Derrynane House, ‘Mecca of the lovers of liberty’
Published in 18th–19th - Century History, Features, Issue 5 (Sept/Oct 2010), Volume 18
Derrynane House from the south. (Eilíse McGuane)
Derrynane House, Co. Kerry, once known as Derrynane Abbey, was the ancestral home of Daniel O’Connell, one of the most celebrated figures in modern Irish history. From his infancy to his death in Genoa in 1847, Daniel and his family spent most of their summers at Derrynane. Described as the ‘Mecca of the lovers of liberty’, Derrynane is now a museum to the life and times of the Liberator and his family, and, along with some 300 acres of surrounding lands, makes up Derrynane National Historic Park.
The oldest part of the house was built by Daniel O’Connell’s grandfather, Captain John O’Connell, in 1702. The north-facing, two-storey house of 1702 was extended or replaced by the captain’s son, Dónal Mór, and this three-storey Georgian farmhouse survived until its demolition, owing to its bad structural condition, by the Office of Public Works (OPW) in the late 1960s: it is today marked out by paving in the courtyard. The house was subsequently owned by O’Connell’s uncle, ‘Hunting-Cap’ O’Connell, until it passed on his death to his nephew Daniel in 1825. At this time Daniel O’Connell greatly extended the house, with a spacious dining room and drawing room to the south, and a crenellated library wing to the east. The orientation of the main entrance was altered from the old approach from the north to the entrance visitors use today, which meets the house on the east.
Plantation and garden walks were laid out by the O’Connell family in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, principally north and west of the house. The Gothic Revival summerhouse in the gardens is directly associated with Daniel O’Connell, who built it as his study.
Interior of chapel. (Eilíse McGuane)
One of the most iconic features of the property is the private chapel added in 1844, following O’Connell’s release from prison after his conviction for conspiracy in relation to the banned Clontarf ‘monster meeting’ of 1843; this is linked to the main building by a single-storey passage entered from the courtyard to the east of the house. The single-cell chapel was roughly modelled on the ruined monastery chapel of nearby Abbey Island. Given Daniel O’Connell’s close link with Catholic Emancipation (1829), the Derrynane chapel has had an active conservation history involving many prominent religious figures. Indeed, it is believed that Pope Pius XII donated £100 to the conservation of Derrynane House and chapel.
No significant additions were made after O’Connell’s death and the house remained in the family’s possession until Daniel’s great-granddaughter, Fannie O’Connell, left the house owing to illness in 1958. The Derrynane Trust, founded in 1948, had already carried out conservation work on the chapel and house, and in 1964 the property was transferred to Bord Fáilte in order to retain it for posterity. The house was opened by President Éamon de Valera as a museum in 1967; three years later it was handed over to the OPW. Derrynane National Historic Park was officially opened by President Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh on the bicentenary of the birth of Daniel O’Connell in 1975.
Daniel O’Connell’s Gothic summerhouse. (OPW)
Derrynane House as seen today, following the restoration completed by the OPW in 1967, consists essentially of the south and east wings built by Daniel O’Connell in 1825 and the chapel of 1844. The surviving house contains the main entrance hall, with the dining room and study opening directly off it on the ground floor. At first-floor level, visitors can see the drawing room and the old library, now displayed as a bedroom. The chapel is also open to visitors. The house and national park are open to the public from April to November. HI
Eilíse McGuane is an architectural researcher working on Catholic estates in Munster. Series based on the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage’s ‘building of the month’, www.buildingsofireland.ie.
Personal Histories
On this Day
April 24
- 1951 Enda Kenny, TD for Mayo West (1975–97) and Mayo (1997–2020), leader of Fine Gael (2002–17) and taoiseach (2011–17), born in Derrycoosh, Islandeady, near Castlebar, Co. Mayo.
