HOUSE TOUR | ROOMS & GARDENS | WORLD OF CABANA
In an exclusive extract from The Irish Country House: A New Vision, step inside an historic, color-drenched mansion in County Sligo, Ireland - a full expression of high-Victorian taste with a high-drama story too. Robert O’Byrne reveals its intriguing history, with photographs by Luke White.
BY ROBERT O'BYRNE | ROOMS & GARDENS | 5 DECEMBER 2024
Annaghmore, an expression of high-Victorian taste © The Irish Country House: A New Vision, published by Rizzoli. Photograph by Luke White.
Based in County Sligo, the O’Haras are an ancient Irish family. Their surname is an anglicisation of the original Ó hEaghra, and their ancestry is attested by a volume of bardic poetry written on vellum for Cormac O’Hara in 1597, now held by the National Library of Ireland. It might have been expected, therefore, that during the upheavals of the 16th and 17th centuries, when so many other Gaelic families lost everything, the O’Haras would suffer the same fate.
However, by adapting to changing circumstances, they survived and continue to live in the same area as had their forebears hundreds of years earlier. It helped that they converted to the Established Church and could take an oath of loyalty to the English crown, and also that they made a series of judicious marriages to heiresses.
All photographs by Luke White @ The Irish Country House: A New Vision
In the mid-18th century, the estate’s owner, Charles O’Hara, sat for some time in the Irish House of Commons but is best remembered as the close correspondent and almost father figure to politician Edmund Burke. Meanwhile, his younger brother Kane O’Hara became well-known as a playwright and composer who in 1757 co-founded the Musical Academy in Dublin with the Earl of Mornington. Five years later, he scored a success on stage with Midas, the first-known burletta (a kind of parody of opera seria) to be performed in English.
After being staged in Dublin, it reached London in 1764 and was succeeded by a number of other burlesques written by O’Hara. In 1774 he opened Mr. Punch’s Patagonian Theatre on Dublin’s Abbey Street. This was a theatre that staged puppet versions of operas and burlesques and later also transferred to London. While a young man, the Irish tenor Michael Kelly, remembered for singing in operas by Mozart, Gluck, and Paisiello, performed in O’Hara’s premises.
Annaghmore: a full expression of high-Victorian taste, fronted in crisp limestone ashlar @ The Irish Country House: A New Vision. Image by Luke White.
Among the next generation, Charles O’Hara, having inherited the estate in Sligo sat, like his father, in the House of Commons, although described in 1782 as “a very dull, tedious speaker.” Perhaps wisely therefore, his son Charles King O’Hara did not stand for election but remained on his estate in County Sligo where he was prominent in relief efforts for his tenants during the Great Famine. Dying childless, his property passed to a nephew with the condition that the latter changed his surname to O’Hara. It is his descendants who have continued to live on the site to the present day.
The O’Haras were never particularly wealthy, indeed they were often heavily indebted and their estates repeatedly mortgaged; it didn’t help that on several occasions there were long and costly legal disputes between them over inheritances. In fact, by the 1790s, their financial circumstances had become so bad that they faced bankruptcy, large portions of their land being sold to pay outstanding debts. Somehow, they managed to hold onto the family house Annaghmore, originally called Nymphfield.
All photographs by Luke White @ The Irish Country House: A New Vision
A succession of residences seems to have occupied the same site, the first one, which may have been a tower house or fortified manor, thought to have been demolished in the 1680s. Its replacement, on which much money was lavished in 1718, lasted until the start of the 19th century, possibly around 1822 when Charles King O’Hara inherited the estate. Surviving images of this building show it to have been of two storeys with single-storey wings on either side, very much in the style of a Regency villa.
In the early 1860s, the nephew, Charles William Cooper, having inherited the estate and changed his surname according to the terms of his uncle’s will, embarked on a substantial enlargement of the house, its design attributed to the era’s most ubiquitous architect in Ireland, James Franklin Fuller.
It is this house, a full expression of high-Victorian taste, which can be seen today, fronted in crisp limestone ashlar. The facade was graced by an Ionic portico, a second storey added to the wings, and the building extended to the rear, although part of this was demolished during the last century. Otherwise largely unaltered over the past 150 years, the interiors are wonderfully florid, reflecting the bold confidence of the period, post–Great Famine and pre–Land Wars, when estate owners across Ireland embarked on a flurry of building work. Happily, the present generation of the family has embarked on a programme of restoration and refurbishment of Annaghmore, as funds permit, while resolutely retaining the house’s special character.
the edit
Latest Articles
DISCOVER MORE
