Kevin Mulligan analyses the beauty of Bellamont Forest designed by Ireland’s foremost Palladian, Edward Lovett Pearce.
Bellamont Forest is the Palladian ideal in Ireland. Standing on a high grassy dome surrounded by long narrow waters pooled by the Dromore River on its journey between the drumlins of Cavan and Monaghan, it is difficult to conceive today of the innovative importance of the building’s arrival in the years just before 1730. Few Georgian houses own an equal significance for the spread of Palladianism in Ireland. Certainly none has endured with the same iconic significance: this is Ireland’s Mereworth, its Villa Rotonda.
