Madam, - Tim O'Brien's report (April 22nd) on Mr Ramie Leahy's long and patient struggle to restore Dysert Castle, near Thomastown, Co Kilkenny, childhood home of the famed 18th century philosopher, George Berkerly, interested us greatly here in Dingle. We are faced with an even more bizarre situation.
The Rice House, which was built in 1750, is situated on Upper Main Street, Dingle, Co Kerry. Údarás na Gaeltachta, the present owners of the Rice House, obtained planning permission to effectively "gut" the interior of the house and to erect a modernistic building on the burgage plot adjacent to the house. This addition would be totally out of keeping with the original Rice House, which, unlike Dysert Castle, is in perfect repair and retains nearly all of the original features of an 18th-century townhouse.
The Rice House Alliance is a federation which was established to protect the house from being effectively destroyed internally and defaced externally by Údarás na Gaeltachta.
Apart from its architectural uniqueness, the house is of huge historical importance as a former owner of the house, Count James Louis Rice, an officer in the Austrian army and a close friend and confidante of the Austrian imperial family, had organised an escape from the Temple prison in Paris of the emperor's sister, Marie Antoinette, Queen of France. She was to be brought by sea from Nantes to Dingle, where she was to be accommodated in the Rice House, before being conveyed to London and thence to Vienna. At the last moment, the queen refused to leave her husband and children and was sent to the guillotine shortly afterwards. Údarás na Gaeltachta is now applying a guillotine to the Rice House. Yours, etc.,
ELIZABETH HIGGINS, Secretary, Rice House Alliance, Co Kerry