The Precentor of Limerick who was in office for 60 years and was a typical Victorian pluralist

The former Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Ardagh, Co Longford … Bishop Charles Warburton was Dean of Ardagh before moving to Limerick; his son was Precentor of Limerick for 60 years (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Patrick Comerford

When a project looking at my predecessors as Precentors of Limerick was postponed last month due to the pandemic limits on public events, I thought it might still be interesting to look at past precentors in a number of blog postings.

In recent postings, I recalled some previous precentors who had been accused of ‘dissolute living’ or being a ‘notorious fornicator’ (Awly O Lonysigh), or who were killed in battle (Thomas Purcell). There were those who became bishops or archbishops: Denis O’Dea (Ossory), Richard Purcell (Ferns) and John Long (Armagh).

There was the tragic story too of Robert Grave, who became Bishop of Ferns while remaining Precentor of Limerick, but – only weeks after his consecration – drowned with all his family in Dublin Bay as they made their way by sea to their new home in Wexford (read more HERE).

In the 17th century, two members of the Gough family were also appointed Precentors of Limerick. In all, three brothers in this family were priests in the Church of Ireland and two were priests in the Church of England, and the Rathkeale branch of the family was the ancestral line of one of Ireland’s most famous generals (read more HERE).

In the mid to late 18th century, two members of the Maunsell family were Precentors of Limerick: Richard Maunsell (1745-1747) and William Thomas Maunsell (1786-1781) (read more HERE).

They were related to Canon John Warburton who was, perhaps, the longest-ever holder of the office, being Precentor of Limerick for 60 years from 1818 until he died to 1878. He was still in his 20s when he was appointed precentor, and had already been Precentor of Ardfert, a sinecure in a cathedral that had not functioned as such since the mid-17th century.

But Warburton was a typical Victorian pluralist found so often in the pre-disestablishment, and like his brother and son-in-law probably owed his preferment to the fact that his father was Bishop of Limerick, albeit a bishop with an unusual and colourful background.

John Warburton was a younger son of Charles Mongan-Warburton (1754-1826), Bishop of Limerick and later Bishop of Cloyne, who was born Terence Mongan ca 1754, the third son of Dominic Mongan or Mangon, a blind harpist from Co Tyrone.

Early in life, the future bishop trained to be a Roman Catholic priest in France, and later claimed to hold the degrees of MA and DD. There is no record of his ordination as deacon or priest in France or Ireland, but he later became an Anglican and was accepted then as an ordained priest. At the same time, he changed his given name to Charles, and became a chaplain with the 62nd Regiment of Foot. He left Monkstown in April 1776 as a deputy chaplain with his regiment, which was sent to fight in the American War of Independence.

I can find no record of the name of his first wife, or whether they had any children. In America, he was captured during the fall of Saratoga in October 1777. After his release, he married his second wife, Frances Marston, daughter of Nathaniel Marston and his wife Anna Van Cortland, in New York on 18 February 1779.

He became a chaplain with the 3rd Battalion, New Jersey Loyalists in 1781. He then lived in New York for a time, before returning to Ireland ca 1785, with his second wife and at least three young children.

Back in Ireland, Warburton became Rector of Tullagh (Baltimore) and Creagh (Skibereen), Co Cork, in the Diocese of Ross (1787-1791); Prebendary of Lockeen in Saint Flannan’s Cathedral, Killaloe (1789-1804); Dean of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Ardagh (1790-1800); and Rector of Loughgilly, Co Armagh (1791-1806).

He changed his name by royal warrant in 1792, from the ‘Rev Charles Morgan’ (sic; corrected later to Mongan), adopting the surname of Warburton, a name held by ‘his maternal cousin-german Miss Alicia Warburton, Spinster, sister of the late William Warburton, of the City of London, Esq, deceased.’

He went on to become Dean of Clonmacnoise (1800-1806), Precentor of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin (1800-1808), and Rector of Laracor, Meath (1804-1806), and was chaplain to the Lord Lieutenant, the Duke of Bedford (1806).

He became Bishop of Limerick and Ardfert in 1806, and was consecrated bishop in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, on 13 July 1806. He later became Bishop of Cloyne on 20 September 1820. Bishop Charles Warburton died in Cloyne, Co Cork, on 9 August 1826, aged 72, and was buried in the family vault in the cathedral.

Charles and Frances were the parents of at least six children, including two sons who followed their father into ordained ministry, and a daughter who married an archdeacon.

Holy Trinity Church, Rathkeale … Canon Charles Warburton was Rector of Rathkeale for over 40 years in 1813-1855 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

The eldest son of Charles and Frances Warburton, Canon Charles Warburton (1780-1855), was born in New York and came to Ireland with his parents in 1785. He was educated at TCD (BA 1803, MA 1807, LL.B. and LL.D. 1826), and was ordained deacon in 1803 and priest in 1804. At first, he was Rector and Vicar of Aglish (Castlebar), Co Mayo (1805-1813), Archdeacon of Tuam (1806-1855), and Rector of Mournabbey, Co Cork (1807).

He became one of my predecessors in Rathkeale when he became Rector of Rathkeale and Kilscannel, Co Limerick (1813-1855). He was also Chancellor of Limerick (1813-1855), Rector of Drishane (Millstreet), Co Cork (1815-1820), then in the Diocese of Ardfert, and Rector of Clonmel (Cobh), Co Cork (1822-1855).

The younger Charles Warburton married Alicia Bunbury-Isaac, and most their children were born in Rathkeale. He died at the Glebe House, Rathkeale, on 12 December 1855, aged 75, and was buried in his family vault at Holy Trinity Church, Rathkeale.

The inscription on the Warburton vault in Rathkeale, reads: ‘Within this vault are interred the mortal remains of the Venerable Charles Warburton LLD Archdeacon of Tuam and Chancellor of Limerick. He died on the 12th day of December 1855 aged 75 having borne a long and suffering illness with exemplary patience and resignation to the Divine Will.’

Charles Warburton’s younger brothers included Canon John Warburton (1786-1878). He was born in Monaghan on 14 July 1786, and was Precentor of Limerick for most of the 19th century (1818-1878).

He was educated at TCD (BA 1807; MA 1817; LL.B. and LL.D. 1826). He was ordained deacon in 1809 and priest in 1810 by his father, Bishop Charles Warburton. Leslie says he was Precentor of Ardfert (1811-1814) and conflates him with John Warburton who was curate of Valentia in 1811 and Rector of Kilmore or Valentia Island (1812-1830).

John Warburton was Precentor of Limerick (1818-1878), Vicar of Loughhill, Co Limerick (1818-1878), Rector of Kill and Lyons, Kildare (1814-1878), a Vicar Choral of Cloyne (1825), a Vicar Choral of Cork (1826), and Rector of Drumcliffe (Ennis), Co Clare, in the Diocese of Killaloe (1829-1871).

He married in Midleton, Co Cork, on 20 March 1822, Henrietta Ann Sandford Palmer, daughter of Sandford Palmer, of Ballynockan Castle, King’s County (Co Offaly), and a descendant of Rowland Davies, Dean of Cork. His father, Bishop Charles Warburton, officiated at their wedding.

They were the parents of six sons and four daughters. Their two eldest sons were born in Dublin (1823) and Cambridge (1824), which shows how John Warburton was not too attentive to being resident in any of his numerous parishes.

Canon John Warburton died at Kill Glebe, near Naas, Co Kildare, on 6 July 1878, aged 95; his wife Henrietta died at Kill Glebe in July 1872.

