Why does the National Trust tell us that the ceiling of Clandon’s Marble Hall cannot rise from the ashes?

Kilboy in County Tipperary is a great house, originally built in the 1760s, burnt in 1922, demolished in 1952 and then re-created by Quinlan and Francis Terry. The late Prof. David Watkin told of their extraordinary project in his book The Practice of Classical Architecture: The Architecture of Quinlan and Francis Terry 2005-2015. Here he describes the process of creating richly moulded new plasterwork in the Rococo style for the drawing room and dining room.

The drawing room ceiling at Kilboy designed by Francis Terry and executed by Locker & Riley

‘The principal rooms on the ground floor at Kilboy have breathtaking plasterwork designed by Francis Terry from August 2010 on the basis of that in Castletown and houses in Dublin by the two Francini brothers, Paolo (1695-1770) and Filippo (1702-79). They came to Ireland on c. 1730 via Germany from Ticino, the area of Italian-speaking Switzerland, which had at that time produced many stuccadores and architects, including James Gibbs’s master, Carlo Fontana. Francis and Shane Ryan visited many examples of Francini work in Ireland and also went to Bavaria and Potsdam with the plasterer to see and sketch the kind of Baroque and Rococo work that had inspired the Francini brothers. Francis also visited Castletown with the plasterers from Locker & Riley, who sent a modeler there to copy the Francini style. White swirling plasterwork of the ceilings at Kilboy incorporate exotic hoho birds, shells and succulent plant forms. Not since the eighteenth century has such work reached this level of richness and quality. Francis discovered the infinite adaptability of Rococo to objects of vastly different scale and character from jewels, china and chairs to massive ceilings.

The dining room ceiling designed by Francis Terry and executed by Locker & Riley with Rococo motifs including hoho birds

Especially memorable is the lush plasterwork of the ceiling in the drawing room, which was carried out in a great hurry because Francis Terry rejected the first attempt by Locker & Riley who thus had to do it again, necessarily very rapidly in order to keep to the program. Francis believes this was a happy accident because the Francini brothers, working in stucco rather than fibrous plaster, must themselves have worked with incredible speed. This gives the ceiling a spontaneity and life that more labored work would lack. A scene showing hoho birds, the mythical animals of East Asia who reigned over all other birds, fighting over an eel and a trout, was added to relate to the lake at Kilboy.’

The ceiling in the dining room at Kilboy made by Locker & Riley to a design by Francis Terry