- 1945
Above: The steamship Monmouth Coast—torpedoed by a German U-boat near Tory Island on 24 April 1945. (Paul Johnson Collection)
During the last week of the Second World War, the Monmouth Coast, an unescorted steamship en route from Sligo to Liverpool with a cargo of barytes ore from the mines of Ben Bulben, was torpedoed by a German U-boat some seven miles north-east of Tory Island. The captain and fifteen crewmen (including two Irishmen) lost their lives, but one managed to survive, thanks to two locals from Arranmore. Two days later, whilst beachcombing on the north-eastern coast of the island, they spotted a life-raft floating in a remote sandy inlet; they rowed out to it and lifted the tarpaulin, to discover a wide-eyed teenager, Derek Cragg (17) from Liverpool, the mess-room boy from the Monmouth Coast. He explained that the ship had gone down very quickly and that those of the crew who managed to leap clear were sucked down after it. He, too, was dragged down but somehow managed to make it back to the surface, where he spotted the life-raft and clambered on board. He was given every assistance by the islanders and safely repatriated, but had the north-easterly wind that drove him 25 miles blown him into the adjoining inlet, his raft would have been smashed to pieces. Over 30,000 Allied merchant seamen, of every nationality, lost their lives during the war. Despite our neutrality, Irish Shipping lost two ships. The Irish Pine was torpedoed off Greenland in November 1942 with the loss of all 33 on board, and the Irish Oak was sunk in the North Atlantic in May 1943, though her entire crew was rescued by a sister-ship, the Irish Plane.
- 1912 Justin McCarthy (82), Home Rule politician, leader of the anti-Parnellite faction (1891–6), historian and novelist, died.
- 1916 The Easter Rising began.Sir Ernest Shackleton and five of his crew set out on their epic 720-nautical-mile rescue mission in the James Caird, from Elephant Island to South Georgia.
- 1974 The Electricity Supply Board (ESB) announced that Carnsore Point, Co. Wexford, would be the site of its planned nuclear power station.
May 19
- 1935
Above: ‘Lawrence of Arabia’—his father was in fact Sir Thomas Chapman of South Hill, Delvin, Co. Westmeath.
T.E.—Thomas Edward—Lawrence (46), the legendary ‘Lawrence of Arabia’, died as a result of a motorcycle accident in Dorset. For much of his adult life Lawrence was a troubled man. Though his key role in the British-inspired Arab revolt (1916) against Ottoman Turkish rule earned him international celebrity, he was torn by guilt over Britain’s post-war betrayal of the Arabs with the implementation at Versailles of the notorious Sykes–Picot Agreement. Then there was the issue of identity. At the tender age of ten he discovered that his parents were not married, meaning that he and his four brothers were illegitimate. Later he was to learn that ‘Mr Lawrence’, his father, was, in fact, Sir Thomas Chapman of South Hill, Delvin, Co. Westmeath, who, though married with four daughters, had fled with their governess, Sarah Lawrence, first to Wales—where ‘Ned’ was born—and finally to London. He was eventually to find himself increasingly drawn to his father’s homeland. A close friend of George Bernard Shaw and his wife Charlotte—GBS had helped him to edit his major work, Seven pillars of wisdom (1926)—he mentioned his desire in his surviving letters to visit Ireland and often referred to the works of Seán O’Casey, James Joyce and J.M. Synge. Indeed, he hoped to write a biography of Sir Roger Casement. It seems that he never did try to make contact with his half-sisters. In 1954, almost twenty years after his death, some of his old friends visited the two surviving ones, who were living at 39 Northumberland Road, Dublin. They told them that they had followed their half-brother’s career with great interest but likewise had made no attempt to contact him.
- 1870 The Home Government Association of Ireland was founded by Isaac Butt with the aim of establishing a federal system for the United Kingdom, which would grant Ireland a parliament responsible for national affairs. Succeeded by the Home Rule League (1873).
- 1868 Sir Benjamin Lee Guinness, son of Arthur Guinness (1725–1803), brewer and writer who restored St Patrick’s Cathedral (1860), died.