Walled Garden

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Walled garden, 1.5 ha extent, with long rectangular plan and north-east south-west axis, lying north-east of the house and yard. Has stone walls with internal brick lining and with main entrance lying in centre of south east wall; this is aligned upon the gardener's house, formerly flanked by glasshouses each side.
The walls have a height of around 14 feet (4.30m) and are composed of random stone rubble with the interior lined with brick laid in a Flemish Garden Wall bond; lining garden walls with brick was standard practice in the 18th and 19th centuries, mainly to allow the wall to absorb the heat of the sun to ripen the fruit. The walls have a stone coping with very little overhang, except along the outside (south side) of the south wall.
The main entrance into the garden is located in the centre of the south wall though a segmental headed arched opening with cement lining. This contains double doors of relatively modern construction contain lattice framing, leading onto the main axial border down the garden centre, backed by yew hedges. In the east wall of the garden are two pedestrian doorways; one located in the centre with a brick reliving arch over, while the other door is located towards the south end. Both have modern but well made batten doors. There is not doorway in the west wall, bit a c.10m (c.30 feet) stretch of the garden at the north of the west end has collapsed in recent years.
The north wall of the garden supported glasshouses, which were located in the central area where the wall height increases to around 20 feet (c.6m) to accommodate them. Both of the original 19th century glasshouses have now been removed; they were about 20 feet long and symmetrically flanked the gardener's house. However, the glasshouse on the east side is substantially a 20th century re-built of the earlier glasshouse. It retains its brick base wall (three feet high), floor and internal cast iron support columns and some other fixtures, but the woodwork is relatively modern and original small glass panes are replaced with larger sheets of plate glass. A sequence of blocked arched opening within the glasshouse base wall indicates that it was formerly a vinery (with the vine roots being allowed to grow outside the building). A double door gives access to the glasshouse on the west side. To the east of this glasshouse there was formerly another lower lean-to glasshouse of late 19th century date; it has now been replaced by a corrugated iron lean-to shed.
In the centre of the north wall lies the gardener's house [once occupied by the head gardener], originally flanked by the two glasshouses. This has been substantially remodelled in the 1990s to a design of Richard Pierce. It's a gable-ended two bay one and half storey house with slated roof and bargeboards, whose rendered south gable forms part of the garden wall. Prior to rebuilding in the 1990s, its south gable end contained a centrally placed sliding sash window (2 over 2) on both floors with the front door positioned to the west side of the ground floor window. This fenestration was altered in the 1990s with the front door being placed centrally and flanked by a window (with sliding sash) each side. Other external alterations undertaken in the 1990s included the remodelling and incorporation of former lean-to potting sheds into the house each side. That range on the west side is lit by a new window (with sliding sash) and entered by a new door, both placed in part of the wall once occupied by the west glasshouse.