The tower of Saint Anna’s Church, Millstreet … for almost 60 years the Rectors of Drishane were all members of Bishop Warburton’s family (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

John and Charles Warburton had four sisters, including Charlotte Anne (1789-1841), who married Canon William Wray Maunsell (1782-1860), son of Canon William Maunsell, Chancellor of Limerick. He was Rector of Drishane (Millstreet), Co Cork (1803-1815), Archdeacon of Limerick and Vicar of Saint Michael’s, Limerick (1814-1860), and Precentor of Cloyne (1822-1860). Their children included Canon Robert Augustus Maunsell (1825-1878), Prebendary of Donaghmore, Limerick (1857-1863), and chaplain at the British Embassy in Paris.

They were also first cousins of John Charles Mongan (1798-1860), who for 40 years was Rector of Drishane (Millstreet), Co Cork, in 1820-1860. He was ordained deacon by his uncle, Bishop Charles Warburton, in Tralee in 1819 when he was still below the canonical age. He married Elizabeth Wallis of Drishane Castle and their daughter Marianne Charlotte married the Revd Francis Young, curate of Drishane.

But John Charles Mongan too spent little time in his parish: for many years he was ‘a chaplain abroad’ and the Rector of Saint Mary’s, Belize, Honduras, where he died on 24 August 1860.

So, for almost 60 years, from 1803 to 1860, the Rectors of Drishane were all members of Bishop Warburton’s family: his son-in-law Archdeacon William Maunsell in 1803-1815, his son Canon Charles Warburton in 1815-1820, and his nephew John Charles Mongan in 1820-1860.

The ruins of Saint John’s Church, Kilmore, Valentia … who was the John Warburton who was Rector of Valentia (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Canon John Warburton was Precentor of Ardfert in 1811-1814, and Leslie those who followed him have identified him with the Revd John Warburton, who was the Rector of Kilmore, or Valentia Island (1812-1830).

However, this John Warburton, Rector of Valentia, was born in King’s County (Offaly) ca 1753-1757, the son of another Revd Charles Warburton, Rector of Banagher, who should not be confused with Bishop Charles Warburton.

This John Warburton was educated at TCD (BA 1781), and he was his father’s curate in Banagher before becoming Rector of Kilmore or Valentia Island, Co Kerry, in 1811. Four years later, Saint John’s Church at Kilmore, outside the present Knightstown in Valentia, was built in 1815.

The archives of the Chief Secretary’s Office, now in the National Archives in Dublin, include letters from the Revd John Warburton, Co Kerry, requesting government relief from his debts.

The first letter, dated 19 October 1823, was sent from Valentia Island to Henry Goulburn, Chief Secretary, Dublin Castle, concerning the difficulties in obtaining his tithes, and pointing out that ‘the parish in its present situation will not support me.’

Warburton emphasises his financial distress, refers to his former work as curate to his late father Banagher, and recalls the assistance he gave his father in the management of the free school at Banagher. He details the debt he incurred through the loss of his tithes during the 1798 rebellion, and his subsequent difficulties with creditors, and requests government relief.

The second letter was sent by Warburton from the jail in Tralee, Co Kerry, to Goulburn on 10 December 1823. He refers to his arrest for debt, and renews his application for government relief. He notes that his family ‘must beg & I starve.’

This John Warburton died at Valentia on 7 November 1829 at the age of 72 while he was the Rector of Valentia. A report at the time described him as the Rector of Valentia, Co Kerry, ‘and Precentor of Limerick... a relative of the late Bishop of Clogher... and was collated to his benefices by Dr Warburton when Bishop of Limerick.’ However, not all these details appear to be accurate, and there is much conflation with the other John Warburton, who was then Precentor of Limerick.

The Valentia parish register records his burial on 10 November. However, another source records says he was buried at Dromod, Co Kerry, also on 10 November 1829, and aged 72 years. Dromod is the name for the Church of Ireland parish in Waterville. A new parish church was built there in 1866, and has since been dedicated to Saint Michael and All Angels.

This John Warburton’s widow Anne later emigrated to New South Wales, probably in 1840, and she died at her son’s residence at Pyrmont, near Sydney, on 29 March 1842.

A new parish church was built in Dromod, Waterville in 1866 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Dromod: https://www.patrickcomerford.com/2020/08/parish-church-in-waterville-looks-out.html

The tower is all that remains of the former Church of Ireland church in Millstreet

The tower is all that survives of Saint Anna’s Church, Drishane, on a hill on the south side of Millstreet, Co Cork (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Patrick Comerford

On a hill overlooking most of Millstreet, and clearly visible from the former shops and pubs once run by my grandmother and my aunt, the early 19th century square tower is all that is left standing of Saint Anna’s, the former Church of Ireland parish church.

The former Church of Ireland church that once stood on this site was built by the local landlord, J. Wallis of Drishane Castle, replacing an earlier church that stood close to Drishane Castle and that probably dated from the late 15th century.

For centuries, the parish was part of the Diocese of Ardfert, which covered much of Co Kerry, and the parochial territory traversed the boundaries of Co Kerry and Co Cork. Many of the Vicars of Drishane were also Treasurers of Ardfert Cathedral or Archdeacons of Aghadoe, but the parish was often unable to financially support its own resident priest, and at times was united with neighbouring parishes, including, at times, parishes in north Cork that were part of the Diocese of Cloyne, such as Dromgtariffe and Nohovaldaly.

The earliest vicars of Drishane are recorded in 1463 or 1464, when Canon Matthew O’Falvey was holding Drishane as a sinecure, and was Treasurer of Ardfert Cathedral, Co Kerry. Soon after, the Revd Donald O’Sullivan was found guilty of simony in 1466.

If Drishane was treated as a sinecure and embroiled in accusations of simony, it is surprising that there are few or new records of serving clergy in the difficult years of the Reformation and throughout the 16th century.

By 1615, when the Revd John Proudville or Prenderville was Vicar of Drishane and Dromtariffe, it was noted that he was a ‘reading minister’ and that the church and chancel were being repaired.

Canon Deane Hoare, who Vicar of Drishane from 1784 until he died in 1795, was typical of the pluralist clergy of his time, holding many Church appointments at the same time, and delegating his church duties in the Millstreet area to a poorly-paid curate. When he died, the parish was virtually inherited by his son, Canon John Hoare, who probably lived in Limerick until 1803, when he became Chancellor of Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick.

While John Hoare was the Vicar of Drishane, the Wallis family built a new church for the parish. The town of Millstreet was developing an expanding to the west of Drishane, expanding around a new and lengthy main street that offered easier access to the mills that give the new town its name.

The Wallis family built the new church on a prominent hill above the town, and the church may have been named Saint Anna’s in the mistaken belief that the name Drishane was linked to Saint Anne.

John Hoare was succeeded as Vicar of Drishane in 1804 by Canon William Maunsell, who lived in Millstreet, unlike many of his predecessors. While he was vicar, the church was enlarged between 1807 and 1814 and the tower and belfry were built during this time. The church building covered an area of about 1,500 sq ft, and had seating for about 70 to 80 people.

Maunsell became Archdeacon of Limerick in 1814, and he was succeeded in 1815 by his brother-in-law, Charles Warburton, a son of Bishop William Warburton of Limerick. Howeverf, Warburton was also a pluralist, and he lived in Rathkeale, Co Limerick, where he was one of my predecessors as rector. He was also Chancellor of Limerick and Archdeacon of Tuam at the same time.

