The Childhood Homes of Joan Arbuthnot

This is no more than a backgrounder piece for a future post on Irene Joan Grace ARBUTHNOT (1904-1997), aka Joan. In the early 1930s, she was headlined in dozens of newspaper articles after the publication of her book, More Profit Than Gold, about her time in the jungles of Papua New Guinea aka British New Guinea (in her time). Then, there was silence, and little was publicly available about what she did next. Since childless “bachelors and spinsters” don’t get much airtime in family histories, I decided to look at her story. More to come. NOTE: I welcome additions and corrections.

Childhood homes can inhabit and shape us long after we have left the family nest. Like some kind of external DNA, they remain part of our inner architecture. The unsettled life of Joan's family was not so uncommon for many of the Anglo-Irish upper class. One foot in Ireland. One in England. Although her childhood homes had nothing in common with mine, we did both share a rootless childhood, so unsurprisingly, I look at her life through that lens, and feel a connection. 

To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul. 
Simone Weil in The Need for Roots.

For me, a few weeks after I was born at VGH in Vancouver Canada, I came home to Commercial Drive. Part of our house still had a dirt floor. A few years later, we lived in a rented house on Mathers Street in West Van on part of what had once been a farm. I remember the jars of pink applesauce made from the old apple trees. Then we spent a year in Winnipeg in an upstairs suite in an old house broken into rental flats. The next dozen homes that we lived in were on Canadian Air Force bases. One day, at age six or so when we were living in a side-by-side duplex in North Bay Ontario, I ran away from home but only lasted six hours. After that, we lived in an apartment in  Longueuil, a duplex in St. Bruno, Quebec, followed by a stop-over at Grannie Oddie’s home in Lytham St. Annes, Lancashire, followed by apartments in two Canadian military bases in France. In one of them, my four brothers shared twin bunk beds in a 12’ X 12' bedroom, while my similarly sized bedroom included multiple laundry lines, often laden with drying sheets hanging above me, and with boxes and suitcases stacked beside my bed. Always on the move.

Joan’s first family home was at 3 Motcomb Street, Belgrave Square, London. On April 25^th, 1904, she had been born to Sir John Bernard ARBUTHNOT (1875-1950) and Olive ARBUTHNOT née BLAKE (1875-1953) . Her parents had marriedat St. John's Cathedral, Hong Kong on June 8, 1903, ten months before her birth. [SOURCE: Visitation of England and Wales.]

3 Motcomb Street, Belgrave Square, London. A drycleaners is now on the main floor.

Even after the family had decamped to Ireland, they still stayed and often owned properties in that part of London. In May 17,1933, when her brother David George ARBUTHNOT (1905-1985) was married at St George’s Church, Hanover Place, his wedding reception was held at the family home at 42 Grosvenor Place, where they often stayed while also maintaining a family home in Co. Cork. This was also the address used by Joan and her travel partner Rachel Veronica Rose LEIGH-WHITE (1906-1985) - of Bantry House, Co. Cork - when the two of them left on their trip to British Guiana in 1931. Their home at Grosvenor Place was a mere 13 minute walk away from her birthplace at 3 Motcomb Square.

The grounds of Buckingham Palace are upper right

Joan’s father had been born at 26 Lower Belgrave Street, just around the corner from Motcomb Street. The building where the ARBTHNOTs lived, may or may not have been demolished. It is possibly included in one of the photos beneath. There is more to be learned.

David ARBUTHNOT (1905-1985), Joan’s Irish twin brother, was born at Myln-croft, Frimley Green, Frimley, Surrey. [SOURCE: Visitation of England]. If the family had actually moved there (and were not just visiting) then its proximity to their London home could not have been the reason. Frimley is about 56 km SE of Belgrave square. One possibility is that it might have been because of a friendship between Joan’s mother, Olive ARBUTNOT née BLAKE (1875-1953) and Dame Ethel Mary Smyth (1858-1944). As early as 1867, Dame Edith’s family had lived at Frimhurst, near Frimley Green, and then after 1894 she lived at One Oak, also in Frimley. Lady Olive and Dame Ethel were both of a similar social class and were also members of the women's suffrage movement. In 1908, Mrs. Arbuthnot donated a modest amount (it was only five shillings but may not have been her only donation) to Votes for Women, a newspaper for the Women’s Social and Political Union started by Mrs.Emmeline PANKHURST (1858-1928).

