Tranarossan House is an early 20th century building in

Carrigart Carraig Airt (anglicised as Carrigart or Carrickart) is a small Gaeltacht village in the barony of Kilmacrennan to the north of County Donegal, Ireland. The village is on the R245 route between Letterkenny and Creeslough. Situated as it is at th ...

County Donegal County Donegal ( ; ga, Contae Dhún na nGall) is a county of Ireland in the province of Ulster and in the Northern and Western Region. It is named after the town of Donegal in the south of the county. It has also been known as County Tyrconne ...

, Ireland. It was designed by

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 ...

for Lucy Phillimore, wife of

Robert Charles Phillimore Robert Charles Phillimore (19 August 1871 – 12 September 1919) was a British liberal politician. The eldest son of Walter Phillimore, he was educated at Westminster School then Christ Church, Oxford. He served as President of the Oxford Un ...

. The Phillimores had bought the land on the Donegal coast in the 1890s and commissioned Lutyens to build a holiday home. The house is little documented and is not recorded in most studies of Lutyens. After her husband's death, Lucy Phillimore handed the house over to ''

An Óige An Óige (; meaning "Youth"), or the Irish Youth Hostel Association (IYHA), is a non-profit organisation providing youth hostel accommodation across the Republic of Ireland. An Óige is a member of Hostelling International. Background An Óige ...

'', the Irish Youth Hostel Association, in 1937. It still operates as An Óige's most northerly hostel and is a protected structure.

History and architecture

came from a family of successful and prosperous lawyers and politicians. He and his wife Lucy bought land at

in the 1890s and later commissioned

to design them a holiday home. By 1907, the year Tranarossan was completed, 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. 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". Robert Phillimore died in 1919. After retaining the house for nearly 20 years, his widow donated it to An Óige in 1937. The house remains a youth hostel, the most northerly in Ireland. The house is little documented and is not referenced in most of the major studies of Lutyens and his work. In his ''North West Ulster'' volume of the Buildings of Ireland series, Alistair Rowan describes Tranarossan as “two

gable A gable is the generally triangular portion of a wall between the edges of intersecting roof pitches. The shape of the gable and how it is detailed depends on the structural system used, which reflects climate, material availability, and aesth ...

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained (phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies undergro ...

blocks…the roofs huge unbroken slopes of heavy local

slate Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. It is the finest grained foliated metamorphic rock. ...

”. The building is of one main storey, with attic bedrooms in the gables. Rowan, noting a “typical Lutyens joke” - a

pier image:Brighton Pier, Brighton, East Sussex, England-2Oct2011 (1).jpg, Seaside pleasure pier in Brighton, England. The first seaside piers were built in England in the early 19th century. A pier is a raised structure that rises above a body of ...

rising from the

veranda A veranda or verandah is a roofed, open-air gallery or porch, attached to the outside of a building. A veranda is often partly enclosed by a railing and frequently extends across the front and sides of the structure. Although the form ''veran ...

stops just short of the roof beam it purports to support - calls the house a “witty holiday home”. Tranarossan is listed by

Donegal County Council Donegal County Council ( ga, Comhairle Contae Dhún na nGall) is the authority responsible for local government in County Donegal, Ireland. As a county council, it is governed by the Local Government Act 2001. The council is responsible for hou ...

on its

Record of Protected Structures Conservation in the Republic of Ireland is overseen by a number of statutory and non-governmental agencies, including those with responsibility for conservation of the built environment and conservation of the natural environment in Ireland. Con ...

Notes

References

Sources

* * * * {{cite book , last=Rowan , first=Alistair , title=North West Ulster , url=https://www.worldcat.org/title/north-west-ulster-the-counties-of-londonderry-donegal-fermanagh-and-tyrone/oclc/813644345?referer=br&ht=edition , series= The Buildings of Ireland , year=1979 , location=Harmondsworth, Middlesex , publisher=

Penguin Books Penguin Books is a British publishing, publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year.Buildings and structures in County Donegal Works of Edwin Lutyens in Ireland Arts and Crafts architecture