Walled Garden, Belle Isle, Lisbellaw, Co Fermanagh

Walled Garden, Belle Isle, Lisbellaw, Co. Fermanagh Late 18th century (1770s)

This is a neat and well-preserved example of a late 18th century walled garden, built in the 1770s as part of the wider landscaping of the Belle Isle demesne. Covering approximately 1.5 hectares, the garden has a long rectangular plan on a north-east to south-west axis, lying to the north-east of the house and yard. Though its symmetrically placed original glasshouses have been removed and the attached gardener's house was substantially remodelled in the 1990s, the garden retains its essential architectural integrity. It has group value with the nearby listed house and outbuildings.

The walls stand at around 14 feet (4.30 metres) high and are built of random stone rubble, with the interior face lined with brick laid in a Flemish Garden Wall bond. Lining garden walls with brick was standard practice in the 18th and 19th centuries, primarily to allow the wall to absorb solar heat and so help ripen fruit. The walls are topped with a stone coping with very little overhang, except along the outer (south) face of the south wall. At the north end, where the wall originally supported glasshouses, the height increases to around 20 feet (approximately 6 metres).

The main entrance into the garden is set centrally in the south-east wall, through a segmental-headed arched opening with cement lining, fitted with double doors of relatively modern construction with lattice framing. This entrance is aligned on a central axial border running the length of the garden, backed by yew hedges. The east wall contains two pedestrian doorways: one in the centre, with a brick relieving arch over it, and one towards the south end. Both have modern but well-made batten doors. There is no doorway in the west wall, and a stretch of approximately 10 metres (around 30 feet) at the north end of the west wall has collapsed in recent years.

Along the north wall, the central section — where the wall rises to its greater height — originally supported two glasshouses, each approximately 20 feet long, symmetrically flanking the gardener's house. Both original 19th century glasshouses have now been removed. The glasshouse on the east side was substantially rebuilt in the 20th century as a replacement for the earlier structure. It retains its brick base wall (three feet high), its floor, internal cast iron support columns, and some other original fixtures, but the woodwork is relatively modern and the original small glass panes have been replaced with larger sheets of plate glass. A sequence of blocked arched openings within the base wall indicates that this was formerly a vinery, the vine roots having been allowed to grow through the wall to outside the building. A double door gives access to the glasshouse on the west side. To the east of this glasshouse there was formerly a lower lean-to glasshouse of late 19th century date, which has since been replaced by a corrugated iron lean-to shed.

At the centre of the north wall stands the gardener's house, formerly the home of the head gardener and originally flanked on either side by the two glasshouses. This is a gable-ended, two-bay, one-and-a-half-storey house with a slated roof and bargeboards, whose rendered south gable forms part of the garden wall. Before its remodelling in the 1990s — carried out to a design by Richard Pierce — the south gable contained a centrally placed sliding sash window (two over two panes) on both floors, with the front door positioned to the west side of the ground floor window. In the 1990s this arrangement was altered: the front door was moved to the centre and flanked by a sliding sash window on each side. The 1990s remodelling also incorporated former lean-to potting sheds on either side of the house into the main building. The range on the west side was given a new window with a sliding sash and a new door, both positioned within the area of wall formerly occupied by the west glasshouse.

Historical Background

The walled garden appears on the 1833 Ordnance Survey map and was evidently built during the 1770s by Ralph Gore, the first and last Earl of Ross. The Gore family had owned Belle Isle from the early 17th century, when the lands — then known as Ballymacmanus or Seanaod MacManus — were granted to Sir Paul Gore, an Elizabethan adventurer, as part of a proportion of 1,000 acres called Manor Gore (Newtowngore), also known variously as Manor Inishmore, Manor of Carrick, and Manor of Belle Isle. The Belle Isle demesne is surrounded by the waters of Lough Erne; it was originally an island, though since the 18th century it has been connected to the mainland by a bridge. Sir Paul Gore built a house here in 1629, replacing and probably incorporating an earlier castle that had been the principal seat of the MacManus clan, the second most powerful family in Fermanagh (after the Maguires) during the 14th to 16th centuries. The best-known head of this clan, Cathal Og MacManus (died 1498), was among other things Vicar General of Clogher. He is remembered today as the compiler of the Annals of Ulster, which was written at Belle Isle by his chief scribe Rory Lunny; the manuscript remained at Belle Isle until the 1630s.

