|
| |
|
BOYLE |
| |
|
|
| |
It's disparagingly said that County Roscommon doesn't have any towns.
It does, and BOYLE , although not the county town, is a fine, upstanding
example. It's not a place marked out by particular charm or beauty, but
there's enough here to keep you entertained for a one-night stopover, if
you're not hurrying to cross the Curlew Mountains into Sligo. Boyle grew
up around the greatest estate in County Roscommon, Rockingham , and
although what remained of the estate was disbanded long ago and the
house - in what is now the Lough Key Forest Park - was burned down in
1957, the town is still marked by their ghostly presence.
In Boyle itself, the most charismatic building is the Cistercian
monastery, Boyle Abbey (Easter-Nov daily 9.30am-6.30pm; out of season,
keys available from Abbey House, next door; tel 079/63242; £1/¬1.27;
Heritage Card), consecrated in 1220 and one of the early results of the
arrival of foreign monastic orders in Ireland during the medieval pan-European
upsurge in spiritual life. In 1142 a group of monks sent to Ireland by
the redoubtable Cistercian abbot St Bernard of Clairvaux, at the
instigation of St Malachy, established the great abbey of Mellifont in
County Louth. Clonmacnois, the important Celtic monastery on the banks
of the Shannon in County Offaly, was quickly abandoned, and within
twenty years monks from Mellifont had settled at a site beside the River
Boyle here at Mainistir na Buaille .
The abbey is small and compact, in very pale stone, well enough
preserved to let you see how the monks must have lived. You still go in
through the gatehouse (a sixteenth- or seventeenth-century addition),
and there's a wonderful twelfth-century church. During the sixty-odd
years it took to build the place, the Gothic style arrived in the west
of Ireland; in a remarkably playful relaxation of their famous
austerity, the Cistercian monks allowed themselves to build Romanesque
arches down one side, and the new Gothic down the other. Look out, too,
for the fantastically ornate (at least, for Cistercians) column
capitals.
Boyle's big house may be gone, but the earlier residence of the King
family, King House (April & Oct Sat & Sun 10am-6pm; May-Sept daily
10am-6pm; £3/¬3.81), in the centre of town, has recently been restored
and opened to the public with a range of high-tech exhibitions. An
imposing stone mansion built around 1730, King House, with its pleasure
grounds across the river, was home to the family for fifty years before
they moved to Rockingham, and it represents the heyday of what was aptly
known as the Ascendancy. The original Sir John King, a Staffordshire
man, had been granted his land for "reducing the Irish to obedience",
achieved in part through violent subjugation and by the enforcement of
the notorious anti-Catholic Penal Laws. For the King family,
establishing themselves in Ireland was a process of determined and
successful social climbing: inheriting a baronetcy in 1755, by 1768
Edward King had ensured his elevation to Earl of Kingston.
One section of the exhibition deals with the Famine and recounts a
familiar story: Robert King, Viscount Lordon, although not an absentee
landlord, did - like many other landlords, after the removal of the corn
tariffs flooded the Irish market with cheap grain - find it economic to
evict his tenants, transport them to America and use the land for cattle
grazing. Other accounts detail the Kings' colourful family history - an
eighteenth-century crime of passion and a very public nineteenth-century
divorce - and there's a section on the house's use as a base from 1775
for the Connacht Rangers. This details their service to the British Army
in such conflicts as the Crimean and Boer wars and World War I,
culminating in their mutiny at Jullandar in the Punjab in 1920 in
protest at the atrocities being perpetrated by the Black and Tans back
home in Ireland. Boyle's civic art collection, with some interesting
modern pieces, is housed on the ground floor of the building, and
there's a pleasant coffee shop, much frequented by locals at lunchtime.
At the other end of town, down the driveway that leads from beside the
bridge, Frybrook House (June-Aug daily 2-6pm; £3/¬3.81) offers a view of
more modest eighteenth-century living - as well as a great place to stay
. Built around 1752, the house belonged to Henry Fry, an English Quaker
(the family may be related to the Cadbury Frys of confectionery fame),
who came to Boyle at the invitation of the Earl of Kingston to establish
a weaving community in the town. The house has been extensively restored
and, although only three pieces of the original furniture remain, it has
been sympathetically decorated with items from the same period and there
are some fine paintings.
|
| |
|
