the fantastic mr elastic
9th March 2005, 09:21 PM
Summary.
The Howard Bury papers copied by PRONI comprise c.500 documents and 3 volumes 1702-1919, deriving from the late Lt-Colonel Charles Kenneth Howard Bury (1883-1963), of Charleville Forest, Tullamore, King's County, and Belvedere, Mullingar, Co. Westmeath. These two properties and estates merged, for the first time, in him; and the arrangement of the archive reflects their separate history prior to his inheritance of Charleville through his mother, the heiress of the Bury family, Earls of Charleville, in 1931, and his inheritance of Belvedere from his exceedingly remote kinsman (by the half blood), Charles Brinsley Marlay, in 1912. Of the two, Charleville and the Burys are more fully documented than Belvedere and its successive owners.
Bury family history.
The following account of the Bury family, Earls of Charleville (who are pronounced to rhyme with 'fury', not as in Bury in Lancashire), is taken from Mark Girouard's account of Charleville, 'perhaps the finest Gothic Revival castle in Ireland', published in Country Life, 27 September 1962:
'... Charles William Bury (1764-1835) [was] a landowner of considerable wealth, derived partly from [Shannongrove], the Bury estate in Co. Limerick (where the family had settled in 1666), and partly from property in [and around] Tullamore, King's County, inherited through his father's mother, the only sister and heiress of Charles Moore (1712-1764), Earl of Charleville and Baron Moore of Tullamoore [as the Moores liked to call it]. He himself was created Lord Tullamoore in 1797, Viscount Charleville in 1800 and Earl of Charleville in 1806. [This was mainly because in 1795 he had purchased political control of the borough of Carlow, which continued to be represented in the Parliament of the UK after the Union, and used his nomination of members for Carlow to bargain for his advancement in the peerage.]
He was an amiable dilettante, with antiquarian interests [which led to his election as third President of the Royal Irish Academy], and a talent for writing ... [and translating occasionally indecent verse. His wife,] Charlotte Maria [widow of James Tisdall of Bawn, Co. Louth], whom he married in 1798, ... [and who died in 1851, was a gifted water-colourist and something of a Blue-stocking. As a result of her first marriage, she had landed property at her own disposal in Cos Cavan and Louth. She, in fact, is the pivotal figure in the extremely complicated familiy history which underscores this archive. It was because her daughter by her first marriage was Charles Brinsley Marlay's mother that the merger of the Charleville and Belvedere properties and archives later took place.]
The building of Charleville Forest.
There was an older, late 17th-century house at Charleville on a different site, down by the river. It was originally known as Redwood; the name Charleville Forest seems to have come into use in the 18th century, 'Forest' being an allusion to the great wood of ancient oaks with which the house is still surrounded. ... The approximate date when the present castle was started is given in a letter of November 8, 1800, from Lady Louisa Conolly to Lady Charleville (or Lady Tullamoore, as she then was) ..., [who credited Lord Charleville with] "having planned it all himself". This letter comes from the large collection of Lady Charleville's papers which descended to her great-grandson, [Charles] Brinsley Marlay, and on the basis of which the late R. Warwick Bond compiled [after 25 years' work only volume one of] The Marlay Papers, 1778-1820 (1937). The papers, [1778-1912], together with the unpublished manuscripts of two further books derived from them by Warwick Bond [to 1854, although the originals run up to 1912], are now in Nottingham University Library [for no better reason than that that was where their very slow-moving editor had been Professor of English!]. ...
If there is any point at which the Irish craze for castles may be said to have started, it is with the building of Charleville ... In the 18th century there had been a certain number of Gothick houses built in Ireland, or older houses remodelled with Gothick trimmings, but they form a comparatively small and disjointed group. Charleville was the first example sensational enough to start a fashion. ... The architect employed was [the Co. Armagh-born] Francis Johnston ..., and Lord Charleville's sporadic letters show that the house took a considerable time to finish ..., [being still incomplete] by the end of 1812. ... The house had the advantage of not being constricted (as was so often the case in Ireland) by the need to adapt and incorporate an older building. It was newly built from the foundations up. As a result, there is a consistency about it, a nobility of scale and unity of treatment in the great echoing rooms, that is very impressive.
Mounting debts.
