Lissan House | A History Of The Staples Family

Hazel wrote the following short history of the Staples in Ireland

In 1610 Thomas Staples, a young lawyer from Yate Court near Bristol, the youngest of 11 children, first settled in Moneymore and then decided to rent land in Tatnagilta.   Here he built accommodation for the workmen who came with him from England, a small house for himself and set up an iron forge or bloomery to smelt the haematite ore he found there.

From this modest beginning rose the great house and farmyard still standing after almost 400 years.

Thomas married Charity Jones heiress daughter of Sir Baptist Jones.  He was created a Baronet by King Charles I in 1628.   It is his heirs who have played their part in the life of the community, in the Church, the law, service overseas in India and in two World Wars and as benevolent and caring employers to the present day.   Sir Richard Staples, the l7th Baronet is the last of this long line.

 

ROBERT THE BUILDER

Thomas' son Robert with great imagination and skill, using all the natural materials to hand designed and built the great house, the stables and outbuildings, and planned the 4.5 acre walled-garden.   Ancient oaks were felled for timber required for the massive beams; the iron came from the bloomery; bricks were made from clay from one field, sand and gravel from another;  the fast-flowing Lissan Water powered the sawmills along its banks and there was natural rock aplenty in the hills below Slieve Gallion in whose protection the demesne lay. Robert was a fine-looking man -he was married for 32 years and did not die until 1714.

The buildings were sound and still standing today; original nails made in the bloomery hold the great oak beams in place but over the years alterations inside the house have given architects food for thought and investigations are ongoing.

Sir Robert set out the four and a half acre walled garden with large orchards, all well kept according to Mr. Ashe who mentioned the "handsome summerhouse covered with shingles."  There were quick-sett hedges and a pretty brook ran through the garden.   The borders set with flowers throughout the years

After about 150 years the iron forge was moved from the house and a man called Stables who visited Lissan in 1773 wrote that a new kitchen had been built in the big house and he was glad the forge was moved as the noise had kept him awake when he visited in Sir Robert's time.

The Line continued with the 7th and 8th Baronets who lived in Durrow near Kilkenny. In the North the Rev. Thomas Staples married Grace Houston and they had 13 children and the descendants of his son Alexander may be living in the U.S.A. or Canada and if so they may be entitled to become the 18th Baronet.

The Rev. Thomas, the Primate and one of the Caulfeilds opened up the coal mines in Coalisland and it is supposed that Davis Ducart who was commissioned to build the Newry Canal in 1732 to carry the coal to the sea was invited to build the White Bridge across the Lissan Water and to design the cascades and water gardens which are now in great need of restoration.

The Rt.Hon. John Staples lived from 1736 to 1820 - he too had 13 children and two wives. His daughters married into great families all over Ireland and Lissan was a hive of activity at this period.   Carriages, horses, footmen and servants all coming and going. all had to be fed and housed.   The ladies in beautiful dresses and the maids toiling up and down the stairs with hot water, freshly trimmed lamps and clean linen.

There are no photographs of this period but as soon as one enters the Great Hall there is a strange sense of peace and welcome and it takes little imagination to hear the swish of a dress and catch a fine perfume of lavender or roses when one least expects it.

The Rev. John Molesworth Staples was Rector of Lissan for 60 years;  He lived in Moville in Donegal where he was responsible for two other churches as well as Lissan.   His sons all served in the Navy or in the Army in India.    It was he who commissioned Nash to build a new Rectory for Lissan and paid half the cost; he built a cornmill in 1820, local schools and over 20 years planted 32,000 trees in great variety throughout the Townlands.

 

 

 

Sir Thomas Staples Q.C. in Ireland set up house at Lissan and owned another property at 11 Merrion Square in Dublin.  He made further improvements to the  big house including the addition around l830 of a very grand room to the east of the building especially for his musical evenings.

 

THE BALLROOM

Now known as the "Ballroom" this lovely place with its double-glazed windows of coloured glass and the remnants of the original Chinese wallpaper is still used for special occasions - wedding anniversaries, Sunday School parties, Golf Club Dances and all manner of excitements over the years.  Sir Thomas and his wife "Handsome Kitty Hawkins" had no children it was she who, on Disestablishment of the Church of Ireland, bought  back the 87 acres of glebeland at the Rectory and gifted it to the Parish in perpetuity.

