Emo Court

Architectural features of the building include sash-style windows, pavilions, a balustrade, a hipped roof, and large dome.

[2] Passing through several owners through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the house and gardens were taken into ownership by the Irish state in the 1990s.

[citation needed] At some time between 1884 and 1902, the London firm Merryweather & Sons installed a water supply system at Emo.

Intended for domestic needs and potential fire fighting, an illustration of the arrangements, involving a 'Hatfield' pump, appeared in Merryweather's adverts.

The house was opened as the Novitiate of the Irish Province on 4 August 1930, and novices transferred from St Stanislaus' College, Tullamore.

[8] Cholmeley Harrison commissioned the London architect Sir Albert Richardson, a leading authority on Georgian architecture, to take on the restoration of the house.

[10] The approach to Emo Court is through a gateway, and along a driveway which runs for some distance through a beech wood before opening up to an avenue lined by giant sequoias.

[11] These large trees were first introduced in 1853 and named Wellingtonias in honour of Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, who died the previous year.

To the left are coach houses and servants' quarters, to the right mature trees and in the centre the entrance front, dominated by a pediment supported by four Ionic pillars.

[11] A larger doorway leads to the rotunda (inspired by the Pantheon), a key feature of the mansion and also the way into two of the major rooms and out to the garden.

[2] Completed about 1860 by the Dublin architect William Caldbeck, it is two storeys high, surmounted by a dome which extends above the roof line of the rest of the house.