This chair is one of the few pieces of furniture that survived the fire that destroyed Castle Bernard in Cork, Ireland in 1921.I was lucky to include one of the only pictures of the interior of the castle before the fire in my first book which clearly shows the chair in the bottom right hand corner. Castle Bernard was the ancestral home of the Bernard family and the Earls of Bandon for generations. After the fire, a compensation claim was lodged with the Irish Government for the loss of the castle in the unsettled political climate of Ireland of the 1920s. The Bernard’s lodged separate claims for the loss of the castle building and its contents. Estimates of the rebuilding costs were made an it was said that if Lord and Lady Bandon left out ‘the trimmings’ they could rebuild the castle for £62,464 including fees. The Bernards’s also lodged claims for the loss of furniture, china, wines, wardrobes and paintings. Lord Bandon lodged a claim for £44,500 for the loss of items that were directly related to him which included a library of rare books. Lady Bandon made a separate claim for the loss of furniture that would have originated from her family together with china, jewellery and valuable old lace that amounted to £14,000. No detailed inventory existed for Castle Bernard, so Lady Bandon and a servant who was familiar with the rooms of the castle made a list of the contents of each room. Lady Bandon herself provided an inventory of the rare china that had been collected by first Earl. Lady Bandon also included a claim for rare china which had come from the Carbery’s house in England, Laxton Hall, which she received upon her marriage to Lord Bandon in 1876. During the hearing of the Bandon Quarterly Session, a Mr. Bennet from Dublin made a detailed presentation of the furniture, paintings and china lost in the fire based on the lists prepared by Lady Bandon and the servant. The claims of Lord and Lady Bandon were broken down as follows; Lord Bandon’s furniture £18,782, his personal wardrobe £732 and the paintings from the castle gallery £25,080. Lady Bandons claim included furniture £11,172 and her personal wardrobe £2,900. The judge awarded Lord Bandon £45,691 and Lady Bandon £14,072. Read about this and other Irish Castles in my first book found at the link below: collinspress.ie/irish-country-houses.html
Posted on: Sun, 13 Jul 2014 07:51:55 +0000
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