When Warburton resigned from Drishane in 1820, he was succeeded in Drishane by his first cousin, John Charles Mongan. He was ordained before he reached the canonical age, although this probably provided no obstacle for his uncle the bishop.

A Church report in 1835 said the average attendance at the Church on Sundays was about 60. But Mongan was a particularly negligent Vicar of Drishane, even though he married Elizabeth Wallis, a daughter of John Wallis of Drishane Castle, and left much of the work in the parish to his curate, the Revd Francis Young.

Mongan seems to have spent most of his clerical career in Belize, then British Honduras, where he had secured a post as chaplain, and he died there in 1860.

Due to the gradual decline in the Church of Ireland population from the late 19th century on, the Parish of Drishane was united with the neighbouring parish of Dromtariffe in 1904. In 1917, Drishane and Dromtariffe were united to another neighbouring parish, Clontarf, and were transferred to the Diocese of Cloyne.

In the decades that followed, Church services were held with less frequency in Saint Anna’s. The last regular church service in Saint Anna’s was held in the 1930s, and the church was officially closed for public worship on 16 November 1958. The main part of the church building was demolished the following year, and the tower was all that was left standing.

The four-stage, square tower, built ca 1810, is the all that survives of the former parish church. It has carved stone pinnacles to the corners, rubble sandstone walls with carved limestone string courses dividing the stages, and cut sandstone voussoirs, with cut-stone sills to some openings.

The ground stage of the tower has a segmental arched blind doorway to the east and a round arched doorway to the north with dressed limestone voussoirs and a sheet metal door.

The second stage has round blind oculus windows to the north and south faces, a blind camber-arched opening to the east and a round-headed glazed window opening to the west. The third stage has round-headed blind windows. The top stage of the tower has oculus openings with inset metal clock faces to all four faces.

The surrounding graveyard has carved limestone gravestones and carved limestone box-tombs. For example, here is an elaborate carved limestone stepped rectangular-profile tomb to the south, with an elaborately carved headstone. But in the rain and the grey mists on Sunday afternoon, I was unable to read the inscriptions.

In 1994-1995, the Millstreet Tidy Town Association, with support from FÁS and Cork County Council, began restoring the church tower and the surrounding graveyard, and recording its history. Saint Anna’s Amenity Park was officially opened by Bishop Roy Warke, Bishop of Cork, Cloyne and Ross, on 4 May 1997. This restoration project has enhanced the image of the town and preserved an important part of its ecclesiastical, social and architectural history and heritage.

Nearby, the former rectory that was built in 1879 is now a private house. Together, the tower of the church, graveyard and the former rectory form an interesting group of church structures.

The restoration of Coole House, a former Crowley home in Millstreet

Coole House, near Drishane Castle … home of Cornelius Denis Crowley in the last century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Patrick Comerford

While I was visiting many places associated with my grandparents’ families in Millstreet, Co Cork – including the mill that gave Millstreet its name, the graveyard at Drishane Castle, my grandparents’ home, shop and pub on the Square, my great-grandparents’ house and pub on the Main Street, and the shop and house where an uncle, aunt and cousins had lived and worked – I was also brought to visit Coole House, one of the main houses associated with my grandmother’s branch of the Crowley family.

Coole House is in Coolmore, on the south side of L1120, about 3 km north-east of Millstreet, just east of Drishane Castle and a short walk north to the banks of the River Blackwater.

In his Guide to Irish Country Houses, Mark Bence-Jones says Coole House was built ca 1760.

Later, Coole House was the residence of Herbert Baldwin O’Donnell (1783-1856), the land agent of Captain Henry Wallis of Drishane Castle, one of the principal land owners in the Millstreet area.

Herbert O’Donnell’s father, John O’Donnell of Egmont, was a barrister. Egmont is about 27 km north-east of Millstreet, in an area that was also home to the Perceval family, Earls of Egmont.

Herbert O’Donnell was born in 1783. By 1837, he was living at Coole House, according to Samuel Lewis’s Topographical Dictionary of Ireland. As well as being the land agent of the Wallis family of Drishane Castle, he was also a Justice of the Peace for Co Cork, farmed 300 acres.

For about 15 years, he was also a churchwarden at Saint Anna’s Church, Millstreet. In the mid-1840s, he gave evidence to the Devon Commission on the land issue and put forward recommendations for its solution.

Herbert O’Donnell married Sarah Teresa Ellis in 1811, and they were the parents of seven children, five daughters (Julia Harriet, Mary Ellen, Eliza, Teresa and Sarah) and three sons (John O’Donnell, Nicholas Michael O’Donnell and Herbert Eyre O’Donnell).

Herbert O’Donnell died on 2 September 1856 at the age of 73 and his wife Sarah died in 1860 at the age of 69. They are buried in the graveyard beside Drishane Castle.

Their first three daughters, Julia Harriet, Mary Ellen and Eliza, died young and were buried with their parents in Drishane. The fourth daughter, Teresa, married Dr Denis O’Connell of Flintfield House, near Millstreet. The youngest daughter, Sarah, married Adeodato da Silva Lima, a Vice-Consul for Portugal, in 1851.

Their eldest son, John O’Donnell, married Mary Jane Cantrell in Guernsey in 1844. They returned to live in Millstreet, and he died on 16 March 1860 aged 47. John, Mary and their 15-year-old son, also John, are buried with John’s parents in Drishane.

The second son, Herbert Eyre O’Donnell, was born in 1818. He trained at the King’s Inns in Dublin and was called to the bar in 1836, later practicing as a barrister in Co Cork and Dublin. Herbert married Anastasia Constantina Woollett, the daughter of a London coal merchant, in Cobh, Co Cork in 1845.

They emigrated to Victoria, Australia, on the Queen of the Mersey in 1866 with their so Herbert O’Donnell, then aged 18. In the early 1870s, he was practicing as a solicitor in Wangaratta. and in 1871 he applied to be admitted to the Queensland Bar. Herbert Eyre O’Donnell returned home soon after and died in Cork on 3 February 1873.

The youngest son, Nicholas Michael O’Donnell, inherited Coole House from his father in 1856. He was active in community life in Millstreet and in 1862 he was Vice-Chairman of the Board of Guardians for the Millstreet Union, the equivalent of the local council.

In 1864, Nicholas bought the mill in Millstreet that gave its name to Millstreet and that was later bought by my great-uncle, Andrew O’Regan, a brother-in-law of my grandmother, Maria (Crowley) Murphy.

A year later after he bought the mill, Nicholas O’Donnell married Jane Chesney in Blarney on 26 February 1865. Jane Chesney was a daughter of General Francis Rawdon Chesney (1789-1872).

General Chesney was from Annalong, Co Down, and is remembered for exploring the Euphrates Valley to the Persian Gulf, his accounts of Constantinople, Syria and Egypt, and his report in 1830 on the feasibility of opening a Suez Canal as an alternative to the overland trade route to India and the sea route around the Cape. His report inspired the French diplomat Ferdinand de Lesseps who developed the canal. When the Suez Canal opened in 1869, linking the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, Lesseps greeted Chesney in Paris as the ‘father’ of the canal.

Later, in 1884, as head of the Franco-American Union, Ferdinand de Lesseps formally presented the statue to the United States, saying, ‘let us hope that it will add, by its moral value, to the memories and sympathies that it is intended to perpetuate.’

