Borris House, Co. Carlow and elite regency patronage

Borris House, situated in the small town of Borris in Co. Carlow, is the ancestral home of the MacMurrough Kavanagh family. The family has had a residence at Borris for approximately 900 years. Walter Kavanagh, the eldest son of Thomas Kavanagh, and Lady Susanna Butler, a sister to the 19th Earl of Ormonde, succeeded his father to the estates at Borris in 1792. In the early 19th century, Walter Kavanagh decided to transform his home at Borris. The early Georgian house, built c.1721-40 by his grandfather Brian Kavanagh, was given an ornate Tudor revivalist exterior and a richly classical interior under the direction of the Co. Cork-born architect Sir Richard Morrison. As the house transformed, so did the collections within. The family amassed notable collections of furniture, books, and silver, much of which was sourced in Dublin and London. This short book identifies the role that the two major patrons at Borris - Walter Kavanagh, a bachelor in his 50s when work begun at Borris, and later, his brother and heir Thomas - had in the shaping of Borris House and its collections. (Series: Maynooth Studies in Local History - Vol. 108)