An Admiral’s Eye View.
At Dromana,
according to Jones, a long avenue, initially lined with rows of trees, led
eastwards from the house. It would appear from his plan that this avenue did
not culminate at the front of the house, and thus, somewhat extraordinarily, it
may have been necessary to reach the house by other means, possibly via the
great stairs in the front garden. The avenue was not aligned with the main
front of the house, probably because the building stood on an escarpment
adjacent to a bend in the river Blackwater. This precluded significant
development immediately to the north, south and west, and presumably led to the
formal grounds being located to the east. It may also explain the unorthodox
orientation of the Jones plan: an east-west orientation enabled him to depict
these formal grounds to best advantage.
2 A diagrammatic redrawing of the Dromana plan,
numbered to show the different features marked on the original. On the original plan the features
which are here identified by letters A-L are marked with roman numerals, while
those here numbered 1-36 are shown with the numbers written out in text.
The tree-lined section of the long avenue traversed
the south-west corner of a ‘dear park’ (6), the quintessential symbol of wealth
and status. At the two points where it met the park boundary Jones put the
number 8 (H on fig,2), an ‘iron palasade finely wroug’t’. Deer parks were
customarily surrounded by a
park pale, a massive fenced or hedged bank, often with an internal ditch,
presumably at Dromana replaced by an iron palisade at these two points. Where this avenue met the eastern
deer park boundary in the north-west corner of Dromana Green, Jones shows somewhat
indistinctly a group of structures (5: E on fig.2) identified as the ‘portridge’
[porterage, for use of the gatekeeper] and ‘park gate’. The accompanying
drawing of these features includes a building named the rock house (4: D on
fig.2), a folly of some sort, with an unusual concave roof, which Jones indicates
lay on the banks of the river Blackwater to the south of the house.7
The avenue then continued eastwards, past woodland set with canals, towards a
sizeable pool, numbered 9 on the plan (I on fig.2] and described as ‘a
beautiful piece of water’, on which Jones playfully drew a rowing boat with a gay
red flag, and an over-sized swan. It eventually left the demesne, via another
tree-lined section, at a point which subsequently became the location of the
Dungarvan gate lodge, and indeed Jones includes a handsome unnamed building in
this vicinity. A branch from the avenue turned sharply to the south, following
another tree-lined route, mainly through extensive oak plantations (30 and 33)
to Villierstown. This was clearly also a means of access to the dwellings on
Dromana Green, to the quay on the riverside and adjacent rock house and bastion
(6: F on fig.2:
two characteristic features of late geometric gardens,
bastions being commonly employed to command a fine prospect over the view
beyond. It appears that the quay and its associated features were also
accessible directly from the house via the gardens on the south side.
A drawing
on the plan shows that Dromana house (2: B on fig.2) comprised a long central
two-storey block dominated by a Jacobean doorcase, with projecting shorter
two-storey wings or offices to each side.8 The house and attendant
buildings or offices to the east were flanked by extensive formal gardens,
divided into a series of compartments of differing size, some open, some
planted. Those in front of the house to the south are described on the key as
being ‘front garden [and] bowling green’ (1). Three open areas, presumably
grass plats, bisected by a tree-lined
avenue, lay on the raised ground immediately to the south-east of the house,
one of them presumably being the bowling green. These were reached from the
house via ‘the great stairs in the garden’ (7: G on fig.2). Beyond lay a series
of variously shaped formally planted areas, culminating in a triangular area
with serpentine beds above the bastion. The wood on the escarpment to the west
is described on the key as being ‘a wood cutt into vistoes’(2), looking across
the wider landscape and hills to the west, and reached by two parallel walks
and flights of steps immediately in front of the house.
Northwards
was an extensive area of twelve kitchen gardens (4), divided into lower and
upper sections, and lined with trees along the east side where they adjoined
the deer park. Beyond them was the osiery (5). The wooded area to the west is
described on the key as ‘the mansion house and wood north of it’ (3), while to
the east of the house were two wooded areas described as ‘wood orcherds and
cannals’ and ‘wood and ponds’ (28 and 27) and set with canals (10: J on fig.2:
South-east was an extensive area of ornamental woodland, predominantly of oak
(30), dissected by a complex network of paths leading to or focused on internal
features, shown to be rings or clumps of trees, typical of the late geometric
style. A separate rectangular area to the north is numbered 29, ‘A wood planted
by his Lordship’. Within the 350-acre deer park Jones depicts a two-storey
building and attendant screen (3: C on fig.2) which was the lodge, complete
with two smoking chimneys.9 Lodges provided shelter and refreshment
for the huntsmen, and often accommodation for the park keeper.
