Clanbrassil Barn and Gateway, Tollymore Park, Newcastle, Co Down

Clanbrassil Barn and Gateway, Tollymore Park

This is a church-like, rubble-built, two-storey, gabled Gothic barn of around 1757, with a distinctive bell tower topped by a narrow spire added in 1789. It stands to the north-east within Tollymore Park, just to the north of where Tollymore House once stood. To the south, the east façade merges with a matching Gothic gateway. Both the barn and gateway may have been based on designs by Thomas Wright of Durham. The gateway merges with a wall enclosing a tarmac-covered yard to the south. To the north is a further walled enclosure.

Architecture and External Appearance

The south façade has, at its centre, a tall pointed arch opening fitted with a steel grille and gate. To the right of this are three evenly spaced window openings with multi-pane Georgian-style glazing and top hopper openings. Either side of the third window is a pointed arch door opening, framed in stone dressings, with a stone lintel immediately above forming the base of a fanlight with Georgian-style panes. To the left of the central arch opening are three windows and two doors arranged in the same manner. At first-floor level there are seven squat, arch-headed openings, symmetrically arranged — three grouped at the centre, two to the left, and two to the right — each fitted with timber louvred ventilators, and broadly matching the shape and size of the door fanlights below.

The east gable has a single high-level quatrefoil opening set within a diamond-shaped stone surround. Rising from the apex of this gable is a square tower. The lower section of the tower is divided by three stone string courses; between the second and third bands, each face has four decorative bap stones. The south face of this lower section carries a sundial. Above the square section rises a taller octagonal section, each face of which has a small pointed arch opening with a louvred frame, and a clock to the south face. The octagonal section has a tall stone spike pinnacle at each corner. A narrow octagonal stone spire surmounts the tower, topped by a ball finial with a small weather vane showing compass points. At the eaves of the gable are further slender stone spike pinnacles.

The west gable repeats the quatrefoil opening and stone spike pinnacles of the east gable. At its apex is a small square minaret with a pointed arch opening, surmounted by a small spirelet with crockets and a ball finial.

The north façade has, to the left, an arrow loop opening at ground-floor level with a matching one directly above at first-floor level. To the right of these is a multi-pane fixed window at ground-floor level. Further right, a stone wall encloses the courtyard area; on its west side this wall is shaped as a balustrade following the line of an external stair. On either side of this section of the façade, external stone stairs rise to gabled half-dormer door openings, each stair having a solid stone side shaped to follow the pitch of the stair. At the centre of the north façade is a large pointed arch opening — the north side of the through-opening that passes right through the building — flanked on each side by two small pointed arch-headed openings. To the far left is a multi-pane window set at a higher level. To the far right are two four-pane window openings with what appear to be smooth cement surrounds, which may originally have been door openings. At first-floor level, to the left of the large opening, is a dressed door opening; to the right of it are three small pointed arch openings.

The Gateway

The east gable of the barn merges with a decorative, equally ecclesiastical-looking gate opening. The matching gate piers each have a recessed pointed arch panel to the east and west faces of the main body, and are surmounted by a squat octagonal section with a recessed pointed arch panel to each face. Each octagonal section is capped by a stone cap with a stone acorn motif. The arch itself is flat-pointed and triangular in outline with a curved pointed Gothic arch soffit. At the apex is a circular decorative panel; the outer sides carry small bap stone crockets, and the apex is finished with a further acorn motif. Both sides of the arch are identical. The gate in the wall on the west side of the barn is plain, with two square gate piers carrying shallow pyramidal stone caps.

History

The barn was built around 1757 by James Hamilton, the newly created Earl of Clanbrassil, just to the north of his recently completed Tollymore House. Its design was probably influenced by the sometime architect Thomas Wright of Durham, who visited Hamilton at Tollymore in 1746. The spire was added to the tower in 1789, at which time the bell — dated 1785 — and probably the clock were also installed. The building continued to serve as a store after the whole of Tollymore Park was sold to the state in 1941 and following the demolition of Tollymore House in 1952, before being converted in the early 1970s to provide an exhibition hall, lecture theatre and toilet facilities.

