A ruined castle near Thurles and a cathedral monument are reminders of a lost family

A memorial to one of the many pretenders to the Mathew and Landaff titles in Llandaff Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

In recent days, I have been writing about tangled family trees and difficult marriages that led to questions about the inheritance of titles and estates in the Townshend family and the Leeson family.

In the Townshend family, scandals and a bigamous marriage threatened the succession to both the title of Marquess Townshend and the ownership of Tamworth Castle. In the Leeson family, a tangled family tree led to the loss of Russborough House in Co Wicklow and the disappearance of the title of Earl of Milltown.

Similar stories are told about the Mathew family of Thomastown, Co Tipperary, and the claims to the title of Earl Landaff.

The Mathew family claimed descent from a branch of the Matthew family of Radyr in Glamorgan, in south Wales. There are three 15th and 16th century Mathew family effigies in Llandaff Cathedral.

Inside Llandaff Cathedral in south Wales (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

George Mathew sold his estate at Radyr in the mid-17th and moved to Co Tipperary. He became the owner of Thomastown Castle, near Thurles, when he married Elizabeth Poyntz (1587-1673), Lady Thurles, widow of Thomas Butler, Viscount Thurles.

It was a marriage that brought George Mathew into a powerful and influential family circle, and he was the stepfather of James Butler (1610-1688), 1st Duke of Ormond.

George Mathew died in 1638, but the Mathew family maintained close connections with the Ormond Butlers in the generations that followed. In 1666, George Mathew was granted a large estate in Co Tipperary, including part of Thomastown. The original Thomastown Castle was a two-storey house of pink brick built in the 1670s by George Mathew with early 18th additions.

Thomastown Castle was the birthplace and early home of Father Mathew, the ‘Apostle of Temperance,’ and his father was a cousin of Thomas Mathew and worked for him as his agent.

Thomas Mathew of Annefield succeeded to the Mathew estates of Thomastown and Thurles in 1760. Wilson described Thomastown Castle in 1786 as ‘an ancient but handsome edifice.’ Thomas was succeeded by his son Francis Mathew in 1777 who was given the title of Earl Landaff in 1797.

Francis Mathew (1738-1806), 1st Earl Landaff, had been MP for Tipperary in the Irish House of Commons in 1768-1783, and was High Sheriff of Tipperary. He was made a member of the Irish House of Lords in 1783 with the title of Baron Landaff, of Thomastown, in Co Tipperary. In 1793, he received the higher title of Viscount Landaff, and in 1797 he was made Earl Landaff.

The Earls Landaff used the invented courtesy title Viscount Mathew for the heir apparent. Despite their territorial designations, the misspelling of Llandaff as Landaff, and the fact that the titles were in the Irish Peerage, the titles all referred to the place in Glamorgan now spelt Llandaff. After the Act of Union, Lord Landaff was elected as one of the 28 Irish peers to the British House of Lords.

This Lord Landaff was married three times. On 6 September 1764, he married Elisha Smyth (1743-1781) in Bellinter, Co Meath. She was a sister of Sir Skeffington Smyth of Tinney Park, Co Wicklow. They had four children, three sons and two daughters: Francis James Mathew, later 2nd Earl of Landaff; General Montague Mathew (1773-1819); the Hon George Toby Skeffington Mathew (died 1832); and Lady Elizabeth Mathew (died 1842).

In 1784, he married his second wife, Lady Catherine Skeffington (1752-1796), a daughter of Clotworthy Skeffington, 1st Earl of Massereene. They had no children, and in 1799 he married his third wife, a woman named Coghlan from Ardo, Co Waterford.

When he died in 1806, he was succeeded in his titles by his eldest son from his first marriage, Francis James Mathew (1768-1833), 2nd Earl Landaff, who had been known by the courtesy title of Viscount Mathew. He was MP for Tipperary in the Irish House of Commons (1790-1792), Callan (1796) and again for Tipperary (1796-1801). As Earl Landaff, he also took his father’s place as an Irish representative peer in the House of Lords.

He opposed the Act of Union, supported Catholic Emancipation, and was seen as ‘a personal enemy of George IV’ when he gave evidence in favour of Queen Charlotte regarding her conduct at the Court of Naples during her famous trial.

Thomastown Castle was enlarged in the early 19th century, and transformed into a Gothic castle, designed by Richard Morrison for Francis James Mathew, the 2nd Earl Landaff.