Lively
illustrations within the plan reveal that some of the fields on the eastern and
northern outskirts of the demesne were used for grazing horses and domestic
livestock; a dairy house and gardens are indicated (16); and two single-storey
buildings depicted in a field in the north-east corner of the demesne.
It is most fortunate
that the accuracy of the plan and the fact that it represented the situation on
the ground rather than a proposed scheme can be corroborated by two written
contemporary descriptions. In 1746 Charles Smith wrote that
The context of the 1751 plan
Dromana
lies near Cappoquin, perched above the steeply-sloping wooded side of the river
Blackwater, whose valley is renowned for the high quality of its agricultural
land. It has been described as the nearest thing in Munster to a castle on the
Rhine, and owes much of its charm to the splendid isolation which was its
safeguard in the past.13 Until the late seventeenth century it was the seat of the
FitzGeralds, lords of the Decies, a junior branch of the earls of Desmond.14
In 1751 Dromana
formed the nucleus of an estate which through marriage had become the property
of John Fitzgerald Villiers, 1st Earl Grandison, the only son of
Katherine Fitzgerald of the Decies and her second husband, the Hon. Edward
Villiers, son of George Villiers, 4th Viscount Grandison of
Limerick, whom she married in 1677. In 1664, aged three, Katherine had
inherited the Dromana estate from her father Sir John Fitzgerald, Lord of the
Decies, she being his only child. She was
granted the rank of viscountess by royal warrant on 6 January 1700, and died
in 1725. Her son John Fitzgerald Villiers then inherited Dromana.
Although it
is not stated on the plan, 1751 was a significant milestone in the history of
the family.15 John Fitzgerald Villiers and his wife Frances Cary had
two sons and a daughter, Elizabeth. Being a younger female child, in 1739
Elizabeth had been permitted to marry a commoner, Aland Mason, who had a
respectable estate in County Waterford, and property in Waterford City itself,
with a rental value in that year of £2500. Due to unexpected deaths, notably
that of Elizabeth’s only surviving brother later in 1739, in 1746 she became
sole heiress apparent to her father. Accordingly, a separate viscountcy of
Grandison of Dromana (subsequently elevated to an earldom) was conferred on
her, with remainder to the heirs male of her body. On 13 July1751, two weeks
before the plan was dated, she gave birth to a son, christened George Mason Villiers,
who after his mother’s death in 1782 became 2nd Earl Grandison of
Dromana. This secured the Grandison family in its tenure of Dromana for another
generation, and substantially elevated the social standing of the Mason family.16
At the time
of his inheritance John Fitzgerald Villiers lived at his London residence in
Grosvenor Street and not until the winter of 1730-1731 did he announce his
intention to move to Dromana, perhaps to play a more active part in the management
of the estate. Nonetheless improvements had already been taking place there. In
1729, for example, 42,000 trees were planted, including plum and pear, along
with box and other hedging. A second nursery was created and over 107,000 fruit
trees planted, presumably to serve the ‘wood orcherds’ surrounding the
‘beautiful piece of water’ and the canals, orchards beside the farmhouse to the
west of the ‘beautiful piece of water’(24), and the kitchen gardens, depicted
on the Jones plan.17 John Fitzgerald Villiers has acquired the
soubriquet of ‘Good Earl John’, but the basis for such a reputation is somewhat
hard to fathom. Although his estate management was in some respects innovative,
he totally failed to live within his means, and so greatly exacerbated his
inherited financial difficulties that he was forced to sell some £50,000 worth
of land. His pride in his ancestry and somewhat limited intelligence caused him
to be defrauded by unscrupulous agents who flattered and deferred to him; and
his attempts at political manoeuvring were ‘lame and lamentable’.18
Nonetheless, a desire
to encourage and promote a favourable perception of his character is reflected
in the cartouche of the Dromana plan, which states that Villierstown was ‘a new
& neat Colony erected by his Lordship for the advancement of the Linen
Manufacture’. Celebrating and publicising to his acquaintance his record as an
improving landlord was in keeping with the spirit of the times—progressive
landlords were capturing their achievements for posterity by commissioning the
finest cartographers to survey and map their estates. Protestant landlords were
keen to show that they played a leading role as improvers, their ambition being
not only to pass on an enhanced rental to their heirs but also to see a
prosperous and peaceful Ireland that perhaps could be Protestant. Planting flax
and developing a local linen industry was a means of achieving this ambition.
