Baronscourt, Newtownstewart, Co Tyrone, BT78 4EX

Baronscourt is one of the largest and most significant country houses in Northern Ireland and on the island of Ireland as a whole. It has served as the family seat of the Earls of Abercorn continuously since 1780 and retains an exceptional wealth of high-quality detailing and craftsmanship. The house is neo-classical in style, faced in ashlar sandstone, and is generally two storeys over an extensive basement. It presents a formal garden front to the south and an entrance elevation with a portico and asymmetrical pavilions to the north. The listing covers the main house together with a lower-level garage block, a detached store, and an ornate gate screen to the south.

The house is beautifully situated on the floor of a declivity within an extensive demesne to the west of Newtownstewart village, approximately 4 kilometres south-west of the town in the townland of Barons Court, within the parish of Ardstraw. The demesne encompasses formal gardens, parkland, woodland, and three loughs. The stableyard sits on a steep rise to the east, and the wider estate includes a number of ancillary structures, among them two earlier ducal residences: an 18th-century classical villa and a 17th-century plantation house.

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT

During the Plantation, extensive lands in County Tyrone were granted to the first Earl of Abercorn in 1611 by King James I, and Baronscourt was included as part of the manor of Derrygoon. The Abercorns originally resided at what is now the Agent's House on the demesne. The present mansion was built on its current site between approximately 1779 and 1781 — correspondence confirms it was complete by 1781, and it appears on a demesne map of 1777, though this may represent a proposed rather than an existing layout. James Hamilton, eighth Earl of Abercorn (1712–1789), employed George Steuart as architect; Steuart's house cost £8,015 8s. 7½d.

John (later Sir John) Soane was subsequently employed by the first Marquis of Abercorn (1756–1818) to remodel and enlarge the house during 1791–92, reorienting it to create a north-facing entrance front. These works cost at least £14,500. In July 1793, James Hamilton described the result as having been "completely metamorphosed, both as to house and grounds, as scarcely to bear a single trace of resemblance to the former appearance of either." In 1796 an accidental fire gutted the main block of Soane's building, causing the loss of his distinctive interior features. Robert Woodgate, already on site overseeing work for Soane, directed the reconstruction between 1797 and 1798. Further changes were made in 1810 by a Mr Turner, though the estate agent John James Burgoyne recorded with some colour that Turner was "idle" and would "do anything to get a drink."

In the 1830s, the Ordnance Survey Memoirs noted that considerable improvements and alterations were about to be made to the house. The second Marquess of Abercorn invited both William Farrell and William Vitruvius Morrison to submit proposals; Morrison's designs were chosen. After Morrison's death in 1838, his father Richard Morrison took over. This campaign of remodelling cost almost £20,000 and gave the house its richly detailed neo-classical interior. Works included the addition of Greek Ionic columns, a Rotunda, a large dining room with scagliola pilasters, a pedimented porte-cochère, and the laying out of formal gardens. Richard Morrison's individual contribution includes the Palladian revival ceiling in the library, designed in 1839.

A further fire occurred around 1940. Sir Albert Richardson subsequently made changes for the third Duke around 1945, most significantly demolishing two substantial wings and giving the house its current reduced form. In 1970 Raymond Firth built the garage block on the site of one of the demolished wings. The interior was remodelled between 1975 and 1976 by David Hicks, work understood to have reinstated some of the internal changes made by Richardson.

ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION

The house is generally double-fronted and approximately square on plan, with east and west wings and two-storey projecting pavilions at either end of the north elevation. The roofs are hipped Welsh slate with lead-capped ridges and hips, served by several tall ashlar sandstone chimneystacks with corniced caps and decorative pots. Drainage is handled by tapered parapet gutters at the base of the roof slopes, cast-iron box gutters elsewhere, and moulded hopper heads. The walling throughout is ashlar sandstone with a parapet and cornice (except where noted), a platband and stringcourse at first-floor level, and a slightly projecting plinth. The parapet supports a number of decorative urns. Windows throughout are timber sliding sashes in various configurations — 6/9, 6/6, and 3/6 — detailed individually by elevation.

