The burning of Woodstock House in Kilkenny 100 years ago 

The gardens of Woodstock House are the star attraction that draw tourists to Inistioge today. It is a stunning landscape brimming with bio-diversity, exotic tree specimens and towering pines, a cool green refuge from modern life. However, walking in the grounds, the shell of Woodstock House is still an imposing presence despite now being a ruin. 

The gardens contain many exotic plants from Asia and South America, including the Monkey Puzzle tree and the Noble Fir tree which form two of the dramatic walks in the gardens, as well as specimens of the Coast Redwood. Set against this landscape, the burnt out shell is a reminder of the destruction of country houses in Ireland, a phenomenon of the Irish revolutionary period (1919–1923), which saw at least 275 country houses deliberately burned down or destroyed by the Irish Republican Army. 

The burning of Woodstock House occurred in July 1922. The Georgian manor, formerly the home of the Tighe family had been used to garrison Auxiliaries (colloquially known as the Black and Tans) and was burned on the orders of the Central Command of the Anti-Treaty IRA to prevent pro Free State garrisons taking it over.  

While Woodstock is now a ruin, the house had a long history as a home for 170 years prior to being burned. It is mainly associated with the Tighe family but was first built by the Fownes in 1737, taking 4 to 5 years to complete. The 1700s were a period of intense house-building by wealthy landowners who engaged in a kind of architectural one-upmanship by commissioning ever larger and grander houses.

These neoclassical style houses drew on ancient Greek and Roman influences for inspiration and this era became known as the Georgian era. Symmetry and proportion were the defining features of these grand buildings. The designer of Woodstock was architect Frances Binden, who also designed 2 other South Kilkenny mansions - Castlemorris House and Bessborough House (now Kildalton College). 

At this time the Woodstock estate was vast, about 22,000 acres and was worked by tenant farmers who paid rent to the Fownes family. Elizabeth Ponsonby of Piltown married into the Fownes family (who built Woodstock House with her £4000 dowry) and her descendant Sarah Fownes later married into the Tighes, thereby bringing the estate into their ownership. Sarah married the Wicklow born son of an MP, William Tighe who died in 1782 leaving her a widow with 5 children. Their son, another William Tighe married Lady Louise Lennox in 1825, who became one of the most famous residents of the house. 

Louise was the daughter of the Duke of Richmond and married William Tighe as a love match. He, despite his wealth, was considered her social inferior. She was the person who planned the gardens at Woodstock with her husband (between 1860 and 1900), and launched many other initiatives in the area including lace making to give employment to local women. Unusually for a large estate, the gates of Woodstock were left open to allow locals access to the grounds, especially local children who played there. 

When  Lady Louise died in 1900, thousands turned out to pay their respects. Her funeral in St Mary’s Protestant chapel was attended by the Catholic Bishop of Ossory and one day later,  another funeral service was held at the neighbouring Catholic church in Inistioge. This unusual  sequence of events showed the exceptionally high esteem that Lady Louise was held in by the community.

The estate was inherited by her grand nephew by marriage, Edward Tighe who spent little time in Woodstock, except during the summers. In 1917 Edward was tragically murdered during a botched burglary and his heir and son Brian, then only 4 inherited. By 1913 most of the huge estate, which extended into Carlow, Tipperary and Westmeath had been sold off to the tenant farmers under successive land acts, so that by 1922 it was reduced to about 1300 acres. 

During the revolutionary era Woodstock was requisitioned by the British military and the Tighes were paid rent and compensation for its use. By 26th August 1920, A Company, of the Auxiliary Division of the Royal Irish Constabulary was posted to Woodstock. These Auxiliaries became known in Ireland as the Black and Tans and soon grew to be hated. They were essentially a heavy gang of decommissioned officers who were employed to fight fire with fire by Winston Churchill. They were  sent to Ireland to ruthlessly suppress the IRA and the War of Independence. 

The Auxiliaries conducted interrogations at Woodstock, imprisoning suspected IRA rebels in the cellar and torturing them with harsh beatings and cruel acts including breaking fingers to extract information. They would often take prisoners out on patrols as hostages knowing that the IRA wouldn’t attack them if they had their colleagues in their company. 

There is Pathé footage of the auxiliaries at Inistioge from 1920 progressing up the hill to Woodstock. Another clip shows them marching blindfolded IRA prisoners into the house while another records Auxiliaries running into action at the front of Woodstock House. The Auxiliaries’ time at Woodstock (approximately 18 months) was marked by killings, a suicide, a marriage and even a birth. From the late 1920s onwards, when ambushes became common, they couldn’t leave the estate except to patrol. When the truce happened from June 1921 to January 1922, things became slightly more relaxed again. 

On January 17, 1922, the IRA took over Woodstock when the Auxiliaries left after the Dáil accepted the terms of the Treaty. The IRA garrison then evacuated to defend James Stephens Barracks in Kilkenny city. Finally when the Civil War erupted on June 28 1922, Irish Free State forces left Woodstock for Dublin leaving the property unguarded - a decision that would prove fateful for the house.  Three days later, Sunday July 2, a dozen local IRA men burned down the house on orders from Central Command. The furniture was loaded into the centre of rooms, set on fire and the windows broken to create drafts to fan the flames. 

According to local folklore there are still items in Inistioge village from Woodstock House including cutlery and books which suggests that the locals took souvenirs. By morning nothing remained but a smouldering ruin and charred skeletal remains. People came from far and wide to view the damage left by what the Estate Manager, William Rogers called the “malicious burning”. It was reported that the arson attack took place at about 1AM and that petrol was stolen from a local garage in Inistioge to start the inferno. Viola Tighe, was reported to be “greatly upset” when she learned of the fire - she had had a difficult time even before then as in 1910 her son had died of pneumonia. Now her Irish home was gone too. 

When Brian Tighe was killed at Dunkirk in 1940, his first cousin Toby Tighe inherited the estate. Eventually in 1999, Anthony Tighe handed Woodstock over to Kilkenny County Council. Today, the estate is open to the public and is a popular recreational space. The shell of the house still stands guard over the splendid grounds  and while there have been discussions in the past about restoring the building, these have now been abandoned. 

As historian, Eoin Swithin Walsh says in his excellent podcast about Woodstock (which is part of Kilkenny Library Services’ Decade of Centenaries - Resources), 100 years later these ruins stand as a “monument to turbulent times”. 

Learn more about Woodstock at: www.kilkennylibrary.ie/eng/our_services/decade-of-centenaries-resources/the-burning-of-woodstock-house/