The broader history of Tollymore Park is closely bound up with the barn's origins. In late medieval times the area was under the lordship of the Magennis family of Upper Iveagh. In 1611, Brian MacHugh Magennis received royal confirmation of ownership when King James I granted him seven and a half townlands including the land that now forms the park. The estate remained in Magennis hands until around 1685, when Bernard Magennis died childless and the estate passed to his sister Ellen, who was married to William Hamilton. On her death, the estate passed to their son James, and then to his son, also James, who inherited in 1701. This second James was created Viscount Limerick in 1719 and Earl of Clanbrassil — of the second creation — in 1728. Popularly remembered by his earlier title of Lord Limerick, he began developing Tollymore as a naturalistic landscape demesne around 1720, enclosing land for a deer park, undertaking large-scale tree planting, building a hunting lodge and the Old Bridge, and rebuilding the parish church at Bryansford — the small estate village to the north of the park, named after his ancestor Brian Magennis. Around 1750 he began constructing a larger house, probably taking design advice from his friend Thomas Wright, who visited Ireland in 1746–47, staying at Tollymore Park in September 1746. Dr. Pococke, in his Tour of Ireland of 1752, noted that Lord Limerick had completed two rooms of his new house by that date, and had also built a thatched open dining place on the south side of the Shimna River. The Clanbrassil Barn was added to the north of the house in 1757, with the Horn Bridge built to the south at around the same time.

Lord Limerick died in 1758 and was succeeded by his son, also named James, who extended the new house and continued the tree planting. In the 1780s this second James erected the Barbican Gate at the eastern entrance to the park, the Gothic gate at the Bryansford entrance, a hermitage, Gothic follies, a steward's lodge on the Hilltown Road, and a number of bridges within the park including Ivy Bridge, Parnell's Bridge and Foley's Bridge, the last named after his wife, Grace Foley. These additions, which also appear to have been influenced by Thomas Wright, together with the planting, made Tollymore one of the most attractive estates in Ireland. Bernard Scalé's 1777 map of the park gives a sense of its picturesque character during this period, showing rolling landscape, extensive planting, meadows, rivers, streams and woodland walks. An advertisement in the Belfast News-Letter of 26 April 1785, offering lodgings in Bryansford village, praised the prospect of the Earl's much-admired demesne and described the wholesome air and herbage on which local goats fed as attracting ladies and gentlemen seeking recovery of their health.

James, 2nd Viscount Limerick and 2nd Earl of Clanbrassil died without issue in 1798, and the park passed to his sister Anne, wife of Robert Jocelyn, 1st Earl of Roden. Their son, Robert, 2nd Earl of Roden, who inherited in 1802, built the Bryansford and Barbican gate lodges — the latter now demolished — and erected an obelisk monument to the east of the house in memory of his second son James, who died prematurely in 1812. The 2nd Earl and his successor, Robert the 3rd Earl, further developed Bryansford village. A Roman Catholic church was built at the eastern edge of the village in 1820, school houses in 1823 and 1826, labourers' dwellings and the large dower house known as The Nest at around the same time. The 3rd Earl also constructed a water-powered sawmill within the demesne, and in 1865 added a further small lodge to the east. He also enlarged Tollymore House by adding an additional storey to the wings and a tall, somewhat incongruous, French château-style roof to the original central block.

Tollymore Park remained in Roden ownership until 1930, when the 8th Earl sold two-thirds of the land to the Ministry of Agriculture for afforestation. The remaining third was bought by the Ministry in 1940, and during the Second World War the house and part of the grounds were used by the Army. After the war the house fell into disrepair and was demolished by Lord Roden in 1952. In 1955 Tollymore became the first state forest in Northern Ireland to be designated a Forest Park and was opened to the public. Though the house itself has gone, most of the park's 18th and early 19th century gates, bridges and lodges have survived.