Built in 1731 Westport House is one of the finest examples of a Georgian Palladian House built in Ireland, designed by the esteemed Richard Cassels. Cassels designed some of the most iconic mansions in Ireland, Leinster House, Russborough House, Powerscourt House and the Rotunda Hospital to name just a few. Prior to Cassels redesign an earlier house had been built by Colonel John Browne on the site of an 16th century O’Malley Castle known as Cahernamart. Browne was married to Maud Bourke who was the daughter of Theobald Bourke, 3rd Viscount Mayo and was the great-great-granddaughter of the ‘Pirate Queen’ Grace O’Malley. The Colonel was a Catholic and supported the Jacobite side in the Williamite Wars providing the army with iron for cannonballs and weapons from the mines on his lands. The defeat of the Jacobite army in 1691 brought financial ruin to Browne with a large proportion of his wealth confiscated. The Penal Laws which followed the defeat of James II meant that Browne’s grandson John IV had little choice but to convert to Protestantism in an effort to help the family survive the ongoing confiscations and suppression of Catholics.
Alongside the construction of the house and landscaped gardens as envisaged by Cassels John replaced the old small village of Cathair-na-Mart with the new town of Westport, where he established a linen industry. In 1752 John’s son Peter married the heiress Elizabeth Kelly from Galway whose family had large estates in Jamaica, this further enhance the Browne’s Fortunes. In 1771 John as given the title of the 1st Earl of Altamont with his son Peter inheriting the title also. Peter’s son was John, the third Earl of Altamont, who created the lake to the west of the house and hired James Wyatt to redesign the interior of the gallery and dining room, he also designed a greenhouse. The 3rd Earl laid out the main streets of Westport and many of the streets are named after the Browne family to this day for example Peter Street, James Street and Altamont Street. In 1800 after the Act of Union the 3rd Lord Altamont received a new title, the 1st Marquess of Sligo. His son Howe Browne inherited the family’s wealth in 1809 and became the 2nd Marquess of Sligo. He was known to be extravagant, wild and a buck, he was a friend of the Prince Regent and Lord Byron, travelling throughout Europe and partaking in the then popular aristocratic pursuit of excavating ancient ruins, in his case at Mycenae. He attempted to smuggle some 3,000-year-old columns from the Treasury of Atreus and bring them back to Westport, for this he was sentenced to four months in Newgate Prison. In 1819 he commissioned a south wing to be designed by Benjamin Wyatt, this wing only last 7 years before it was burned during a fire caused by a defective heating system,. The 2nd Marquess reconstructed a large section of the house including covering in what was a central open courtyard and added the north and south wings.
The Marquess married Lady Hester de Burgh, the Earl of Clanricarde’s daughter and became the 2nd Lord Sligo. In 1834 he was appointed as the Governor of Jamaica and was tasked with overseeing the ‘apprenticeship system’, this system was designed in a sense to transition out of slavery. The difference being that the slaves were paid but were still obligated to work a certain amount of hours for their former ‘masters’. Even this slight improvement in the slave’s lives was met with great opposition from plantation owners. The 2nd Lord Sligo was the first to fully emancipate the slaves on his family’s plantations and the first ‘free village’ in the world was subsequently named in his honour, this being Sligoville. Howe was also a supporter of Catholic Emancipation, he died as the famine started in 1845 and his son George became the 3rd Marquess of Sligo. George inherited an estate in a poor financial position, the local area had been so badly affected by the famine that rents dropped off the charts, George spent fifty thousand pounds importing cargoes of meal to Westport Quay to be distributed to the people and also subvented the local workhouse. Westport House continued to be held in the Browne family until 2016 when it was put up for sale and bought by the Hughes family in 2017, who committed to it remaining open to the public.
GPS: 53.80055, -9.53552