows, only a few panes broken. And one woman I speak to, who grew up in the area, has memories of exploring the upper floors as a teenager in the '90s. But today, the staircase rises to a landing that leads to nothing. The roof and upper floors have mostly fallen through to the basement; and little remains of the interior.

Stephenstown House

But pieces of intricate cornicing still punctuate the thick walls, and the huge windows still survey the rolling countryside from a series of giant, empty rooms – now two or three storeys in height. At the back of the house – the servants' quarters – an ancient cooking range dominates what must have been the kitchen. Several of the tall columns that stood along the main hallway have fallen away from their places, showing their hollow interiors – they are wood, painted to look like stone. Graffiti – "Knockbridge Boyz" – covers the walls.

Stephenstown House

In an ideal world, would Blake have all these houses restored to their former glory? "I guess if they were all restored, there'd be nothing for me to go and look at," he says with a laugh. "My objective is just to record the places as they stand today. After that… I mean, it would be nice to see some of these places at least preserved in their current state. Like for example at Westown House, in Naul – it was nice to see that the vegetation had just been cleared back from the front and the sides of the house. So at least you know it's not going to be completely overgrown within a few years, and nothing left of the place."

Westown House

He points out that it wasn't all tea parties, back in the day. "I got an email from a woman in the States," he says. "Her grandfather was a servant at Woodlawn House in the '20s – one of the groundsmen. He used to work in the greenhouses. And she was saying that it was a rough time. Pretty grim. Being a servant, having to work long, hard hours." Her grandfather was moved to scratch his own graffiti into a greenhouse windowpane: "Gone to America".

Woodlawn House

Blake himself is philosophical about the demise of the elegant houses that he documents.

"The purpose of these places is quite historical now," he says.

"As they stand, or as they stood before, these buildings are just no longer viable."

He pauses, then adds, "Who wants to live in a 20-bedroom house?"

