By Matt Wheeler and Duncan Laurence
Situated in the old Anglo-Norman Pale of south County Wexford, Johnstown Castle dates from the 1200s. After the Cromwellian confiscations, the castle was acquired by the Grogan family, whose direct descendants lived there until 1942. The estate peaked in the mid-1800s, with Hamilton Knox Grogan Morgan possessing the largest single landholding in the county.
Johnstown Castle was one of the last of the ‘big houses’ in County Wexford to succumb to the changing circumstances of the twentieth century. Remaining in private ownership until the 1940s, the Gothic Revival castle lingered, virtually unchanged from how it looked at its completion in 1872. Besides its splendid Victorian interiors, a full complement of staff was retained, including a butler, footman, coachman, chauffeur and gamekeeper. By contrast, many of the other local stately homes of equivalent size had been either destroyed in the unrest of 1921–3 or sold. Johnstown Castle eventually succumbed after the last occupier, 82-year-old Lady Adelaide FitzGerald, passed away in 1942. The building began to be repurposed as an agricultural college in 1944, and in May of that year the castle’s contents were sold in a week-long auction.
STATE INVOLVEMENT
Following its official hand-over to the State in 1945, the castle and the courtyard buildings that now house the Irish Agricultural Museum were used by the Department of Agriculture mainly for soil analysis. Later, in 1958, a new semi-State organisation, An Foras Talúntais (the Agricultural Institute, later renamed Teagasc), took over this pioneering research work, and in 2003 the staff relocated from the castle to new modern buildings on the estate.
Although the 100-acre grounds and the museum have been open to visitors for many years, the castle itself remained empty for a further decade, prevented by a legal impediment from opening as a heritage attraction. Once that had been overcome, the Department of Agriculture and Fáilte Ireland funded the upgrading of the building and the construction of a new road entrance, car park and visitors’ centre.
Johnstown Castle reopened in 2019, with the Irish Heritage Trust CLG being engaged to manage it, the museum and the grounds. Using a mixture of paid staff and volunteers, the castle has become a very significant leisure destination, with over 150,000 visitors in 2022. While much of the pre-1944 building remains intact, the sale of its contents was a significant blow. Fortunately, the purchase of some of the original furniture by the State at the 1944 auction has allowed the main rooms now open to the public to be furnished. Indeed, when visitors view the quality of these rooms and their contents, they may not realise how much is missing.
INFORMATION IN THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES
While there remain significant gaps in our understanding of Johnstown Castle’s 800-year history, its transfer to the State in 1944 is particularly well recorded. The National Archives contain documentation about its acquisition and conversion. In conjunction with the extensive newspaper coverage about the 1944 auction, the story of the end of one of the last ‘big houses’ in County Wexford makes an interesting tale.
The Department of Agriculture had hoped to acquire enough of the castle’s contents by negotiated purchase to furnish the proposed college, but Lady FitzGerald’s descendants decided that there should be a public auction. As the Department of Agriculture had limited expertise on the acquisition of furniture and the repurposing of a historic building, the Office of Public Works (OPW) was engaged to advise. Furniture experts from the OPW made their first visit in February 1944, drawing up a list of desired purchases. As the proposed agricultural college was to be residential, this list included not only numerous tables and chairs but also wardrobes, washstands, chests of drawers, mirrors, bedsteads and mattresses, fire-irons, carpets, dumb waiters and a gong on a stand.
THE AUCTION CATALOGUE
The catalogue produced by the auctioneers, Jackson Stops & McCabe, categorises the castle’s contents into 1,187 individual lots. It comprises a room-by-room, item-by-item listing that also gives an impression of how the castle was furnished at the time. Some sections are usefully detailed; for example, some 180 books from the library are listed by title and date of publication. Other items are described rather less clearly, particularly a number of the castle’s portraits. There are, for example, four lots entitled ‘Portrait of lady in blue gown’, three lots described as ‘Portrait of lady in brown gown’ and two lots called ‘Portrait of lady in crimson gown’. Probably family portraits, their loss (along with the identity of their subjects) represents a frustratingly closed window into the castle’s history.
