The Georgian Castle at Clongowes
Citation:
Tierney, A., The Georgian Castle at Clongowes, Coiseanna: Journal of the Clane Local History Group, 2020, 9, 75 - 82Download Item:
Abstract:
The history of the castle at Clongowes is long and complicated, with several phases of reconstruction
and expansion. The imposing facades overlook the long avenue to the front, the pleasure grounds
to the north and the playing fields to the east. Its architecture is unmistakeably that of a great
estate, but the significance of its castellated style is entrenched in the country’s wider history of
religious dissention. Castle Browne, as it was known until its purchase by the Jesuits, is one of a
series of late eighteenth-century ‘castles’ built by old Catholic families of the Pale, which includes
Ballinlough, seat of the O’Reilly/Nugent family, Malahide Castle of the Talbots, Killeen Castle of the
Plunketts, and Gormanston Castle of the Preston family. Professor Alistair Rowan has suggested that
Thomas Wogan Browne, the owner of Castle Browne in the late C18, had a hand in several of these
designs as an amateur architect, including that of his own house from 1788. These represent the
earliest phase of the Castle Revival style in Ireland, a fashion for chivalric architecture that forms
part of the wider Gothic Revival that influenced both ecclesiastical and domestic architecture in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The revival spread quickly among leading Catholic families, no
doubt keen to promulgate the antiquity of their lineages. However the seed of the revival can be
found in a source both English and Protestant: the work of James Wyatt at Slane Castle.
Sponsor
Grant Number
Irish Research Council (IRC)
15840
Author's Homepage:
http://people.tcd.ie/tiernea4Description:
PUBLISHED
Author: Tierney, Andrew
Type of material:
Journal ArticleSeries/Report no:
Coiseanna: Journal of the Clane Local History Group;9;
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Full text availableSubject (TCD):
Identities in Transformation , Making Ireland , Irish History , Irish architectural historyMetadata
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