Meanwhile, the mill in Millstreet seems to have ruined Nicholas O’Donnell financially. In 1870, a year after Suez Canal opened, Nicholas O’Donnell, describing himself as a miller, filed for bankruptcy. He died before 1876, but his wife continued to live at Coole House until she died at Coolemore on 3 July 1903 at the age of 79. She is buried in the old churchyard beside Saint Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church in Millstreet.

Mary McCarthy (1839-1920), nee Bingham, who was born in Kilkeel, Co Down, is said to have inherited Coole House in Millstreet, from her employer Jane O’Donnell.

Coole House, with the Perry family, in 1910 (Photograph: The Larence Collection/National Library of Ireland)

But by 1910, when Coole House was photographed for the William Lawrence Collection, the house was owned by the Perry family. The photographs show Coole House as a long, two-storey Georgian house, with a seven-bay front.

Sarah (Perry) Malcolm is standing by a window in the centre of the old black and white photograph of Coole House. Lying to the right is Sarah’s sister, Mary (‘Minnie’) Louisa (Perry) McCulla, to the left is Harry Perry, who has been mistaken for the gardener in some comments on the photograph; above him on the knee of a maidservant is Sarah’s child, Ernest Ray Malcolm; and another, unidentified woman is in the background.

Sarah Perry had emigrated to America, where she married, and then moved to Vancouver in Canada. She had returned in Millstreet when the photograph was taken. Ernest Sarah is by the window, and her. Ernest Malcolm later returned in 1990 and visited Millstreet Museum.

Some years after the photograph was taken, Coole House was bought by one of my great-uncles, Cornelius Denis Crowley (1879-1972), a brother of my grandmother, Maria (Crowley) Murphy (1882-1957) of Millstreet, Co Cork.

For many years, Con Crowley was a director of the Roscrea Meat Company with his brother Jeremiah D Crowley of Wallstown Castle, Castletownroche, Co Cork – the other directors included Robert Briscoe TD and G Fasenfeld.

Con Crowley was anxious to be remembered in Millstreet, and in 1944 he erected two windows as memorials to his parents, Denis and Maria Crowley, in Saint Patrick’s Church, Millstreet. The inscription at the foot of the Oliver Plunket window reads: ‘Erected to the memory of Denis and Margaret Crowley of Millstreet by their son Cornelius. 1944.’

After World War II, Con Crowley also lived at of Finnstown House, Lucan, Co Dublin. The Crowley family continued to own Coole House, but it by the 1960s it was derelict, and my cousins in Millstreet remember climbing into the house to play in it and wander through it. The describe its marble floors and its fading elegance.

When Con Crowley died in 1972 he was buried in Millstreet in the graveyard beside Drishane Castle, alongside his wife Hannah, who died in 1969. Coole House remained vacant for many years and was derelict by the early 1990s, when it was bought by the Duggan family, who carried out extensive renovations. The Duggan family bought Drishane Castle about the same time, and have been active in attracting major international equestrian events and the Eurovision Song Contest to Millstreet.

Today, Coole House is owned by Martina Hickey (née Duggan) and her husband. They have completely refurbished the house, so that it is once again an attractive country house and a family home.

The grave of Cornelius and Hannah Crowley in Drishane, with the grave of my grandmother and great-grandparents in the background (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Childhood memories of the mill that gives its name to Millstreet

The steps beside the old mill race in Millstreet, leading up to Mill Lane (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Patrick Comerford

Although I remember few childhood visits to Millstreet, Co Cork, those memories include playing at the steps of the mill that gives its name to Millstreet, and playing on the steps of the local branch of the Bank of Ireland, a few doors away from the shops, pub and home of my grandmother, Maria (Crowley) Murphy, who died 60 years ago on 8 July 1957 at the age of 72.

My grandmother is buried in the cemetery beside Drishane Castle, and from early times the parish was known officially as Drishane.

But a village grew up west of Drishane Castle around the mills that were operating in the early 18th century, and the village and town around these mills became become known as Millstreet at an early stage in its development.

In his Topographical Dictionary of Ireland, Samuel Lewis notes that before 1736 Millstreet consisted of an inn, a mill, and five small cabins. The earliest mill in the town was the Black Gate Mill located on Station Road, using the River Finnow.

Corn milling was increasingly mechanised in the latter half of the 18th century, and the mills were given fresh impetus in 1758 when the Irish Parliament introduced a subsidy for transporting flour to Dublin. In Co Cork, large flour mills developed in towns such as Macroom, Fermoy and Castletownroche, and the county had 32 mills in the late 18th century.

Mill Lane, Millstreet, with O’Regan’s Mills at the end of the lane (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

A large mill was built on the site of the present mill in Millstreet in the 1820s. This was much larger than the other three mills in Millstreet at the time, and had a wooden wheel on the north (station) side. This was later replaced by a steel millwheel operated by the mill race on the south (town) side of the mill.

A brewery was built in Millstreet in 1835, and two years later Lewis observes that Millstreet had one long street in 1837, with several smaller streets and lanes leading off it, and 312 houses that were small but neatly built.

In addition, Lewis notes, Millstreet had many flour mills that ‘have proved very advantageous to the farmer in encouraging the growth of wheat.’ The other mills in the Millstreet were at Mount Leader, where there were two mills side-by-side at Dromacolane Bridge, also known as the Miller’s Bridge, and the Black Gate mill, which was the first mill in Millstreet.

The Wallis family of Drishane Castle bought the mill on the north side of Millstreet in 1856, adding to their other enterprises in the town, which included the brewery, a sawmill and a tannery.

The O’Donnell family of Coole House, who were the stewards of the Wallis family on the Drishane estate, became the owners of the mill in 1864 when it was bought by Nicholas Michael O’Donnell, who married a year later. But the mill must have fallen into financial difficulties, and in 1870, describing himself as a miller, Nicholas O’Donnell filed for bankruptcy.

In 1875 Maurice Hickey of Castletownroche bought the mill. He made many improvements to the mill, changing the location of the mill wheel from the station or north side to the town or south side, and upgrading the building of the mill from timber to steel. But once again the mill fell into financial difficulties by 1912, and it was bought that year by John D Murphy of Coomlegane Street, Millstreet.

The Station Road frontage of O’Regan’s Mills (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Following rebuilding works by John D Murphy, the mill was bought by Andrew O’Regan, my great-uncle by marriage, soon after his wedding. My grandmother’s younger sister Johanna (‘Hannah’) Maria Crowley (1882-1964) married a much younger Andrew O’Regan (1895-1984), son of Jermiah O’Regan of Kilmurry, on 16 September 1919 in Cork Cathedral. The witnesses were Jeremiah O’Regan and Bridget Crowley (1887-1976), a younger sister of my grandmother and my great-aunt Hannah.

Hannah and Andy O’Regan were the parents of two sons and two daughters, and today the mill is run by a third and fourth generation of the O’Regan family.

I was probably a six or seven-year-old at the time I remember playing in the mill stream and the mill race that feeds into O’Regan’s Mills. On Sunday afternoon, as we climbed the steps beside the old mill race, my cousin recalled my precocious daring-do attitude and feigned bravado as I led younger cousins across the mill race, only to fall on my backside and to suffer a humbling soaking. I had learned at a very young age how pride can come before a fall.

Appropriately, a mural of the old mill race and mill stream as they looked around 1910 is painted on the new gable created on the side of the former home on Main Street of my grandmother’s parents, my great-grandparents, Denis Crowley (1853-1912) and Margaret (Twomey) Crowley (ca 1845-1923) when Mill Lane was widened some years ago.

