A Monaghan MP and the tragic death of Lady Anne
Following on from last week, we now recall the next owner of Dartrey Estate. His name is Thomas Dawson: the elder brother of Richard Jnr who you may remember was murdered in 1782.
Thomas inherited the Dartrey Estate on the death of his father Richard who served as a former ‘Alderman of Dublin’ and died in 1766. Thomas, the new owner strongly supported the British government and was eventually raised to the peerage. However, his political leanings were in sharp contrast to his brother Richard Jnr who remained in favour of having Ireland ruled by an Irish government, as it had been prior to the Act of Union.
Born on February 25, 1725, Thomas Dawson, MP for Monaghan from 1749 to 1768, was elevated to the peerage of Ireland in 1770 as Baron Dartrey, of Dawson Grove, and thereafter, to the lofty sounding title of Viscount Cremorne, on June 9, 1785, and then as Baron of Cremorne in 1797.
The Viscount was married in 1754 to a woman named Lady Anne Fermor, a daughter of the 1st Earl of Pomfret, and they had a son named Richard and a daughter, Henrietta Anne. Sadly, Lady Anne Fermor Dawson died on March 1, 1769, at the age of just 36 years. Poignantly, it was noted that both their children too, would die in youth; Richard lived until he was 19 years and Henrietta until she was 11 years old.
Available information on Lady Anne appeared to be quite scarce until I obtained a copy of a publication called ‘Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century’, penned by Amy Prendergast. Prior to finding the book, I had extraordinarily little information about her.
Lady Anne Dawson was said to have been an important link between Ireland and England as a member of the Bluestocking Society, which was founded by a group of ladies. The founders included Elizabeth Vesey, Elizabeth Montagu, and others and it was established for the purpose of educating and of inspiring mutual co-operation amongst women; men were permitted to attend the meetings too.
When a botanist named Benjamin Stillingfleet arrived informally dressed to one such meeting in his bluestockings, this gave rise to the term bluestockings, which came to symbolise the focus on conversation being more valuable than worrying about fashion. The ‘bluestocking’ term was widely applied to all learned and literary women by the late 18th Century and Lady Anne Dawson was regularly featured in letters connected to the society founder Elizabeth Vesey.
An extract from the bluestockings correspondence, in Prendergast’s book, reads: ‘Gentle gales and halcyon seas convey you safely over, my dear Mrs Vesey, to the friend who will so truly rejoice to see you on this side the water! Pray despatch your affairs as fast as possible and get yourself ready to come with Lady Anne Dawson, for it will be a great comfort to me to think you are embarked in the same vessel to save from sinking a whole fleet of such poor frail mortals as you and I …’
The book further adds that members of the bluestockings were ‘all enamoured’ by Lady Anne Dawson’s influence on Mrs Vesey and emphasised that she was held in high opinion by Mrs Montagu who gushingly praised Anne, whom she said was simply, ‘Milton’s divine melancholy… she is the Goddess, and Sage, and holy.’
The Yale Centre for British Art said of Thomas Dawson: [he is] ‘an Anglo-Irish landowner with close ties to the court of George III.’ Indeed, Joseph Wilton, who produced sculptures for Lady Anne Temple for Thomas Dawson, is described by the Yale Centre as a ‘Sculptor in Ordinary to George III’. Wilton produced a bust in marble based on the statue of Thomas Dawson from the Temple. The bust can be seen at the Yale Centre. The Georgian-styled Lady Anne Temple was designed by the eminent architect, James Wyatt.
Lady Anne’s Temple
Thomas was bereft when Lady Anne died. He had the temple, or to be more accurate a mausoleum erected in her memory. On 19 August 1774, The Hibernian Journal, contained a report on the Dartrey Temple, which stated: ‘A few days ago was landed in Dublin a beautiful Marble Monument done by Joseph Wilton, Esq., of Portland Street, London, which Lord Dartrey is to erect in a Temple at his seat in Co. Monaghan, to the memory of his late wife, Lady Anne Dawson, daughter of the late Earl of Pomfret’.
In 1798, when the ‘Wexford Rebellion’ broke out, and fearing reprisals, Thomas had the remains of his first wife and two children exhumed, and removed to Stoke Poges Church, Buckinghamshire, England, for reburial.
In 1917, an account appeared in volume 10 of the ‘Association for the Preservation of the Memorials of the Dead, Ireland’ which stated: ‘On a wooded island in a lake in Lord Dartrey’s demesne is a square building, with a single window in the roof, known as the Temple.’
Later in 1961, a study on ‘Memorials’ was published in the Quarterly Bulletin of the Irish Georgian Society which included an account of the Dartrey Temple. The society pointed out the dire state of the Mausoleum during the early 1960s, telling us that: ‘The roof has fallen in, and if the monument had not been in a niche, it would have suffered even more than it has from the weather’; while ‘vandals have broken off fingers and toes, and the angel’s arm has gone.’
The account added that: ‘The Irish Georgian Society has made it waterproof and put a stout lock on the door and has cleaned off the signatures which defaced the urn.’ At the time, members of the Georgian Society wishing to see the Temple, were asked to ‘apply to Lady Edith Windham, Dartrey, for the key’.
Thankfully, in recent times, the Dartrey Heritage Association under the expert guidance of Noel Carney have had the Lady Anne Temple, on Black Island, restored to its former glory. The Irish Georgian Society note that the original designs for the mausoleum were placed in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.