Joan’s next brother, Bernard Kieran Charles ARBUTHNOT (1909-1975), was the first to be born at the ARBUTHNOT’s new home at Baltimore [Parish Tullagh, Barony West Carbery (East Division)]. Although the Visitation of England claims he was born at St. Patrick’s Cork, his birth certificate documents his birth as being at Baltimore. Her third brother, Richard Myles Henry ARBUTHNOT (1911-1943), who died in Italy in WWII, was also born at Baltimore where he was officially recorded as: Richard Henry. Since their family home was sometimes referred to as Baltimore House, this map may be helpful to any curious readers who happen to live nearby:

 

I am unsure if this is the right house.

Baltimore House on the 1st and 25-inch edition Ordnance Survey maps is still extant. SOURCE: Landed Estates.

Baltimore House is in the lower left hand corner, near the Corn Store, and the property then included a Gate Lodge. In the 1953 printing of Griffiths Valuation, Lady Carbery was the landlord for lot #19, with the house valued at £10.5.0 but was unoccupied. Lady Carbery aka Harriet Maria Catherine SHULDHAM married George Patrick Percy EVANS-FREKE, 7th Baron Carbery on August 5, 1852. [SOURCE: thepeerage]. Since he was deaf and unable to speak, communicating entirely by writing on a personal handheld slate, she often managed their leases and other legal matters.

The year that Joan's brother Richard was born, Joan was seven years old when she was mentioned in the news coverage of Baltimore’s celebration of the coronation of King George V and his wife, Mary. The celebrations had begun with a church service, then a procession through the village, and then a concert at the local school. Some of the stage decorations had come from the world-wide collections of both her father, Sir John Bernard ARBUTHNOT (1875-1950) as well as from her grandfather Sir Arthur Henry BLAKE (1840-1918). Both had lived and worked in Hong Kong – Sir Arthur as Governor, and John as his aide-de-camp. Clearly, her mother Olive ARBUTHNOT née BLAKE (1875-1953) had also been involved in the set-up, although she was not mentioned.

[For the stage decorations] Many of the hangings had been lent by J.B. Arbuthnot [Joan’s father], Castle House, including the magnificent Chinese and other foreign coverings for the thrones of the represented colonies. The very fine crown of the king and the court dress and jewels of the queen were also kindly lent by her. … Ireland, Scotland and Wales appeared – all three in costume – Scotland being represented by Master David Arbuthnot in kilt and fully correct details; he saluted manfully though only six years of age. … Miss Joan Arbuthnot gave a tiny recitation to replace Miss Kathleen Whitla, who was prevented from filling her own place on the program, and this item was one of the best in a good performance. … Pages and Train Bearers: Miss J. Arbuthnot SOURCE: Skibbereen & West Carbery Eagle. July 8, 1911.

Within three years, the family had moved from Baltimore to Derry House Rosscarbery [Derry, Parish Ross, Barony of East Carbery (West Division)], where Joan’s sister, Patricia Evangeline Anne ARBUTHNOT (1914-1989), was then born. The family rented Derry House - didn't own it - a not uncommon practice for footloose families such as theirs.

NLI: The Lawrence Photograph Collection

They must have left Derry House sometime between 1914 and 1921 since they were not there on April 1921 when Alexander Sullivan, a well-known barrister, was living there and the house was significantly burnt and partly destroyed during the War of Independence.