The former home of Denis Crowley (1853-1912) and Margaret (Twomey) Crowley on the corner of Main Street and Mill Lane (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

As we came back down the steps, those memories from 60 years ago started to flow back as I read ‘The Mill Stream,’ by Marie Ryan, on an interpretive noticeboard beside the mill:

‘The Mill Stream,’ by Marie Ryan

The mill turns busily on and on,
but the old mill stone has long gone.
And the old mill stream no longer flows,
on its erstwhile bed, the lilac grows.
And it would be so easy to forget
and consign the stream to its silent death.

But the old mill stream lives on in my heart.
And leaps from the past with a mighty start.
And it is if I am a child again.
And I watch the stream as I watched it then.

The water fell in a seething mass
When the sluice gate opened to let it pass.
And the water thundered and rolled and rolled
And rumbled, and grumbled, and bubbled and belled.
And to wing from the bars on the steps nearby
was a feat for a daring child to try.

The years have come, and the years have gone,
And still the children meet and play
on the sunny steps by the mill each day.
And they swing from the bars in childish glee,
And bring back the past to you and me.

Times have changed, perhaps a lot,
But the children haven’t changed a lot.
And it seems like the ghost of the stream is there.
Echoing soft on the summer air.

The mural of the mill on the corner of the former Crowley home (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Kilmeedy Castle, a former MacCarthy stronghold near Drishane and Millsreet

Kilmeedy Castle, built in the 1430s or 1440s by the MacCarthy family of Drishane Castle (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Patrick Comerford

After visiting Drishane Castle on Sunday afternoon [6 August 2017], I was brought to see Kilmeedy Castle, which lies next to a farm south of Millstreet, Co Cork. This tower house is within the parish of Drishane and ‘on the confines of the baronies of Magonihy, West Muskerry, and Duhallow.’

Kilmeedy Castle was built in the 1430s or 1440s by the MacCarthys of Drishane Castle, not as a residence but as a military stronghold. It is said to have been built in 1436 by Dermot MacCarthy of Drishane Castle, a brother of Cormac Láidir who built Blarney Castle, or in 1445 by his son Teige MacCarthy.

The castle was built to guard the wild mountain pass between two mountains, Musherabeg and Claragh. The road that runs past the castle was the main highway from Co Kerry into Co Cork, and the merchants and traders who used it were the victims of many raids and robberies. This was later the ‘Mail Coach Road’ and the main road linking Macroom and Killarney.

By 1638, a branch of the MacCarthys of Drishane Castle was living in Kilmeedy Castle. The Meirgeach O’Mahonys, who were chief stewards of MacCarthy Mór, are also said to have had lived at Kilmeedy Castle at one stage in the 17th century.

In the mid-17th century, the castle was damaged by Cromwell’s Parliamentarian forces, who also laid siege to Drishane Castle. Charles MacCarthy, who lived in Kilmeedy Castle, was shot dead at the castle gate by a Colonel Ingoldsby with a ‘span’d pistol’ in 1651. A local legend says ‘the golden gates of Kilmeedy’ were thrown into Comeenatrush, a lake in a neighbouring townland.

Kilmeedy Castle was confiscated from the MacCarthys, but after the restoration of Charles II in 1660, through the intervention of Lord Muskerry, the MacCarthy family recovered Kilmeedy Castle.

The MacCarthys lost their lands again after the Williamite wars (1688-1691). The castle was attacked in 1713 by the dispossessed Tadhg O’Keeffe of Ballymaquirke. But yet again it reappears in the will of Donagh MacOwen MacCarthy, the centenarian, in 1728.

The castle later suffered at the hands of local tradesmen and builders who hacked away at its limestone curbstones and used them as corner stones in many houses in the area, and used the castle ruins as a source of cheap building materials. It is said some of these stones can be seen appearing through the plaster in the old farmhouse beside the castle.

The stairs were also broken near the top by farmers who supposedly had a problem with cattle climbing to the top of the castle in summer days to get away from the flies.

Local lore also says an underground passage leads from under the ground floor to some unknown place beyond the castle walls.

Kilmeedy Castle remains an interesting tower house, and my cousins remember playing it as children and reaching the top. But the castle stands on private grounds and can no longer be visited by the public.

The national flag was flown from the top of the castle on special occasions in recent decades, including Pope John Paul II’s visit to Ireland in 1979, and when Millstreet hosted the Eurovision Song Contest in 1993.

How the Wallis family fell from grace and lost Drishane Castle

Drishane Castle … home of the Wallis family until the early 20th century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017; click on image for full-screen view)

Patrick Comerford

During my visit to Drishane Castle, near Millstreet, Co Cork, at the weekend, in search of my grandmother’s grave and stories about the Crowley and Murphy family, I also came across the story of Henry Aubrey Beaumont Wallis, the last Wallis to live at Drishane Castle.

Henry Aubrey Beaumont Wallis was born on in July 1861, the third child but only surviving son of Captain John Richard Smyth Wallis (1828-1868). His mother Octavia (Willoughby) was the illegitimate daughter of Sir Digby Willoughby, 7th Baronet, of Middleton.

When Aubrey was only a boy of seven, Captain John Wallis died on 27 October 1868. Within three years, the widowed Octavia Wallis had remarried: on 4 April 1872, she married Sir George Howland Beaumont, 9th Baronet, of Cole Orton Hall, Leicestershire, in Saint Paul’s Church, Knightsbridge.

As Lady Beaumont, she continued to take an interest in the Drishane Estate on behalf of her son while he was a minor. In the 1870s, the Drishane Castle estate totalled 5,000 acres, and in 1876 Lady Beaumont was involved in architectural improvements and extensions to the house, building new entrance gates and erecting a grand new porch at the castle, with the Wallis arms carved above.

The Wallis arms above the decorative porch built at Drishane Castle by Lady Beaumont (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

In 1882, when Aubrey Wallis came to full age, he inherited Drishane in his own name. The estate was placed in Chancery on an application of insurance companies, but the family remained at Drishane and continued to invest in the estate. Slater noted in 1894 that Drishane Castle was still the seat of Major Wallis, although he misspells his surname as Wallace.

However, Henry Aubrey Beaumont Wallis was the last member of the Wallis family to live at Drishane Castle.

Shortly after Aubrey inherited Drishane Castle, he married Elizabeth Caroline Bingham at Kiderpore in Calcutta on 1 March 1883. She was a daughter of the Hon Albert Yelverton Bingham, and a granddaughter of Lord Clanmorris. Aubrey and Elizabeth lived together in India, New Zealand, London, West Africa, and at Drishane Castle, as well as other places, and were the parents of a son and a daughter:

1, Henry Digby Wallis (1885-1914).
2, Audrey Beatrice Jean (1888-1961), who married Francis Ivan Oscar Brickmann, and then married Captain Robert Law.

In 1892, the Wallises returned from the Gold Coast (now Ghana) in West Africa, where he had been a District Commissioner, and they lived at Albert Gate Mansions, London. But Elizabeth soon returned to India, without her husband or her children, claiming her visit to India was for the benefit of her health.
On her return to London, she claimed, she could not ascertain where her husband was living. Later, however, the couple lived together again for some time, in Drishane Castle, in London, and possibly in Molesworth Street, Dublin.

Until then, the Wallis family owned all of Millstreet and the surrounding country property from the Bridge to Drishane. The second portion of Millstreet, from the bridge west to Coomlegane, was the property of the McCarthy O’Leary.