The Dublin Society encouraged its members to establish villages as a vital
element in the development of their estates, claiming that ‘If gentlemen could
once be persuaded to build little towns on their land ... they would in the
best manner possible improve the circumstances of their own fortunes. We should
in time see those parts of the Kingdom well peopled, not only with Protestants,
but weavers, spinners and bleachers like the North’.
The
settlement named Villierstown is marked in the south-west corner of the plan
(36), as Pococke suggests, comprising two streets set at right angles with a
market house in the centre, and another sizeable building at the south-western
end. Also shown is a neat row of houses for tradesmen and an inn on the green
at Dromana, the latter presumably intended to accommodate the merchants who
would flock to deal in the locally produced linen. The key includes entries
(31and 32) for the ‘Green of Dromana’ and ‘Gardens belonging to ye Green’,
these features being south-east of the house, so there were two distinct
settlements for workers—one on the Green and the other at Villierstown.
Pococke’s account does not state what types of tradesmen were accommodated on
the Green but, like the inhabitants of Villierstown, they may have been
employed in the linen trade, or possibly on the demesne itself and in crafts
such as carpentry.19 One commentator has suggested that Dromana was
an example of an estate unable to make up its mind where its estate village
should be—within or without the demesne—and hence had both.20
When Dr
Thomas Campbell visited the town of Tipperary in 1775 he wrote that ‘an effort
was made to establish the linen manufacture in the locality and for this
purpose a colony of northern weavers was settled there about forty years ago’,
but this failed, ‘for the children of those weavers, like the other natives,
neither weave nor spin, and in everything but religion are indistinguishable
from the general mass’. The Villierstown linen industry appears to have ended
in the late 1760s, perhaps for much the same reason. However, the failure of
similar enterprises locally was also a result of the death of the
landlord-promoter: John Fitzgerald Villiers died in 1766, which might have been
a factor in the demise of the industry here.
Other reasons have been
cited for the failure of the linen industry in the south and west of Ireland.
There was considerable difficulty in obtaining good-quality flax seed
outside Ulster,
and although the northern promoters of linen saw little concern in sending a
few weavers south to educate the rest of Ireland, they were not prepared to
allow the prosperity of the northern linen industry to be compromised. Outside
Ulster, employment in the linen industry was unreliable and offered poor wages
compared to worsted spinning, and it was imposed from the top down through the
activities of the Linen Board and individual landlords. By contrast, in Ulster
it was a long-established cottage industry providing vital income to landless
labourers’ families, and evolved over time to meet changing market conditions
and manufacturing techniques.21
The cartographic context and
implications
From the
beginnings of British cartography in the sixteenth century maps were made in
distinct and separate civilian and military forms, the former favouring the
bird’s eye view and the latter being constructed with a strict ‘ichnographic’
viewpoint from directly above. This distinction persisted into the eighteenth
century.22 From about 1540 Ireland had its own distinctive
cartographic identity, created by the many English military and political maps
which were the contribution of surveyors and engineers to the Tudor settlement.
