Tourin
- Classification
- Manoir
- Pays
- Irlande
- Région
- County Waterford
- Adresse
- Cappoquin, Cappoquin
- Époque / style
- Italianate villa (1841)
Country houses were always adapted to reflect changing circumstances, but in Ireland a surprising number of owners endured the inconveniences of a medieval existence, living in small rooms with little light until well into the nineteenth century. Until the late 1830s, when they commissioned a new house in the most up-to-date taste, the Musgrave family lived at Tourin Castle in County Waterford, an early 17th-century house attached to a medieval tower house beside the River Blackwater. Downstream from Cappoquin and just above Dromana on the opposite bank, Tourin was owned by the Roche family until the seventeenth century, when it passed to a family called Nettles. In 1778 the estate was purchased by Sir Richard Musgrave, MP for Lismore and erstwhile High Sheriff of County Waterford. Musgrave rapidly published a work on the 1798 Rebellion, 'Memoirs of the Different Rebellions in Ireland', in 1801, claiming it was compiled from original affidavits and other authentic documents. His contemporary Sir Jonah Barrington criticised Musgrave's perspective as limited, humorously suggesting he had lost his objectivity regarding politics, religion, martial law, his wife, the Pope, the Pretender, the Jesuits, Napper Tandy and the whipping-post. Despite the early accusations of bias, his work is now recognised as a significant primary source for understanding the era. Completed in 1841, the new Tourin House is a handsome Italianate villa in the very latest style, possibly to the designs of the Waterford architect Abraham Denny. It has four formal rendered facades with cut-stone details, an elaborate cornice, and decorative quoins and string courses. The five-bay front displays projecting single-storey porches framed with limestone pilasters at both ends, flanking an arcade of three round-headed windows. The remaining facades comprise four bays (the rear ground floor has five bays with a bowed iron veranda), and the garden front has a robust central bow. Internally, the house retains a splendid bifurcating imperial staircase of oak situated behind the hall. The five acres of gardens were laid out at the beginning of the twentieth century by Richard Musgrave, with the help of his friend the Cork brewer Richard Beamish. They contain collections of rhododendrons, camellias and magnolias, mature trees including oak, cedar and London plane, and a walled garden of fruit, vegetables, herbs and cut flowers, as well as over 100 bearded irises, which flower in May and June. Open April-September, 1pm-5pm (closed Sundays and Mondays), with house and garden visits, concerts, educational visits, country sports and receptions, and is available as a film location.
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