Desart Court
In 1654, Joseph Cuffe was awarded a substantial 5000-acre estate in the barony of Shillelogher, County Kilkenny in the wake of the Cromwellian Conquest of Ireland for his efforts. In due course, his descendants would come to call the estate "Desart".
Desart Court was amongst the earliest enormous mansions erected by individual landowners across the country. It was built on the Cuffe family estate in Kilkenny in 1733 for John Cuffe, later 1st Lord Desart, eldest son of Agmondesham Cuffe, the Williamite soldier. A graduate of Trinity College Dublin, John Cuffe stood as MP for Thomastown, County Kilkenny, from 1715 to 1727. Desart Court has been described as one of Ireland's most outstanding architectural triumphs. Its original architect is increasingly believed to have been Sir Edward Lovett Pearce, the man who designed Parliament House in Dublin. However, even if Pearse did commence the design, he cannot have been there to see its completion because, on 7th December 1733, he died. The construction costs appear to have been partially met through the sale of a large quantity of silver plate seized during a raid on the French fortress of Quebec by the father-in-law of the 1st Lord Desart.
John Cuffe may have been fretting about the unpaid bills involved in the construction of his new stately home but he must also have derived considerable pleasure when, on 10th November 1733, he was elevated to the peerage as Baron Desart, of Desart in the Irish Peerage. The preamble to the patent applauded his father and grandfather; particularly the latter's efforts to ensure the "Protestant succession". He took his seat in the Irish House of Lords two days later, no doubt casting a nod at his brother-in-law, Lord Howth, seated opposite.
At any rate, Desart Court was built, a stunning early Georgian masterpiece of blue limestone, a central block with pavilions projecting on either side. Over the ensuing decades, the interior was fitted with sumptuous tapestries, oil paintings by Italian Masters, Chippendale chairs, dado wood panelling, rococo ceilings, Dutch walnut cabinets, bookcases "enriched with fluted pilasters", beautifully carved oakwood balustrades, mantelpieces from Sienna … the Cuffe family fortunes were substantially reduced in the process.
Dorothea Herbert who visited the house nearly forty years after it's completion later offers us this description:
"Sometime after … we went to Desart, Lord Desart's fine old family Seat in the County Kilkenny remarkable for its fine Woods and large Oaks - The House is a very Grand one much like Bessborough but its chief Beauty is its two Superb Staircases and Noble Gallery - It is altogether a very grand and venerable place and I felt a pleasure in hearing my mother [Martha Cuffe, daughter of John, 1st Lord Desart] recount the Many Happy Hours she spent in the large Hall were in my Grandfathers time the family met and dined around a blazing Woodfire after the Manner of Old Times".
Dorothea, later claimed that, although "a good man", Lord Desart had "lived forty years a Bachelor and let the place [ie: Desart Court] go to wreck whilst he mostly resided in England". This comes as a surprise for Otway appears to have been an enlightened individual who did much to enhance the state of County Kilkenny during his time at Desart. In this regard, he must have been much aided by a new high road, commenced in 1750, which linked Kilkenny and Callan. "This formed the principal entrance into the city of Kilkenny from the numerous mansions of the Anglo-Irish families in the south and southwestern parts of the county.
The outbreak of agrarian unrest in Ireland in 1884 lead to the Earl closing up Desart Court and relocated to England until his death in 1898.
Initially, Ellen the previous Countess of Desart refused to leave Desart Court, but eventually she did, and the Fifth Earl and his family took up residence in 1899. He spent the next twenty years restoring the neglected house and grounds. After 1903, he sold most of the lands around Desart to his tenants retaining just the House and gardens.