Shop fronts in Millstreet ... in 1900, a rumour spread around Millstreet that the Wallis Estate was to be sold (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017; click on image for full-screen view)

But in the summer of 1900, a rumour spread around Millstreet that the Wallis Estate was to be sold in the Land Judge’s Court. About three-quarters of the town was built on the Wallis estate, a public meeting was called, and a committee was formed to represent the public interest. The committee was chaired by Father Charles O’Sullivan, later Bishop of Kerry.

The committee wanted each holding in the town be sold separately so that householders could buy their own houses, and if the property was to be sold by auction, they wanted the auction to take place in Millstreet. A long, drawn-out court battle began before Mr Justice Rose.

Meanwhile, Lady Beaumont died in London on 19 June 1901 in London, she was buried in Cole Orton, Leicestershire. Her will was probated at £12,196, the equivalent of about £4 million today. By then she seems to have lost all interest in her son’s estate at Drishane, and there was no possibility that anything he inherited from her would save Drishane Castle and estate for the Wallis family.

Finally, the auction was fixed for July 1901. William Marsh and Sons, Cork, were the auctioneers and the auction was held in the old Court House in Millstreet. The occupiers were the only bidders and their bids totalling £12,200 were submitted to Judge Rose. The landlords were represented by Casey and Clay, solicitors, and the tenants by TM Healy, KC; Tim Healy (1855-1931) was then MP for North Louth and later became the first Governor-General of the Irish Free State.

However, on the application of Casey and Clay, the judge refused to approve the bids of the local people and fixed a date for a sale in his own Court in Dublin. The tenants renewed their bids, but there was a surprise bid of £12,800 from Elizabeth Wallis, the wife of the owner of Drishane Castle. Her counsel naively explained that she had no money but was hoping to source funds from a London financier named Lane. Judge Rose gave her until 1 January 1902 to lodge the money.

When the case came before the judge again, Elizabeth Wallis still had no money. DD Sheehan, who now represented the tenants, persuaded the judge to make a definitive order that if Mrs Wallis did not lodge the money before 1 March 1902 he would reject her offer.

When the court sat again in March, Elizabeth Wallis still had no money. Judge Rose then made an order accepting the tenants as purchasers if they increased their offer to the amount bid by Mrs Wallis. The parish clerk, John M Murphy, had the new bids signed by the tenants, the documents were lodged in court and were accepted. Millstreet Rural District Council assisted the purchases through the Small Dwellings Act, advancing loans to the tenants, and became the first local council in Ireland to do so.

Inside Drishane Castle last weekend (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Separately, Drishane Castle was sold before Mr Justice Rose in the Court of Chancery on 4 June 1902 to Patrick Stack of Fermoy, Co Cork. Aubrey Wallis then became the legal tenant of Drishane Castle and Aubrey and Elizabeth continued to live there.

But soon after the sale, the private lives of the last Wallises at Drishane Castle became the topics of public gossip and salacious newspaper reports when Elizabeth sought a divorce from her husband in 1906. This divorce was legislated for by Act of Parliament and seems to have been one of only two divorces that were allowed in Ireland until divorce was legalised in 1996.

At a hearing in the House of Lords, witnesses were called in support of the Irish Divorce Bill promoted in the name of Mrs Elizabeth Caroline Wallis, of 19 Molesworth Street, Dublin, who sought to dissolve her marriage with Henry Aubrey Beaumont Wallis, of Drishane Castle, Co Cork.

Elizabeth alleged that in 1903, at Drishane Castle, Wallis treated her cruelly, refusing to allow her any money or the use of his horses and carriages, and that on 18 May 1903 he flung her to the ground, wrenching her wrist and bending back her fingers.

In March 1904, Elizabeth left Drishane and never saw her husband again. Later, she claimed, she discovered that between 1896 and 1901 he was having an affair at a flat in Titchfield Street, London, with a woman named Edith Scott.

Elizabeth Wallis gave brief evidence at the hearings in the House of Lords, but there was no appearance on behalf of Aubrey Wallis at the hearing. The Clauses of the Divorce Bill provided that the marriage should be declared void, and that the petitioner could marry again, that her property rights were protected, and that it was not lawful for Aubrey Wallis to marry Edith Scott.

Within four months of the divorce, Elizabeth Wallis was married again, which may indicate that she was not have entirely faithful in the marriage. Aubrey also married again within a year later, in February 1907, this time to Julia Mary Catharine Curteis, the widow of Captain Edward Witherden Curteis (1853-1902), who had played cricket for Kent and the MCC. She was an only daughter and a wealthy heiress, and later inherited Mottram Hall in Cheshire through her mother in 1916.

Aubrey’s hasty second marriage after the divorce also raises questions about the real name of the woman in the affair, and whether Julia was the real Edith Scott?

By the early 20th century, Aubrey Wallis was living in Roskrow-Penryn, Cornwall. When his second wife inherited Mottram Hall, he changed his surname from Wallis to Wallis-Wright. In 1923, he changed his name back again from Wallis-Wright to Wallis, and he died in 1926.

His only son, Henry Digby Wallis, was born in New Zealand and went to school at Wellington in Berkshire. As a child might have expected to grow up to inherit Drishane Castle. He was 28 and a lieutenant in the Coldstream Guards when was killed in action on 21 October 1914, at St Julien in Belgium. A memorial plaque in Saint Mary’s Collegiate Church, Youghal, Co Cork, says: ‘He died as he lived, a very gallant gentleman.’

If Aubrey Wallis’s first marriage was unhappy and became a public scandal, then his daughter Audrey Beatrice Jean (1888-1961) also had an unhappy first marriage. Audrey was born on 23 January 1888, and she was still only 20 she married Francis Ivan Oscar Brickmann, an officer in the Indian Army, on 5 January 1909. She was divorced in 1921, and within weeks she married Captain Robert Law, MC, of Rosnaree, Slane, Co Meath, on 4 June 1921.

It is said that an ancestor of the Law family had fought with King William at the Battle of the Boyne. The Law family was a long-established clerical family in the Church of Ireland, and the Revd William Samuel Law (died 1760), was the first of four successive generations of distinguished clergy: the Revd Robert Law (1730-1789), the Revd Francis Law (1768-1807), who married Bellinda Isabella Comerford from Cork, and the Revd Patrick Comerford Law (1797-1869) of Killaloe, Co Clare.

Robert William Law, a first cousin of the Revd Patrick Comerford Law, was the father of Michael Law (1795-1858), of Castle Fish, Co Kildare. He founded the Law & Finlay Bank, and was also a Director of the Bank of Ireland. He married Sarah-Ann, daughter of Crofton Vandeleur Fitzgerald of Carrigoran, Co Clare, and they had four sons who were successful in their chosen careers.

However, poor health forced Michael Law to close his bank and on his doctor’s orders he left Ireland to live on the continent, where he died while his sons were still children or in their teens: Robert Law (1836-1884) later lived in Newpark, Co Kildare; Michael Law (1840-1905) became a judge in British administered Egypt; Sir Edward Fitzgerald Law (1847-1908) became a colourful adventurer who later became effectively the Finance Minister of Greece; and Sir Archibald Fitzgerald Law (1853-1921) was a colonial judge in Malaya.

The eldest son, Robert Law (1836-1884) of Newpark, Co Kildare, was the father of Michael Augustine Fitzgerald Law (1861-1917), of Bearmond, Drogheda, who is buried in the old churchyard in Duleek with other members of the family, including his wife Mary and their son, Major Francis Cecil Law, who died in 1958.