The maps produced by John Speed in the early seventeenth century commanded
particular respect, although by that time military campaigns were a less important
cartographic influence than the confiscation of landed property. The emphasis
was now on the measurement and plotting of numerous small territorial divisions
at large scales. After 1607 land in six Ulster counties was confiscated and a
hasty survey made by Josias Bodley. In County Londonderry land granted to the
London companies was mapped in more detail by Thomas Raven in 1622, while the
Down Survey, organised by Sir William Petty in the 1650s, was pre-eminent among
these seventeenth-century surveys of confiscated land. Petty’s legacy included
not only accurate printed maps of the outline and counties of Ireland, but also
a flourishing class of land surveyors who specialised in the manuscript mapping
of estates and farms on behalf of their new proprietors.23 However,
such maps, produced for a purely utilitarian purpose, lacked the quality of
artistry and refinement and level of detail which characterised those produced
from the mid-eighteenth century onwards. In his study of land surveying in eighteenth-century
and early-nineteenth-century Dublin, Finnian O’Cionnaith commented that until the
mid-1750s ‘maps were relatively simple line drawings with limited artistic
decoration or colouring which gave the impression of still being heavily
influenced by the Down Survey or late seventeenth-century city maps’.24
Assessing the
collection of estate maps held in the National Library of Ireland, and relating
primarily to the three southern provinces, John Andrews concluded that
As a member
of the powerful Fitzgerald and Villiers families, John Fitzgerald Villiers
cannot fail to have been aware of the respect which the work of Rocque and
fellow members of the ‘French School’ enjoyed, particularly among improving
landlords as John considered himself to be. However, the Dromana plan does not
typify the topographical style of estate mapping introduced by Rocque, and
which revolutionised mapmaking in Britain and Ireland. There is no attempt to
show relief, or to distinguish between different types of land use. Jones was
quite possibly aware of the work of Rocque and his colleagues in England, since
the Dromana plan demonstrates certain characteristic elements of their
style—the depictions of buildings, views of the local landscape, family coats
of arms and cartouches in a simple Baroque style.
Such
characteristic elements of the French School are, however also observable on early-eighteenth-century Irish town and county maps, such as Charles Brooking’s ‘A map of the
city and suburbs of Dublin’, published in London in 1728, and Joseph Ravell’s
1749 map of the town and suburbs of Drogheda. Brooking was a Dublin carpenter
and surveyor, but there is little other biographical information about him
(even his proper name is uncertain—Charles, Thomas, Charles Thomas or Thomas
Charles)—despite his map of Dublin being far superior to others produced in
Ireland at the time.29 By 1749, Joseph Ravell had established
himself as a surveyor and mathematics teacher in Drogheda. In her discussion of
his map of Drogheda, Christine Casey postulates that he was influenced by
Brooking’s map of Dublin, and that his surname suggests some connection with
the circle of Huguenot land surveyors who exerted a significant influence on mid-eighteenth
century Ireland, although she has not pinpointed the form such a connection
might have taken, or whether Ravell had worked for or been apprenticed to
Rocque in England.30 Contemporary Irish influences may thus have
played a part in shaping the style and content of the Dromana plan.
Views of
the local landscape and family coat of arms are generally absent from
early-eighteenth-century Irish estate maps, but profile drawings of gentlemen’s
residences, houses and cottages are quite common, albeit often in a very crude
form. Some mapmakers even attempted to depict notable buildings in three
dimensions, as Jones did at Dromana. Fine views of houses are found on estate
maps produced by Rocque, Longfield31 and Barker, although these date
from 1757, 1809 and 1762 respectively, after the Dromana map.32 A
few seventeenth-century Irish examples exist, notably by the English
cartographer Thomas Raven,33 such as his 1625 depiction of the manor
house at Killyleagh, but they are far more common on British estate maps—for
instance, the 1654 map of the manor of Albyns, Stapleford Abbots (Essex) by
John Kersey.34 All this reflects Wyld’s statement in The Practical Surveyor of 1725, that if
[one] would express a gentleman’s seat or manor house, ‘tis best done in some
corner of the draught, or in the plan by itself, annexed to that of the estate
to which it belongs. And the house must be drawn in perspective ... and if the
gardens, walks and avenues to the house are expressed, it must be in the same
manner’.35
Although
lacking the high degree of artistry, imagination and allusion that
characterises the work of Rocque and Scalé, the Dromana plan is clearly the
work of a surveyor of some artistic talent and imagination, with a significant
understanding of the elements of composition, and knowledge of some of the
characteristic elements of the French School. Neither is it atypical or
backward for its time. But the plan is notably distinguished from the work of Rocque and Scalé,36
and indeed other Irish surveyors of the time, by the inclusion of small,
carefully composed and drawn vignettes of the agricultural use of specific
areas of the demesne, including a herdsman with his cattle and sheep on the
pasturage for the town mentioned by Pococke and what appear to be red deer grazing in the deer
park.
