Image courtesy of the Irish Architectural Archive
In 1825 John Smith Barry had extensive landscaping works carried out to create Fota Island Demesne in Cork. The Demense included parkland areas, plantations, and elaborate walled and formal gardens, to the north and east of the newly enlarged Fota House. Four separate walled gardens, covering approximately 5 acres, were in evidence on the 1841 Ordnance Survey. This map is interesting as it shows a building, possibly an earlier conservatory, forming the fourth side of the walled garden nearest the house The Pleasure Gardens. A long rectangular garden was in use as an orchard and the other three gardens had highly decorative formal layouts. The arboretum commenced by John's son, James Hugh Smith Barry, around 1847 extended right up to the walled gardens, incorporating the area of the earlier formal garden by 1862-70. A number of additional glasshouses, vineries and frame yards had been added to the northern-most section of the walled gardens to ensure a continuous supply of exotic fruits vegetables and flowers for the house and formal garden displays. Walled gardens of the period were generally more decorative nearer the house and more productive further away. Gardening skills were highly valued and a head gardener’s house had been built in the corner of the walled orchard by this time. From around 1863 Arthur Hugh Smith Barry (later Lord Barrymore ) continued his father's work planting the arboretum with native and exotic species, and developed new features
in the gardens, including significant developments to the walled Pleasure Gardens. He also built a new classicalstyle Orangery (recently restored by the OPW) on an axis with the house and new terraces, steps and paths connecting to the south and east sides of the house. Arthur Hugh removed the old conservatory from the south side of the Pleasure Gardens and replaced it with a high yew hedge with new ornamental gates and stone piers, which were erected in 1890 in memory of his first wife, Lady Mary Smith Barry. These gates formed the new entrance to the Pleasure Gardens on the main central garden axis leading to the classical temple on the south wall and ornamental pond in the centre of the garden, which can all still be seen today. By 1898 the garden had been divided into two compartments by a further yew hedge. On one side were a number of stone steps leading to two sunken areas, one a formal rose garden; directly behind this was a formal cordyline garden. On the other side of the garden the yew hedge was extended to form two further compartments; one was for a tennis court and the other became the site of what was originally called the Italian Garden. An article in Irish Garden Magazine of 1914 refers to a sunken Italian Garden across from the rose garden with paved paths and a fine 15th-century Italian well-head as a centre piece,apparently brought back from Italy by Lady Barrymore in 1910. However, the accompanying
photograph with this article, though an extremely useful view of the Pleasure Gardens did not include a view of the Italian Garden, of which no trace appeared to have survived Major and Mrs Bell (a daughter of Arthur Hugh Smith Barry) came to live at Fota in1937 after it had gone through a period of neglect, and set about restoring the gardens. Mrs Bell carried on the family tradition of adding to the planting in the gardens and arboretum. The walls to the gardens remained intact, and the gardens were generally used productively for fruit and vegetables. The glasshouses however deteriorated further. The Cordyline garden was grassed over and by the 1950's the Rose garden had been reduced in scale . The Pleasure Garden to the east of the house retained their yew hedge compartments until after the estate was sold in 1975 to University College Cork. In the 1980s Fota House, arboretum and about a hundred acres of parkland passed to the Fota Trust and because of the importance of the plant collection,the arboretum and gardens were later brought into state care in the mid-1990s under Park Superintendent Cormac Foley.
OBAIR 19
