The picturesque little village came to fame in the mid-1700s after the English government enacted the Marriage Act, which forbade persons under 21 years of age to marry without parental consent.<\/p>\n
Scotland, however, did not recognise or enforce this legislation. In their own peculiar way, and keeping with long-standing Scottish custom, any couple over the age of 15 who were not closely related were permitted to wed without yea or nay from anyone.<\/p>\n
Gretna Green was just north of the English\/Scottish border so many \u2018runaway\u2019 couples went up there to tie the knot.<\/p>\n
In Gretna, the local blacksmith struck his anvil in the presence of the couple as if \u2018forging two metals\u2019 together. It wasn\u2019t just younger couples who availed of the \u2018anvil priest\u2019 – couples who were marrying against the wishes of parents or without their blessing often went there.<\/p>\n
On that April day, Harriet Devonsher married one John Arnold Wallinger. I\u2019ve still no idea if the aforementioned John Arnold Wallinger was any of my seed, breed or generation, but Harriet had strong links with my parish.<\/p>\n
That local connection goes back to around 1650 and sadly ended last month with the death of Jeremiah -known as \u2018The Duke\u2019 Devonshire.<\/p>\n
Harriet Devonsher was born in 1796 so was of \u2018full age\u2019 when herself and John Arnold threw their legs over the anvil – it must have been the parents who didn\u2019t approve of the union!<\/p>\n
\n The Devonsher name has for centuries been associated with Kilshannig House near Rathcormac. Kilshannig has been translated as \u2018Coill Shionaigh\u2019 or Shinnick\u2019s Wood and local tradition has it that this was a traditional stronghold of the Shinnick clan – descendants are still in the area.\n <\/p>\n
Everything changed irrevocably after Oliver Cromwell came to Ireland in 1649. Huge amounts of land held by the \u2018native Irish\u2019 was confiscated and granted as rewards to Cromwellian soldiers and planters. One such man was Michael Weber, and in 1662 his daughter Sarah married one Thomas Devonsher – his family had extensive property in and around Cork city -Devonshire Street still bears the family name to this day.<\/p>\n
After his wife Sarah died in 1669, Thomas married twice more. His third wife was Sarah Morris and her son Jonas succeeded in the Kilshannig estate. In turn, it passed down to Abraham who married a Mary Moore.<\/p>\n
It was this couple who engaged the famous David Ducart, around 1764, to build the present Kilshannig House, probably on the site of an older, smaller dwelling.<\/p>\n
Abraham was a successful banker and a Quaker. The magnificent house features stunning ceiling plaster-work by the Swiss Lafranchini brothers.<\/p>\n
After Abraham\u2019s death in 1783, the house and lands passed to his grand-nephew John Newenham of Maryborough in Cork city. He assumed the Devonsher name – John Newenham Devonsher.<\/p>\n
John married well! At Glanmire in 1792 he wed New York-born Cornelia Schuyler – daughter of Cortlandt Schuyler and relative of future USA Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, George Bush and George W. Bush!<\/p>\n
One of John and Cornelia\u2019s children was Harriet who headed off to Gretna Green to marry my \u2018namesake\u2019. Her brother Abraham John Newenham Devonsher was next in Kilshannig.<\/p>\n
After the end of the Napoleonic Wars around 1815 there was a severe \u2018economic crash\u2019 which naturally affected the fortunes of merchant bankers. Abraham was forced to sell Kilshannig in the 1830s and it was purchased by the Burke Roche family, later Lords Fermoy – subsequently, KIlshannig was owned by the Myles and Rose families and since 1962 has been the home of the Merry family.<\/p>\n
During their years in Kilshannig, the Devonshers had built another residence, Mountain Lodge in Bartlemy – they used it as a hunting lodge. During \u2018the season\u2019 family members and friends would move here to hunt and shoot grouse and pheasant in the uplands of Bartlemy.<\/p>\n
After Kilshannig was sold, Abraham J. N. Devonsher moved lock, stock, and barrel to Mountain Lodge. He was still the owner of over 1,000 acres of land. With his wife Louise Cooke he had three daughters but the couple separated in 1836.<\/p>\n
Abraham then had Martha Davis – \u2018a Welsh woman\u2019 – as his partner -after Louise died in 1871, Abraham wed Martha in a private ceremony in Mountain Lodge.<\/p>\n
Amongst the family of Abraham and Martha was a son, John Davis Devonsher. He married Frances Burton Norman of Ballybrowney, in Rathcormac Church in 1876.<\/p>\n
\n Under the various Land Acts, the local Irish tenant farmers were able to \u2018buy out\u2019 their farms from the landlords and thus the Devonsher landholding was reduced to around just 30 acres in and around Mountain Lodge. The fortunes of the family continued to decline.\n <\/p>\n
In 1889, the Mountain Lodge holding was put up for sale, bought by RIC officer Robert Smeltzer, from Tipperary, and his wife Caroline Sophia Armit. John, Frances and family moved to a small farm in the townland of Rathgobane – literally a mile and a half up \u2018Devonsher\u2019s Hill\u2019 on the road to Leamlara. Here they reared five children John, George, Charles, Florence and Frank – a little girl, Mary, died in 1890.<\/p>\n
From Quaker bankers to small farmers, the Devonshers had certainly seen ups and downs in their family, but life went on. In 1919, George married Mary Crowley from Lisgoold. He became a skilful and much in demand stone mason -gifted hands were a feature of the family down through the years.<\/p>\n
The family sold their farm to the Forestry Department and the land was planted. They then moved to a house on the Knockeen\/ Coolequane Road.<\/p>\n
Last month, Jeremiah Devonshire, son of Frances and grandson of George the mason, died. Truly, the end of an era as the last of the Devonshers in this district has gone.<\/p>\n
Known as \u2018the Duke\u2019, Jerry was a talented and skilled worker. He was a master at woodcarving and building, and also very witty – he was a true character in the \u2018mould\u2019 of generations gone before him.<\/p>\n
Many \u2018big house\u2019 landlord families hadn\u2019t a great reputation when it came to dealing with tenants and estate workers. Not so the Devonshers, or Devonshires. They had a great relationship with locals.<\/p>\n
During the Penal Laws, when the Catholic Bishop of Cloyne, John O\u2019Brien, was living in semi-hiding in a little house not far from the Kilshannig estate, the Devonshers assisted him in every possible way.<\/p>\n
Down the years, successive generations of the family who lived around here were good neighbours. Pragmatic people who knew of their storied past with no sense of resentment or bitterness.<\/p>\n
Jerry was a very tall individual with a noble bearing and language to match. His great-grandparents were married in the Protestant Church in Rathcormac in 1876, and now, a century and a half later, Jerry lies in the shadow of that same church.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Monday, April 3, in the year 1820, a marriage was \u2018solemnised\u2019 at Gretna Green in Scotland. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":333652,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[75],"tags":[18,117,19,17,56073],"class_list":["post-333651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-john-arnold"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116057997783575161","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333651\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/333652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}