Besides the furniture, about half of the auction catalogue’s 1,187 lots fall into three categories: books, tableware (mainly silverware) and ornaments. Twenty-two bronze or marble figures or busts were for sale, along with 45 portraits and 43 other paintings. Besides bows and arrows, spears, rapiers, a 1798 pike head, knives and a special constable’s baton, the castle’s vintage gun collection included an old fowling piece, two blunderbusses, two pairs of duelling pistols, eight other pistols and an old rifle.
Other miscellaneous items included a child’s cot and an invalid car, a sewing machine, a knitting machine, the organ that was formerly located in the main hall, a pathescope (a vintage type of film projector), fishing equipment, a table-tennis table, a full size and a miniature billiard table, and more mundane items such as rugs, curtains, commodes, fire extinguishers and fire buckets, a sole potted palm and a watering-can. There were also 24 lots of stuffed animals, including whole display cases of stuffed birds. Although not actually listed in the catalogue, Lot 1253 was the castle’s luckless parrot.
THE AUCTION
The auction was held between 1 and 5 May 1944, a few weeks before the D-Day landings in Normandy. Rosslare Port was closed; ferry services to south Wales had been suspended in 1941 following the sinking of the SS St Patrick by the Luftwaffe off Strumble Head. Locally, the auction may well have been the event of the decade in those bleak wartime years. Contemporary press reports suggest that something akin to a carnival atmosphere prevailed, with large numbers from Wexford town walking or cycling to Johnstown Castle for a day out. A fully licensed bar provided much-needed refreshments and, no doubt, fortified both spectators and would-be bidders.
A pre-auction viewing took place the previous week, with the Irish Times observing:
‘Towards the end of last week, when the contents of the Castle were on view, something like 15,000 people, including children, went to see them; over 1,500 catalogues were sold, and the Guards had to clear the grounds every evening.’
This high level of catalogue sales may well have been the result of entry being restricted to catalogue-holders—a canny convention often adopted by Irish auctioneers to this day. The Irish Times contains a somewhat wry report of the auction’s first day:
‘The big auction of the entire contents of Johnstown Castle in Wexford, which began yesterday, afforded the people of that county an excellent excuse for a good day’s outing in ideal surroundings, and 400 of them used it as such. About 100 others—many of them from Dublin—went to do some serious bidding. They all appeared to be having a very good time, with the possible exception of the earnest bidders and the over-worked auctioneers. The rooms were so crowded that bidding was difficult and movement almost impossible.’
The press reports about the first day seem to have encouraged further attendees. The Irish Independent and Irish Times confirm that more than 1,000 people attended the auction’s third day, with the Independent recounting that ‘Some fifty cars and hundreds of bicycles were parked along the avenue’. Even if these newspapers’ figures of attendee numbers are exaggerated, the volume of spectators created some chaos throughout the week, particularly as none of the rooms within Johnstown Castle is exactly large. A report in the Irish Press has the heading ‘Castle was not big enough’, with the scrum inside being graphically illustrated by the Irish Independent:
‘The hall and corridors were so crowded that goods had to be displayed from upper balconies. A minor sensation occurred during the afternoon: the bottom and one arm fell out of an elbow chair which was being displayed. As the crowd was so tightly packed, five or six people bore the impact, but no one was injured.’
Fortunately, three attendees wrote down the sale prices in their catalogues, copies of which are held in the Irish Agricultural Museum’s archive. These suggest that some items sold well. For example, Lot 813, ‘Oil—portrait of gentleman in robes’, sold for £48. By contrast, the other paintings that hung nearby sold for between £2 and £7. The highest price paid for a painting was for a portrait of the family of Charles I. While the catalogue does not identify the artist, historical accounts attribute it to Anthony van Dyck. This was Lot 242, which sold for the very high price of £245—the same amount paid to purchase Lady FitzGerald’s 16HP Austin automobile.
