Capard House Irish Country Estate
A Georgian manor and demesne restored over three years, and refurnished with Irish antiques brought home
Ireland has long held me captive, its magic and its beauty and above all its eighteenth-century architecture, when the Classical Revival swept the country and aristocrats and merchants built magnificent edifices for themselves. Longtime clients of mine fell for the same enchanted land and bought Capard House, a Georgian country manor and demesne.
The entrance hall is the perfect invitation into the house. Dove grey walls are decoupaged with eighteenth-century Irish scenes, local landmarks, architecture and pastoral views, sourced from the historic library at Birr Castle.
It is a print room in the Irish Georgian tradition, taking its cue from Castletown House in County Kildare. In the porch, a pair of Greek Revival consoles carry the Capard House crest.
Butter-yellow paint in the great hall, chosen to match the tone of the original decoration, gives a warm welcome to a display of antique busts.
One is a sixteenth-century Roman emperor, one of a pair that came from the Guinness collection at Leixlip Castle.
The drawing room centres on the only original furniture left in the house: three large William IV mirrors made in Dublin around 1820. Deep Prussian blue silk damask hangs on the walls, and forest green velvet and silk cover the upholstery. Scagliola columns open the room into the enfilade beyond.
Custom de Gournay chinoiserie envelopes the double-sided library, which holds a pair of Robert Adam marble mantelpieces.
The dining room is hand-painted, a romantic reading of the view from Capard that takes in the Slieve Bloom Mountains alongside local follies and ruins. The table is laid with crested porcelain and Irish Georgian silver.
The heart of the home is the kitchen, where original eighteenth-century stone floors are heated by a giant double Aga and thick plastered walls back a dresser stacked with ironstone, copper and jugs. The refectory table runs seventeen feet and was found in Los Angeles.
“I searched the auction houses of the world to find Irish antiques and return them to their motherland.”
Martyn Lawrence Bullard
The original wine cellar is now a bar the family call the Hair of the Dog, after the Staffordshire dogs that decorate it.
The main powder room is hung with early nineteenth-century Piranesi lithographs beneath an enormous Irish Regency overmantel mirror. A second is papered with Regency silhouettes.
The billiard room is wrapped in eighteenth-century-style silk damask and hung with Irish portraits, including Arthur Guinness over the mantel.
Plaster architectural fragments cover the conservatory walls, above woven rattan by Soane.
The restoration of this Palladian-inspired house took three years, from replacing the floorboards up. Its history is entwined with local aristocrats, rebellion, romance and intrigue.
A Georgian four-poster stands flanked by a suite of four eighteenth-century Irish mirrors. In the bathroom, peacock blue and a Mary Beale portrait of Elizabeth Cockayne, circa 1670, looking down from above.
Outside, the landscaping was opened up to reveal the folly, the lake, the walled garden and the classical lawns. My clients planted a topiary garden and brought the land holding back to its original size and scale. Proof that a grand house can still be a warm home for a family in the twenty-first century.
Capard House was published in Veranda in October 2023.
Photography by James McDonald for Veranda
Star Style
This project appears in Star Style by Martyn Lawrence Bullard, his collection of the interiors he has created for the people who shape modern taste. Signed copies are available here.
