Bogay House

Photo Courtesy of National Inventory of Architectural Heritage

Bogay House in County Donegal is a property which brings back many happy childhood memories. The above photograph must have been taken circa 1967. Shortly after that the driveway was tarmaced,

The property was owed by a cousin of my father and we visited he and his wife on a very regular basis. The demesne was a veritable adventure ground for a young schoolboy. The rear of the house has a southerly aspect and the lawn immediately below the the house had and presumably still has an Italianate pond. Both this pond and the rather more informal pond adjacent to the northerly turning circle were full of frogspawn every Spring and newts could always be seen amongst the pondweed.

The surrounding woodland provided me with a seemingly limitless playground. I remember visiting Bogay to view a red deer stag that had escaped from Glenveagh and found its way to this little piece of rural tranquility. There were several Spanish Chestnut trees in the woods and I recollect collecting the nuts to eat.

Below the house was the walled garden. Apparently this is one of only nine walled gardens in Co. Donegal. Unfortunately this garden is now unused and overgrown. My dad's cousin kept it in good order, indeed it was a working and productive garden. The lower half of this two acre enclave was planted with apple trees. The remainder of the garden was devoted to soft fruit and vegetables. Uncle Willie, (that's what I called him), operated the garden as a vaguely commercial venture and sold the excess produce. Self sufficiency was definitely something which he approved of. He kept bees and up until the last three or so years of his life he had a couple of dairy cows. Learning how to milk a cow by hand is another memory that remains with me. I wonder if it is one of those skills, like riding a bike, that you don't forget?

He was a nice old buffer. Certainly from another generation. Born in 1890 he was educated at Campbell College, Cambridge and St. Thomas' Hospital. Having qualified as a doctor he served as such in the RAMC during the Great War where he was awarded the MC (For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty. He personally assisted in getting his wounded away from the dressing station under heavy machine-gun and rifle fire. Previous to this he had gone out from the dressing station on several occasions to tend ....).

Much of his subsequent working life was spent in Palestine as a senior medical officer. He was awarded an OBE in 1936. After he had retired to Co Donegal in 1946 he and his wife, (Dorothy) would travel to East Africa for the winter months, visiting friends and relatives in Kenya, (then pronounced Keen ya, not Ken ya). Not such a bad idea methinks. He was a good source of stamps for my schoolboy collection.

The house contained various artefacts from William's colonial career. I was particularly fascinated by the huge snail shells sitting on top of the bookcases in the large three bay drawing room. He was a keen ornithologist and his notebooks are contained within the manuscript collection in the Natural History Museum in Tring.

Cutting up firewood was another of his pleasures. Unfortunately he was rather too enthusiastic at this task on one occasion and managed to sustain a ten percent reduction in digits. This however did not result in a trip to hospital. He self treated.

Built as a hunting lodge on the Abercorn Estates the Record of Protected Structures for Co Donegal states that the house was constructed in the early to mid eighteenth century. It has five bays and is two storied over a basement and with a dormer attic. There is a single bay basement to the east. A projecting porch was added to the northern aspect circa 1890. In or about 1800 the house was given to the Reverend Thomas Pemberton, rector of Taughboyne for use as a Rectory and it remained as such for in excess of a hundred years. At the time of the 1911 census, Rev A. G. Stewart had the benefit of the glebe and the twenty one room house. The ancillary buildings are listed as being, two stables; coach house ; harness room; calf house; dairy; fowl hose; broiling house; barn; potato house; workshop; shed; laundry and wood house. The census goes on to reveal three other houses on the lands, one of which was vacant and one of which was occupied by a family by the name of Best, whose head of household is described as Land Stewart. For a large part of the nineteenth century Bogay House was the residence of Rev Edward Bowen and his family. His eldest son, Sir George Ferguson Bowen, (1821 -1899) became the ninth Governor of Hong Kong on 30th March 1883, remaining in this post until 21st December 1887.

Ballymacool House, Letterkenny - A Name and Arms Clause

Grant of Arms to William Henry Porter d 1st June 1891

Ballymacool House and its surrounding estate was purchased by John Boyd in 1798. It then passed to his son, also John Boyd, a barrister by profession. Upon his death in 1836 the property passed to his son John Robert Boyd who died on 30th March 1891 without issue. The Estate then passed to the latter's nephew, William Henry Porter, but conditional upon him taking the name and arms of the Boyd family.

Such testamentary clauses would not have been unfamiliar to the nineteenth century solicitor. As with the strict settlement such devices had as their aim the retention of land within the family. Unfortunately the estate passed out of the Boyd family in 1941. The purchasers, Kelly by name, sold off a lot of the timber and disposed of the property for development in the mid 1980's.