While contemporary press reports suggest that there was a lot of interest in the sale, certain items did not attain high prices. This worked in the Department of Agriculture’s favour, as the Irish Press records:
‘It was hard to find bidders for some of the massive oak furniture. An oak side table on carved pillars, 7ft long, brought only £5 and the same sum bought the carved oak pedestal sideboard.’
These items match two of the purchases that the OPW made on the first day of the auction and which remain in the castle to this day.
ITEMS PURCHASED BY THE OPW
The OPW intended to secure about 150 items at the auction, but the competitive bidding process whittled this down to 114. The largest category of purchases consisted of 24 tables, including an 18ft-long dining table (£40). Despite an OPW staff member complaining that the auctioneers had deliberately mixed good and woodworm-infested chairs, seven were purchased, along with two beautifully carved dumb waiters (£11 each). The latter items currently stand in the castle’s dining room, on either side of an 8ft-long oak sideboard which was bought for £5. A number of very elegant hand-carved chaises longues were purchased, being intended for the agricultural college’s bedrooms. They now adorn the main rooms in the castle that are open to the public. The prices paid ranged from £5-10s to £15.
A minority of purchases were not included on the OPW/Department of Agriculture’s original list of wanted items. As public money was involved, it appears that a written justification was required for each of them. This following explanation is given for the purchase of a pair of elk antlers:
‘The antlers were fixed to the walls direct and as the auctioneer could not get a bid for them he offered them there and then to me at 5/- each. To avoid possible damage to the walls by their removal I took them.’
Sadly, these antlers disappeared many years before the castle’s restoration in 2018–19.
The Department of Finance sanctioned purchases up to a total of £2,000. In the end, the 114 purchases came to only £939, a sum significantly below the OPW’s item-by-item pre-auction valuation of £1,300.
LOOKING FORWARDS 80 YEARS LATER
It is incredibly fortunate that, unlike many other Irish country houses, the contents of Johnstown Castle were not dispersed entirely. Furniture dating from the 1830s remains at the castle to this day simply because the Department of Agriculture considered it to be better made and less costly to acquire than to purchase new items. The result is an impressive inventory of custom-made antique furniture in the various rooms that are now open to the public.
There are good reasons to hope that further items will return to the castle. Contemporary newspaper reports refer to purchases by local residents, including a marble bust entitled ‘Veiled lady’ (£48), a Boulle writing-desk and matching corner cabinets (£300) and some of the paintings. Since the castle opened as a heritage attraction in 2019, a number of individuals and organisations have kindly lent, sold or donated items that were auctioned in 1944, many of which are now on public display. Perhaps the most dramatic example is a large taxidermy case full of exotic birds, which the owner had previously kept in a bungalow near Wexford town. Early 2023 saw the donation and return of a rocking-chair, four other chairs and a highly ornate carved washstand. In addition, an email enquiry from Paris resulted in the identification of one of the auction catalogue’s inadequately described paintings. Depicting a scene from Shakespeare of Brutus being visited by Caesar’s ghost on the eve of battle, this painting was acquired for £5 in 1944. In 2011 it was sold by Sotheby’s of London on behalf of the family of the original purchaser for an eye-watering £51,650.
Other ex-Johnstown Castle items have been repurchased at auctions or from antique dealers. This includes one of a pair of miniature bronze horse statues attributed to the sculptor Auguste Poitevin. A key future project is to locate more of the lost artwork. Already, two facsimile copies of portraits of Lady FitzGerald’s mother, Jane Colclough Grogan Morgan, are displayed in the castle, with the owners of the originals allowing them to be photographed and reproduced. While many of the paintings that hung in the castle prior to 1944 are so poorly described in the auction catalogue as to be virtually untraceable, a core list of 10–20 has been developed. The next step is to try to find them and to see whether the current owners will allow reproduction. Perhaps even the lost elk antlers might turn up.
Matt Wheeler is curator for the Irish Heritage Trust, managing both Johnstown Castle and its museum; Duncan Laurence is a semi-retired environmental consultant and has been a volunteer at the castle since it opened to the public in 2019.
Readers who have any information about artefacts from Johnstown Castle—options range from loan, sale and photography to just having knowledge about the object—can contact info@johnstowncastle.ie.