SMYTH, JOHN [2]

According to the Dublin Penny Journal, 'John Smyth' was the architect of the extravagantly castellated gateway and avenue bridge at Ballysaggartmore, Co. Waterford, which were built for the proprietor, Arthur Keily (afterwards Ussher).(1) Bence Jones relates a story that 'these follies were intended to be the prelude to a castle which Mrs Keily…persuaded her husband to build as a rival to his brother's castle of Strancally [by James and George Richard Pain]; but which never matierialized owing to the money running out'.(2) If indeed they wished to outshine the Pains' work, it seems strange that they would have relied on designs by their gardener, as Smyth is described in Gardeners' Magazine 12 (1837), 583,(3) or by 'a native mechanic'.(4)

(1) Dublin Penny Journal (13 Dec 1834), 185-6.
(2) Mark Bence-Jones, Burke’s Guide to Country Houses. Volume I, Ireland. (London, 1978), 28.
(3) Cited by E. Malins & the Knight of Glin, Lost Demesnes: Irish landscape gardening, 1660-1845 (1976), 187 n.25.
(4) O'Flanagan , River Blackwater in Munster (1844), 58.

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