Such features were commonplace on British maps in the seventeenth and
early eighteenth centuries, frequently including lively depictions of agricultural
husbandry and the productive use of smallholdings, with a populace seemingly
happily engaged in many aspects of daily life.37 That Jones should
have felt happy to produce, and Lord Grandison able to accept, a depiction of a
contented and productive population
[peasantry] on the
Dromana estate is noteworthy. The general absence of such imagery on Irish maps
is perhaps a tacit acknowledgement of the fractured and troubled nature of
landlord-tenant relations in Ireland, where for generations an at best uneasy
peace had prevailed, and where tenant agitation was an aspect of everyday
existence. Its presence on the Dromana plan is interesting, and possibly
reflects John Fitzgerald Villiers’ reputation as ‘Good Earl John’, an improving
and benevolent landlord.
Also
notable is a vignette entitled ‘A prospective View Of Dromana from the North
from Wherry’, set in a cartouche at the bottom left of the plan. The use of the
term ‘wherry’ is curious as this is commonly used to describe a type of craft
associated with waterways in Britain.38 Here it may be referring to
a ferry across the river at this point, perhaps the means by which Pococke
‘crossed the Blackwater to Drumanna’. It is known that the rock house at one
time accommodated a ferry man.39 Although towards the end of the
eighteenth century several artists of considerable calibre, such as Gabriel
Beranger, produced views of the Irish countryside, including the activities and
dwellings of the rural population,40 earlier eighteenth-century
views of Irish scenes and houses are less common than might be supposed.41
This view, in monochrome with the exception of some of the flags of two craft
on the river which are picked out in red, shows the house from the west,
embowered in trees, and the pleasure grounds and tree-lined avenue to the
south. The features within the pleasure grounds, such as the serpentine
plantings, steps down to the bastion below, and rock house to the south, are
directly comparable with the same features on the main plan, but the vignette
goes further by confirming the presence of a wall along the southern perimeter.
Of particular interest is the figure of a neatly dressed man driving a heavily laden
pack animal along the further bank of the river, and the fishermen and sailing
boats on the river.
The
Blackwater was navigable for sizeable vessels as far as Cappoquin.42
As Jones clearly recognised, there was a thriving commercial traffic along it,
merchandise being loaded and unloaded from quays on the riverside. Jones shows
four large vessels sailing along the river, apparently two three-masted,
full-rigged ships, a three-masted barque and a two-masted brigantine. The quay
at Dromana was clearly a significant centre of riverine activity, with the
adjacent bastion serving as a boathouse. On the plan itself, Jones shows two
craft moored at the quay, and two pairs of rowing boats and their crew, with a
seine net slung between each pair of boats, fishing, presumably for salmon, in
the river. These small craft, so neatly illustrated by Jones, appear to be a
type of ‘cot’, customarily associated with salmon fishing on the Blackwater.43
This
cartouche is flanked by two allegorical figures. As they bear, or are depicted
in association with, instruments of the surveyor’s trade, such as a globe,
circumferentor, dividers and telescope, they are typical of the Baroque
employment of allegorical allusion, as exemplified by the work of Rocque and
Scalé, in this case to the art of surveying. On the bottom right of the plan is
a pair of dividers outstretched above a graduated scale. The cartouche below
notes that ‘the above scale is Graduated to Measure the Lands Or Buildings By’
but as far as can be ascertained the scale is not calibrated, making it
impossible to determine at what scale the plan has been drawn.
