Description
Florence Court is the great house of the Cole family, who came to Enniskillen with Captain (later Sir) William Cole, the governor of the town and grantee of surrounding lands under James I. He repaired the castle at Enniskillen and built the tower and strong house at Portora. In 1710, on the death of his grandson, Sir Michael Cole, the estates passed to the first of the family to live at Florence Court, John Cole, M.P. for Enniskillen, whose wife, Florence Wrey from Trebitch in Cornwall, gave her name to the house. John Cole is called ‘of Florence Court’ and is said to have begun ‘very costly and sumptuous buildings’ on his estate before he died in 1726, but the bulk of the present building is the work of his son, another John, who in 1760 was raised to the Irish peerage as Baron Mount Florence of Florence Court. A memorandum of 5 November 1767 added to Lord Mount Florence’s will shortly before his death directed that his eldest son William should inherit ‘all the marble chimney pieces and cut stone for the colonnades at Florence Court’; so the wings of the house must have been projected in that year. William Cole was created Earl of Enniskillen in 1789, and the title has remained in the family ever since. In 1955 the main block was partly destroyed by fire. It was restored by the National Trust, to whom the house had been made over by the fifth Earl two years before. Much of the fine Rococo plasterwork in the interior was saved by the foresight of the then Countess, who had holes bored through the surviving ceilings to let the water drain away.
The house is a tall, early to mid 18th century 7 bay block of 3 storeys over a basement its front heavily enriched with rustications, balustrades, pedimented niches and other features; joined by long arcades with rusticated pilasters to pedimented and pilastered single-storey pavilions.
The centre block was probably built by John Cole MP (later 1st Lord Mountflorence), whose mother was the Florence after whom the house is named; the name was probably originally given to a shooting-box built here in the days when the family lived at Enniskillen Castle. The arcades and pavilions seem to date from ca.1770, and would have been added by William Cole, 1st Earl of Enniskillen, possibly designed by Davis Duckart. They blend perfectly with the centre block, and the whole long, golden-grey front has a dream-like Baroque beauty that is all the greater for being somewhat bucolic. The centre block has a 3 bay breakfront with a central pedimented niche between 2 windows in the top storey, a Venetian window between 2 niches in the storey below, and a pedimented tripartite doorway on the ground floor. The rear elevation has a central 3 sided bow with rusticated window surrounds; but there is nothing like the lavish ornament here that there is on the front, Curved sweeps join the back of the house to outbuildings.
The interior contains some wonderfully vigorous rococo plaster work, in the manner of Robert West and apparently dating from 1755. In the hall, which is divided from the staircase by an arch, the decoration is architectural, reflecting the outside, with banded pilasters and a Doric frieze. Through the arch and up the staircase of splendid joinery with its handrail of tulip wood, the plasterwork becomes more rococo: great panels of foliage on the walls, and a cornice of pendants and acanthus. From the half landing one gets a view downwards to the hall and upwards through 2 arches at the top of the stairs to the Venetian Room, lit by the great Venetian window, which has what is probably the finest ceiling in the house; with a swirl of foliage and eagles and other birds of prey in high relief. The drawing room, to the right of the foot of the staircase, has a cornice of acanthus foliage, masks of "Tragedy" and "Comedy", baskets of fruit and birds. The ceiling of the dining room, on the other side of the staircase hall, is more elaborate, with foliage and birds and a central panel of cherubs puffing from clouds. There was formerly a delightful ceiling in the nursery on the top floor, with drums, rocking horses and other toys incorporated in the ornament. The park, which is dramatically overshadowed by the sombre mountains of Benknocklan and Cuilcagh, contains the original Irish or Florence Court yew.
The 5th Earl and his son, the late Viscount Cole, gave Florence Court to the Northern Ireland National Trust 1953. Two years later, the centre of the house was severely damaged by fire; fortunately the staircase and much of the plasterwork was saved, and most of what was lost was restored under the direction of the late Sir Albert Richardson. No photographic record existed of the nursery ceiling, which was among those destroyed; so this was not reinstated.