ENTRANCE (NORTH) ELEVATION

The entrance elevation faces north and is asymmetrical. It is dominated by a triple-height prostyle tetrastyle Ionic portico with a pediment bearing a carved stone coat of arms; the frieze is detailed with laurel wreaths, and the responding piers have decorative capitals. The portico is flanked on each side by lower two-storey two-bay projecting bays fronting recessed two-storey east and west wings — the west wing sits further back than the east. Each wing is terminated by a lower two-storey pavilion; the east wing has no parapet, and the east pavilion is deeper than its western counterpart. A plainly detailed granite colonnade of square arches spans each ground floor between the pavilions and the projecting bays, with an ashlar infill panel to the right arch of each. The pavilions are plainly detailed, each having a blind semi-circular arch to its main face.

The main entrance consists of a double-leaf half-glazed timber door with brass furniture, a lugged architrave, and a pediment, flanked on either side by a 6/6 window with a moulded lugged architrave and pediment on foliated console brackets. A secondary entrance door is accessed by stone steps to the right of the portico; it has a beaded muntin, brass furniture, and a large 6-light transom. Ground-floor windows are generally 6/6 with lugged architraves and moulded cills with panelled stops; those at first floor are 3/6 without lugs.

EAST ELEVATION

The east elevation comprises the east end of the main east wing — which has two blind openings at first floor over two similar diminished openings, all separated by platbands — and the east face of the east pavilion, which is four windows wide at each floor over an exposed rubble-stone basement. The basement entrance has an elliptical arch head and comprises a four-panelled door surmounted by a plain entablature on plain baseless columns. Basement windows are 3/3 with plain reveals. The remaining windows are 6/6, with the exception of a single 3/3 at first floor. The main block is abutted at the left, at basement level, by a monopitched garage extension, which is screened by a false front on the south elevation.

SOUTH (GARDEN) ELEVATION

The south elevation is symmetrical. It consists of a central section seven windows wide and four windows deep, with a central pedimented breakfront, flanked by wings four windows wide. Ground-floor windows are 6/9 with full-height architraves down to ground level enclosing a panelled apron. First-floor windows are 6/6 with a platband at cill level and lugged architraves.

WEST ELEVATION

The west elevation comprises the west face of the west wing and the lower west face of the west pavilion, both two windows wide. The west wing has an eight-panelled door at the left with a large 9-light transom, and a window above, all framed by full-height lesene strips. To the right is a projecting bowed ground-floor bay with three windows — a 9-light upper sash over a large plain glazed lower sash — surmounted by a balcony with a panelled parapet. A double-leaf half-glazed timber door with a large transom leads onto the balcony at upper-floor level; all openings have lugged architraves except those to the bowed bay, which are framed by pilasters. Pavilion openings are 6/6 at ground floor and 3/6 at first floor.

GARAGE BLOCK

The garage block forms a false front to the south, detailed to match the main house with a parapet cornice concealing a monopitched natural slate roof behind. It reads as two parts: the left section is three 6/6 windows wide at each floor; the right section breaks forward and has two double-height round-headed 15/15 sash windows. The north elevation of the garage block consists of an arcade of eight elliptical-headed openings set in a timber-sheeted wall; the two at the left are open, while the remainder have double timber-sheeted doors with multi-light elliptical transoms. A tennis court lies directly to the north.

DETACHED STORE

To the east of the garage block is a square stone-faced store, built into rising ground and constructed partly in ashlar and partly in random coursed stonework. It has two hopper openings that may have been used for the delivery of coal. The roof is supported on steel beams and a series of brick jack arches.

GATE SCREEN

At the south-west corner of the house is a sandstone and cast-iron gate screen connecting a gravel estate road to the south with a grass avenue running up the west side of the house. It comprises two sets of piers supporting an ornate cast-iron gate with matching screens to either side, divided by square open-latticework piers with pointed finials, and terminated at either end by square ashlar sandstone piers with corniced caps and shallow filleted urn finials on pedestal blocks.

SETTING

The house sits within a landscape of considerable quality and extent. To the south lie late formal gardens comprising a series of shallow terraces with a linear network of gravel paths and manicured beds, furnished with bull-nosed stone steps and balustraded plinth walls defining the immediate curtilage. Beyond the garden boundary to the south is pasture and grazing land. To the north is an expansive lawn and gravel forecourt. A set of steps to the west descends a steep terrace to give access to one of the estate's three loughs.