Conclusions
An
extensive search through the collection of estate and demesne maps held in the
map collections of the National Library of Ireland, Trinity College Dublin, and
the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland has revealed no early- to mid-eighteenth- century map which in any degree resembles, or compares in
refinement, sophistication and quality of execution, with the Dromana plan, or
which contains vignettes of agricultural practice.44 This
strengthens the findings of both Andrews and O’Cionnaith, that ‘Before Rocque’s
arrival in Ireland, maps were relatively simple line drawings with limited
artistic decoration or colouring’. Among those in Irish collections, the most
accomplished examples close to the date of the Jones map are the work of
Charles Frizell junior (1738-1812) and his brother Richard, agent to Lord Ely
at Rathfarnham, including a map of the estate of Edward Crofton in
Roscommon, drawn in December 1777.45 Charles
Frizell was among the leading surveyors of his day in Ireland, most of his work
being undertaken in County Kildare,46 but apart from the work of
Rocque and Scalé, maps of a comparable quality are not generally
seen until around 1780 in the work of James Williamson, for whom what mattered
most was ‘the beauty and clarity of the maps’.47
Why,
therefore, is the Dromana plan so atypical of Irish estate maps of the period?
The Villiers-Stuart papers in PRONI show that a range of surveyors was
engaged to conduct surveys of landholdings on the family’s Irish estates. Their
identity is uncertain, although some were Irishmen from Cork, Kildare and
Queen’s County,48 but no other survey by Henry Jones was located
among these papers. Given his name, Jones was perhaps English or Welsh, but Eden’s Dictionary does not mention him,49 and a search through
literature referring to both Britain and Ireland, such as the works of Andrews
and O’Cionnaith, reveals no clues to his identity. There is the slight
possibility that he might have been the well-known British architect Henry
Joynes, but he is not known to have worked in Ireland and would have been
approaching seventy in 1751.50 Our surveyor was perhaps trained in
Britain and thus versed in the practice of surveying there. His interest and
skill in the depiction of sailing boats possibly even suggests he had trained
as a naval surveyor. His skills might have been admired by, or he could have
enjoyed the patronage of, a Grandison connection; or he may have been employed
as a surveyor on the modest Grandison property in Hertfordshire. Joseph Dobbin
managed these English estates until his death in 1753 and some of their rents
helped fund the Dromana improvements.51 Alternatively, it is known
that Rocque was accustomed to employing a team of assistants,52 and it
is thus possible that Jones had been employed by him to complete some of his
earlier major surveys in Britain, such as his survey of London.
The 1751 plan of Dromana has a special place in the history of Irish
demesne cartography. Not only does it prefigure the work of Rocque and Scalé,
thereby demonstrating that elements of their style of estate mapping were
already manifesting themselves in Irish estate cartography some time before
their arrival in Ireland, but it also provides an apparently unique Irish
example of a cartographic embellishment that had been characteristic of estate
mapmaking in Britain since the early Stuart period. The presence of indicators
of both schools on the Dromana plan is most probably due to the identity of the
mapmaker, Henry Jones, and his likely origins in Britain ... perhaps in due
course the true identity of this elusive and talented individual will be
discovered?
Acknowledgments
I would particularly like to thank Barbara and Nicholas Grubb for their
support and encouragement of this study, and for supplying fascinating background information; Professors Tom Williamson, John Andrews and Patrick
Duffy, Dr Sarah Rutherford, Dr Arnold Horner, and Willie Cumming for their
invaluable help and insight, and Phillip Rush for his surveying expertise. The
staff of the map library in Trinity College Library and the manuscript reading
room of the National Library of Ireland, together with Glynn Kelso and Des
McCabe of the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, aided my search for
similar maps of the period. Colum O’Riordan and Dr Eve McAulay of the Irish
Architectural Archive answered my many questions and queries relating to the
Dromana plan itself; Dr Patricia McCarthy generously shared her knowledge of
Dromana House; and George Gossip kindly drew my attention to Smith’s 1746
description of Dromana. Finally, I owe a huge debt to my husband, Patrick, for
sharing this journey of discovery with me, and for his knowledge of naval
matters.
NOTES AND REFERENCES
1 The spelling of this settlement used
consistently by Jones on the plan; abbreviations in this extract have been
expanded.
2 The map is now framed and protected by
glass. It is thus not possible to confirm whether it is on watermarked paper or
if there is any inscription on the reverse. The staff of the IAA familiar with
it have no knowledge of either being the case in this instance.