The Grant of Arms in favour of William Henry Porter DL, JP, (pictured above), confirms that he and his issue, "may take and henceforth use the surname of Boyd and instead of that of Porter and bear the Arms, Crest and Motto of Boyd.' It is signed and sealed by Sir John Bernard Burke, Ulster King of Arms and Knight Attendant on the Illustrious Order of St Patrick.

An interesting, "by the by," is that one of the Boyd family, one Patti Boyd, married George Harrison and subsequently Eric Clapton.

Case for the Grant of Arms

Three Die in Carrigans

Dunmore House January 2013

There is a forthcoming 5k race at Carrigans in Co. Donegal so I decided to go and look at the course on Thursday afternoon. I don't think that I am doing the village a disservice by saying that it is a quiet place. Seventy four years ago, in 1938, that quietude was shattered in the most tragic of circumstances on the afternoon of Saturday 24th September.

The venue for the fatalities was Dunmore House, the ,"Big House," of the village, which belonged to Col. Robert Lyle McClintock, a career soldier and a veteran of the Niger Expeditionary Force; the Boer War and the Great War. He and his wife the former Jennie Margaret Casson-Walker had one child, a son, William. Like his father before him he was educated at Wellington College before being commissioned into the Army.

William was a keen horseman and in April 1938 he took part in the Royal Artillery Gold Cup Race at Sandown Park. He fell and unfortunately his mount fell on top of him. He was paralysed from just below the shoulders.

Shortly before this accident he had become engaged to a Miss Helen Macworth and was to have been married to her in June of that year. Due to the accident this had to be postponed. After a period of convalescence at King Edward VII Hospital William was brought home to Carrigans accompanied by Miss Macworth and two private nurses who had been engaged to look after him.

It was eventually determined that the wedding should occur at Dunmore House on Monday 26th September. On the preceding Saturday William was carried into the garden. His mother took him out his lunch. Shortly before two o'clock his father left the house to take him certain medicines. He was to find his son dead, with the top of his head blown away. One of the nurses, Dorothy Trotter seems to have taken control of the whole ghastly situation. She told the Colonel to have the gardeners come to assist in moving William's body to his bedroom and for him to go to collect the local doctor. She then broke the news to Miss Macworth before starting to search for Mrs McClintock in the company of one of the maids.

They soon found her body. She had shot herself under the chin with the murder weapon. The force of the blast was such that Miss Trotter reports that Mrs McClintock's head had been severed from the torso and was hanging in the tree occupied by the rookery. The birds were pulling at the hair. This macabre vignette unsurprisingly caused the maid to faint. She had just come round when the second housemaid came running with the news that, " Miss Helen has done it now." She was found in Williams room, unconscious and fatally wounded. She had shot herself with William's rifle.

The funeral for the mother, son and bride to be took place on 27th September the day of the intended wedding. Miss Macworth was buried in her wedding dress. The officiating clergyman, Rev David Kelly concluded that,"This was a tragedy. A triumph of love. The bond of love was stronger than the thread of life."

A View the Foyle Commanding - Upper Moville Parish Church

I suppose the bean counters at Church House have to bow to financial pressures and demographics but it is still sad to see a church falling into decrepitude and being sold. Such is the fate of Upper Moville Parish Church at Tullynavin, Redcastle. The Church and grounds, but excluding the graveyard to the rear and the grave of Capt. The Hon Ernest Grey Lambton Cochrane which is situate to the front of the Church, was recently being advertised by a Donegal estate agent. The guide price was fifty thousand euro. This does seem quite cheap but I suppose there are several factors depressing the figure, the state of the Irish property market being the prime one. I wonder if a sale has been agreed as yet?

I knew that the church had not been used for some time but I hadn't realised that it is over twenty years since its doors closed. That does rather beg the question why the decision to sell was not taken during the boom days of the Irish economy.

The present church was consecrated in August 1853. It replaced a smaller building which had been constructed by the Cary family of Castle Cary in 1741 as a private chapel and which then became a chapel of ease before becoming the parish church with the division of the Moville Parish into, "Upper," and "Lower." The ruined walls of the original church are still to be seen in the graveyard and indeed there are several graves within the walls. Lewis in his, "Topographical Dictionary," of 1837 reports that the original church was too small and that there were plans for the construction of a new and larger building. Clearly these plans took a few years to come to fruition.

The present building is I think quite picturesque with its bellcote and well proportioned lancet windows and the septfoil window on the west wall. Hopefully the planners will ensure that any conversion is carried out in a sympathetic manner. It was suggested to me that it might be a good idea for the nearby Redcastle Hotel to buy the property and use it for civil ceremonies. This strikes me as an extremely good notion, but I suspect that the cost of renovation works would just not make it financially worthwhile.