Looking from Australia at photographs of the 2016 Lotabeg House auction in Tivoli, Cork, we saw what appeared to be a remarkable family inheritance preserved across the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Yet the house and its contents were presented principally as a Hart family time capsule.
We now know that Vincent Hart’s home was not historic Lotabeg House. The deeds and later records identify his residence as the separate Silver Spring House on Lotabeg Farm, Mayfield.
But the consequences of that mistaken history went far beyond identifying the wrong house.
The Galwey family had owned Lotabeg House for more than two centuries. Yet in the extensive newspaper coverage of the auction that we have examined, we have not found a single mention of them. This was despite the presence of remarkable objects associated with their history, including the gilt mirror bearing de Burgh–Galwey heraldry, carved chairs displaying the Galwey arms, and the portrait of the Duke of Ormond.
Confusion between the houses on the Lotabeg estate, compounded by the limitations of Griffith’s Valuation and later historical accounts, had gradually obscured the Galwey and Galwey–Kellett history of the house.
In 2016, there was an extraordinary opportunity to investigate that history, with the house and its contents still together, and to restore the Galwey family to the story of its own home. Instead, the Hart story dominated, and the collection was dispersed before that opportunity could be realised.These articles explore the history of Lotabeg House as the surviving records reveal it. Their purpose is to give the Galwey family back the history of the estate they created, while restoring Lotabeg House, Silver Spring House, Silverspring and Fort William to their separate histories.
They draw on genealogical records, estate papers, contemporary newspapers, historical journals and other published sources. I welcome further information from anyone with knowledge of the Lota estates, Lotabeg House or the families connected with them.
Vincent Hart bought Silver Spring House, not Lotabeg House. This article follows the documentary trail and re-examines the story told at the remarkable 2016 Lotabeg auction.
2. Lotabeg: The Four Houses on the Estate
How four distinct houses on the Galweys’ Lotabeg estate became confused, obscuring the true history of Lotabeg House.
3. Callaghan’s Gate – Fact or Fiction
A well-known local story seen from another point of view
4. Lotabeg House: How a History was Lost
This investigation takes a different approach to a longstanding problem.
5. Two Houses Called “Lotabeg”
How the stories of two houses on the Lotabeg estate became confused in the historical records