3 Public Record Office of Northern Ireland
(PRONI), ‘Introduction to the Villiers-Stuart papers’, 54
4 Wildernesses supplied the need for an
enclosed area in gardens which were increasingly open. Here the ‘explorer’
might seek their own spiritual origins and experience the sensation of being
lost, albeit comforted by the knowledge that they would emerge safely in the
end, see Jellicoe et al (eds), The Oxford Companion to Gardens (Oxford UP,
1991) 604.
5 Tom Williamson, Polite Landscapes: Gardens and Society in Eighteenth-Century England
(Sutton, 1998) 35-36, 40, 49, 71-73, 78;
Jellicoe et al, Oxford Companion to
Gardens, 167.
6 F. Aalen et al (eds), Atlas of the Irish Rural Landscape (Cork UP, 1997) 200-201
7 The numeral 5 in fact occurs twice on the
plan, secondly in the south-east corner of the deer park. No buildings are
shown here, but perhaps a gate.
8 Jones’ limited ability to capture a
building in perspective makes it uncertain whether the two wings/offices were
linked to or adjoined the main block.
9 The lodge depicted within the deer park is
somewhat at odds with that depicted (3) on the perimeter of the plan.
10 The likelihood
that Jones was familiar with Dromana and its key features is strengthened by
his depiction of the rock house complete with its unusual concave roof; Charles
Smith, The Antient and Present State of the County and City of
Waterford (Dublin,
1746) 76-77
11 Jones depicts Villierstown church at a point
some distance north of the village on the west of the tree-lined avenue leading
to Dromana, but it was in fact built (as Pococke stated) in the centre of the
village, on the eastern side of the road. Pococke notes that the chapel had yet
to be built at the time of his visit in 1752, which may explain the seeming
inaccuracy of the Jones plan. The church was apparently constructed between
1748 and 1760. Among the Villiers-Stuart papers is a letter dated 22 June 1755 (PRONI T3131/B/7/36) from
Christopher Musgrave of Tourin (agent of Earl Grandison) to an unknown
recipient suggesting that construction had started by that time, ‘My Lord has
not yet determined whether he will remove the well at the east end of the
church, but says he will if he find it necessary. They have laid the
foundations and the piers, and are settling the walk round the church’, see Niall C.E.J. O’Brien, ‘Villierstown and
the linen industry’:
http://niallbrn.wordpress.com/2015/03/09/villierstown-and-the-linen-industry/#_
12 George T. Stokes (ed), Pococke’s Tour of Ireland in 1752 (Dublin,1891) 123-124
13 http://www.vecp.ie/villierstown/history/the-history-of-dromana
14 https://dromanahouse.com/history/
15 An inventory of the contents of the house
was also prepared around this time (PRONI T3131/F/2/17, 1755): see Patricia
McCarthy, Life in the Country House in
Georgian Ireland (Yale UP, 2016) 244. The rationale behind it, and whether
it was associated to any degree with the preparation of the Jones plan, are
unclear: P. McCarthy pers. comm., April 2017.
16 PRONI, ‘Introduction to the Villiers-Stuart
papers’, 10. In 1747, Mason, presumably in acknowledgement of the prestigious
nature of the Grandison lineage, executed an ignominious resettlement whereby
in gratitude for having the good fortune to match himself with Lady Grandison
and her noble family he allowed his personal estate to pass to his son by Lady
Grandison or any other children, male or female that she might bear, and should
she fail to produce an heir, to her father Earl Grandison and his rightful heirs.
In other words, he cut his own collateral relations out of the succession to
the Mason estate: see A.P.W. Malcomson, The
Pursuit of the Heiress: Aristocratic Marriage in Ireland 1740-1840 (Ulster
Historical Foundation, 2006) 68.