During the early 18th century the demesne was, according to John Dolan in 1718, "much improved and beautified" by Paul Gore's great-grandson, Sir Ralph Gore, 4th Baronet, who had a distinguished political career and served among other things as Speaker of the Irish House of Commons. In 1739 the house at Belle Isle was described by Dean Henry as a "small lodge", with a terraced garden (parterre) extending down to the lakeside, enclosed within "high walls covered with fruit trees" and with "square turrets on the extremities". After the death of St George Gore St George in 1746, the demesne was subject to substantial improvements by his brother Sir Ralph Gore, 6th Baronet (1725–1799), who became Baron Gore in 1764, Viscount Belleisle in 1768, and finally Earl of Ross in 1772. He rebuilt the house, transformed the landscape, and much of what survives today — including the present walled garden — was created during his fifty-three years of ownership. Many of Ireland's foremost landscape artists were drawn to Belle Isle during this period, notably Thomas Roberts and Jonathan Fisher. When Arthur Young visited in 1776 he remarked upon the "uncommon beauty" of the property, noting its woods, "walks around the island", a "temple built on a gentle hill", a "grotto", and the lawn below the house "scattered with trees that forms the margin of the lake". Fisher commented upon the park's "grotesque seats and ornamental spots on the most interesting situations" and admired its "handsome cottage with a kitchen and other conveniences". Though Young did not specifically mention the walled garden, it was an integral part of the Earl of Ross's re-landscaping. It was originally enclosed by extensive slip gardens, much of which by 1833 were being used as orchards.

The Earl of Ross died in 1799, after which the house and demesne were inherited by his daughter Mary (died 1824), who in 1793 had married Richard Hardinge (1756–1826), created a baronet in 1801. They lived at Belle Isle until around 1809, after which time the property entered a long period of decline: it was leased to a tenant and apparently at times left unoccupied. In 1826 the house and demesne passed to Sir Richard Hardinge's nephew, the Reverend Charles Hardinge, 2nd Baronet, who had no Irish interests and remained in England. The Gore connection with Belle Isle was finally broken in 1829, when Hardinge sold the property for £60,000 — a considerable sum at that time — to a clergyman from Cumbria, the Reverend John Grey Porter. His father, John Porter, had come to Ireland as chaplain to the Earl of Camden, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (later 1st Marquis Camden), and had been appointed Bishop of Killala in 1795 and in 1797 to the extremely valuable see of Clogher, which he retained until his death in 1819. His son, the Reverend John Grey Porter (1789–1873), had been preferred to the prebend and rectory of Kilskerry in Co. Tyrone in 1813, also within the diocese of Clogher. Having acquired Belle Isle in 1829, he lived there until his death in 1873. The demesne and its buildings were still in poor condition in 1837, when Porter embarked on improvements: he established new plantations, rebuilt the house, and in the 1850s rebuilt the south part of the stable yard. He also carried out improvements to the walled garden, and the 1857 Ordnance Survey map suggests that he added the glasshouses — or earlier versions of the glasshouses that survived into the 20th century — with the gardener's cottage in the centre and lean-to potting sheds and working ranges to the rear.

From 1873 until his death in 1903, Belle Isle was owned by John Grey Vesey Porter (1818–1903), son of the Reverend John Porter. He was well known for his interest in politics, newspapers, and agricultural improvement. He built a hotel on Lough Erne (the Knockinny Hotel) and operated a fleet of boats, including a number of large steamers on the lake. At Belle Isle he remodelled the house in the 1880s and around this time added the axial path down the centre of the walled garden. He may also have remodelled the gardener's cottage at this time.

On the death of the Reverend John Porter in 1903, the male line of the family came to an end and the property descended through his sister Adelaide Mary (1832–1926) to her second son, John Porter Archdale, who changed his name by deed poll to John Porter Porter. In 1906 he engaged the English architect Percy R. Morley Horder (1870–1944) to remodel the house; the resulting Tudor wing was completed in 1907. The Edwardian era also saw the creation in front of the house of a substantial rock garden, since removed, which was painted by the well-known artist Beatrice Parsons, who visited the Archdale family at Belle Isle and Castle Archdale in the summer of 1916. After his death in 1939 the property passed to his son Nicholas, on whose death in 1973 it passed to his niece, Lavinia E.M. Baird. In 1991 she sold the property to James, 5th Duke of Abercorn.