House - 18th/19th century

The National Monuments Service's description

The medieval manor of Santry which consisted of a hall, chambers, stables a bakery, 200 apple trees, 100 pear trees, 30,000 great ash trees and 1000 large alder trees was originally granted to the de Feypo family but it was Barry family that built Santry Court in 1703. The house was ‘a stately mansion of brick, containing many spacious apartments, ornamented with numerous family portraits, a valuable collection of historical and scriptural paintings by the best masters and many items of fine arts’. The demesne covered ‘140 acres laid out in pleasure grounds and richly embellished with trees’.
Sir Charles Compton William Domville embarked on a transformation of Santry Court in 1857. The 130 rooms were redecorated, the gardens and out offices restored, a water supply was laid on to the house from the river and ornamental gas lamps lit the avenue to a replica of the Phoenix monument erected in the grounds. On the night of the 24th October 1941 the house was destroyed by fire. It lay derelict until demolition in 1959. All that remains of the house are the front steps that lead up to a grassed platform where the house used to stand, and a walled garden. Plaster friezes (the imagery based on the Parthenon) are located in the rear of the walls of the entrance piers.
A polished stone axehead was found in Santry Demesne in 1947, indicating prehistoric activity in the vicinity. Archaeological monitoring of a 20ha commercial development within Santry Demesne led to the identification and excavation of two isolated pits and a probable garden feature (Sullivan, E. 2005: 528 www.excavations.ie).

Compiled by: Geraldine Stout

Updated by Christine Baker

Date of upload: 23 January 2015

References

Sullivan, E. 2008 Churchview, Tullamore. In I. Bennett (ed.), Excavations 2005: summary accounts of archaeological excavations in Ireland, 319, No. 1307. Dublin. Wordwell.