Family records indicate the original house at Derry was bought by Bryan Townsend, son of Richard, the Cromwellian officer, in the 1680s. This house was a short distance from the current house which was built by Reverend Horatio Townsend in the early years of the nineteenth century and was held in fee by Reverend Chambre Townsend in 1851 when it was valued at £44. Earlier, in 1786, Wilson referred to Derry as a Townsend seat. SOURCE: Landed Estates.

By 1926, the family was living at Glenbarrhan in the townland of Castletownsend , ED Castlehaven North, Townland Castletownsend, Parish Castlehaven, Barony West Carbery (East Division)). The 1926 census records 8 family members and 9 servants occupying 17 rooms. NOTE: Castletownsend is about 8 km south of Skibbereen and a half hour drive from Bantry.

SOURCE: find-a-grave.

Sometimes grand settings are not what they might seem. In her novel, Great Granny Webster (1977), Lady Caroline Maureen Hamilton Temple BLACKWOOD (1931-1996), an heiress to the Guinness fortune, satirized her family’s leaking rotting and falling apart Clandeboye House in County Down:  

Visitors from England were totally scandalized by the sight of these men [butlers] in the formal dining room clumping round the table as they handed out the dishes of food with an unsteady gait that was made more noticeable by the fact that the black trousers of their liveries were tucked inside their mud-splashed wellingtons. NOTE: Shortlisted for the Booker, her novel was recently revisited by John Banville - September 2026.

Patricia Evangeline Anne COCKBURN née ARBUTHNOT (1914-1989), Joan’s younger sister, recalls somewhat similar memories of decay at their rat-infested home at Castletownsend in her 1885 autobiography Figure of Eight. SOURCE: Random Notes CXXX,

 

 Of the houses we used to take in Ireland before my Grandmother’s death, one was called Glenbarrahane in Castletownshend. The Anglo-Irish in Castletownshend, of which there were many, were composed entirely of three families, all related – the Somervilles, the Coghills and the Townsends. The most distinguished inhabitant of  Castletownshend was Miss Edith Oenone Somerville, the authoress, half of that “Somerville and Ross” team who wrote the “Memoirs of an Irish RM” and many other books. She wasn’t really a half, as there was no Ross. Violet Martin, the original Ross, had died prematurely after the first book they wrote together, but Miss Somerville – or Dr Somerville, as she preferred to be called after Trinity College, Dublin had made her an honorary Doctor of Literature – was a keen spiritualist and believed that the ghost of Violet Martin was directing her pen.

 My chief memories of Castletownshend are of Dr Somerville herself, and of rats. Like almost every other Irish mansion that I have known, Glenbarrahane was infested with rats.

 Rats and spiritualism are two subjects that have generally been neglected in the many books that have been written about our class and nation. Horses have been exhaustively dealt with but rats, no. Practically everybody had rats. Some householders fought back and spent endless hours discussing different methods of exterminating them, but most simply regarded them as an Act of God and gave up the struggle.

 I had, and have, a particular horror of the creatures and all my youth would never go to bed without my enormous black cat, Nemo, the terror of the local dogs.”

Earlier in the 19th century, Glenbarrahan had been the home of Sir John Joscelyn COGHILL (1826-1905). He had moved there in 1860, and was later recorded in the 1901Census: John Jocelyn COGHILL, age 75, son Egerton COGHILL age 48, daughter Violet COGHILL age 33 (unmarried Dr. of Medicine) and grandson Marmaduke COGHILL age 5 and Neville COGHILL age 1 and Aymer SOMMERVILLE, a nephew, age 35, Justice of the Peace, as well as a Land Agent and a widower. 

In one glimpse of the flavour of life there Violet COGHILL and others can be seen performing a play enacted for the family:

Family Play circa 1890: L-R Willy Plunket – aka William Lee PLUNKET (1864-1920); Violet Coghill aka Dr. Violet COGHILL (1868-1951); Hebe Coghill aka Dr. Elfrieda Hester Brooke “Hebe” COGHILL (1886-1981). “Hebe” was the daughter of Violet’s brother Claude Plunket COGHILL (1859-1922)  and it is possible that he was the unnamed 4th person in the photo.  NOTE: Violet COGHILL and William PLUNKET were cousins, grandchildren of John Spann PLUNKET (aka PLUNKETT) and Charlotte BUSHE. Hebe, like her aunt, Dr. Violet COGHILL and many other women in this family, never married. SOURCE: Queens University Archives.

