Terence Reeves-Smyth looks at the history of Springhill House in Co Derry, three hundred years after its construction
T he aftermath of the Williamite Wars provided new opportunities to build country houses in fashionable Classical styles. Few of these now survive and none is so well preserved as Springhill, commonly regarded as ‘among the most beautiful residences in Ulster’.1 Lying a mile from the plantation town of Moneymore, the house is an elegant, unassuming building, whose steep roof and whitewashed walls exude a confident, theatrical aura. Its remarkable survival, complete with axially designed landscape and outbuildings, is the product of ten generations’ ownership by the same family, before transfer, along with its contents, to the care of the National Trust in 1957.
Peter Somerville-Large recounts the history of the National Museum of Ireland’s significant ethnographic collection, last displayed over thirty years ago
Eileen Black recounts the life and work of Post-Impressionist painter, Georgina Moutray Kyle
