Beschreibung:

A large Set of Original Architectural Plans Courtown House, Co. Wexford: A set of over fifty Architectural Drawings of various sizes showing proposed alterations to Courtown House, Co. Wexford, seat of the Stopford family, Earls of Courtown. Some are signed by John Kelly, Gorey, and dated 1864; others bear the London address of the architect William Burn and are dated between 1864 and 1868. There are measured plans and elevations; details of doorways, cornices, staircases, windows, roofs and chimneys. Also a set of “plans for proposed alterations at Seafield [a dower house of the Earls of Courtown] about 1852”. Courtown House, built in 1726, was badly damaged in the 1798 rising. It was altered and extended in the 1860s for the 5th Earl of Courtown; the local builder/architect John Kelly appears to have carried out the initial survey, but the ultimate designs were the work of William Burn Architect, of 6 Stratton St., London – Kelly may have been their builder or clerk of works. The collection also includes two plans for a “proposed house at Saltersford [in Cheshire] for the Earl of Courtown”; plans and elevations of cottages and lodges; plans for Courtown demesne; and a cyclostyled letter of 1862 requesting the Earl’s opinion on two proposed railway lines between Woodenbridge and either Carlow or Bagnalstown. The Stopford family played a major role in the affairs of Co. Wexford for over two centuries, both as members of parliament and as landlords; they had a fine humanitarian record during the Famine, and by 1914 their estate consisted of some 23,000 acres. Their seat, Courtown House, was sold in 1947 and demolished circa 1950. Seafield, the dower house, described as “a very fine, large, three-bay, two-storey residence,” was partly demolished in 1975 and levelled in 1992. This collection therefore forms an important visual record of two vanished features of Co. Wexford’s landscape and heritage. As drawings, as an Archive, w.a.f. (1)