 By the time that Joan’s family lived at Glenbarrahan House, it was already famous as the birthplace and childhood home of Violet Florence MARTIN (1862-1915), a novelist who wrote under the pen name of Martin Ross, She is still well known to many because of the television series, The Irish R.M. based on books that she had co-authored with her cousin, Edith SOMERVILLE (1858-1949) - who lived a fifteen minute walk away in Somerville House aka Drishane House . Violet was not only a 1^st cousin once removed of Sir John Joscelyn Coghill (albeit sometimes referred to as his grand daughter) but she also shared a great-grandmother with the writer Maria Edgeworth, whose use of Irish vernacular speech she followed in her work. It is not far fetched to conjecture that both MARTIN and SOMERVILLE had influenced and inspired both Joan and Patricia in both their writing and their outlook on life.

After Glenbarraghan, the ARBUTHNOTs moved, most likely shortly after the death of Lady Edith BLAKE on April 18, 1926, to Myrtle Grove in the townland Youghal-lands, Parish Youghal, Barony Imokilly. Since Lady Edith had died on the same day that the 1926 census was taken, the family may have been in transit, this may explain their absence from that census.

Myrtle Grove. SOURCE: NLI. Collection: Poole Photographic Studio, Waterford.

The date of this photograph is uncertain, but I suspect that it was taken sometime after a 1913 photo by W. Lawrence. There was no evidence of the patched roof in the 1913 photo, and the climbing plants had been cut back from what was previously visible. I do wonder: who was the woman in the right-hand window?

Joan’s nephew, Patrick Oliver COCKBURN (1950-) described living as a child at Myrtle Grove in his book The Broken Boy, a page-turning memoir of his time recovering from polio but also something of a amily memoir. It was described by Maeve Binchy as written with affection and insight.  On the initial purchase of Myrtle Grove by his grandfather, Sir Arthur Henry BLAKE (1840-1918), Patrick recalls:

The Blakes had expectations but not much money when they bought Myrtle Grove from Sir John Pope Hennessy, another colonial governor, for 1,500 pounds in 1894. Their plans to live there were in any case delayed because it came with two ladies in their 80s, the aunts of the previous owner, in residence. It had been agreed that they should continue to occupy the house until they died something, it was tactfully suggested, that could not be long delayed. For several frustrating years the aged relations did not take the hint, but when they finally did so the Blake's fortunes had much improved. The house was soon filled with Chinese tables inlaid with mother of Pearl, chairs with delicate scenes from the imperial court in Peking and vases with Chinese ladies standing gossiping by their tea houses. For a child it was like living inside an exotic doll’s house which had come to life. P.91. 

Patrick’s memories of the early days of the ARBUTHNOT’s life while living there: 

When my mother was growing up in the 1920s thirteen servants had looked after the house and gardens, but 30 years later the number was down to two or three my father caustically remarked that my mother's family had made a slight financial miscalculation sometime after the First World War in imagining the income tax was just a passing phase. P. 89

Patrick’s description of the house:

The house’s unique personality - part Tudor, part Chinese - was the creation of Sir Henry Blake and his wife Edith Osborne. Sir Henry's handsome, somewhat arrogant face, with piercing blue eyes and very dark hair looked out from a portrait in the dining room drawing room, almost a caricature of the successful colonial administrator. He had eloped with Edith, a great heiress, whose wealthy but ill-matched parents, having quarrelled bitterly for thirty years, came together briefly to disinherit their daughter. Lady Blake's portrait also hung in the drawing room, showing her dark, tough, Spanish looking face. She was a keen and able artist, a botanist, a lepidopterist and a linguist, and bored by the tedious social round of a colonial governor's wife, she claimed to suffer from an incapacitating illness and painted hundreds of pictures of plants, animals and butterflies. I was delighted as a child by their exotic colours but they also had the cool precision of scientific studies made before botanists could rely on colour photography. These wonderful paintings covered the walls of the main staircase at Myrtle Grove as it rose two stories and created the illusion that one was walking upstairs through a Caribbean paradise alive with blue seas exuberant green vegetation leaping fish dancing butterflies. p. 90

