Our Feb Walk Round 17th Century Springhill House Cookstown with it's Spectacular Snowdrop Display скачать в хорошем качестве

Our Feb Walk Round 17th Century Springhill House Cookstown with it's Spectacular Snowdrop Display

Here we are at Springhill House Moneymore Cookstown. Unfortunately the house was all shut up for the winter but the extensive grounds with their beautiful snowdrop display were open for all to see. Springhill is a 17th-century plantation house in the townland of Ballindrum near Moneymore, County Londonderry in Northern Ireland. It has been the property of the National Trust since 1957. In addition to the house, gardens and park, there is a costume collection. It is open from March to June, and September on weekends, and is open to the public seven days a week during July and August. Features This 17th-century unfortified house was built about 1680-1695 and was originally surrounded by a defensive bawn. Around 1765 two single-storey wings were added and the entrance front was modified to its present arrangement of seven windows across its width. History The Conyngham family The Conyngham family had come from Ayrshire in Scotland in about 1609, possibly from Glengarnock and the first of the family in Ulster was said to have been one of the family of the Earls of Glencairn. Alexander Conyngham, Dean of Raphoe, ancestor of the later Marquesses Conyngham, was probably a near relative – his son Sir Albert Cunningham's portrait is at Springhill and not Slane Castle. They were granted lands under James I's Plantation of Ulster in County Armagh and County Londonderry. The early history of the family is something of a mystery. Mina Lenox-Conynham asserted that a document previously held in the Public Records Office in Dublin asserted that the lands at Ballindrum (later Springhill) were in Conyngham hands as early as 1609, but she believed this record to have been destroyed during the Battle of Dublin and the shelling of the Four Courts. It is believed that some form of farm dwelling was constructed on the estate in the second quarter of the seventeenth century (probably on the site of the present carpark) but this was destroyed during the Irish Rebellion of 1641. The house was occupied from around 1680 onwards by a sucession of Conynghams. William Conyngham I William Conyngham I (referred to in family documents as "the elder") was a colonel in the Irish rebellion of 1641 and one of Cromwell's Commissioners for County Armagh and held land at Drumcrow in the county and property in the town of Armagh itself. He was granted new title deeds by Cromwell in 1652, 'the old ones having been destroyed in the recent wars'. He died in 1666, when High Sheriff of County Londonderry. In 1676 his widow lived in a house on the north side of Armagh with a garden and a little parke called Garreturne. When William Lenox-Conyngham died in 1858, the estate passed to his eldest son Lieutenant Colonel Sir William Lenox-Conyngham who had married Laura Arbuthnot, daughter of George Arbuthnot of Elderslie (Founder of the Indian bank, Arbuthnot & Co) in 1856. Decline of the Estate By the time of Sir William's death in 1906, there was little left of the estate and as a result of some unwise investments, his son Lt. Col. William Arbuthnot Lenox-Conyngham found financial matters very trying. In 1899 he married Mina Lowry of Rockdale near Cookstown in County Tyrone. She was the last member of the family to live on the estate and she continued to do so even after the death of her son and the National Trust taking over in 1957, until her own death in 1961. National Trust William Arbuthnot Lenox-Conyngham died in 1938 and the estate passed to his elder son Capt. William Lowry Lenox-Conyngham who led the local Home Guard during the Second World War as a result of being invalided out of the National Defence Corps in 1940. Realising that the finances of the family were now in terminal decline he left the house and estate to the National Trust three days before his death in 1957. Present day The house today contains a vitally important and almost complete collection of one family's occupation for three hundred years. In the Gun Room can be found one of the largest surviving 18th century wallpaper schemes surviving in the UK (Chinese wallpaper from the 1720s), along with a "long gun" dating to about 1680 which was presented to Alderman James Lenox after the Siege of Derry. Present is a six-inches-long muzzle-loader and two late 18th-Century blunder busses. A 1920 catalogue of the library prior to the National Trust acquiring the property was compiled by Mina Lenox-Conyngham who played a key role in both the dispersal and the preservation of Springhill’s book collection. The Library contains one of the most important collections of 17th and 18th century books in Ireland and is composed of around 3000 volumes, the oldest of which is a small Latin psalter of 1541. In the old laundry can be found the largest costume collection in Northern Ireland (established by Viscount Clanwilliam[clarification needed] in 1960) and a selection from the collection is displayed annually in the costume museum.