Heywood House Gardens, generally Heywood Gardens, form the grounds of a now-vanished house in

County Laois County Laois ( ; gle, Contae Laoise) is a county in Ireland. It is part of the Eastern and Midland Region and in the province of Leinster. It was known as Queen's County from 1556 to 1922. The modern county takes its name from Loígis, a medie ...

, Ireland. The estate was developed in the late 18th century by Michael Frederick Trench, a politician, landowner and architect. He built a substantial house and laid out an extensive park, under the direction of

James Gandon James Gandon (20 February 1743 – 24 December 1823) was an English architect best known for his work in Ireland during the late 18th century and early 19th century. His better known works include The Custom House and the surrounding Beresford ...

. In the early 20th century, Heywood was owned by Sir

Hutcheson Poë Sir William Hutcheson Poë, 1st Baronet (20 September 1848 – 30 November 1934) was an Irish soldier and politician. Biography He was born the younger son of William T. Poë in Donaghadee, County Down. He joined the Royal Marines in 1867 and ...

who commissioned

Edwin Lutyens Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens ( ; 29 March 1869 – 1 January 1944) was an English architect known for imaginatively adapting traditional architectural styles to the requirements of his era. He designed many English country houses, war memori ...

to develop the gardens immediately surrounding the house. Lutyens engaged his long-time collaborator

Gertrude Jekyll Gertrude Jekyll ( ; 29 November 1843 – 8 December 1932) was a British horticulturist, garden designer, craftswoman, photographer, writer and artist. She created over 400 gardens in the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States, and wrote ...

to undertake the planting. The house was demolished after a fire in 1950 and the gardens are now in the care of the

Office of Public Works The Office of Public Works (OPW) ( ga, Oifig na nOibreacha Poiblí) (legally the Commissioners of Public Works in Ireland) is a major Irish Government agency, which manages most of the Irish State's property portfolio, including hundreds of ow ...

History and architecture

Michael Frederick Trench built Heywood House and developed the surrounding estate in conjunction with

. The resulting parkland was considered by contemporaries to be one of the finest 18th century Romantic

landscapes A landscape is the visible features of an area of Terrestrial ecoregion, land, its landforms, and how they integrate with Nature, natural or man-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionar ...

in Ireland. The estate descended by marriage to the Poë family in the 19th century, when Colonel

married Mary Adelaide Compton Domvile in 1886. In 1906 Poë determined on the development of a new garden immediately adjacent to the house. The recommendation for

came from the colonial administrator

Henry McMahon Sir Arthur Henry McMahon (28 November 1862 – 29 December 1949) was a British Indian Army officer and diplomat who served as the High Commissioner in Egypt from 1915 to 1917. He was also an administrator in British India and served twice as ...

, who knew Lutyens personally. By this date Lutyens had established himself as one of England's leading architects of

country house An English country house is a large house or mansion in the English countryside. Such houses were often owned by individuals who also owned a town house. This allowed them to spend time in the country and in the city—hence, for these peopl ...

s and gardens. In his study of English domestic buildings, ''

Das englische Haus ''The English House'' is a book of design and architectural history written by German architect Hermann Muthesius and first published in German as in 1904. Its three volumes provide a record of the revival of English domestic architecture durin ...

'', published in 1904,

Hermann Muthesius Adam Gottlieb Hermann Muthesius (20 April 1861 – 29 October 1927), known as Hermann Muthesius, was a German architect, author and diplomat, perhaps best known for promoting many of the ideas of the English Arts and Crafts movement within German ...

had written of him, "He is a young man who has come increasingly to the forefront of domestic architects and who may soon become the accepted leader among English builders of houses". The site Lutyens was required to develop was unpromising; Heywood was set high on an elevated

embankment Embankment may refer to: Geology and geography * A levee, an artificial bank raised above the immediately surrounding land to redirect or prevent flooding by a river, lake or sea * Embankment (earthworks), a raised bank to carry a road, railwa ...

with little space on the garden front between the house and an "enormous cliff-like

buttress A buttress is an architectural structure built against or projecting from a wall which serves to support or reinforce the wall. Buttresses are fairly common on more ancient buildings, as a means of providing support to act against the lateral (s ...

" which separated the house from the parkland. Lutyens responded with the creation of a

terrace Terrace may refer to: Landforms and construction * Fluvial terrace, a natural, flat surface that borders and lies above the floodplain of a stream or river * Terrace, a street suffix * Terrace, the portion of a lot between the public sidewalk a ...

linking a series of small

garden room In gardening, a garden room is a secluded and partly enclosed space within a garden that creates a room-like effect. Such spaces have been part of garden design for centuries. Generally they are regarded as different from terraces and patios just ...

s and leading to a circular

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

garden at the western end. The garden contains an

oval An oval () is a closed curve in a plane which resembles the outline of an egg. The term is not very specific, but in some areas (projective geometry, technical drawing, etc.) it is given a more precise definition, which may include either one or ...

pool, surrounded by turtles and with a fountain at its centre.

undertook the planting. Poë was reputed to have spent £250,000 on the redevelopment of the house and estate. Christopher Hussey, in his official biography ''The Life of Sir Edwin Lutyens'', records that the Heywood scheme, ‘though architecturally superb, proved very much more costly than the client had contemplated". Following Poë's death in 1934 the house was left empty until it was purchased in 1941 by the Salesian Brothers for the establishment of a

seminary A seminary, school of theology, theological seminary, or divinity school is an educational institution for educating students (sometimes called ''seminarians'') in scripture, theology, generally to prepare them for ordination to serve as clergy, ...

. During their tenure, the house was almost destroyed in a fire in 1951. It was subsequently demolished. The seminary moved to a new site and the gardens passed into the care of the

Gallery

County Laois - Heywood Gardens- 20200520114542.jpg, The summerhouse in the Italian Garden County Laois - Heywood Gardens - 20200520124349.jpg, The

Pergola A pergola is most commonly an outdoor garden feature forming a shaded walkway, passageway, or sitting area of vertical posts or pillars that usually support cross-beams and a sturdy open lattice, often upon which woody vines are trained. The ...

County Laois - Heywood Gardens-Summerhouse- 20201026131247.jpg, The Gothic Summerhouse County Laois - Heywood Gardens-Castle Folly - 20201026144222.jpg, The Sham Castle County Laois - Obelisk, Heywood Gardens - 20201026123849.jpg, The

Obelisk An obelisk (; from grc, ὀβελίσκος ; diminutive of ''obelos'', " spit, nail, pointed pillar") is a tall, four-sided, narrow tapering monument which ends in a pyramid-like shape or pyramidion at the top. Originally constructed by Anc ...

Notes

References

Sources

* * * * * {{cite book , title = The English House , last=Muthesius , first = H. , author-link = Hermann Muthesius , orig-year=1904 , year=1979 , edition=Single volume , url = https://books.google.com/books?id=M4jRAQAACAAJ&q=editions:-7GFYV4ktzcC , publisher=

Granada Publishing Granada (,, DIN: ; grc, Ἐλιβύργη, Elibýrgē; la, Illiberis or . ) is the capital city of the province of Granada, in the autonomous community of Andalusia, Spain. Granada is located at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountains, at the co ...

, location=Frogmore , isbn = 978-0-258-97101-7 Buildings and structures in County Laois Works of Edwin Lutyens in Ireland