Lord Landaff married Gertrude Cecilia La Touche, a daughter of John La Touche, of Harristown, Co Kildare. They had no children, and he died in Dublin on 12 March 1833, aged 65.

Thomastown Castle was enlarged in the early 19th century, and transformed into a Gothic castle by Richard Morrison for Francis James Mathew, the 2nd Earl Landaff

Lord Landaff’s next brother, Lieut-Gen Montague James Mathew (1773-1819), had died 14 years earlier, on 19 March 1819, and so the family titles became extinct. General Mathew was MP for for Ballynakill in the Irish Parliament until 1800, and MP for Co Tipperary in Westminster in 1806-1819. He was a Whig and a supporter of Catholic Emancipation.

Their youngest brother, the Hon George Toby Skeffington Mathew, also died in 1832. So, when the second earl died, the family titles became extinct, and the estates passed to his sister, Lady Elizabeth Mathew. The Ordnance Survey Name Books record Lady Elizabeth Mathew owned townlands in the parish of Kilfeacle, barony of Clanwilliam, in 1840.

When she died in 1842, she left the family estates and fortune to a cousin, the Vicomte de Chabot, the son of her mother’s sister Elizabeth Smyth. Viscount Chabot was living at Thomastown Castle in the mid-19th century. Later it was owned by the Daly family, but from the mid-1870s it began to decay from the mid-1870s. William Daly was living there in 1906.

As Thomastown Castle crumbled and decayed, a number of pretenders came forward, claiming they were the rightful holders of the title Earl Landaff and heirs to the castle. The most outrageous of these pretenders was Arnold Harris Mathew (1852-1919), self-styled de jure 4th Earl Landaff, also self-styled Count Povoleri di Vicenza.

Mathew was also the founder and first bishop of the self-styled Old Roman Catholic Western Orthodox Church in Great Britain, an Old Catholic Church. His episcopal consecration was declared null and void by the Union of Utrecht’s International Old Catholic Bishops’ Conference. In addition, he was excommunicated by Pope Pius X for illicitly consecrating two priests as bishops which led a London jury to find that ‘the words were true in substance and in fact’ that he was a ‘pseudo-bishop.’

He claimed his father, Major Arnold Henry Ochterlony Mathew, who died in 1894, was the third Earl Landaff, and the son of Major Arnold Nesbit Mathew, of the Indian Army. According to these claims, this Major Arnold Mathew was, in turn, the eldest son of the 1st Earl Landaff, born in Paris five months after his parents married.

This claim was later shown to be based on invented and fictitious information. Arnold Nesbit Mathew originally used the name Matthews, as did his son. He was, in fact, the son of William Richard Matthews and his wife Anne, of Down Ampney in Gloucestershire. Incidentally, Down Ampney was also the home village of the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958(, who composed the tune ‘Down Ampney’ for the hymn ‘Come down, O love divine’

Arnold Harris Mathew put forward his claim to the Garter Principal King of Arms for the title of 4th Earl Landaff of Thomastown, Co Tipperary, in 1890, and placed his creative pedigree on the official record at the College of Arms.

John H Matthews, Cardiff archivist, said in 1898 that the number of claimants to the dormant or extinct earldom was ‘legion.’ In his opinion, Arnold Henry Mathew’s pedigree was ‘too extra-ordinary to commend itself to an impartial mind.’

Nevertheless, Arnold Henry Mathew presented his petition to the House of Lords in 1899, claiming a right to vote with the Irish peers for representative peers in the House of Lords. In his petition, he did not repeat other exuberant claims, including one that his grandmother was Eliza Francesca Povoleri, was an Italian countess and the daughter of a Papal marchese.

His petition was read and referred to the Lord Chancellor, Lord Halsbury, who reported in 1902 that Mathew’s claim ‘is of such a nature that it ought to be referred to the Committee for Privileges; read, and ordered to lie on the Table.’

Mark Bence Jones in a feature in Country Life says Archbishop Mathew also bought the ruins of Thomastown Castle and 20 acres surrounding it to save it from destruction.

Mathew’s aristocratic pretensions, like his life as a ‘wandering bishop,’ were fantasies that continue to resurface in the claims of fantasists and pretenders in many walks of life.

When he died on 19 December 1919, the claims to the Mathew title did not come to an end.

As recently as 1987, a mural memorial was erected in Llandaff Cathedral, claiming it was: ‘In memory of Thomas James Mathew son and heir of Francis James Mathew second Earl of Landaff born in London 1798 died in Cape Town 1862.’ The memorial includes a full display of the coat of arms of the Mathew family of Co Tipperary as Earls Landaff, and the misspelling of Llandaff as Landaff.

