Lissan House

Lissan House is a historic house and tourist attraction in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, that was the seat of the Staples baronets. Lissan lies nestled at the foot of the Sperrin Mountains amid ancient woodland near the historic market town of Cookstown.

The estate was home to the Staples family from about 1620 until the death of the last incumbent, Hazel Radclyffe-Dolling (née Staples), in April 2006, the longest known occupation by a single family of a domestic dwelling in Ireland.^{[citation needed]}

Thomas Staples had originally come from Yate Court, near Bristol in Southwestern England, in about 1610 as part of the plantation of Ulster. He settled in the town of Moneymore (then being constructed as part of the terms of the Plantation Grant to the Worshipful Company of Drapers who had been granted large swathes of the new County in 1611) in County Londonderry and his stone house is marked on a Thomas Raven map of 1622 beside the Market Cross.

In around 1622 Thomas Staples married Charity Jones, heiress of Sir Baptist Jones, Master of the Worshipful Company of Vintners. In 1628, he was created the first Baronet of Lissan and Faughanvale by King Charles I. Around the same date, he purchased several leases including the lands of the town of Cookstown and 180 acres (0.73 km²) at Tatnagilta (now the Lissan estate). It is thought that a dwelling existed on the estate at this time along with an Iron Forge which was used to smelt the iron deposits found across the estate. Mainly as a result of the existence of the forge, the dwelling house survived the Rebellion of 1641 when the estate was seized by Niall Og O'Quinn who had marched with a troop of rebels from Moneymore. Prior to the rebellion Sir Staples had purchased the townland of Loy from O'Quinn. Charity, Lady Staples, and the couple's four children were imprisoned briefly in the Castle at Moneymore before being moved more permanently to the Castle at Castlecaulfield where they spent almost two years in captivity until Moneymore was relieved and the rebels suppressed. Throughout the Rebellion, the rebels used the estate and its workers to manufacture pikes, staves and other weapons as a result of which all the buildings on the estate survived despite the rebels' destruction of the town of Cookstown and the nearby plantation estate at Ballydrum (later Springhill). Testimonies taken from The Dowager Lady Staples and her son, the new Baronet, Sir Baptist Staples (which survive in Trinity College Dublin, describe the brutality of their treatment during these years. Lady Staples recounts witnessing Anglo-Irish families being murdered outside her prison window or those being tortured in chain-gangs begging to be killed to be done with their misery.

The present house substantially owes its existence to Sir Thomas' third son, the fourth Baronet, Sir Robert Staples. Having married another heiress in the person of Mary Vessey, he improved the estate, building mills and enlarging the iron forge as well as substantially constructing the present house (incorporating large parts of the pre-existent dwelling) in about 1690. He also created the 5-acre (20,000 m²) walled garden which survives to this day. The main feature of his house was the huge oak staircase which still (following a reconstruction due to collapse in the 1880s) dominates the house today. Thomas Ashe writing his report to the Archbishop of Armagh, from whom the land was originally leased, said in 1703 "Robert Staples has built a very good stone house; the rooms are noble, lofty and large. There is a very handsome staircase which leads to chambers above with a large parlour and dining room. The house is well-shingled and stands near a small tenement with four pretty rooms. He has built a handsome stable, large barns and a turf house all well shingled." Sir Robert died in 1714.

As a result of a legal uncertainty contained in the Marriage Settlement executed by the fourth Baronet and his wife Mary Vesey at the request of Mary's father John Vesey the Archbishop of Tuam and dated 12 March 1682, ownership of the Estate became the subject of protracted legal proceedings following the death of the 4th Baronet in 1714 conducted between his four surviving children; Sir John the fifth Baronet, Sir Alexander the sixth Baronet, the Rev. Thomas Staples and their sister Mary Maurice (née Staples). These legal difficulties resulted in almost a century of court proceedings which were eventually conclusively settled in favour of Sir Alexander and Rev. Thomas in the wake of the House of Lords appeal in Sir Robert Staples v Margaretta Maurice (1774) Mews Dig. vi, 328; xii, 950, by which time all the original protagonists were dead. During the course of the proceedings, Sir Alexander and Rev. Thomas had effectively divided the Staples estates between them, with Sir Alexander tending to lands in Queen's County from his home at Dunmore House whilst Thomas operated the Estate at Lissan.

When this arrangement was confirmed in 1774, Lissan became the permanent seat of a junior branch of the family under the Rt. Hon. John Staples K.C., P.C., M.P., whilst the seventh and eighth Baronets remained at Dunmore. John Staples was a talented lawyer and one of the longest standing members of the Irish House of Commons before its dissolution in 1801. He went on two grand tours of Italy, furnishing Lissan with a fine collection of books, paintings and marbles and was painted twice by the famed Italian artist Pompeo Batoni.

He married, firstly, Harriet Conolly, daughter of William James Conolly of Castletown House. This marriage resulted in three children, a son, William Conolly Staples, and two daughters. Upon the death of Harriet Conolly in 1771, the two daughters, Louisa Anne and Henrietta Margaret were taken into the custody of Thomas Conolly and Lady Louisa Conolly of Castletown House. When Lady Louisa died in 1821, she bequeathed the Castletown estate to the eldest son of Louisa Anne Staples, Col. Edward Michael Packenham who thereupon adopted the name Conolly by Royal Licence on 27 August 1821. His descendants remained at Castletown until 1965. His second wife was Henrietta Molesworth, younger daughter of the 3rd Viscount Molesworth, one of the Duke of Marlborough's generals during the War of the Spanish Succession. He had saved the Duke from death by shouting to his equerry as the Duke mounted his horse just in time for the equerry to hoist the Duke up thus avoiding a cannonball which decapitated the equerry. Henrietta lost a leg in a fire in her mother's house during her youth. King George III had provided her dowry and also instructed the Court physician to fashion for her a wooden prosthetic leg. The children of the Rt. Hon. John Staples and his wife Henrietta married into some of the best connected families in Ireland including the Marquesses of Ormonde, Earls of Clancarty, Earls of Longford and Lords Ponsonby. The couple are also the great-great-grandparents of the writer C.S. Lewis.