Eyrecourt Castle

Eyrecourt Castle (or Eyre Court) was an Irish 17th century country house in Galway which became a ruin in the 20th century. The house, the surrounding estate, and the nearby small town of Eyrecourt all took their name from Colonel the Right Hon. John Eyre, an Englishman who was granted a large parcel of land in recognition of his part in the military campaign in Galway during the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland. There was an earlier fortified house or castle on the same land.

There is also a block of private apartments called Eyre Court located in the London neighbourhood of St. John's Wood.

Eyrecourt Castle was "an early example [of] a classical country house ". A 7-bay two-storey house "built on a symmetrical pattern with a central staircase and hall taking up nearly a third of the overall space, it was an impressive, modern residence for the new landowner". A visitor in 1731, Mary Granville, commented on a "great many fine woods and improvements that looked very English" in the parkland around the house.Richard Cumberland, a few decades later, called it "a spacious mansion, not in the best repair" with "a vast extent of soil, not very productive". The grounds are now called a demesne, a standard expression in Ireland for an estate; the demesne gates were bought and restored by the National Heritage Council in the 1990s.

The most striking features of the house were its "ambitious wood-carvings, massive doorcases and a famous baroque staircase", one of the first grand staircases in Ireland, with "acanthus leaves issuing from grotesque masks and rolling down the banisters" and "by far the most exuberant piece of wood carving surviving from the 17th century". Dutch craftsmen are believed to have worked there, with the possible involvement of the Dublin-based French-born James Tabary. One chimneypiece followed a design of Serlio's.

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