The house is then of two, if not three, periods and restored in the 20th century. It occupies a magnificent site on a shallow ridge looking E across pastoral country towards Lough Erne and west to the Leitrim hills, with Cullcagh, an escarpment of over 608m where the Maguire chiefs of Fermanagh were anciently crowned, behind the house to the southwest. Further south is the bold outline of Benaughlin rising as a great humped cliff out of the trees of the park. The Irish Georgian Society volumes describe the house as the finest early Georgian house in Co. Fermanagh. It is in fact the finest in all the counties dealt with in this volume, but its architecture is endearing rather than fine, with a showy façade that degenerates into a very plain rendered box at the sides and back. The main house, dated variously around 1758 to 1764, is a tall three-storey block, three rooms wide and two rooms deep, with a central hall opening directly to a staircase behind which projects as a narrow canted bay in the middle of the rear façade. All around, the roof is hidden by a high parapet, balustraded at the front but solid at the sides and back, so that the house from the w has a blank, bald appearance similar to Mountcharles Hall in Donegal.
The wings added about 1768 have improved the house immeasurably, for it is now impossible to walk round the main block and experience the architectural disintegration just described. Extending in a straight line with the front and ending in irregular octagonal pavilions, the wings expand the show façade to a frontage of 260ft, so that the exterior must be judged as a front. The wings, a good deal more sophisticated than the main block, are attributed by the Knight of Glin to Davis Ducart, the architect of Castletown, Cox, the Customs House, Limerick, and Lissan House near Cookstown in Tyrone. Their straightness, extent, and terminal pavilions are all unusual, recalling, if anything, the younger John Wood's wings at Buckland in Berkshire of 1757. The arcades are open, of seven bays, Doric, with a triglyph frieze and rusticated pilasters; the pavilions with high leaded roofs have shallow pedirnented centres with windows flanked by niches between plain Doric pilasters.
In detail the main front is quite crazy. Seen in perspective from the entrance drive it masses grandly enough, but anyone who stands opposite the front door and looks at the facade will soon detect the vain gloriousness of a provincial hand. Rustication, keystones, and lugged surrounds run riot. The window surrounds are not the same on any two floor levels, and those on the ground and first floors are of a curious Gibbs type gone wrong, with the rusticated blocks moved sideways, set beyond the edge of the architrave surround and not over it. Each floor is marked by a string course and cornice, and all the corners have rusticated quoins. The centre, projecting slightly, is a welter of jumbled scales. First the main door, flanked by side lights and surmounted by a big Doric pediment supported on illiterate rusticated pilasters that shrink to a thin line between the rusticated blocks. Above, a rusticated Venetian window with blind balustrading almost sits on the point of the pediment and is flanked by two niches in aedicules different in scale from anything else on the façade. A third, fatter niche, flanked by paired rusticated pilasters, is squashed in between the two attic windows on the top floor. What is one to make of this front? Richard Castle, who designed the now vanished Castle Hume nearby, has been proposed as architect, but the design, for all its charm, is far too gauche for him, though it does seem likely that the plan to judge by its old-fashioned style might have been drawn up a good many years before it was built. The mason for the wings was a man called Andrew Lambert, who incorporated plain office buildings behind them, with a plain quadrant wall curving away from the w front.
Inside it is the plasterwork and woodwork that are the best features. One would not look for ingenious planning. The Hall, almost square, is Doric, with a nice sandstone Doric fire place surmounted - unusually for a chimneypiece - with a raking pediment. The front-door pediment is repeated inside and bumps awkwardly into the ceiling cornice. The doors are a curious seven-panel design that is used throughout the house. The Stair, opening off the hall through a segment-headed arch, is particularly fine. Three fluted banisters per tread, with a mahogany rail and a pine floor. It is lit from the half-landing by two tiers of windows (making the centre of the rear façade have four storeys while the bays on either side are only three) and has fine Rococo panels in plasterwork, similar to those in Trinity College Common Room in Dublin, and a Gothic plaster cornice of alternating cusped and ogee arches in brackets round the walls. The best surviving ceiling is in the original Dining Room, where birds, acanthus scrolls, and cornucopias in high relief fill the frieze of a rich Corinthian entablature; the ceiling itself is filled with scrolls, shells, and rocaille work round a circular panel with Jupiter's eagle hovering over the hook for the chandelier, surrounded by the four winds. The chimneypiece is a nice mid c18 design - perhaps one of those mentioned in Lord Mount Florence's will - with consoles and a central Apollo mask. On the first floor beyond the stair is a charming Vaulted Lobby and then the Venetian Window Room with another cornice of birds and flowers worthy of Dublin craftsmen, and restored Rococo ceiling that just lacks the edge of the original work.