DUNDRUM HOUSE HOTEL

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DUNDRUM HOUSE HOTEL, GOLF & COUNTRY CLUB

Dundrum, Co. Tipperary, Tel: (Ireland) 353 62 71116 ; Fax: (Ireland) 353 62 71366

"Rich in History, Beauty & Comfort",

This is Dundrum House

Dundrum House A History

Built in the mid -18th century, was the centre of a fine estate once owned by the famous Irish family the O'Dwyer of Kilnamanagh. The O'Dwyer were dispossessed of their lands during the Cromwellian Confiscation of Ireland in the 17th century. Philip O'Dwyer, was the proprietor of the estate at Dundrum, and little is known about him except that he captured Cashel, along with his followers on December 31st, 1641, and during this siege some 20 of the 300 English there were murdered, in retaliation for the indiscriminate murder of their relatives by some of the Cashel English, a few weeks before. The attack on Cashel opened the campaign into Munster, and as a result Philip O'Dwyer had to pay dearly for his action. His action then and later, was made the ground for him and his cousin Anthony, being excepted from pardon for life and estate, in the Commonwealth Act of 1652 for the hanging at Clonmel in November 1652, of his brother Colonel Donogh O'Dwyer, and for the confiscation of the 60,000 statute acres owned by the Kilnamanagh clansmen.

Philip and Anthony probably cheated the gallows by dying before the Cromwellian Conquest. Philip was the last of the line extending back for 10 centuries of Chiefs and Barons of Kilnamanagh, and so in less than a decade the O'Dwyer had met their fate. Cromwell's Conquest had been complete and the cruel process of confiscation and transplantation was yet to come. John O'Dwyer in his pathetic adieu, gives us this tragic picture of his native land.

"Hark the foe is calling
Fast the woods are falling,
Scenes and sights appalling
Mark the wasted soil.
War and confiscation
Curse the fallen nation
Gloom and desolation

Shade the lost land o'er.

(Furlong's translation)

(woods - the old Irish Families.)

When the O'Dwyer estate was confiscated, Robert Maude Esq., got all Philip's land including the O'Dwyer Manor and the Castle of Dundrum. The Maude family were a Norman family, and they conquered Flintstone for William the Conqueror in 1066.

Robert Maude was an M.P. for many years and in 1718 he was granted the title of Sir Robert Maude. The Maude family at Dundrum rose to great eminence, attaining to the rank of Viscounts Hawarden and Earls of Montalt in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. The family has produced many distinguished soldiers and sailors including the famous General Maude, who in one of the most brilliant campaigns of the Great War, drove the Turks out of Irak and met a tragic death from cholera at Baghdad in 1917.

In 1730, the Maude family built Dundrum House and it was situated in the midst of a fine demesne comprising of 2,400 statute acres of which nearly 800 acres were planted. In 1844-45, the house was described as a capacious structure standing in the centre of one of the most extensive wooded parks in the country. The house itself consisted of a centre block of two stories, a high basement joined by short links to flanking wings or pavilions and it was very much in the style of Sir Edward Lovett Pearce. In 1890 an extra storey treated as an attic above a continuous cornice, was added by the 4th Viscount Havvarden, who was the first and last Earl of Montalt. The grounds surrounding the house were tastefully laid out and there was a profusion of fine old timber on the estate.

There are many stories told about the acquisition of the Dundrum Estates by the Maudes and not least among them is the tradition that Philip O'Dwyer was hanged by Cromwell's orders from one of his own trees. The tradition goes on to say that an officer named Maude was employed to see the execution carried out and when he saw O'Dwyer's daughter weeping at the foot of the tree for her father's death, he fell in love with her, obtained a grant of her father's land and married her. This is a very romantic story, but unfortunately for the romance there is no foundation for the story, as the lands at Dundrum were under the Acts of Settlement and Explanation, granted to Robert Maude Esq.

Sir Thomas Maude, a descendant of Sir Robert, is reputed to have worn a tail. This tradition probably grew from the fact that he was involved in the prosecution of Fr. Sheehy, the martyr priest from Shanrahan, Clogheen, who was hanged in front of Clonmel jail in 1766. Indeed it is interesting to note that the "packed jury" who sentenced Fr. Sheehy to death, meet in the Drawing Room of Dundrum House.

In 1909-10, when Dundrum House and demesne were put on the market, the family of the remaining O'Dwyer clan were approached by the Land Commission as to purchasing in view of their hereditary connections. Family and financial reasons stood in the way, however, and the house and demesne were acquired by a religious order and were used thereafter for an industrial school. Later the Presentation Sisters set up a Domestic Science College in the spacious wings and up to recently it was a Novitiate and Retreat House.

Sampled By: Mary Landers.

SAMPLED FROM THE FOLLOWING BIBLIOGRAPHY.

1. - The O'Dwyers of Kilnamanagh, 1933: Sir Michael O'Dwyer.

2. - Michael MacCarthaig, Knockavilla. Dundrum, Co. Tipperary.

3. - The Parliamentary Gazetteer of Ireland, 1844-45.

4. - Desmond Guinness, Irish Georgian Society.

5. - Lewis' Topographical Dictionary of Ireland.

6. - Anthologia Tipperarensis.

Soursed By: John Davis White.

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