Enfilade

From Distributed by ACC Art Books:

Tessa Murdoch, ed., with a foreword by Toby Barnard, a preface by Leslie Fitzpatrick, inventory transcriptions by Jessica Cunningham and Rebecca Campion, and inventory preambles by Jessica Cunningham Rebecca Campion, Edmund Joyce, Alec Cobbe, and John Adamson, Great Irish Households: Inventories from the Long Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: John Adamson, 2022), 436 pages, ISBN: 978-1898565178, £75.00 / $115.

Inventories of fourteen great Irish country houses, three Dublin town houses, and one London town house yield remarkable insights into the lifestyle of leading families across Ireland and the households that supported them. With startling directness, they record in detail the goods and chattels inherited, accumulated, or acquired for enjoyment or everyday use.

Two sections in colour feature likenesses of many of the owners or householders of the properties at the time, including portraits by Pompeo Batoni, Michael Dahl, Thomas Gainsborough, Godfrey Kneller, Thomas Lawrence, and Joshua Reynolds, as well as the Irish artists Hugh Douglas Hamilton and Charles Robertson.

The value of inventories in charting how houses were arranged, furnished and used is now widely appreciated. Typically, the listings and valuations were occasioned by the death of an owner and the consequent need to deal with testamentary dispositions. That was not always so. The inventory for Castlecomer House, Co. Kilkenny, for example, was drawn up to make a claim following the house’s devastation in the 1798 uprising. Mostly hitherto unpublished, the inventories chosen give new-found insights into the lifestyle and taste of some of the foremost families of the day. Above stairs, the inventories show the evolving collecting habits and tastes of eighteenth-century patrons across Ireland and how the interiors of great town and country houses were arranged or responded to new materials and new ideas. The meticulous recording of the contents of the kitchen and scullery likewise sheds light on life below stairs. Itemized equipment required for the brewhouse, dairy, stables, garden and farmyard reflects the at times significant scale of the communities the houses supported and the remarkable degree of self-sufficiency at some of the demesnes.

A comprehensive index facilitates access to the myriad items within the inventories, while the books listed at three of the houses are tentatively identified in separate appendices. A foreword, together with preambles to the inventories, sets the households in their historical context. Illustrated with historical engravings of the houses and with portraits of the owners of the time, the inventories will appeal to country-house visitors, historians of interiors, patronage, collecting and material culture as well as to scholars, curators, collectors, creative designers, film directors, bibliographers, lexicographers, and historical novelists.

The eighteenth century is the period onto which the Knight of Glin directed his penetrating gaze as art historian. The book is dedicated to his memory.

Tessa Murdoch, FSA, is Research Curator, Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Toby Barnard, FBA, is Emeritus Fellow in History at Hertford College, University of Oxford, and a specialist in the political, social and cultural histories of Ireland and England, c. 1600–1800. Leslie Fitzpatrick is the former Samuel and M. Patricia Grober Associate Curator, European Decorative Arts, at the Art Institute of Chicago.

C O N T E N T S

1  Lismore Castle, Co. Waterford, 1702/3
2  Kilkenny Castle, Co. Kilkenny, 1705
3  Dublin Castle, 1707
4  The Duke of Ormonde’s House, London, c. 1710
5  Bishop’s mansion house, Elphin, Co. Roscommon, 1740
6  Captain Balfour’s town house, auction sale, Dublin, 1741/2
7  Hillsborough Castle, Co. Down, 1746 and 1777
8  Kilrush House, Freshford, Co. Kilkenny, 1750
9  No. 10 Henrietta Street, Dublin (Luke Gardiner’s house), 1772
10  Morristown Lattin, Co. Kildare, 1773
11  Baronscourt, Co. Tyrone, 1782
12  Castlecomer House, Co. Kilkenny, 1798
13  Killadoon, Co. Kildare, 1807–29
14  Shelton Abbey, near Arklow, Co. Wicklow, 1816
15  Borris House, Co. Carlow, 1818
16  Carton House, Co. Kildare, 1818
17  Newbridge House, Co. Dublin, 1821
18  Mount Stewart, Co. Down, 1821

Glossary
Appendix I: Buyers at Captain Balfour’s Town House Sale, 1741/2
Appendix II: Books in the Second Duchess of Ormonde’s Closet at Kilkenny Castle, 1705
Appendix III: Books in the Study at the Bishop’s Mansion House, Elphin, Co. Roscommon, 1740
Appendix IV: Books in the Library at Newbridge House, Co. Dublin, 1821

List of Inventory Sources
List of Plates
Bibliography
Index of Personal Names
General Index