Thomastown Castle remains in ruins outside Thurles, Co Tipperary

A tangled family tree saw the loss of a great house, art collection and family titles

Russborough House, near Blessington, Co Wicklow, home to generations of the Leeson family and the Earls of Milltown (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

I was writing yesterday about the scandals surrounding the marriage of George Townshend, 3rd Marquess Townshend, and how, without legislative parliamentary intervention, Tamworth Castle and his family titles almost passed to the illegitimate children of his estranged wife and her bigamous partner.

But at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, a tangled family tree saw one of the great Irish country houses, Russborough in Co Wicklow, and its great collection of art pass out of the hands of the Leeson family, and the rightful heirs to the title of Earl of Milltown pass into obscurity.

The Leeson family fortune was made by Joseph Leeson, a Dublin brewer who owned a brewery behind his house on Saint Stephen’s Green and engaged in property speculation.

His son, Joseph Leeson (1711-1783) travelled on grand tours of Europe in 1744 and again in 1750, amassing on his travels a large art collection of paintings, sculpture, furniture, and antiques which would later furnish Russborough House, near Blessington, Co Wicklow.

Joseph Leeson became Baron Russborough of Russborough (1756), Viscount Russborough (1760) and Earl of Milltown (1763).

His titles passed in succession to his sons, Joseph Leeson (1730-1801), as second earl, and Brice Leeson (1735-1807) as third earl, and then to Brice’s grandson, yet another Joseph Leeson (1799-1866), as the fourth earl.

The fourth earl’s three sons then inherited Russborough and the titles one after another: Joseph Leeson (1829-1871), fifth earl, Edward Leeson (1835-1890), sixth earl, and Henry Leeson (1837-1891), seventh earl.

Henry Leeson (1837-1891), 7th Earl of Milltown, a Dublin barrister, was Vice-Chamberlain of Ireland (1859-1862) and Chamberlain to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (1862-1874). He never married, and he had only lived at Russborough for ten months when he died on 24 March 1891.

None of these three brothers had any children, and the sixth earl’s widow, the former Lady Geraldine Stanhope, continued to live at Russborough until she died in 1914. While she lived on at Russborough, a series of wrangles and claims to the family titles followed, one after another.

The coat-of-arms of the Earls of Milltown in frosted glass in Russborough House (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The first claimant to the title was John Leeson (1827-1905), a railway official in India. He was a son of Major Joseph Leeson (1796-1847), a major in the East India Company and a grandson of Hon John Leeson (1767-1835), who in turn was the second son of the third earl.

John Leeson, the claimant to the title of 8th Earl of Milltown in 1891, was married twice in India, and was the father of two daughters, who lived in the Punjab. For some reason, however, John Leeson never legally pursued his claims to the titles. He had no sons, and his younger brother, Henry Corbett Leeson, had already died on 29 September 1887. So, when John Leeson died on 25 January 1905, the claims to the Milltown title ought to have passed to his nephew, Henry Leeson’s son. However, Henry’s son was never traced in India and he remains unnamed in the family trees produced by genealogists.

Questions were raised about the validity and legality of marriages in India, and how to prove these legally. But part of the problem may have been created by a Victorian form of prejudice and racism unwilling to accept what were known as ‘Anglo-Indian’ families.

Instead, the claims to title of Earl of Milltown were assumed by John Leeson’s second cousin, Robert William Frederick Leeson (1842-1906). This Robert Leeson was a son of the Revd Joseph Leeson (1813-1850), who was born in Dublin and became Vicar of Fishlake, Yorkshire, and Chaplain to Lord Cloncurry, and a grandson of Captain the Hon Robert Leeson (1772-1842), third son of the third Earl of Milltown.

Robert Leeson was seven when his father the vicar died. His claims were difficult to pursue because he could never prove a negative: that Henry Corbett Leeson had no legitimate male descendants who stood between him and inheriting the titles.

Robert never married, and although he had two sisters, he had no brothers to continue claiming the family titles. He died at the age of 62 on 19 June 1906 of tubercular disease after a fall while attempting to board a tramcar.

Since then, no further claimants to the Milltown titles came forward. Yet it is possible that there are many living descendants in the male line of the Hon Robert Leeson (1773-1850), who was the fourth son of the first Earl of Milltown.