Charleville had not been cheap to build and the Charlevilles did not live in a cheap way ... [and] continued to live above their income. In the years that followed they rented the Duke of Queensberry's house in London and entertained there lavishly ..., [with Lady Charleville establishing a much-frequented salon.] A new church was built in ... Tullamore at Lord Charleville's expense, ... [and many other building costs were incurred when, at Lord Charleville's instigation, the county town of King's County was transferred to Tullamore from dilapidated and inconvenient Philipstown]. Tours were made on the Continent in the grand style. Their son, Lord Tullamore, and his expensive and fortuneless wife [Harriet Beaujolais, née Crawford, whom he married in 1821], were supported in a separate and increasing establishment; and two expensive election campaigns were paid for [in order] to get him an English seat in parliament [after the Great Reform Act had liberated the electorate of Carlow]. When ... Lord Charleville died in 1835 he left a heavily embarrassed estate.
The Bury estates.
His heir (whom Creevey had described in 1833 as "justly entitled to the prize as by far the greatest bore the world can produce") was not the man to set things right. ...' The papers include the following (useful) statement of c.1835 of the whereabouts and value of the Bury estates, apparently based on the more than vague information which was all that Lord Tullamore was able to supply, though on the eve of inheriting them.
'The town of Tullamore, Charleville Forest and estates in King's County in the heart of Ireland of the annual value of about £9,000. In County of Limerick in the south of Ireland, Shannongrove on the expiration of the subsisting leases it is understood will be of the annual value of about £9,000, this latter estate now producing, as it is believed, only from £5,000 to £7,000. Sopwell Hall estate in the County of Tipperary of the annual value of £1,200 to £1,300. N.B. Lord Tullamore understands that the Sopwell Hall estate is entailed on him, having been the property of his grandmother, Miss Sadleir, afterwards Lady Dunalley, the mother of Lord Charleville. This latter estate is said to be let on leases in perpetuity. Lord Charleville has also property in the City of Dublin of the annual value of about £12,00, and also in the north of Ireland (Lord T. thinks) in Cavan [this was Lady Charleville's estate], of about £1,200.'
Girouard concludes: '... The inevitable crash came in 1844; the Limerick estates had to be sold. Charleville was temporarily shut up, and its owner retired to Berlin. The property was ultimately inherited by ... [the 3rd Earl's] daughter, Lady Emily Howard-Bury, [in 1874], and from her passed [in 1931] to her son ...', the late Colonel Charles Howard Bury. He was the leader of the first Everest expedition to find a route through Tibet to the North Col (1921), and is best known for that achievement. He abhorred Charleville Forest and stripped it of its contents at a now notorious auction in 1948.
continued....page2
The Howard Bury papers copied by PRONI comprise c.500 documents and 3 volumes 1702-1919, deriving from the late Lt-Colonel Charles Kenneth Howard Bury (1883-1963), of Charleville Forest, Tullamore, King's County, and Belvedere, Mullingar, Co. Westmeath. These two properties and estates merged, for the first time, in him; and the arrangement of the archive reflects their separate history prior to his inheritance of Charleville through his mother, the heiress of the Bury family, Earls of Charleville, in 1931, and his inheritance of Belvedere from his exceedingly remote kinsman (by the half blood), Charles Brinsley Marlay, in 1912. Of the two, Charleville and the Burys are more fully documented than Belvedere and its successive owners.
Bury family history.
The following account of the Bury family, Earls of Charleville (who are pronounced to rhyme with 'fury', not as in Bury in Lancashire), is taken from Mark Girouard's account of Charleville, 'perhaps the finest Gothic Revival castle in Ireland', published in Country Life, 27 September 1962:
'... Charles William Bury (1764-1835) [was] a landowner of considerable wealth, derived partly from [Shannongrove], the Bury estate in Co. Limerick (where the family had settled in 1666), and partly from property in [and around] Tullamore, King's County, inherited through his father's mother, the only sister and heiress of Charles Moore (1712-1764), Earl of Charleville and Baron Moore of Tullamoore [as the Moores liked to call it]. He himself was created Lord Tullamoore in 1797, Viscount Charleville in 1800 and Earl of Charleville in 1806. [This was mainly because in 1795 he had purchased political control of the borough of Carlow, which continued to be represented in the Parliament of the UK after the Union, and used his nomination of members for Carlow to bargain for his advancement in the peerage.]
He was an amiable dilettante, with antiquarian interests [which led to his election as third President of the Royal Irish Academy], and a talent for writing ... [and translating occasionally indecent verse. His wife,] Charlotte Maria [widow of James Tisdall of Bawn, Co. Louth], whom he married in 1798, ... [and who died in 1851, was a gifted water-colourist and something of a Blue-stocking. As a result of her first marriage, she had landed property at her own disposal in Cos Cavan and Louth. She, in fact, is the pivotal figure in the extremely complicated familiy history which underscores this archive. It was because her daughter by her first marriage was Charles Brinsley Marlay's mother that the merger of the Charleville and Belvedere properties and archives later took place.]
