The stately Mayo designs of James Franklin Fuller
By Tom Gillespie
THE west of Ireland is dotted with magnificent period houses of fine design.
From Kylemore Abbey to Ashford Castle, Mount Falcon and Belleek Castle, they all have one thing in common.
They were designed by James Franklin Fuller, a favourite architect of the gentry.
Other works include Farmleigh House, now owned by the government, and the Great Southern Hotel, Parknasilla, Co. Kerry.
During the 1870s he carried out a lot of work for the Knox family in Mayo, especially in the Ballina area.
There he was involved with the construction of Mount Falcon. The ‘castle’ was created from the love of one young man for his new bride - Miss Nina Knox-Gore of Belleek Manor. He agreed that she was so special that she deserved to live in a ‘castle’.
In 1872 this young man, Sir Arthur Knox-Gore, for the cost of €10,000, commissioned Fuller to construct a palatial home at Mount Falcon and Fuller also carried out work for the Knoxes of Belleek Castle.
For them he designed a new gateway to the castle and an impressive monument over the grave of Arthur Knox-Gore who died in 1873.
Belleek Castle was built between 1825 and 1831, on the site of a medieval abbey, one of four along the River Moy, and the Knox-Gores lived in Belleek until the early 1940s.
Marshall Doran, a merchant navy officer and an avid collector of fossils and medieval armour, acquired the rundown property in 1961, restored it and opened it as a hotel in 1970.
Some of the rooms are in 19th style, whilst most of the interior design has a medieval and nautical touch. Marshall, being quite a craftsman, did a lot of the work himself, assisted by John Mullen, and supervised the restoration expertly. Today, the castle is managed by Marshall’s son Paul Doran and Ms. Maya Nikolaeva.
Another of Fuller’s works was the design and construction of Errew Grange for Granville Knox near Crossmolina.
The Ashford Castle estate was purchased in 1852 by Benjamin Lee Guinness from the Encumbered Estates’ Court. He added two large Victorian style extensions. He also extended the estate to 26,000 acres, built new roads and planted thousands of trees. On Sir Benjamin's death in 1868, the estate passed to his son Lord Ardilaun, who expanded the building further in the neo Gothic style.
Lord Ardilaun was an avid gardener who oversaw the development of massive woodlands and rebuilt the entire west wing of the castle, designed by architects Fuller and George Ashlin. The new construction connected the early 18th century part in the east with two de-Burgo-time towers in the west, and battlements were added to the whole castle.
Fuller came of minor landed gentry in Co. Kerry. He was born in 1835, the only son of Thomas Harnett Fuller of Glashnacree, Co. Kerry, by his first wife, Frances Diana, third daughter of Francis Christopher Bland of Derryquin Castle, Co. Kerry.
He was sent to school in Blackrock, Co. Cork, and after two years the establishment moved to Dublin, where he completed his schooling.
In 1850 he went to England, where he spent a year's apprenticeship with the mechanical engineers Summers, Day and Baldock of Southampton before entering the office of Frederick William Porter of London.
After serving his articles with Porter he worked briefly for several London architects - Horace Jones, Thomas Roger Smith and William Burges - then for Alfred Waterhouse in Manchester. From Manchester he moved to the office of Matthew Ellison Hadfield in Sheffield, and afterwards to the office of Henry Dawson in the City of London.
In 1861 Fuller returned to Co. Kerry with his wife. The following year he answered an advertisement for a district architect under the Irish ecclesiastical commissioners, and was chosen for the post from among 97 candidates.
His charge was the North Western Division with a residence at Killeshandra, Co. Cavan. On the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland in 1869, he received a lump payment and set up his own office at 179 Great Brunswick Street, Dublin, where he remained for the rest of his long life.
His connection with the Church of Ireland continued: in 1871 he became architect to the Representative Church Body for the Dioceses of Dublin, Glendalough, Kildare, Ossory, Ferns and Leighlin, and in 1882 for Meath, holding these positions until his resignation at the end of March 1913 'on account of advancing years and failing health', when he was granted a retiring allowance of £200 per annum.
In 1873 he was appointed architect to St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin. He was considered an authority on the Hiberno-Romanesque style.
In addition to ecclesiastical work, he was architect to the Benchers of King's Inns and to the National Board of Education, and in 1912 he was appointed assessor to the Ballsbridge Carnegie Library competition.
In addition to running a busy architectural practice, Fuller was a prolific writer on a variety of topics. He published several novels, which were well received, as well as articles on genealogy, heraldry and antiquarian subjects. His reminiscences, Omniana: the autobiography of an Irish octogenarian, were published in 1916.
Fuller died suddenly, after a few hours' illness, at his house on Eglinton Road, Dublin, on December 8, 1924. In spite of the 'failing health' cited as a reason for his resignation from his position with the Representative Church Body in 1913, he was said to have 'retained all his faculties and mental vigour to the end'.
He ascribed his longevity to a sound constitution which had not been undermined by excess. He ate only two meals a day, drank mainly water, confined his pipe smoking to the period after dinner, and kept his bedroom window open at night throughout the year.
In 1860 he had married Hélène (1838-1925), daughter of John Prosper Guivier, a French musician, by whom he had two sons and three daughters, of whom only one daughter, Evelyn, survived him. She is buried in the same plot as her parents in Mount Jerome Cemetery.