His many male children and descendants included Sir William Edward Leeson (1801-1885), Genealogist of the Order of Saint Patrick. So, undoubtedly, there are probably many male descendants of the Leeson family living today who are potential or prospective claimants to the title of Earl of Milltown. The title, therefore, should be regarded as being dormant rather than extinct.

Meanwhile, the Milltown collection of art in Russborough eventually came into the hands of the National Gallery of Ireland originated from Russborough house, Blessington, Co Wicklow. Designed by Richard Castle, Russborough, was built for Joseph Leeson (1711-1783), the first Earl of Milltown, in 1763.

In 1897, the widowed Lady Milltown, still in her mid-50s, wrote to Sir Walter Armstrong, then director of the National Gallery of Ireland, to offer the Milltown collection at Russborough to the gallery in memory of her late husband. The offer was accepted and an extension, completed in 1903, was built to house the collection.

However, Lady Milltown and Armstrong argued over his attribution to Pater of works from the collection which she believed to be by Watteau. A long delay ensued before the collection was delivered to the gallery in March 1906.

Further confusion and ill-feeling were created by the number of varying schedules or inventories that were created from the initial offer that Armstrong had approved by Sir Walter Armstron, to the delivery to the gallery of a much large volume of paintings and artefacts in 1906.

Lady Milltown was not satisfied with the arrangements made by the gallery board to house the collection and corresponded with them, through her solicitors, detailing her complaints and demands for changes.

Lady Milltown was convinced the gallery had not honoured the terms of the agreement. The correspondence continued until late 1913, and the matter remained unresolved when she died on 5 January 1914.

Later that year, however, the board of the gallery approved a loan of paintings, furniture, and other works from the Milltown Collection to Sir Edmund Turton (1857-1929), a Tory MP and a nephew of the fifth, sixth and seventh earls, who was then living at Russborough House. The loan from the Milltown collection to Turton would cause much confusion in the years that followed. The Turton loan continued until 1929 when Turton’s widow contacted the gallery about the condition of some of the paintings.

It became evident that there was no exact inventory of the loan. In December 1929, Thomas Bodkin, the director of the gallery, wrote to Lady Turton: ‘I have been trying … to reconcile the scattered and somewhat formless inventories which we possess of the pictures, furniture, and other articles which the board of the National Gallery lent to your husband.’

Efforts to establish a definite inventory and to assist Lady Turton in returning some of the loan continued until 1931 when Russborough House was sold to Captain Daly. The balance of the Turton loan was finally returned by Captain Daly in 1934, with the exception of paintings by George Barrett that were to remain on loan at Russborough.

Russborough was later bought by the Beit family, the Milltown collection remained the property of the National Gallery of Ireland, and no-one came forward to secure a provable claim to the title of Earl of Milltown.

The Library in Russborough House, near Blessington, Co Wickow, with one of the three stucco ceilings in the house by the Lafranchini brothers (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Memories of John Julius Norwich in Venice, Byzantium and at the Wexford Festival Opera

With John Julius Norwich at the Wexford Festival Opera in 2016

Patrick Comerford

I was sorry to read last night in the Guardian that the great scholar of Byzantium and Venice, John Julius Norwich, died last Friday [1 June 2018].

John Julius Norwich (John Julius Cooper, 2nd Viscount Norwich) is one of the most distinguished and charismatic writers and broadcasters of our time and is best-known for his works on the Byzantine empire, mediaeval Sicily and Venice. He produced 30 historical documentaries for BBC television.

One of his recent books is In The Great Cities in Europe, which I bought in Cambridge the year before last. This book, which he edited, paints a portrait of world civilisation by telling the stories of the world’s greatest cities from ancient times to the present. His portraits of cities in this book are vignettes about Constantinople, Palermo and Venice

A few weeks after reading this book, I was back in Wexford to hear John Julius Norwich deliver the 2016 Dr Tom Walsh Lecture as part of the Wexford Festival Opera [28 October 2016].

In an interview-style presentation on the stage at the Clayton White Hotel, that morning, he spoke fondly of Wexford, saying he had been there at least 50 times, coming to the opera festival for the first time in 1961. There were humorous recollections of staying with the Beits at Russborough House in Co Wicklow, and late night festival parties in the Talbot Hotel.

It was a self-deprecating hour on stage, as he tried to deny he was an original historian, saying instead he only tried to make what is already known to the general reader.

