History of Templetown Mausoleum
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Templetown Mausoleum lies in the old Templepatrick burial ground in County Antrim, at the heart of the Castle Upton demesne. Designed by Robert Adam, it was built in memory of the Rt. Hon. Arthur Upton, MP by his widow, Sarah Cosby. A leading architect of the eighteenth century, Adam had very few Irish commissions, all of which were linked by family connections. Although small in scale, Templetown Mausoleum is a very fine example of his work.
Templepatrick and the Uptons
By tradition, the origins of Templepatrick lie in Saint Patrick’s blessing of a well in the mid-fifth century. A religious centre developed here, in the borderlands of two early medieval kingdoms.
Following Henry II’s invasion of Ireland and John de Courcy’s violent land grab in the northeast of the island in 1177, Templepatrick saw monastic settlement connected with English foundations. The Templepatrick burial ground – in which Templetown Mausoleum sits – may have roots in that ecclesiastical development.
The Upton family came to Templepatrick in 1625 as part of another colonial enterprise. Captain Henry Upton fought under the Earl of Essex in the Elizabethan re-expansion across Ireland. As a retired officer, his reward came in the form of land grants in Antrim. Later, he purchased what would become the Castle Upton estate. The family would remain here for the next 300 years.
Love and loss
In September 1768, Arthur Upton of Castle Upton wrote to his brother-in-law, Bernard Ward, from the fashionable health resort of Tunbridge Wells: ‘I have not had an hour’s health since I came to England.’ Only three weeks later, Arthur was dead.
As an expression of her loss, Arthur Upton’s wife, Sarah Cosby, sought out the Scottish architect Robert Adam to design a mausoleum which would ‘perpetuate the memory of an husband she loved and esteemed.’ Erected within the burial ground at the heart of the Castle Upton demesne, Templetown Mausoleum must have been finished or close to completion by the time Sarah Cosby remarried in December 1771.
Legacy in stone
Adam’s original plan was for a relatively elaborate building, with much exterior ornamentation and interior architectural features. Sarah Cosby opted for a smaller, plainer version, in which Adam transferred his design for one of the side elevations to the main facade.
The result is an elegant, sober, neo-classical temple of memory, well suited in size to the surrounding burial ground. Decorative funerary urns and caskets emphasize the building’s function.
Two classical medallions increase the sombre mood. One represents the early Christian martyr Saint Agnes, while the other is a personification of the Roman province of Dacia, weeping for the destruction of her people.
Adam would have sourced these from Coade’s Artificial Stone Manufactory in London, run by businesswoman Eleanor Coade. Made from terracotta to Mrs Coade’s secret recipe, they appear in the earliest Coade catalogues, where they were advertised as ‘companion pieces.’ The ‘weeping province’ is a copy of a Roman artwork in the Capitoline Museum, well-known to eighteenth-century travellers. It is a good example of Robert Adam’s studious approach.
Keeping it in the family: Robert Adam in Ireland
Unaltered since its construction, Templetown Mausoleum is a rare, intact survivor of the neo-classical movement in Ireland. It is also one of the very few Irish examples of the work of Robert Adam, one of the great architects of the eighteenth century.
Adam’s first patrons in Ireland were Hercules Langford Rowley and his wife, Elizabeth Upton – a cousin of Arthur Upton of Castle Upton. In 1765 they commissioned him to design interiors for drawing rooms in their Dublin townhouse, alongside an extension to their country seat at Summerhill, County Meath, although this latter project was never carried out.
Adam’s work must have appealed to the family. Only a few years later it was to Adam that Arthur Upton’s widow turned for the design of his mausoleum. Around the same time, in 1771, Rowley’s daughter Jane and her husband, Thomas Taylor, commissioned Robert Adam to create a spectacular series of state rooms at Headfort House, County Meath.
Adam’s final projects in Ireland revisited Castle Upton. In the early 1780s the architect remodelled the existing house in his antiquarian ‘castle style’ for Arthur Upton’s brother and successor, Clotworthy Upton. Another fine example of his influential, romantic architectural style is the large stables complex adjacent to the castle, completed for Clotworthy’s widow and their son in 1788–9.
Templetown Mausoleum has traditionally been connected to this final phase of work for the Uptons. However, inscriptions on Adam’s proposal drawings and within the tomb itself indicate that it was almost certainly completed in the years immediately following Arthur Upton’s death.
Afterlife: the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
Templetown Mausoleum served as the Upton family burial vault throughout the nineteenth century. It was sold along with the rest of the Castle Upton demesne in the 1920s. The Mausoleum was given to the National Trust in 1963 by Mr W. Henderson Smith and Sir Robert Kinahan. After extensive repair works, the building was opened to visitors in 1966.
Further reading
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Dictionary of Irish Architects 1720-1940, for Adam’s work in Ireland: https://www.dia.ie/architects/view/299/ADAM-ROBERT%23#tab_biography
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Robert and James Adam office drawings in the Soane Museum, for works at Castle Upton: https://collections.soane.org/drawings?ci_search_type=ARCI&mi_search_type=adv&sort=7&tn=Drawings&t=ARC16160
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