From the Summer 2017 edition
James Horan recounts how a chance encounter led to the unravelling of some architectural mysteries in the restoration of Humewood Castle, County Wicklow
Humewood Castle was constructed between 1867 and 1870 to the designs prepared by the architect, William White (1825-1900). It had been commissioned by the Right Honourable William Wentworth Fitzwilliam Hume Dick (1805-1892), a Wicklow landowner and member of Parliament at Westminster from 1852-1880. Hume Dick was one of the descendants of the Dunbar, Dundas and Hume families who originally came from Scotland in the mid-17th century with branches of the Hume family eventually residing in Sligo, Donegal and Monaghan as well as in Co Wicklow. The lands at Humewood were bought by Thomas Hume in 1704.
The castle, its attendant buildings and surrounding estate would become one of the most extraordinary Victorian Gothic stately homes in Ireland, and indeed one of Ireland’s last castles. However, realisation…
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