Baltyboys House

53°08′49″N 6°32′10″W / 53.14699°N 6.53621°W / 53.14699; -6.53621 Baltyboys House, also known as Boystown House, is an 18th-century Georgian country house close to Blessington, County Wicklow, Ireland.

Baltyboys House is a mansion built in the Georgian style. The estate sits on one hundred acres.[1][2][3] It is located a mile from Russborough House, near Poulaphouca Reservoir.[4]

The estate was previously owned by the Smiths, a gentry family. Elizabeth Grant Smith, the wife of Colonel Henry Smith, wrote extensively about managing the estate, particularly during the Great Famine.[5] Dame Ninette de Valois, the great-granddaughter of Elizabeth Grant Smith, was born at Baltyboys.[6][7] In her 1959 memoir Come Dance With Me, de Valois described Baltyboys House thus:[8]

My home, Baltiboys, a country house situated some two miles from the village of Blessington in County Wicklow, stood in the middle of a beautiful stretch of country at the foot of the Wicklow Hills. The original house was burnt in the rising of 1798; the house was now a long two-storeyed building with a spacious network of basement rooms. It was a typical Irish country house of about 1820-30, late Georgian in part, consisting of one main wing and two smaller ones.

In January 2014 the estate sold for €4.925 million by the owner, Elizabeth McClory, daughter of Vincent O'Brien and second wife of Kevin McClory. Baltyboys was not listed on the market, instead being sold through a private auction at Christie's.[1]

References

  1. ^ a b Lyons, Madeleine (15 May 2014). "Owning the big house: Who buys a country pile?". The Irish Times. Irish Times Trust. Retrieved 3 March 2019.
  2. ^ "Baltyboys House". National Inventory of Architectural Heritage. Retrieved 3 March 2019.
  3. ^ Long, George (1843). The Penny Cyclopædia. Vol. 27. Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. p. 356.
  4. ^ Hayes, Jim (February 2014). The Road from Harbour Hill. Bloomington, Indiana: iUniverse LLC. p. 229. ISBN 9781491716236.
  5. ^ TeBrake, Janet K. "Personal narratives as historical sources: the journal of Elizabeth Smith 1840-1850 (3:1)". History Island. History Publications Ltd. Retrieved 3 March 2019.
  6. ^ "Baltyboys House, Hill and Cairn". Wicklow Heritage. Archived from the original on 6 March 2019. Retrieved 3 March 2019.
  7. ^ "Blessington Lakeside". Irish Independent. Independent News & Media. 24 February 2018. Retrieved 3 March 2019.
  8. ^ de Valois 1959, p. 14.

Sources