Drive through the Co Meath village of Summerhill and you drive through a pleasantly nondescript place; yet in its own way, Summerhill is a pithy little symbol of possession, dispossession, myth, emigration and destruction.
Summerhill was once called Cnoc an Linsigh, Lynch's Hill; but times changed, so did circumstances, and in due course so too did the name. Lynch passed from history, as so much was to pass from history in Summerhill.
That is what makes Summerhill so interesting; the sheer quality of the amnesia associated with the place. Ask in Summerhill today about Lovett Pearce's great Palladian house there, and you will receive blank looks. That house has passed from memory as completely as have the Lynches; yet Summerhill house not merely dominated the village for two-and-a-half centuries, but was one of the great houses of Ireland. Indeed, it was probably the greatest house in Ireland, and one of the most majestic houses in the United Kingdom. Were it standing today, it would probably be one of the greatest tourist attractions in the island.
Astounding beauty
It was a work of the most astounding beauty. Mark Bence Jones has described it as being "a two-storey, seven-bay main block, with a central feature of four giant, recessed Corinthian columns, joined by two-storey curving wings to end pavilions with towers and shallow domes. The skyline was further diversified by two massive square towers rising boldly at either end of the main block. The front was further prolonged by walls of rusticated stonework ending in rusticated arches."
Inside was the normal combination of rococo artwork and Doric coved ceilings which Georgian Ireland revelled in and constructed at vast expense. This stunning masterpiece was destroyed by the IRA in 1921, in one of those curiously overlooked acts of vandalism which no doubt represented some sort of tribal retribution for real hurts done or for hurts imagined. I do not know; but I never cease to wonder at the minds of the men who did such things. Did they years later wake from the sleep and think of the vast amounts of beauty, of books, of precious manuscripts and photographs that they destroyed, then weep? Or did they instead chuckle in glee?
The ruins of Summerhill remained as a haunting and wondrous reminder of an old order, until a farmer demolished the lot 30 years ago this year, and did so without complaint, and so thoroughly that there is not an ounce of stone and not a standing tree to remind us of the parkland and the house that were once Ireland's greatest architectural jewel. Now there's true vandalism.
As Summerville house was being built more than a quarter of a millennium ago, a young local boy called Ambrose was growing up in the village. He was born in 1720, and very possibly worked on the building of Summerhill, which began in 1731.
Family history
That Ambrose left no mark on the village is hardly surprising, for he emigrated as a young man; and in later years, he dressed up his family history so as to give it the grander Sligokings-of-Connacht connections that exiles prefer to affect.
But the likely truth is that he was a Summerhill boy, and he would have seen the great house being erected, would have seen its architects, Pearce and Castle, coming and going, and would have seen the great families of the area, the Rowleys and the Langfords visiting as Summerhill grew.
Great names indeed; but not as great as his, which South America was to know and respect, not so much through him as through his son Bernard; or, as he is known across the continent and to history, Bernardo O'Higgins, who will be celebrated next Thursday as he is annually, on Chilean Independence Day, September 18th. So Chile certainly claims him; though on the other hand, there is barely a South American country which does not. As far as I can ascertain, the only place in the entire region which was not liberated by Bernardo O'Higgins was the Falkland Islands, where the population still awaits his arrival, in between baas.
Peru, Bolivia and Chile - which over much of its length is barely more than a beach - all revere Bernardo O'Higgins, though perhaps Chile is inclined to forget that it forced him into exile for the last years of his life, no doubt as Summerhill forgets it once had the finest house in Ireland.
Chilean wine
But Chile does not forget his Irish roots; and we should not forget what Chile sends back to the land which sent its liberator to it. Wine. And very properly, for it was in one of the vineyards of Santa Rita wines that Bernardo O'Higgins hid with 120 of his followers during the War of Independence 180 years ago next year - giving rise to the present label, Santa Rita 120. I am utterly unaware of what Ireland sends Chile, apart, that is, from a handshake with that bloodstained old savage Pinochet; but I praise heaven, and maybe Bernardo O'Higgins too, for the wines which they send to us, and which so far surpass all European wines competing even a couple of pounds above them. Every glass of Santa Rita 120 is a reminder of a great Irishman.
Bernardo O'Higgins was one of the noblest exports from Ireland; and the house in the village of his ancestors was probably the noblest house that was ever built in Ireland; and Summerhill, Co Meath, home of them both, slumbers on unaware of either.
Odd, this thing called memory.