17 O’Brien, ‘Villierstown and the linen industry’, n.49
18 PRONI, ‘Introduction to the Villiers-Stuart
papers’, 9
19 See Aalen et al, Atlas of the Irish Rural Landscape, 187.
20 Finola O’Kane, Ireland and the Picturesque: design, landscape painting and tourism
1700-1840 (Yale UP, 2013) 69
21 O’Brien, ‘Villierstown and the linen industry’
22 Dan MacCannell, ‘How the modern map came to
be’, Oxford Today vol.29 no.2 (2017)
43-46 [43]
23 S.J. Connolly (ed), The Oxford
Companion to Irish History (Oxford UP,
1998) 346
24 Finnian O’Cionnaith, ‘Land Surveying in Eighteenth and Early
Nineteenth-Century Dublin’ (PhD thesis, National University of Ireland
Maynooth, 2011) 43
25 J.H. Andrews, ‘The French School of Land
Surveyors’, Irish Geography vol.5
no.4 (1967) 275-292 [275-277]
26 O’Cionnaith, ‘Land Surveying’, 43
27 ‘John Rocque’, http://www.mapforum.com/05/rocque.htm#maph;
Colm Lennon and John Montague, John
Rocque’s Dublin: A Guide to the Georgian City (Royal Irish Academy, 2010) xi-xvi;
Anne Hodge, ‘The practical and the decorative: the Kildare Estate Maps of John
Rocque’, Irish Arts Review vol.17 (2001) 133-140, 133-134
28 J.H. Andrews, Plantation Acres: an historical study of the
Irish land surveyor and his maps (Ulster Historical Foundation, 1985) 162-166
29 O’Cionnaith, ‘Land Surveying’, 263, 269
30 Christine Casey, ‘Joseph Ravell’s “A Map of
the Town and Suburbs of Drogheda 1749” ’, Journal
of the County Louth
Archaeological and Historical Society vol.22 no.4
(1992) 361-363
[361-362]
31 Another member of the French School; see
Andrews, Plantation Acres, 170.
32 O’Cionnaith, ‘Land Surveying’, 246-250
33 http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/plantation/cartographers/index.shtml
34 F.G. Emmison (ed), Catalogue of maps in the Essex Record Office, 1566-1860 (Essex
County Council, 1947) plate XI
35 Samuel Wyld, The Practical Surveyor (London, 1725) 113
36 Presumably because the French School
considered them to be inappropriate or unworthy of inclusion.
37 Edward Lynam, The Mapmaker’s Art: essays on the history of maps (Batchworth Press,
1953) 15, 19; Andrews, Plantation Acres,
156; Susanna Wade Martins, Farmers, landlords
and landscapes: rural Britain, 1720 to 1870 (Windgather, 2004) fig.10
38 This might further suggest that Henry Jones
was an Englishman, see p.9.
39 https://irishwaterwayshistory.com/abandoned-or-little-used-irish-waterways/waterways-of-cork-and-kerry/the-bride-the-munster-blackwater-and-the-lismore-canal/
40 They are also evident on some of the Scalé
surveys.
41 Arnold Horner, ‘Cartouches and vignettes on
the Kildare estate maps of John Rocque’, Quarterly
Bulletin of Irish Georgian Society vol.14 no.4 (Oct-Dec 1971) 57-76 [62]
42 See
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/swept-away-on-my-own-river-of-life-1.592397
43 https://irishwaterwayshistory.com/about/irish-inland-waterways-vessels/traditional-boats-and-replicas/
44 John Andrews, Arnold Horner (TCD), Patrick
Duffy (NUIM), Glynn Kelso (PRONI) and Colum O’Riordan (IAA) were all contacted
personally and none could suggest any other Irish estate map that contains
vignettes of agricultural practice.
45 Charles Frizell (National Library of
Ireland, MS 19,672)
46 James Robinson, ‘Charles Frizell
(1738-1812): a surveyor in Co. Kildare’, Dublin
Historical Record vol.58 no.1 (Spring, 2005) 2-11 [3,7]
47 J.H. Andrews, ‘Surveyors and surveying in
James Williamson’s autobiography’, Familia
vol.2 no.7 (1991) 7-16 [9]
48 PRONI T3131/F/1/1-19 maps, surveys,
valuations, etc., of parts of the Grandison estate in Co. Waterford, and the
Mason estate in Co. Kildare, [c 1708] -1795; biographical information in
Andrews, Plantation Acres.
49 Peter Eden (ed), Dictionary of land surveyors and local cartographers of Great Britain
and Ireland 1550-1850 (Dawson, 1975)
50 Howard Colvin, A biographical dictionary of British architects1600-1840, 3rd
edition (Paul Mellon Center for Studies in British Art, 1995) 565-566
51 O’Brien, ‘Villierstown’
52 Hodge, ‘The Practical and the Decorative’, 133