 In the walled garden of Myrtle Grove are a pair of large cast iron gates with two Chinese characters each a foot high, attached to the thick bars. Round and black, the bars look like muscular snakes swallowing each other's tails. The gates appear wholly exotic amid the dahlias, roses and valerian, and they hang in a gateway cut in Youghal’s ancient town wall. But they are not the only such gates in the world. An identical pair hang on the other side of the globe in a high brick wall, built to protect people from bandits and pirates, surrounding the village of Kat Shing Wai on the Chinese mainland opposite the island of Hong Kong. p. 83 

The reason for the duplicate set of gates is complicated. They had initially been part of the protection of the village of Kat Hing Wai (吉慶圍) but had been blasted open during the 1899 Six Day War when the British were attempting to take over the New Territories after having previously leased the land from the Qing Dynasty. The Tang clan of Kat Hing Wai had offered up serious resistance to the British forces which were under BLAKE’s command and at the conclusion of the battle, he had seized these gates as war booty, and then brought them home with him in 1903. In 1825, after the elders of Kat Hing Wai had made repeated requests over two decades to have them returned to the village, BLAKE’s widow Olive had returned the gates. What followed:

A year later, shortly before she [Olive BLAKE] died, she received a testy phone call from Cork Customs saying they had received a crate, so heavy that it had broken their crane, addressed to a ‘Miss Blake, Ireland’. They asked her to collect it. When opened it was found to contain a perfect full-size copy of the Kat Shing Wai gates dispatched by the grateful elders of the Tan clan. p. 85

It is ironic that Myrtle Grove, like Kat Shing Wai, had also been built initially as part of a walled village. Patrick describes the neighbourhood of Myrtle Grove as he knew it as a step back in time.

Just off the Main Street was my mother's family home Myrtle Grove, the oldest unfortified large house in Ireland, protected by massive town walls. Horse drawn traps, gigs and carts were still common in our part of Ireland in the mid 1950s and there were two blacksmiths conveniently placed on the road to Brook Lodge. p14

The history of Myrtle Grove can be traced back for close to five centuries:

On one side of the room was an oriole window where Raleigh's friend the poet Edmund Spencer, burned out of his own Castle at Kilcommon, is supposed to have composed stanzas of the Fairy Queen. p. 90 

Raleigh, drawn back to England by court politics culminating in his long imprisonment and eventual execution, had not, in fact, spent a long time at Myrtle Grove.

One of the 1930s newspaper accounts relating to Joan’s book noted this connection of the Arbuthnot family home to Sir Walter RALEIGH.

February 13, 1931 Irish Times.

Although this tidbit was intended as a 1930s newspaper equivalent of click bait, it also happened to be true. RALEIGH, in 1585, had been granted 40,000 acres of land in County Cork, Ireland, and that had included Myrtle Grove which was where he had briefly lived while in Youghal.

[RALEIGH] was mayor of Youghal for one year (1588/1589) although his duties were fulfilled by a deputy suggesting absenteeism and it would appear Raleigh ran his various estates from London. SOURCE: Walter RALEIGH

The Buildings of Ireland describe Myrtle Grove as:

Traditionally the home of Sir Walter Raleigh, a former Mayor of Youghal, this house is a rare example of an unfortified sixteenth century Irish house to have survived with much of its original form intact. The house was renovated in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries yet it retains its original character and some interior features, which may date back to the 1580s. The building’s Tudor features are characterized by the steep gables and tall chimneys. There are many legends associated with the house, it is purported that the first potatoes in Ireland were planted in the gardens of Myrtle Grove, and it is possible that the house witnessed the beginning of tobacco smoking in Ireland. The poet Edmund Spenser, a contemporary of Raleigh's, is said to have been inspired to write the "Faerie Queen" while looking out the window of Myrtle Grove.

