Irish Manor House : History of Coopershill
The history of Coopershill is, per se, the story of Simon’s family. The house was built for his great, great, great, great grandfather and he is the seventh generation of the family to live here. For live in the house he does – his bedroom is on the 2nd floor.
Arthur & Sarah Cooper lived originally in a 16th century house which was alongside the Drumfin to Riverstown road. This building still stands proudly with sound walls, situated just before the sharp right turn on the avenue which takes you onto the humpback bridge over the river Unsin. The old house is now used to store hay & straw.
In the early 1750s, with luxury in mind, Arthur & Sarah decided that they would build on the bare hill nearby, across the river. The story is told that they engaged an architect & a builder, placed two buckets of gold sovereigns on the ground and instructed them to build a grand manor house on the hill. However, they had not reckoned with the building of the bridge across the river; every time the foundation stones were laid by the river bed, the giant stones would sink into the soft mud. The solution found was to place layers of fresh sheepskins under each stone, which would prevent them sinking. To this day the skins remain and the bridge is solid, which is a good thing for all of us! However, it is said that the skins must remain moist, or they will dry out and rot and the bridge subside. A good side of all the rain we get in Ireland is that there seems little chance of the river drying up. So, after the drama of the bridge, the best part of a bucket of the sovereigns had been spent.
The building of the house started in 1755, under the supervision
of one of the best known architects of the time, Francis Bindon,
of Ennis in County Clare. We often wonder at the task that was
given to Mr. Bindon. He lived close to where Shannon Airport
is now, and a round trip to see the progress of the building
of Coopershill would have taken him a full week. The poor man
was eventually killed in coach crash – hopefully he was
not on his way to or from Sligo at the time.
Experts can now look at the house and tell us that the builder
changed somewhere near the top floor, so all did not go smoothly.
The sandstone blocks, from which the outer stones were cut,
were dragged by mules from a quarry 5 miles away; there still
remains a wood on the estate named “the Mule Park”,
where the mules were stabled. The stones were shaped by masons
working at the front of the house, and the chippings lie just
2 feet below the surface of the lawn, surprisingly thwarting,
rather than aiding, good drainage.
It is clear by the positioning of the main staircase that the
owners could not decide whether the entrance to the solid square
shaped Georgian house should be through the north or south facing
walls. They appear to have left the decision till the last possible
moment, no doubt adding to the problems of the architect &
the builder. The mansion took 19 years to build and was finally
completed in 1774. The store of sovereigns must have been exhausted
by this time, because there is evidence that much of the interior
of the house was completed later; the design of the door casings,
for example, was to be found only in London in the 1770s, so
these will have been added at a later date.