The building of Charleville Forest.
There was an older, late 17th-century house at Charleville on a different site, down by the river. It was originally known as Redwood; the name Charleville Forest seems to have come into use in the 18th century, 'Forest' being an allusion to the great wood of ancient oaks with which the house is still surrounded. ... The approximate date when the present castle was started is given in a letter of November 8, 1800, from Lady Louisa Conolly to Lady Charleville (or Lady Tullamoore, as she then was) ..., [who credited Lord Charleville with] "having planned it all himself". This letter comes from the large collection of Lady Charleville's papers which descended to her great-grandson, [Charles] Brinsley Marlay, and on the basis of which the late R. Warwick Bond compiled [after 25 years' work only volume one of] The Marlay Papers, 1778-1820 (1937). The papers, [1778-1912], together with the unpublished manuscripts of two further books derived from them by Warwick Bond [to 1854, although the originals run up to 1912], are now in Nottingham University Library [for no better reason than that that was where their very slow-moving editor had been Professor of English!]. ...
If there is any point at which the Irish craze for castles may be said to have started, it is with the building of Charleville ... In the 18th century there had been a certain number of Gothick houses built in Ireland, or older houses remodelled with Gothick trimmings, but they form a comparatively small and disjointed group. Charleville was the first example sensational enough to start a fashion. ... The architect employed was [the Co. Armagh-born] Francis Johnston ..., and Lord Charleville's sporadic letters show that the house took a considerable time to finish ..., [being still incomplete] by the end of 1812. ... The house had the advantage of not being constricted (as was so often the case in Ireland) by the need to adapt and incorporate an older building. It was newly built from the foundations up. As a result, there is a consistency about it, a nobility of scale and unity of treatment in the great echoing rooms, that is very impressive.
Mounting debts.
Charleville had not been cheap to build and the Charlevilles did not live in a cheap way ... [and] continued to live above their income. In the years that followed they rented the Duke of Queensberry's house in London and entertained there lavishly ..., [with Lady Charleville establishing a much-frequented salon.] A new church was built in ... Tullamore at Lord Charleville's expense, ... [and many other building costs were incurred when, at Lord Charleville's instigation, the county town of King's County was transferred to Tullamore from dilapidated and inconvenient Philipstown]. Tours were made on the Continent in the grand style. Their son, Lord Tullamore, and his expensive and fortuneless wife [Harriet Beaujolais, née Crawford, whom he married in 1821], were supported in a separate and increasing establishment; and two expensive election campaigns were paid for [in order] to get him an English seat in parliament [after the Great Reform Act had liberated the electorate of Carlow]. When ... Lord Charleville died in 1835 he left a heavily embarrassed estate.
The Bury estates.
His heir (whom Creevey had described in 1833 as "justly entitled to the prize as by far the greatest bore the world can produce") was not the man to set things right. ...' The papers include the following (useful) statement of c.1835 of the whereabouts and value of the Bury estates, apparently based on the more than vague information which was all that Lord Tullamore was able to supply, though on the eve of inheriting them.
'The town of Tullamore, Charleville Forest and estates in King's County in the heart of Ireland of the annual value of about £9,000. In County of Limerick in the south of Ireland, Shannongrove on the expiration of the subsisting leases it is understood will be of the annual value of about £9,000, this latter estate now producing, as it is believed, only from £5,000 to £7,000. Sopwell Hall estate in the County of Tipperary of the annual value of £1,200 to £1,300. N.B. Lord Tullamore understands that the Sopwell Hall estate is entailed on him, having been the property of his grandmother, Miss Sadleir, afterwards Lady Dunalley, the mother of Lord Charleville. This latter estate is said to be let on leases in perpetuity. Lord Charleville has also property in the City of Dublin of the annual value of about £12,00, and also in the north of Ireland (Lord T. thinks) in Cavan [this was Lady Charleville's estate], of about £1,200.'
Girouard concludes: '... The inevitable crash came in 1844; the Limerick estates had to be sold. Charleville was temporarily shut up, and its owner retired to Berlin. The property was ultimately inherited by ... [the 3rd Earl's] daughter, Lady Emily Howard-Bury, [in 1874], and from her passed [in 1931] to her son ...', the late Colonel Charles Howard Bury. He was the leader of the first Everest expedition to find a route through Tibet to the North Col (1921), and is best known for that achievement. He abhorred Charleville Forest and stripped it of its contents at a now notorious auction in 1948.
continued....page2