He became fascinated with Byzantium as an 18-year-old undergraduate at Oxford, and his first major work was a two-volume history of Sicily. After a career in the diplomatic service, he became a writer, particularly on history, art and travel subjects. His many books include acclaimed works on Venice, Byzantium, Mount Athos, Glyndebourne, the Normans, the Popes, Shakespeare and architecture, and his Christmas Crackers collections of trivia and witticisms.

He edited the diaries of his father, Duff Cooper, 1st Viscount Norwich, and letters from his famously glamorous mother, Lady Diana Cooper (Darling Monster: The Letters of Lady Diana Cooper to Her Son John Julius Norwich).

A distinguished and popular broadcaster on television and radio he has written and presented some 30 television documentaries on art, architecture and history, on subjects ranging from the fall of Constantinople, through Napoleon’s final 100 days’ campaign, to Haiti’s revolutionary leader Toussaint Louverture.

He chaired or served on the committees of numerous charitable projects, including projects concerned with Venice, world monuments, fine arts, the disabled, the National Trust and English National Opera. He was a regular speaker at lunches and dinners and in 2006 and 2007 he gave one-man shows in two London theatres.

He will also be remembered for his wit and erudition by listeners to the BBC radio programmes My Word! and Round Britain Quiz.

John Julius Norwich on the stage in Wexford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

John Julius Cooper, Viscount Norwich, author and broadcaster, born 15 September 1929, died 1 June 2018. The Guardian obituary is HERE.

A tour of Russborough House in the rain to delight historians of art and architecture

The Library in Russborough House, near Blessington, Co Wickow, with one of the three stucco ceilings in the house by the Lafranchini brothers (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Patrick Comerford

What do you do on a rainy summer afternoon?

I was in Saint John’s Church, Sandymount, this morning, presiding at the Sung Eucharist and preaching.

But it had been raining all morning, and when I left at early lunchtime there was no sign of the downpour easing.

A walk on the beach was certainly out of the question, and so instead two of us headed back through Knocklyon, and then out through Bohernabreena and Blessington to spend an afternoon in Russborough House on the edge of the Wicklow Mountains.

I had been to Russborough earlier last year, on another rainy afternoon, and had a double espresso during that visit, but I had never been on a tour of the house.

Russborough House, near Blessington, Co Wicklow, on a wet August afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Russborough is one of Ireland’s truly great houses. It was built in the 1740s by Richard Castle for Joseph Leeson, a wealthy Dublin brewer. As Castle’s masterpiece it represents one of the most architecturally significant neo-Palladian buildings in Ireland.

Leeson, who later became 1st Earl of Milltown, embarked on two extensive Grand Tours to Italy, commissioning and acquiring paintings in Florence, classical statues, and splendid rococo gilt furniture, to adorn the house and to complement its decoration.

Much of the stucco ceiling work in Russborough House may be the work of the Lafranchini brothers (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Much of the plaster work is attributed, without certainly by the great Swiss-Italian stuccodores, the Lafranchini brothers Paolo and Filippo. They were among the earliest and great stucco artists in Ireland, and their work in Russborough includes the ceilings of the library, saloon and music room.

Russborough was home to a curious cast of characters from Joseph Leeson, the idiot 2nd Earl of Milltown, to Joseph Leeson, the dysfunctional 4th earl, who spent almost the entire family fortune at the racetrack, and his formidable wife. Their son eloped with a farm girl.

The coat-of-arms of the Earls of Milltown in frosted glass in Russborough House (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

The Earls of Milltown remained at Russborough until the early 20th century when the last countess donated its contents to the National Gallery of Ireland. The house passed to a nephew of the 4th Earl of Milltown, Sir Edmund Russborough Turton, whose widow later sold the house and estate to Colonel Denis Daly.

In 1952, Russborough was bought by Sir Alfred Beit, whose family made its fortune in the gold and diamond mines of South Africa, and Lady Beit. They brought with them their internationally acclaimed art collection, including works by artists such as Murillo, Vermeer and Velázquez.

Several well publicised robberies in the 1970s and 1990s did not deter the Beits from two public generous bequests to the people of Ireland. They donated major works of art to the National Gallery of Ireland, while the house and its collection were passed to the Alfred Beit Foundation.

Our tour began in the Dining Room, with its Italianate mantelpiece decorated with a mask of Bacchus supported by the vine. The dining table was made in the 1930s and the mirror dates from the reign of George II.