On his return from India Sir Nathaniel Alexander Staples, son of the Rev.John whose portrait hangs to the right of  the great hall fireplace, took up the burden of running the house and estate on very little money and other family difficulties.   Like his predecessors he did all he could to keep things going for the house and the community.    He purchased the clock from Magherafelt Council when the Diamond was demolished and  he then constructed a tower with a fine copper dome for its new home.    This clock was made by Joshua Adams in 1820 and the great bell can be heard in Churchtown to this day.   It is even mentioned in the song Slieve Gallion's Braes.

At this time the porch in front of the house appeared.   Ladies were able to leave their carriages in bad weather without getting soaked and the coachmen could keep warm by a turf fire inside but there were two strange turrets which thankfully are no more.   Monkey puzzle trees were planted on the estate - a novelty in those days - and several large firs stand on the avenue and tall Irish yews appear in the record books.

Sir Nathaniel's heir John was unable to manage his own affairs so his brother James Head Staples was asked to come to Ireland and try to keep things going.   He obeyed the call and left his beautiful home in Braemar to find a very shabby old house in a time of great poverty. He and his wife worked wonders;  they built a creamery - their butter was sent all over the U.K. - they took in boarders, taught cookery and lace-making so that the local girls would have some training to enable them to find work in Cookstown.

The most exciting introduction was the instillation in 1902 of a water turbine to provide electricity for the house and all the farm buildings; it was one of the earliest in Ireland.

In 1912 the youngest brother, Robert Ponsonby, the eccentric and talented artist came back to "this golden place" - his name for his beloved home.   His personality is strongly imprinted on Lissan today - his pictures line the Hall and many lovely portraits of the family hang in the Dining Room - bathrooms are painted with fish and swans -he worked so hard on the family archive - kept his diaries going almost to the end of his life - walked in this bare feet to absorb energy from the earth - the stories about him are legion. The Historic Society have awarded him a blue plaque which he richly deserves.

His son Robert George Alexander, the l3th Baronet, returned home late in life.  He too was a great character but he had no son and was afraid that on his death, all the work of his ancestors would come to nothing.

However, the last of the Staples of Lissan, his daughter Hazel, born in the big house in 1923, came home to visit her parents and by a strange chance fell in love and married Harry Dolling, her father's Agent who had also spent much of his childhood at Lissan, and so in her turn she came to live in the home she inherited when Sir Robert died.

Hazel has now worked for over 40 years in the gardens and grounds, painting the rooms, running the turbine,collecting her grandfather's pictures and building up the family Archive.   She entertains Staples from all over the World and welcomes the descendants of people whose grand-parents and great grand-parents once worked at Lissan.

 

HAEMATITE IRON ORE

Iron ore in Unagh - a townland of Lissan.   These workings were old in 1652 asrecorded by Dr. Boate in his book - "Ireland's Natural History" - he was quite correct because Thomas Staples must have been aware of the ore when he came from Moneymore soon after 1600 to build a home for himself and his skilled workmen.   He set up a furnace at Lissan to release this valuable metal from the nodules of various deposits in which it was to be found.

In the Rebellion of 1641 the O'Neills took over Lissan House and smelted the iron to make tips for the pikes of their followers.   In 1689 chains which formed part of the boom on the River Foyle at the Siege of Derry came from the Lissan foundry but by 1700 the Archbishop of Armagh who owned the land banned the felling of oaks to make the necessary charcoal and work ceased.

In 1875 Sir Nathaniel Staples re-opened the mines, installed a weighbridge in the Lissan yard, and arranged for the ore to be smelted in Barrow - in - Furness in England.   There was much interest in Cookstown when 100 workmen arrived and houses were especially built for them.  Their job was to carry coal by horse and cart to prime the pumps as water was constantly rising in the mine and take the iron nodules to the railway station for the start of the journey to England.

This unique  venture became uneconomic and in 1920 the mine was closed for the second time and the workmen scattered all over the World.

In 1943 Sir Robert Staples tried to drum up interest in the Barrow Mine but to no avail.  Traces of the old workings are still to be found on the Gourley property in the Cove Bridge  area and nodules containing the metal  may still be found in a variety of lovely colours.   Research on this project is being undertaken by a Director of the Trust R.S.D. Marks O.B.E.

 

 

"It would be so sad if nothing was left - nothing but memories"

Hazel Dolling

Lissan must be saved in all its beauty and peace; a wildlife sanctuary with  meadows of wild flowers, trees in great variety alongside the river pouring over the rocks down to the Ballinderry onwards to Lough Neagh.