FEW PLACES better exemplify the maxim of appearances being deceptive than Headfort House in Co Meath. An immense, austere structure – the main front including wings runs to more than 150m (500ft) – it was described by the Duke of Rutland in 1789 as "a long range of tasteless building" and three years later George Hardinge said it was "more like a college or an infirmary" than a private home, writes ROBERT O'BYRNE
In fact, for the past 60 years Headfort has served as a preparatory school but before then it belonged to successive generations of the Taylor family who, after rising in the social hierarchy, aggrandised their surname to Taylour.
Originally from Sussex, the first in a long line of Thomas Taylors came to Ireland in the middle of the 17th century in the company of his school contemporary Sir William Petty. By 1660 Taylor had secured 21,000 acres of land in Cavan and Meath, and settled outside Kells. No trace remains of the first house constructed by the Taylors, but from 1750 onwards plans were under way to build a new country seat suitable for the family’s advancement in the Irish peerage: already a baronet, the third Sir Thomas Taylor, who inherited the estate in 1757, would be created Baron Headfort in 1760, Viscount Headfort two years later and Earl of Bective in 1766. His son, in turn, would become Marquess of Headfort in 1800.
The first architect consulted about designs for a new house was Richard Castle, responsible for, among others, Russborough, Powerscourt and Leinster Houses. His proposals of 1750 were not to the second baronet’s liking; an extant portfolio is marked: “Mr Castle’s plan and a damn bad one.”
John Ensor and another, anonymous, architect also drew up proposals for a similarly Palladian-style building but they too were spurned and, on the basis of a 1760 plan inscribed GS, the consensus is Headfort as constructed was adapted from a design by George Semple, a Dublin-based builder and self-taught architect.
The house’s exterior would not have required much architectural skill in its composition. Of three storeys and 11 bays, the near-identical front and rear elevations of grey Ardbraccan limestone are largely unrelieved other than by pedimented doorcases.
The Taylors were not as wealthy as some of their contemporaries and funds to spend on the building were limited. Presumably this is why although still more plans were commissioned in 1765 from the fashionable neoclassical architect William Chambers, these were also rejected in favour of Semple’s more sober, and more economical, scheme which was by then well under way.
But if the outside of the house always lacked ornament, the interior was intended to present a different image. Between 1771 and 1775, Lord Bective requested the Scottish-born architect Robert Adam to produce decorative schemes for a suite of rooms in the newly completed Headfort.
Adam, who never visited this country, duly came up with designs for the entrance and staircase halls, as well for as a series of three adjacent rooms on the garden front culminating in a double-height saloon that was known as the ‘Eating Parlour.‘
Even if not all his proposals were fully implemented, the interiors are of immense importance as the only extant examples of Adam’s work in Ireland. Once more due to shortage of funds, a simplified version of his suggested decoration was executed in the two halls. But the architect’s original drawings survive and show other elements of Adam’s design scheme were carried through, not least in the Eating Parlour, where the only major modification saw the recommended barrel-vaulted ceiling coved instead.
Created by reconfiguring the house’s layout to merge two rooms on the ground and first floors, the Eating Parlour is lit by a line of tall windows between which stand the original marble-topped console tables and their pier glasses. Facing these are a pair of carved white marble chimneypieces with circular overmantles holding classical compositions by the Italian artist Antonio Zucchi, who worked with Adam on a number of other occasions; further Zucchi work is found elsewhere in the room, including a ceiling centrepiece. The rest of the walls are covered with panels intended to contain Taylour family portraits, and a number of matching doorcases.
Inevitably with the passage of time, the fabric of Headfort began to deteriorate; problems of damp coming into the building were a particular problem. Due to the significance of the Adam interiors, in 2004 the World Monuments Fund (WMF) placed the house on its list of 100 Most Endangered Sites. Since then the Headfort Trust, through funding from the WMF, the Heritage Council and the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, has overseen a programme of essential work including repairs to the roof, chimney stacks and gutter piping.
Inside the house, the trust has embarked on a conservation and research programme revealing a remarkable and hitherto scarcely known decorative scheme.
Nowhere is this more the case than in the Eating Parlour which has just undergone a complete refurbishment thanks to aid from a number of sources, principally the Irish Georgian Society which last year made the room the beneficiary of its 50th anniversary fundraising efforts.
For a long time the room has been painted an insipid pale blue. Before its refurbishment, an investigation of Adam’s original decorative interiors at Headfort was undertaken by stuccodore and historic interiors specialist Richard Ireland, who determined the colours used in the original decorative scheme. The Eating Parlour, it transpired, was first painted using a variety of mid to dark shades of green verdigris, a scheme which tallied with the Adam drawings.
The manner in which these tones both complement and compete with each other is startling and altogether confounds the popular view of how a chaste neo-classical interior should look. Headfort’s Eating Parlour has recovered its verve and drama.
When officially reopened on September 17th it will be regarded as one of the most architecturally important rooms in this country.
Who Was Robert Adam?
THE REGULAR misappropriation and misspelling of his name – as in ‘Adams-style’ – would no doubt infuriate Robert Adam, a man meticulous in all his enterprises. Born in Scotland in 1728, he was the son of that country’s leading architect whose practice he would inherit along with an older brother. Adam spent a number of years in Italy, studying the ancient architecture of Rome and refining his drawing skills, before he returned to Britain in 1758 and set up business in London with another brother.
The two men were renowned for producing complete decorative schemes. Hugely influential both in Europe and the US, the Adam style was far more eclectic in its inspiration than the previously dominant Palladian taste, drawing not only on classical design but also Greek and Byzantine. Adam’s work features extensive use of decorative motifs such as framed medallions, vases, urns and tripods as well as mythological creatures, together with painted ornamentation and complex colour schemes.
Many of these elements can be seen in his plans for Headfort House, which contains the only surviving Adam interiors in Ireland; the architect also produced schemes for Langford House in Dublin and Castle Upton in Co Antrim but the first of these has long since disappeared while the second was seriously altered in the 19th century.
Adam died in London in 1792.