Contact: info@AbandonedIreland.com

All images displayed on this web site are COPYRIGHT
Abandoned Ireland

Home
	The following four page article appeared in the Sunday Tribune newspaper 15th Feb 2009. If these walls could talk... To some they're derelict eyesores but to others such as photographer Tarquin Blake, they're elegant relics from a bygone era begging to be explored. Join him and Michael Freeman for an antiques roadshow through some houses on the hill. In the 18th-century drama The Duchess, which came out last year, Keira Knightley plays Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. Georgiana was a scandal-prone aristocrat famous for her domestic arrangements: she and her husband lived in a ménage à trois with her friend Lady Elizabeth Hervey, who – as well as enjoying bed-hopping affairs with numerous aristocrats including a cardinal – happened to be the mother of the owner of Glyde Court, Tallanstown, Co Louth. Today, the family's manor house at Glyde lies in a depression on the edge of a wood, almost invisible from the road. It isn't signposted, or even named on recent maps. The only reason we're here at all is a tip-off, saying that the abandoned mansion might be worth exploring. And it is: though the trees that flank the house are encroaching into the rooms, and its corridors are clogged with rubble, the big crumbling building is beautiful. Lady Elizabeth did her family some favours. Glyde Court The tip-off about the house came to Blake, a part time photographer based in Co Cork. Blake (full name Tarquin Blake, but he stopped using the first part because it was a liability at school) is the driving force behind Abandoned Ireland, a website dedicated to recording historic buildings that have been left untended, and are falling into ruin. In person, he is a man in his mid-30s wearing dark, expensive outdoor gear and walking boots, with the look of somebody in his weekend clothes. "I'm trying to document abandoned buildings across Ireland," he says. "And the buildings that I'm interested in are those which have either historical, architectural or social importance. I feel they're important places, which are basically just left there falling down. There's nobody interested in trying to preserve them. So what I'm trying to do is just get a record of them, as they stand today." As it stands today, visiting Glyde Court is a little like going through the looking glass. Rounding a curve in the rutted path, you suddenly come upon it: a huge, palatial mansion. All at once, the muddy track is a grand driveway. Ivy covers some of the building's front, but not enough to obscure the arched doorway; and above, a large balcony area with an ornamental stone railing. The house stretches back in bay after bay of delicately proportioned sash windows that look over the sunny fields. The windows are empty of glass, but the wooden pane dividers are intact, like the skeleton of a leaf. Glyde Court Most of Blake's project is exploring these abandoned manor houses that lie dotted across the countryside. Many were burnt out during the Troubles of the 1920s; of these, he says, "all you get left is the walls standing". But others were occupied until relatively recently. Glyde Court falls into this second category. Homes like this, Blake suggests, were probably abandoned simply due to lack money. "The place would have been deteriorating over the years, and just became uninhabitable. I guess the owners might have even gone down to just living in a couple of the rooms of the house. Then finally, as the conditions worsened, they couldn't maintain even those." The house has a strange, Marie-Celeste feeling. "Look at this!" says Jess, Blake's sometime companion in the Abandoned Ireland explorations, as we pick our way through one room. She holds up a newspaper, dated 1979. In the warren of small back rooms, the ceilings bulge and sag but remain intact, so the interiors have some protection from the weather. Bookcases still rest against the walls. Several sets of stairs lead up to the rickety first floor – but Blake urges caution. Is there an element of danger to exploring these places, I ask. "There is, yes. But as I visit more of these places, I'm just getting a bit more comfortable with finding my way over rotten floors, and avoiding dodgy floorboards, and that kind of thing." I take his advice and leave the upper floors to the ivy. Glyde Court During the week, Blake works as a software engineer. (When asked what exactly he does, he says he's "in automation".) If he has spare time in the evenings he researches these abandoned buildings and, when he has three or four in the same area, he sets out at the weekend to make a day of exploring and photographing them. How did he get interested in the ruins? "I guess it started a few years ago", he says. "I saw a couple of old cottages in west Cork, overgrown and the roof all collapsed, and just walked up to them and had a bit of a look. And I found it interesting, trying to figure out the history behind the place. And then back at the beginning of 2008, I noticed the old Cork asylum there on the side of the hill" – part of the old Our Lady's Hospital complex, on the outskirts of Cork city – "and just decided to walk up and have a look around that. I found the door open. And I was surprised to see the place sort of fallen down and just left there, rotting. And no one seeming to care about it. After that I started being more aware of these buildings, and actually trying to find them." And find them he does. For each house we are to visit, he has satellite photographs, scans of 19th-century maps, and a photocopied entry from an ancient directory of country houses giving architectural details: all neatly stapled together into a kind of dossier. Some of his houses he locates on these maps or in history books; others, such as Glyde, are recommended by visitors to his website. In Glyde's huge reception rooms at the front of the building, where sections of elegant moulding still cling to the mossy walls, it's not hard to imagine the tea parties of two centuries ago. Elizabeth Hervey's son Augustus Foster, the first Baronet of Glyde, probably didn't spend much time at the house – he was a diplomat, not a very good one, who eventually committed suicide in England by cutting his own throat in a fit of temporary insanity. But thanks to Elizabeth's romance with the duchess and the duke, the family's fortune was made regardless, and the Fosters became a notable line. A 1907 William Orpen portrait of the fourth Baronet Foster and his family is part of the National Gallery's collection. All the metal fittings are gone from the Fosters' old home now; genuine salvaged antiques like these are big money these days, and Glyde Court's door handles are possibly ornamenting the master bedrooms of Dublin 4. But the occasional relic remains. In the main stairwell – a room at least 30 feet high, where the actual staircase litters the floor and only its track can still be seen ascending the walls – a decorated wrought-iron box sits squatly amid the fallen steps. Vegetation sprouts from it, so it looks rather like a garden planter. But Blake knows better. "It's a stove," he says. An ornamental iron heater, fuelled by peat or coal. In the extensive stables at the back of the house, too, we find harnesses and yokes for drawing carriages. In the wine cellar there are numerous empty bottles, but only one still has the remains of a label; it's whiskey, marked 'Newry'. The wine cellar is guarded by a rusted but formidable-looking iron gate. "What's this for?" asks Jess. "To keep the servants out," Blake replies. Glyde Court He says that public reaction to the project has been very encouraging. "The feedback I've had on the website has been entirely positive. I had the current Lord Ashtown congratulating me on my documentary of Woodlawn House, Galway – his former family home. He was a bit surprised, I think, to see how fast the place was deteriorating. Dereliction was creeping up on the place a lot faster than he'd thought." Dereliction comes quickly to abandoned houses. Leaving Glyde to disappear again among the trees, our next destination, is Stephenstown House, nearby in Knockbridge. Stephenstown, a local landmark, was sold off in 1974 by the Fortescue family – its owners for more than 200 years. A 1982 photograph shows the house with roof intact and glass still in the windows, only a few panes broken. And one woman I speak to, who grew up in the area, has memories of exploring the upper floors as a teenager in the '90s. But today, the staircase rises to a landing that leads to nothing. The roof and upper floors have mostly fallen through to the basement; and little remains of the interior. Stephenstown House But pieces of intricate cornicing still punctuate the thick walls, and the huge windows still survey the rolling countryside from a series of giant, empty rooms – now two or three storeys in height. At the back of the house – the servants' quarters – an ancient cooking range dominates what must have been the kitchen. Several of the tall columns that stood along the main hallway have fallen away from their places, showing their hollow interiors – they are wood, painted to look like stone. Graffiti – "Knockbridge Boyz" – covers the walls. Stephenstown House In an ideal world, would Blake have all these houses restored to their former glory? "I guess if they were all restored, there'd be nothing for me to go and look at," he says with a laugh. "My objective is just to record the places as they stand today. After that… I mean, it would be nice to see some of these places at least preserved in their current state. Like for example at Westown House, in Naul – it was nice to see that the vegetation had just been cleared back from the front and the sides of the house. So at least you know it's not going to be completely overgrown within a few years, and nothing left of the place." Westown House He points out that it wasn't all tea parties, back in the day. "I got an email from a woman in the States," he says. "Her grandfather was a servant at Woodlawn House in the '20s – one of the groundsmen. He used to work in the greenhouses. And she was saying that it was a rough time. Pretty grim. Being a servant, having to work long, hard hours." Her grandfather was moved to scratch his own graffiti into a greenhouse windowpane: "Gone to America". Woodlawn House Blake himself is philosophical about the demise of the elegant houses that he documents. "The purpose of these places is quite historical now," he says. "As they stand, or as they stood before, these buildings are just no longer viable." He pauses, then adds, "Who wants to live in a 20-bedroom house?" Contact: info@AbandonedIreland.com All images displayed on this web site are COPYRIGHT Abandoned Ireland