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40 April-May
April-May 41
The degraded Carton House estate, once one of the
two or three finest in Ireland, replaces important
paintings and furniture with parodies and faces a
business park being inserted in its woods
By Michael Smith
Cartoon Carton
Above, designed
lndscpe tht
took 10,000
men ten yers
to ly out is now
golf course;
Ner right,
ncient
woodlnds:
zoning for
business nd
technology prk
Suburbnistion of front view of Crton House
ENVIRONMENT
40 April-May
April-May 41
have given way to vulgar fakes. Two unnamed
lovely ladies have been hung without the aid
of a spirit level.
Mullen lacks the eye of earlier owners, and
the new paintings have the amateur character
that might be expected of the art works
hanging from the railings of Dublin’s Merrion
Square of a weekend.
Dining room
The dining room at Carton House is one of the
grandest and most historically significant in
Ireland, reflecting the power and refinement of
the FitzGerald family. Designed in the
neoclassical style by Morrison, the room
features ornate stucco work, high ceilings, and
a screen of porphyry columns that enhance its
grandeur. The walls were until recently adorned
with the remarkable collection of FitzGerald
portraits. One of the most striking was the
portrait of Emily FitzGerald, Duchess of
Leinster, painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds. This
painting captures her with a poised yet natural
elegance, highlighting her importance in
18th-century Irish high society.
The room also housed family group portraits,
probably from Reynolds’ studio, depicting
James FitzGerald, the 1st Duke of Leinster, with
Emily — his wife — and their children. The
formal poses, rich textiles, and detailed
background conveyed the desired air of
contrived.
The favourite finish for dining rooms in the
Regency period was a painted red or crimson
There were several reasons for this. One was
that in that era dining tended to start very late,
meaning dining rooms were experienced after
dark. Candelabras and colza lamps are best
backgrounded by red. Moreover many artists,
The demise of the parklands
For two hundred years, the Carton Demesne
was the finest example in Ireland of a Georgian-
created parkland landscape. From the late
1990s, much of the demesne was redeveloped
by Powerscreen into two golf courses and the
house into a hotel complex with flag poles,
capacious lawn-based carparks and a US-style
gated housing estate in the arboretum woods
near the house with the loss of some trees.
It is only fair to note that nevertheless the
conservation treatment of the main house
externally and the furnishing and decoration
internally were exemplary. This was facilitated
by the sale of many of the FitzGerald paintings
and items of furniture including the Dining Room
table by the Leinster Estate trustees to Lord
Brocket and then in in 1977 to Powerscreen and,
after its demise, the Mallaghan family.
Saloon
The La Francini saloon, now called the Gold
Room, is the only room in Ireland which
belongs in a baroque Continental palace but
regrettably has recently suered the stripping
of its paintings and the insertion of mirrors in
the horizontal frames, a foul interior-design
solecism. Regrettably, the Mullen treatment of
the historic-house interiors shows little design
awareness.
Drawing room
The walls of the drawing room with its mid-
19th-century ceiling are now lined by a
replacement David Skinnner wallpaper which
was well chosen by Mullen’s design team.
However, the original FitzGerald paintings
here, which survived up to the Mallaghan era,
C
arton House, located near
Maynooth, County Kildare, has a
rich history as the ancestral
home of the FitzGerald family
who landed with the Normans
and became Dukes of Leinster. Originally
built in the 18th century by architect Richard
Castle, who also designed Westport,
Powerscourt and Leinster Houses. In 1815 it
was overhauled by Richard Morrison after
the third Duke sold Leinster House on Kildare
St to the RDS. Carton was one of the three or
four most distinguished houses in Ireland.
The FitzGerald landholding originally
comprised 70,000 acres but was reduced to
the 1,100-acre Carton Demesne which now
centres on a hotel.
It played a central role in Irish aristocratic
life and was home to personages such as
Emily FitzGerald, Duchess of Leinster —
grand-daughter of Charles II — and the storied
Irish patriot, Lord Edward FitzGerald, one of
her 23 children and a leader of the 1798
rebellion.
