Government seeks partner to save historic house
The Government is considering a joint bid with private interests to buy one of the country’s most historically well-connected stately homes.
Lissadell House in Co Sligo, which has strong links with the 1916 Easter Rising against British rule, is up for sale – at an asking price of almost €3.75m.
But its redevelopment could swell the final cost to more than €30m and, because of current financial pressures, Environment Minister Martin Cullen feels that the Government cannot afford to go it alone.
He is therefore looking for partners from the private or local authority sector in the face of a concerted campaign for government intervention on Lissadell.
The name has been copied by home-owners throughout the length and breadth of Ireland, but the original Lissadell featured in a poem by WB Yeats and is currently home to a family centrally caught up in the fight for independence in the early years of the last century.
The Gore-Booths have lived in the house since it was built around 170 years ago and it is now going on the market for the first time – in a move that has sparked attempts to keep the building for the nation.
It was the childhood home of Constance Gore-Booth who in later years, as Countess Markiewicz, was closely connected with the leaders of the struggle for independence and became the first woman to be elected to the British House of Commons.
She lived at Lissadell with her sister Eva and their beauty, as well as the elegance of the building itself, was believed to have inspired Yeats to pen the line “The light of evening, Lissadell, great windows open to the south.”
The countess fought alongside the Irish freedom fighters during the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin and was condemned to death by the British authorities.
Her sentence was later quashed and she was imprisoned instead.
After refusing to take her seat as the first woman MP at Westminster, she later sat as a member of the first Dáil.
After that, she fought in the Civil War and aided the poor of Dublin until her death in 1927.
Her brother Josslyn was the grandfather of the present Lissadell owner, who has the same name.
The grey limestone mansion is set in 400 acres of parkland on the northern shore of Sligo Bay.
Designed by the London architect Francis Goodwin for Sir Robert Gore-Booth MP, the building of Lissadell began in 1830 and was completed five years later, replacing a smaller house.
The Gore-Booths have lived in the area for 400 years, and at one time their estate extended over 32,000 acres.
But the sheer cost of maintaining the present-day property is reckoned to have prompted the decision to sell.
The Government was today urged to move swiftly to purchase the property to save it “pure and true” for the nation, and invest later in development of Lissadell.
Sligo County Tourism executive Ita Leyden said: “Millions do not have to be pumped into it right away – that can be done later.
“That is a step in the right direction.”