We then moved on the entrance hall. While all the other rooms on view have covered ceilings that bring down the cornice and frieze by two or three feet, the hall is rectangular and gives the impression of greater height than the other rooms. In fact, they are all have a uniform height of 20 ft.

The two niches on either side of the Kilkenny black limestone fireplace contain 18th century French stone busts of an unknown lady and gentleman by Pajou (1730-1809). In the two niches on the north wall are busts of Sir Alfred and Lady Beit. The glass chandelier, which forms a pair with the chandelier in the saloon, is by Perry of London (ca 1820).

There are two paintings by the Genoese artist Alessandro Magnasco (1681-1747), one depicting Saint Augustine and his vision of the Christ Child, and the other Saint Francis of Assisi preaching to the birds and the fish.

The Drawing Room in Russborough House has fine plaster mouldings made to display Vernet’s marine paintings (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

The Drawing Room was probably completed in the mid-1750s, after the rest of the house was finished and after the death of Richard Castle in 1751 to accommodate four marine scenes by Joseph Vernet. The pictures represent morning, afternoon, evening and night. The fine wall plaster mouldings were made to receive them in their present frames, which are the original ones.

The ceiling is the work of an anonymous stucco artist known as the Saint Petersburg Stuccodore.

But the main focus in the room is a copy of The Triumph of David by Guercino – Leeson may have seen the original in Rome in the Galleria Colonna.

The barrel-vaulted ceiling in the Tapestry Room (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

The Tapestry Room has a barrel vaulted ceiling. It is an unusual choice of room to display a state bed made for Richard Arkwright, the inventor of the Spinning Jenny. The Soho Tapestry, dating from around 1720, represents Mogul characters and fantasies. The mantelpiece shows Aesop’s fable of the dog and the bone: a dog carrying a bone was crossing a stream and saw a much larger bone reflected in the water; to get it, he dropped his bone in the water and of course ended up without either.

Aesop’s greedy dog with a bone in the Tapestry Room )Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

This room once displayed The Moorish Kitchen Maid and Christ at Emmaus, both by Velasquez. Today, the main painting in the room is a portrait of an unknown female sitter by the French artist Andre Derain, and few visitors probably notice the signed Picasso in the corner.

Looking out on the rain from the Music Room in Russborough House (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

The Music Room also has a ceiling by the Lafranchini Brothers, but is very different from the others with a more geometrical form that has the effect of a sounding board. The pianos, one Steinway and one Bluthner, are encased in matching inlaid rosewood.

Androcles and the Lion … the mantelpiece in the Saloon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

The Saloon is the largest room in the house. It too has a superb plaster ceiling by the Lafranchini brothers, decorated with of putti or angels. The chandelier is a pair to the one in the front hall.

The mantelpiece, probably by Thomas Carter of London, represents the story of Androcles and the Lion, flanked by Homer and Plato. The room also has a portrait of Thomas Conolly of Castletown House by Sir Joshua Reynolds.

The Library has another of the three stucco ceilings by the Lafranchini brothers. This room, which is probably my favourite room in the house, once displayed Goya’s portrait of Dona Antonia Zarate, a Spanish actress who had the distinction of being painted twice by Goya – the other portrait is in the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg.

The stucco plasterwork in the Staircase Hall appears to be the work of Irish apprentices and pupils (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

The plasterwork in the Staircase Hall is probably by Irish apprentices and pupils. Mixed with garlands are the masks of hounds and other trophies of the chase, and in a rectangular plaster frame on the left of the door from the front hall is a caricature of the 1st EarI of Milltown.

The domed oval lantern upstairs in Russborough House (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Upstairs, we saw the domed oval lantern and visited some of the bedrooms, with their spectacular views of the parkland, the Blessington lakes and the Wicklow Mountains. Indeed, these views were one of Leeson’s reasons for choosing this location for building his house.

We visited the basement before finishing our visit with a late lunch in the Tea Rooms – including the requisite doubles espressos. As we were leaving we also visited the Hippodrome, a former riding school restored by the Beits.

The Hippodrome or former riding school was restored by the Beits (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

It was a guided tours to excite and inspire historians and lovers of art and architecture, from the beauty of the Lafranchini ceilings to the collection of art, furnishings and ornaments.

There are guided tours of the house every hour, on the hour, from May to September, and on Sundays and Bank Holiday Mondays in April and October.

The view of the Co Wicklow countryside inspired Joseph Leeson’s choice of site for his new Palladian mansion near Blessington, Co Wicklow (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)