IRELAND'S HUMEWOOD CASTLE
BREATHING NEW LIFE INTO
A GOTHIC REVIVAL MASTERPIECE
TEXT BY MALISE RUTHVEN PHOTOGRAPHY BY IANTHE RUTHVEN
Located in Ireland's Wicklow Mountains is Humewood, a Gothic Revival castle designed by English architect William White in 1867 for William Wentworth Fitzwilliam Hume Dick. The residence, which was recently bought by international businesswoman Renata E. Coleman is now undergoing an extensive renovation.
"The landed proprietor," wrote the great English architect Sir George Gilbert Scott in 1857, "has been blessed with wealth, and he need not shirk from using it in its proper degree. He has been placed by Providence, in a position of authority and dignity, and no false modesty should deter him from expressing this, quietly and gravely, in the character of his house." Renata E. Coleman, the new owner of Ireland’s Humewood Castle, is no shirker when it comes to investing time and money on her house. Having saved the neglected Victorian masterpiece, she now devotes part of the time she spends traveling around the world on business searching for suitable furniture and fabrics.In Ireland, the country house was more than just an expression of its owner. It also had a military purpose as a defensible stronghold and rallying point for the local militia. The original eighteenth-century house on the Humewood estate had withstood sieges, and many of its defensive features were incorporated in the Gothic Revival structure, built between 1867 and 1870, that now stands on the grounds. The magnificent mansion was commissioned by William Wentworth Fitzwilliam Hume Dick. Like his father, William Hoare Hume, and grandfather William Hume, he was a member of Parliament for County Wicklow. From his mother, Charlotte Dick, daughter of a wealthy Dublin merchant, he inherited the fortune that enabled him to demolish the old house with its Georgian facade and erect a castle faced with pure granite and containing the most modern conveniences. There were baths on every floor, and the kitchen was connected to the dining room by means of a rotating hatch through which dishes could be passed "without letting through either draught, noise, or smell." In recognition of the maternal contribution to his improved status, Hume added his mother’s family name to his own.
The groin-vaulted sandstone
entrance hall features four original stained-glass windows and, at right, the
Hume crest, which contains the family motto, True to the End. A French
serpentine white-marble console table is surmounted by a painted and gilded
pier glass. The 19th-century sleigh is from Austria.