Desart Court stood for nearly two hundred years before an order from the high command of the anti-treaty faction was issued during the Irish Civil War demanding the burning of all houses occupied by Senators of the governing Irish Free State. Ellen, Countess of Desart, had been appointed to the Senate just a few months earlier. Desart Court should never have been burned. The Countess, a patron of the Gaelic League, was the widow of the 4th Earl and did not live in the house. At the time, it was occupied by her brother-in-law, the 5th Earl, a prudent and successful solicitor who was amongst the greatest diplomats working for a solution to the Irish crisis in the lead up to independence. He was a great-great-grandson of the 1st Lord Desart who built Desart Court in 1733. It is rather extraordinary to contemplate that the 1st Lord, born during the reign of Charles II (1661 - 1685), was only four generations distant from the 5th Earl, a man who witnessed the birth of the Irish Free State and died in 1934.
On the night of February 1922, the 5th Earl of Desart was in London when a small group of Republicans walked up the avenue to Desart Court armed with fire-torches. Why it was felt necessary to destroy the building is unclear. The Desarts had not done anything obvious to bring it upon them. The 5th Earl had been amongst the earliest Irish landlords to agree to the sale of his estate in the wake of the 1903 Land Act. A lady called Mollie Ackroyd, whose grandfather was a gardener at Desart Court, recalled the era as one in which "all the workers on the estate received a Christmas hamper, the children each had an orange in their stockings, a Christmas dinner for staff and their families, they seated at a huge wooden table in the hall. In the summer vast tea was held for the estate workers and their families, a fete affair with stalls and games in the grounds."
Lady Sybil Lubbock maintained the burning was "for no personal ill-will towards [the Desarts] but in reprisal for some measure of severity on behalf of the new government". That same night, the Ponsonby's house at Bessborough was also burned. However, there does seem to have been an element of malicious intent in the burning for, when a truck escaped from Desart carrying various pieces of furniture and art, it was apprehended at Athy and its contents destroyed. One can only guess at the treasures lost - the furniture, the portraits, the diaries, letters and correspondence. Ham Cuffe was distraught at the news; that so few of his tenants had lifted a finger to stop the destruction hurt him deeply. Ten years later, he wrote to his granddaughter, Iris Origo: "I can't bear to think of Desart - it is sadness itself. All gone, all scattered - and we were so happy there". He never again returned to Ireland.
Among the family portraits burned during the 1922 fire at Desart Court was "a curious but by no-means artistic … three-quarter length portrait" depicting Captain Joseph Cuffe in buff jerkin, holding a pistol. Oil paintings of the 2nd Earl of Desart and his wife by the Irish portrait artist Thomas Clement Thompson, and of both Maurice and Maria Nugent O'Connor were also destroyed. Thompson's two pictures were exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1819. Also lost, a portrait of Spencer Perceval painted from a mask taken after his death. It was painted by G.F. Joseph, ARA, and presented to the 2nd Earl in 1813. A portrait of William Cuffe by Johan Zoffany was lost in the fire as well.
Following the burning of Desart, Ham Cuffe, 5th Earl of Desart, handed the estate over to his niece, Lady Kathleen Pilkington, reasoning that he had neither the money nor the inclination to rebuild the house. Under the Free State Government'scompensation scheme, she duly restored the property, aided by the architect Richard Orpen and the building company, McLaughlin & Harvey (formed 1853). The house was reopened in 1926, but the 5th Earl declined an invitation to visit. However, during the 1930s, a rise in anti-English sentiment compelled Lady Kathleen to abandon the family home once again. A local named Mick Nugent recalled the "sad day when Lady Kathleen called to the house for the last time [and] made a present to my [son] Garrett and he gave her a present of a dozen ash walking sticks. She said to him "I will remember Ballykeefe Wood for ever" - it was her last time to see it".
Desart Court appeared for sale in The Kilkenny People in 1934. During the Second World War, or The Emergency, as it was officially known in Ireland, Irish army troops were billeted there. A demolition sale was held in 1943, and in 1957, Desart Court was razed to the ground, its cellars filled in and the site grassed over. "The destruction of this house was one of Ireland's greatest architectural losses". Today one might not know that one of the grandest houses stood upon this quiet meadow beneath Ballykeefe Hill but the present owner of the land, James Kelly, says that on certain days when the weather has long been dry, the ghostly outline of the house emerges from the grass.