Captain Robert Law (1890-1973), of Rosnaree, Slane, Co Meath, was a son of Michael Augustine Fitzgerald Law, of Bearmond, Drogheda, Co Meath. Robert was brought up in Drogheda and educated at Haileybury. He was an officer with the Royal Dublin Fusiliers during World War I, and was decorated with the Military Cross.

After World War I, it is said, he shot 12 bull elephants in West Africa but was charged by the thirteenth which left him badly mauled. When he emerged from the jungle with a hoard of ivory, he claimed he had survived on a diet of bananas only.

Shortly after, he eloped with the former Audrey Beatrice Wallis of Drishane Castle, Millstreet. She divorced her first husband, he sold Bearmond, and they moved to Rossnaree, near Slane and Newgrange, Co Meath.

Audrey Law died on 28 October 1961. Her son, Major Michael Law (1923-1975), was the father of Robert Law (1955-2004), who married Aisling Stuart, daughter of Imogen Stuart and great-grand-daughter of Maude Gonne. The Law family continues to live at Rosnaree, which has featured on RTÉ television as a country house wedding venue and is known for its summer art schools.

The complex marital affairs of Aubrey and Audrey, father and daughter, may be long forgotten in Millstreet, but the Wallis family is still remembered in Millstreet in the name of the Wallis Arms Hotel in the centre of the town opposite my grandmother’s former home, pub and shop.

A tree-lined avenue on the former Wallis estate at Drishane Castle (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

(Updated: 13 August 2017)

A return visit to Millstreet in search of family stories

Drishane Castle, near Millstreet, Co Cork, dates from the 15th century, and was a convent for most of the 20th century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017; click on image for full-screen view)

Patrick Comerford

I had plans at the weekend to attend the open day at Glin Castle on Sunday afternoon. However, a telephone conversation with my cousin Dick Barrett brought a surprise invitation to visit Millstreet, Co Cork.

Although my mother was from Millstreet and my grandmother and many of my ancestors on that side of the family are buried in Millstreet and in the cemetery at Drishane Castle, I have seldom visited Millstreet.

Any time I visited Millstreet, I was welcomed by uncles, aunts and cousins, and although I have dim childhood memories of staying with the extended family, it is a part of my background with which I have little familiarity. A holiday weekend visit to Millstreet offered an opportunity to redress the past.

The first place two of us stopped to visit was Drishane Castle and the cemetery there with the grave of my grandmother, Maria (Crowley) Murphy, who died 60 years ago on 8 July 1957 at the age of 72. Her husband, my grandfather, Thomas Michael ‘Corduroy’ Murphy, died in Australia on 10 September 1949, at the age of 67, and is buried in Mackay, Queensland.

As I child, I had been told that this grandmother had expected this grandfather to buy Drishane Castle when it was being sold by the Wallis family, and so I also visited Drishane Castle on Sunday afternoon.

The first castle at Drishane was by the MacCarthy family in the mid-15th century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Drishane Castle is north-east of Millstreet, near where the Finnow river flows into the Blackwater. The original castle is a tower house 22 metres tall. It is built of stone with four storeys, with narrow arrow-slits, crenellations on the roof, and a small circular tower next to the castle.

The original Drishane Castle is a tower-house built by the MacCarthy (Mac Cárthaigh) clan ca between 1436 and 1450. It was probably built in the mid-15th century by Dermot Mór McCarthy, the second son of Tadhg MacCarthy, Lord of Muskerry (1390-1428), and a direct descendant of Diarmuid, King of Cork.

Dermot Mór McCarthy is also said to have built the castles at Kilmeedy and Carrigaphooca, while his brother, Cormac Láidir MacCarthy, built Blarney Castle and Kilcrea Castle. Dermot Mór died in 1448, and Drishane was probably completed by his son, another Dermot MacCarthy.

The genealogy of the MacCarthy family is confusing. The Christian names are often repeated, and different accounts of the Drishane branch of the family vary considerably. For example, it is often said that there were two centenarians in the family, both named Donogh. However, the evidence suggests there may have been only one centenarian: the second Donogh MacCarthy, who is buried in the grounds of Drishane Castle, lived from 1597 to 1719, and died at the age of 122.

Teige MacCarthy, the son of Owen MacCarthy, owned Drishane Castle in 1592, when he surrendered it to Queen Elizabeth I and received it back in a re-grant. Teige MacCarthy died around 1624.

His son, Owen Mac Teige MacCarthy, held Drishane Castle when he died in 1637, and the castle was inherited by his son, Donogh MacOwen MacCarthy, the centenarian. He was over 40 at the time, and had married Kathleen Fitzgerald, who also died in 1637. He probably married a second time.

Owen MacCarthy had at least four brothers, Callaghan, Donogh, Phelim and Dermot; this Dermot MacCarthy was killed leading a squadron of horse at the battle of Knockbrack in 1652, fighting the Cromwellian Parliamentarian forces. A year earlier, in 1651, Drishane Castle was garrisoned by the supporters of the beheaded King Charles I. All the MacCarthy lands were forfeited by the Cromwelliams after the Irish Confederate Wars (1641-1653).

When Charles II was restored in 1660, the MacCarthy lands were recovered by Donough MacCarty, 1st Earl of Clancarty. He was the head of the MacCarthy family, and in 1677 he granted a lease of Drishane Castle to Donogh MacCarthy, with a proviso that Donogh settled what was due to Dominic Coppinger for the mortgages previously raised on the estate.

After the Jacobite and Williamite Wars (1688-1691), the MacCarthys lost their lands at Drishane once again. Drishane was acquired by the Hollow Sword Blade Company, which had helped to finance the campaign of William of Orange in Ireland. In 1709, Drishane was sold to Henry Wallis of Ballyduff, Co Waterford, a younger son of Thomas Wallis of Curraglass, Mogeely, Co Cork.

The Drishane estate was acquired by the Wallis family in the early 18th century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

The Wallis family was living at Curraglass, since 1596, and there are suggestions that the family connection with Drishane may date from the mid-17th century. Renovations were carried out at the castle in 1643, according to the date on a fireplace, and this bears the inscription ‘W’, perhaps suggesting the name ‘Wallis’.

It is also suggested that Wallis family had a friendship with Donogh MacCarthy, who allowed the Wallises to live in peace at Drishane during his lifetime. Another account says Donogh MacCarthy demised part of the land to Henry Wallis.

Donogh MacCarthy died in 1719, and in 1722 and 1724 his widow leased her part of the remaining lands to Thomas Wallis. In 1703, Thomas Wallis of Curraglass bought part of the estate in the Barony of Muskerry, Co Cork, that once belonged to the Earls of Clancarty, and the Wallis family took full ownership of Drishane Castle and the lands in 1728.

Henry Wallis’s daughter, Elizabeth Wallis of Drishane, Co Cork, married her cousin, George Wallis of Curraglass, in 1721, and their eldest son, also Henry Wallis, inherited Drishane.

Under provisions for ‘discovery’ in the Penal Laws, the Wallis family bought what remained of Drishane for £450 in 1728, although it was valued at £8,000. This led to a local tradition that Donogh MacCarthy’s widow died on the doorstep of the castle from exposure. In reality, the transaction may have been to clarify the entire matter because of claims to the property by the widow’s relatives, the MacCarthy-O’Leary family.

When Dr Smith wrote his History of Cork in 1750, he noted that there was a handsome new house near the castle built by the late William Wallis who had considerably improved his lands. The new Drishane Castle built by the Wallis family is a large three-storey 18th century house, which was extended, improved and remodelled in the following decades.