Historical information

The walled garden, shown on the 1833 Ordnance Survey map, was evidently built sometime during the 1770s by Ralph Gore, the first and last Earl of Ross.
The Gore family had owned Belle Isle from the early years of the 17th century, when the lands here (then known as Ballymacmanus or Seanaod MacManus) were granted to Sir Paul Gore, an Elizabethan adventurer. It had formed as part of a proportion of 1000 acres called Manor Gore (Newtowngore), but also known variously as called Manor Inishmore, Manor of Carrick and Manor of Belle Isle. At that time Belle Isle demesne, which is surrounded by the waters of Lough Erne, was an island, though since the 18th century it has been linked to the mainland by a bridge.
Sir Paul Gore built a house here in 1629, replacing and probably incorporating the earlier castle that had been the principal seat of the McManus clan, the second most powerful family in Fermanagh (after the Maguires) during the 14th to 16th centuries. The best known head of this clan, Cathal Og MacManus, (died 1498) was among other things Vicar General of Clogher. He is remembered today as the compiler of the Annals of Ulster, which was written at Belle Isle by his chief scribe Rory Lunny (the manuscript remained at Belle Isle until the 1630s).
During the early 18th century the demesne, according to John Dolan in 1718, was 'much improved and beautified' by Paul Gore's great grandson, Sir Ralph Gore, 4th baronet, who had a distinguished political career and was among other things, Speaker of the Irish House of Commons. In 1739 the house at Belle Isle was described by Dean Henry as a 'small lodge', with a terraced garden [parterre] extending down to the lakeside and enclosed within 'high walls covered with fruit trees' with 'square turrets on the extremeties [sic]'.
After the death of St George Gore St George in 1746, the demesne was subject to substantial improvements by his brother Sir Ralph Gore, 6th baronet (1725-1799). He became Baron Gore in 1764, Viscount Belleisle in 1768 and finally Earl of Ross in 1772. He rebuilt the house and transformed the landscape; indeed much of what survives today, including the present walled garden, was created during his fifty-three years of ownership. Many of Ireland's foremost landscape artists were attracted to the beauties of Belle Isle at this time, notably Thomas Roberts and Jonathan Fisher. When Arthur Young came here in 1776 he remarked upon the 'uncommon beauty' of the property with its woods, its 'walks around the island', the 'temple built on a gentle hill', the 'grotto', and the lawn below the house 'scattered with trees that forms the margin of the lake'. Fisher commented upon the park's 'grotesque seats and ornamental spots on the most interesting situations' and admired its 'handsome cottage with a kitchen and other conveniences'.
The walled garden, though not specifically mentioned by Young, was an integral part of the Earl of Ross's re-landscaping. It was originally enclosed by extensive slip-gardens, much of which by 1833 were being used as orchards.
The Earl of Ross died in 1799 [not 1802] after which time the house and demesne were inherited by his daughter, Mary (died 1824), who in 1793 had married Richard Hardinge (1756-1826), created a baronet in 1801. They lived at Belle Isle until around 1809 after which time the property fell into a long period of decline. It was leased to a tenant and apparently at times left unoccupied. In 1826 the house and its demesne passed to Sir Richard Hardinge's nephew, the Rev. Charles Hardinge, second baronet, who had no Irish interests and remained in England.
The Gore link with Belle Isle was finally broken in 1829, when Hardinge sold the property for £60,000 (a considerable sum at that time) to a clergyman from Cumbria, the Rev. John Grey Porter. His father John Porter, had come to Ireland as chaplain to the Earl of Camden, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (later first Marquis Camden) and had been appointed Bishop of Killala in 1795 and in 1797 to the extremely valuable see of Clogher, which he retained until his death in 1819. His son, the Rev. John Grey Porter (1789-1873), was preferred to the preband and rectory of Kilskerry in Co. Tyrone in 1813 (also in Clogher diocese).
Having acquired Belle Isle in 1829, the Rev. John Grey Porter lived there until his death in 1873. The demesne and it buildings were still in a poor state in 1837, when Porter embarked upon improvements. He put down new plantations, rebuilt the house and in the 1850s rebuilt the south part of the stable yard. He carried out improvements to the walled garden and the 1857 Ordnance Survey map would suggest that he added the glasshouses, or earlier versions of the glasshouses that stood here until the 20th century with the gardener's cottage in the centre and the lean-to bothy and working ranges to the rere.
From 1873 until his death in 1903 Belle Isle was owned by John Grey Vesey Porter (1818-1903) son of the Rev. John Porter. He was a well known for his interest in politics, newspapers and agricultural improvement. He built a hotel on Lough Erne [Knockinny Hotel] and operated a fleet of boats, including a number of large steamers on the lake. At Belle Isle he remodelled the house in the 1880s and around this time added the axial path down the centre of the walled garden. He may have remodelled the gardener's cottage (former home of the head gardener) at this time.
On the death of Rev. John Porter in 1903, the male line of the family came to an end and the property descended though his sister Adelaide Mary (1832-1926), to her second son, John Porter Archdale, who changed his name by deed pole to John Porter Porter. In 1906 he engaged the English architect Percy R. Morley Horder (1870-1944) to remodel house and added the Tudor wing (completed 1907). The Edwardian era also saw the creation in front of the house of a substantial rock garden (now removed). This was painted by the well known artists Beatrice parson, who visited the Archdale family at Belle Isle and Castle Archdale in the summer of 1916. After his death in 1939 the property passed to his son Nicholas, on whose death in 1973 it passed to his niece, Lavinia E.M. Baird. In 1991 she sold the property to James, 5th Duke of Abercorn.

References
Anon. 1907. 'Recently constructed houses - Belleisle, the home, its architecture, decoration and furnishing'. The World. 22nd February, 1907.
Rowan, Alistair (1979). Buildings of Ireland, p144 [date incorrect]
Bence-Jones, Mark (1978) Burke's Guide to Country Houses - Ireland. Burkes, p38
Crawford, Joe. History of Lisbellaw.
Young (1777). A Tour of Ireland. Dublin edition, p271-3
Ordnance Survey Memoirs, Parish of Cleenish, Co. Fermanagh. Statistical Report by Lieut. John Chaytor, 30 May 1835, Box 26, VI i, pp1-84. Modern Topography or Artificial State.
Fisher J (1795) Scenery of Ireland. Belleisle, plate 34. Aquatint.
OS Maps, sheets 27 and 33 (1833-35); (1859) and (1909); IG 230-12 (1960)

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
C. Ornamentation
D. Plan Form
J. Setting
K. Group value

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Z. Rarity
X. Local Interest
V. Authorship

Evaluation

Neat example of a late 18th century (1770s) walled garden, with stone walls internally lined with brick and capped with ashlar. While its symmetrically placed original glasshouses have now been removed and the attached gardener's house has been remodelled in recent years, the walled garden retains its essential architectural integrity. The garden was created as part of the later 18th century landscaping at Belle Isle and has group value with the nearby listed house and outbuildings HB12.05.032

General comments

This property was previously recorded under HB12/05/032 A