Ireland's Forgotten Past by Turtle Bunbury

Author:Turtle Bunbury
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Published: 2020-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

21 The Lixnaw Project

One of the most remarkable landscaping projects of the 17th century took place along the banks of the River Brick at Lixnaw, some 11 km (6½ miles) southwest of Listowel, in the plains of north County Kerry. This was the demesne of William FitzMaurice, 20th Lord of Kerry, who lived at Lixnaw Court, a five-bay, two-storey Jacobean mansion that he built in 1680. It stood opposite a castle where his ancestors had lived for the previous four hundred years. Nicholas, the 3rd Lord, erected a stone bridge across the river in 1320 and so became ‘the first person that made causeways to this place, the land being naturally wet and marshy’.

During the 1680s and 1690s, Lord Kerry’s employees completely changed the surrounding terrain. They constructed a new road along a man-made dyke that ran across the marsh, bookended by a mausoleum and an oblong tower, known as the Hermitage, visible from the main house. They built a series of walled courts, gardens, orchards and summerhouses, as well as an octagonal house that may have been used for cock-fighting. They also cut three shapely canals into the meandering, tidal Brick and created a bathing pool in the gardens where the FitzMaurices’ guests could splash about. The canals were particularly impressive as they not only provided an aesthetic vista but also helped to drain the surrounding farmlands. The hard-working steward who oversaw this remarkable operation was Connemara-born Seán Mór Seoighe (Big John Joyce), a direct ancestor of the writer James Joyce and of the historian and music collector Patrick Weston Joyce.

One early admirer of Joyce’s work was Dr Charles Smith, the Irish topographer, who observed in 1750 how the tidal canals flowed right into Lixnaw’s gardens, such that ‘boats of a considerable burden may bring up goods to the bridge near the house’. Ninety years later, Samuel Lewis, another topographer, described how ‘sea-weed and sand for manure’ were still being brought up the river to the village of Lixnaw, which, at that time, comprised ‘two streets of tolerably good houses’, as well as a ‘spacious’ Catholic chapel and a school. Mr Lewis also mentioned an unfulfilled ambition by the Scottish engineer Alexander Nimmo to make the river navigable for larger vessels and to drain and cultivate extensive tracts of marsh and bogland nearby.

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