In 1827, Henry Wallis’s grandson, another Henry Wallis, married Ellen Grice Smyth of Ballynatray, Co Waterford. This Henry Wallis died in 1862, and the castle and Drishane Castle and estate were inherited by his only son, Major John Richard Smyth Wallis (1828-1868).

During the Fenian Rising 150 years ago, Drishane Castle was garrisoned in 1867, but the Wallises appear to have been popular in the area around Millstreet.

When Major Wallis died in 1868, a year after the Fenian Rising, his only surviving son and heir, Henry Aubrey Beaumont Wallis (1861-1926) was then a seven-year-old. The boy’s widowed mother, Octavia (Willoughby) became Lady Beaumont in 1872 when she married Sir George Howland Beaumont (1828-1882), and she continued to take an interest in the Drishane Estate on behalf of her son while he was a minor.

In the 1870s, the Drishane estate totalled 5,000 acres, and in 1876 Lady Beaumont was involved in architectural improvements and extensions to the house. Her son, Henry Aubrey Wallis, inherited Drishane in his own name when he reached the age of 21. The estate was placed in Chancery on an application of insurance companies, but the family remained at Drishane Castle. Slater noted in 1894 that Drishane Castle was still the seat of the Wallis family, although he misspells the surname as Wallace.

However, Major Henry Aubrey Beaumont Wallis was the last member of the Wallis family to live at Drishane Castle. His personal life became a matter of public gossip and salacious newspaper reports when he and his estranged wife, Elizabeth (Bingham) were divorced in 1906. This divorce was legislated for by an Act of Parliament and seems to have been one of only two divorces that were allowed in Ireland until divorce was legalised in 1996.

The couple were married in Calcutta in 1883, and had lived in New Zealand, Ghana (Gold Coast) and London before returning to Drishane Castle, where Mrs Wallis alleged she had been attacked in 1903 by her husband who was having an affair with a woman in London.

Within four months of the divorce, Elizabeth Wallis had married again and Henry remarried a year later in 1907. But Henry’s fortunes seem to have been in decline for some time. By 1911, he was living in Roskrow-Penryn, Cornwall, when he gave his occupation as Justice of the Peace for Co Cork. In 1916, he changed his surname from Wallis to Wallis-Wright, and in 1923 he changed his name back again from Wallis-Wright to Wallis. He died on 23 April 1926 in Cornwall.

Drishane Castle and the convent buildings (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Meanwhile, an auction was arranged for the Drishane estate in July 1901. The auction was cancelled, as Mrs Wallis made a number of unsuccessful efforts to raise funds to buy the estate for herself. Eventually, the tenants of the houses and premises in Millstreet bought out their holdings, and on 4 June 1902 Drishane Castle was sold in the Court of Chancery before Judge Rose to Patrick Stack of Fermoy.

The evidence in the Wallis divorce case in the House of Lords indicates that the Wallis family continued to live at Drishane Castle as tenants until at least 1904. Through the intervention of Cornelius Duggan, the castle and estate were acquired on 9 December 1908 for the Dames of Saint Maud, a French order of teaching nuns also known as the Sisters of the Infant Jesus, who had arrived in Millstreet in 1907. The order was established in France in 1662 by Rev Nicholas Barre, a Spiritual Director of Saint John Baptist de la Salle. The first members of the community arrived at Drishane in March 1909, the first Mass was celebrated there on 25 May, and the official opening took place on 8 September 1909.

The nuns lived at Drishane Castle for most of the 20th century, built a new convent chapel and from 1911 ran a boarding secondary school for girls.

In December 1974, there was excitement in Millstreet when part of the movie In This House of Brede was filmed at Drishane Castle. It stars Diana Rigg as a widowed business executive who turns her back on commerce and capitalism to enter a strict order of Benedictine nuns at Brede Abbey.

The school closed in 1992, and Drishane Castle and estate were bought by the Duggan family. The castle has hosted a number of music concerts and fundraising events, and the initial plans were to turn the former convent into an hotel. But the house is a centre for asylum seekers, and refugees from Kosovar stayed there for a year. Today, refugees and asylum seekers from many nations live at Drishane Castle.

The 18th century house known as Drishane Castle is a substantial country house, built ca 1730. Although the house has had many phases of building and rebuilding, it retains the fabric of an 18th century house at its core. The house has many interesting features including lancet, bipartite and tripartite windows. The castle revival form of the house dates from the mid to late 19th century when this style was in vogue.

The porte-cochére was added in 1876 by Lady Beaumont in 1876 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

The porte-cochére was added in 1876 by Lady Beaumont and is a fine example of theatrical architecture. It emphasises the importance of the main entrance and provides a strong decorative focus to the façade. The coat-of-arms of the Wallis family above is finely carved heraldic motif and is an example of the skill of 19th century craftsmen. Lady Beaumont also restored the adjacent mediaeval tower house.

The main building is a nine-bay, three-storey main block with a one-bay breakfront having a porte-cochere to the front. Other features include cut sandstone turrets, crenellations, double and triple lancet windows, Tudor-style arched openings and doorways.

Drishane demesne is relatively intact, with many of the related demesne structures, such as the gate lodges, reflecting the style of the main house. The farmyard complex, dating from 1828, includes courtyards and a walled garden.

A gate lodge added to the estate in 1870s (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

The picturesque main gate lodge and piers were built ca 1870 in the castle style that became popular in the mid-19th century, with frivolous crenellations and a crenellated turret. A second detached gate lodge, built at the same time, has an octagonal-shaped three-stage tower with crenellations, and pointed arch window openings and doors.

The convent was built as a separate building for the Sisters of the Infant Jesus, and in 1931 they built a separate nine-bay, two-storey chapel and hall, and the new chapel was solemnly blessed in 1934.

Although I did not get into the chapel on Sunday afternoon, this seems to be is a fine example of early 20th century ecclesiastical architecture. The chapel block was designed by the Cork-born architect Dominick O’Carroll. It is an unusual example of a two-storey chapel building with a hall below, a form that is not usually associated with Roman Catholic churches.

A marble plaque in the chapel was donated by the Crowley family to the convent when it opened in the 1930s, and two or three members of the Crowley family were members of the community. One was Sister Anne, a second was Sister Cornelius, who died in 2001 and who probably took her name after my grandmother’s brother, Cornelius Crowley, who lived at Coole House, near Drishane, and Finnstown House, near Lucan, Co Dublin. One of these nuns was known in the family as ‘Mary Nun.’ But, without access to convent chapel, I could find out nothing more about the Crowley nuns.

Meanwhile, was there any truth behind the story I had been told about Thomas Murphy attempting to buy Drishane Castle on behalf of his wife in 1912?

Thomas Murphy, son of Michael Murphy, merchant, of Millstreet, married Maria Crowley, daughter of the late Denis Crowley, in Millstreet on 3 March 1915. The witnesses at their wedding were Jeremiah O’Shea and Hannah Crowley.

So, they were married six years after Drishane Castle had been acquired by the Sisters of the Infant Jesus, and 14 years after Drishane Castle was first put up for sale. The story now seems to me to be apocryphal.

I needed to find out more about the last Wallis of Drishane Castle, more about the houses where the Murphy and Crowley families lived in Millstreet, and I needed to find the mill that gave Millstreet its name. We headed back into Millstreet to meet my cousin.

● Drishane Castle is open to the public in summer (May to September) from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. During the rest of the year, visits may be arranged by appointment.

The Murphy family grave in Drishane Cemetery (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)