In the early twentieth century the 7th Duke
of Leinster, who inherited the title and estates
after misfortunes beset his older brothers,
spaed his life interest to a moneylender, Sir
Harry Mallaby-Deeley, to pay o gambling
debts of £67,500.
In 1949 the house and demesne was
bought by a Tory peer, the 2nd Baron Brocket.
In the 1960s the house hosted bohemian
parties and was briefly rented by Desmond
Guinness who had founded the Irish Georgian
Society in 1958. Much later, Marian Faithfull
lived in the Shell House on the estate with her
husband, John Dunbar.
The place was sold, in good condition, to
Powerscreen, a company controlled by the
Mallaghan family, which suppplied quarry
machinery in County Tyrone, in 1977. A
campaign for the state to buy it went nowhere.
The Mallaghans in various vehicles have
lingered ever since, retaining land and until
recently some of the house’s furniture.
Development
In 1999 a group of private investors including
developer Paddy Kelly was brought in to oset
some of the development costs. The project
crashed with the demise of the Celtic tiger
though the hotel and golf continued. With the
support of NAMA, Ireland’s ‘bad bank’ they
sold to Belmullet Hospitality Group, a vehicle
of American-Irish John Mullen, founder of the
insurance giant Appleby and of Apple, one of
the largest vacation companies in North
America, in 2017.
Should be on Merrion Squre rilings t weekends
42 April-May
April-May PB
Then and now: Above left, bespoke table and no wallpaper; Above right, John Mullen’s dining room
nouveau
sold by the less scrupulous current
generation of the ancient family, who live in
England, for over €500,000 at Bonhams’ Old
Master Paintings auction. Among these was
a notable painting depicting a historical view
of Carton House.
The Mallaghans sold the 25-foot dining
table, designed bespoke for Carton House,
as lot 72 in a Sothebys’ “Royal and Noble”
sale in 2020, ‘achieving’ over £100,000.
The replacement French-restaurant-style
furniture is pretentious. Combined with the
cartoonish paintings they tend to the
aesthetic of provincial hotel function rooms.
In the last few years the Mallaghans’
vehicles withdrew an application to build a
nursing home in the ancient, if depleted,
walled garden. Meanwhile the Mallaghans
have for years crassly promoted the use for
SUV-racing of the ancient woods on the
Meath portion of the Demesne, which they
cleverly retained after their interest in the
hotel and house was sold.
Indeed Meath County Council rezoned the
including Turner, asserted that red walls were
the “best ground for pictures” allowing them
to stand out appropriately. Portrait painter, Sir
Thomas Lawrence, was fastidiously critical of
a case where the red walls of a dining room had
been painted yellow. Dining room chairs of this
period too were invariably upholstered in red
leather.
High-quality golden, patterned wallpaper,
inappropriate for a dining room, has been
hung in the recent John Mullen era, detracting
from the ceiling and creating an almost
Trumpian fiasco. Large windows oer views
of the estate’s landscaped parkland which
allegedly took 10,000 men ten years to
create, and the golf courses which undid
their work, providing a half-picturesque
setting for the grand dinners that once took
place here. Glimpses of élite sports people,
borne in from training camps in the distance,
delight the discerning diner. The fare here is
‘prestigious’, and now Michelin-endorsed.
In 2018 five paintings from the collection
of the Dukes of Leinster collectively were
woods, with the extraordinmary support of
the planning regulator (and despite a
sensitive decision from An Bord Pleanála
turning down an earlier planning application)
for a business and technology park which
would feed the housing-heavy County
Council with commercial rates.
The portraits installed as replacements by
Mullen’s Belmullet Hospitality Group are an
emblem of the descent of the house and
demesne starting with the Mallaghan
family’s custodianship; and of the
unstylishness of some of our Irish-American
investor cousins. Fred Krehbiel, who brought
faithful panache to Ballyfin, County Laois,
was unusual.
The compromised architectural splendour
of Carton House hotel reflects the impure
mood of the country beyond. As part of the
luxury hotel, golf, rugby and executive
housing experience, beloved of the Range
Rover set, it somehow all betrays the ethical
and aesthetic ambitions of today’s Irish
gentry.
Provincial-hotel-style fake paintings
