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LYONS DEMESNE
The historic hill behind Lyons traditionally takes its name from Liamhain, one of the four tragic daughters of the ancient King of Desi Brigia, Dubhthach Dubthaire, all of whom were slain by their outraged father for breaking the pagan geis or injunction on marriage. Although the Old Castle at Lyons became the seat of the Aylmer family from at least the early 15th Century, this was destroyed in the Rebellion of 1641. The tenure of the Aylmers also finally succumbed - this time to the squandering extravagance and erratic gambling of the thrice-married Michael Aylmer in the late 18th Century. It fell to one of his creditors, Nicholas Lawless, who was the son of a rich Dublin draper and the MP for Lifford, to pick up and reunite the demesne at Lyons in a complex series of transactions that were finally completed in 1796 at a cost of £37,450.
Lawless successfully consolidated his father's mercantile and banking interests and married the heiress of a Dublin brewer, Margaret Browne - ultimately being elevated to the peerage as the 1st Baron Cloncurry in 1789. This was not, however, without both financial and social cost - Cloncurry complained to the Viceroy that 'If I have obtained any honours, they have cost me their full value'. As befitted his newfound status, Lord Cloncurry engaged Oliver Grace to design a new palatial seat at Lyons, which was finished in 1797. The activities of his son and heir, Valentine, may well however have sent Cloncurry to an early grave. An active member of the Society of United Irishmen, founded in 1791 to oppose the projected Act of Union with Great Britain and 'all other Government measures', Valentine Lawless was ultimately arrested and committed to the Tower of London as a result of the 1798 rising - and it was whilst incarcerated in 1799 that he succeeded his father as the 2nd Lord Cloncurry. A free man again in the year of the Act of Union, the 2nd Lord Cloncurry 'settled upon a plan for enlarging my house at Lyons'. It was Richard Morrison of Cork who was entrusted with the work, whilst Cloncurry embarked upon an extravagant European Grand Tour acquiring pictures, sculptures and antiquities - including the granite columns from the Palazzo Farnese that support the portico at Lyons to this day and originally stood in the Golden House of Nero.
A less fortunate acquisition on Cloncurry's travels, so it turned out, was his bride Georgiana Morgan - who was seduced on her return from Rome in 1805 by Sir John Piers, Bt., a gambler, duellist and spendthrift. This cuckolding as a result of a scandalous wager led to a notorious court case which inspired John Betjeman to write his epic poem Sir John Piers, which includes the couplet 'The nobility laugh and all are free from worry Excepting the bride of the Baron of Cloncurry'.
Cloncurry is reputed to have spent nearly £200,000 on the 'fine place' that is Lyons. Amongst the 'army of men', perhaps his most enlighted patronage was of the Italian landscape artist Gaspare Gabrielli, who painted arguably the most important series of murals in Ireland - with subjects ranging from the waterfalls of Powerscourt and Leixlip to Claudian landscapes. It was Gabrielli's palette that inspired the polychrome-painted furniture that Dr. Ryan acquired for the Gabrielli room - and the waterfalls no doubt aroused his interest in the work of George Barrett and Thomas Roberts (see lots 304-5). Gabrielli's fellow countryman Acquisiti, meanwhile, provided sculptural reliefs for the Sculpture Gallery and elsewhere.
Sadly the halcyon days of Lyons under the 2nd Lord Cloncurry and his second wife, Emily, the widow of Joseph Leeson of Russborough, marked the end of its apogee. In the 20th Century, Lyons finally passed into institutional use as an outpost of the Faculty of Agriculture of University College, Dublin, with laboratories and partitions set up in the grandeur of the state rooms.
But for the wholehearted enthusiasm and energy of Dr. Ryan, the enterprising founder of the GPA Group and ultimately of Ryanair, Lyons' fate may well have followed that of so many of the great Irish country houses. Instead, it has been rightly said that at Lyons 'Dr Tony Ryan has accomplished the largest, most ambitious and exhaustive programme of restoration ever undertaken in a private capacity in the history of the Irish state'. Some 670 'man years' of work was packed into 33 months - with an expert team of architects, artisans, builders and craftsmen. When he embarked on this monumental restoration project in 1996, Dr Ryan remarked that, 'Despite its semi-ruinous state, Lyons seemed to possess an indomitable spirit and a vast amount of potential'. As a result, the house and formal gardens - as well as the long abandoned Village at Lyons beside the Grand Canal - have enjoyed a Renaissance worthy of Nero's Palace and the indomitable spirit of both Lyons and Dr. Ryan live on in unison.
Lord Cloncurry's revolutionary temperament in youth mellowed to that of a 'noble patriot', Daniel O'Connell 'The Liberator' writing in 1824 that 'Ireland has not a better friend or one more devoted to her service than Lord Cloncurry. The poor man's justice of the peace; in private life the model of virtue; in public worthy of the admiration and respect of the people'. How fitting that a champion who shared so many of these same attributes should have saved Lyons almost two centuries later.
Orlando Rock
(with grateful thanks to the article by Hugh Montgomery-Massingbird in Great Houses of Ireland, London, 1999)
A NORTH EUROPEAN BRONZED PINE MODEL OF A LION
LATE 18TH/FIRST HALF 19TH CENTURY
Details
A NORTH EUROPEAN BRONZED PINE MODEL OF A LION
LATE 18TH/FIRST HALF 19TH CENTURY
The back legs and tail replaced, traces of earlier decoration
22 in. (56 cm.) high; 37 in. (94 cm.) long
LATE 18TH/FIRST HALF 19TH CENTURY
The back legs and tail replaced, traces of earlier decoration
22 in. (56 cm.) high; 37 in. (94 cm.) long
Brought to you by
Victoria von Westenholz
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