Borris House

The ancestral home of the Mcmorrough Kavanaghs, High Kings of Leinster, Borris is one of the few Irish estates that can trace its history back to the royal families of ancient Ireland. Set in over six hundred and fifty acres of walled private park and woodlands, Borris House retains its place as the centrepiece of the locality.

Originally an important castle guarding the River Barrow, Borris House was rebuilt in 1731 and late altered by the architectural dynastic family, The Morrisons, chiefly Richard and William. Externally, they clothed the 18th c house in a thin Tudor Gothic disguise, adding a crenellated arcaded porch on the entrance and decorating the windows with rectangular and ogival hood-moulds.

Inside the house they created an exuberant series of rooms beginning with the most florid room of the house, the entrance hall, where a circle is created within a square space with the clever use of pairs of scagliola columns and richly modelled plasterwork. The ceiling is like a great wheel with its shallowly coved circular centre from which eight beams radiate outwards. The plasterwork is profuse with festoons in the frieze, eagles with outspread wings in the spandrels and swirling acanthus in the cove of the ceiling.

Richard and William Morrison designed a number of works as a father and son team. They include such prominent houses as Baronscourt, Co Tyrone, Kilruddery House, Co Wicklow, Ballyfin House, Co Laois and Fota House, Co Cork. Among their public works were alterations to the cathedral at Cashel, the court-house and gaol at Galway, court-houses at Carlow, Clonmel, Roscommon, Wexford, and elsewhere, and the Roman Catholic Pro-cathedral at Dublin. William Morrison is also responsible for Clontarf Castle, Co Dublin, Glenarm Castle and Mount Stewart, Co Down.