A blog post by Patrick Comerford adds some specific dates that clarify when the family lived there:

In 1940, after a divorce, Patricia married the journalist Claud Cockburn (1904-1981), and they returned to Youghal to live at Myrtle Grove in 1947.

 For many years, Claud Cockburn was a columnist with The Irish Times while I worked there, and some of his sons, including Patrick Cockburn, also contributed to The Irish Times. Patrick’s godmother was Lady Clodagh Anson, who once lived at the Towers in Ballysaggartmore, in Lismore, Co Waterford.

Patricia and Claud Cockburn moved to Ardmore, Co Waterford, in 1980. Claud died on 15 December 1980, Patricia died on 6 October 1989; they are both buried in the churchyard of Saint Mary’s Collegiate Church, Youghal, under a tree planted by her mother in memory of her brother and close to the gates of Myrtle Grove.

It is clear that while retaining a residence at Myrtle Grove, the family also continued to stay at their home at 42 Grosvenor Place: 

1927 May 18. Irish Independent.

Like her parents, Joan never touched down anywhere for any length of time. In December 29^th, 1951, she was recorded in a ship manifest while traveling to Kingstown, Jamaica with Monica BALDWIN (author). Both gave their address as Byre House., a place which was a meeting place for many creative souls.

SOURCE: The Byre House. For a time, the farm was occupied by the painter, biographer and collector Sir Roland Penrose (1900-1984) and his wife the famous model and war photographer Lee Miller. Picasso visited the house in the 1960s. SOURCE: British Listed Buildings.

Six months later, in June 13, 1952, Joan had left Jamaica via Dominica and sailed to Avonmouth (near Bristol), this time sans Monica. On this trip, her given address was Myrtle Grove, probably one of her many extended visits there with her sister Patricia, visits that her nephew Patrick recalled with delight:

Her coming was heralded by the arrival, weeks in advance, of parcels containing great quantities of clothes. Often she would change her plans and the parcels would have to be sent on. She had traveled in the South Seas and would give me bright yellow cowry shells from the lagoons, gaudy Hawaiian shirts on which were printed palm trees and lagoons, and records with Hawaiian guitar music. She was teaching me, without much success, to swim, saying that the first essential was for me to learn to float on my back. This was something I was reluctant to do because I had learned early on that, however picturesque the Irish coast, the water was bitterly cold. Extremely good looking and with a strong mellow voice Joan, never married. She lived for many years in a cottage in Oban in Scotland with Monica Baldwin, a nun who had fled her convent after 28 years and was a niece of Stanley Baldwin, the British Prime Minister before the war, with whom she exchanged frequent letters. Monica wrote a memoir, which did well, called I Leap Over the Wall, and was known in our family as ‘The Show Jumper’. p. 79

 When Joan died at age 92 in 1997, in a care facility in Youghal, she had long outlived all her siblings and she was buried, near many family members, at the cemetery at the Collegiate Church of Saint Mary, a short walk from Myrtle Grove. This was a church she knew well from her early life. Despite her foot looseness, she had returned to Youghal, a place where she had some roots, a place that felt like home.

The oak roof of Saint Mary’s, seen above, has been carbon dated to about 1170, long before Sir Walter RALEIGH  - let alone the ARBUTHNOTs - set foot in Youghal.

 As I was feeling my way into writing this piece, I was also reading Raising Hare, a memoir by Chloe Dalton about her rescue and care of a leveret – a baby hare. As I did, I found out that Chloe also had a rootless childhood, with known ancestors reaching back three hundred years or more, also with land they had owned that she had finally chosen to call home. Both Joan and Chloe had parents who had been born into wealth and prestige, and who had jobs which took them all over the world. It seems that a life like this often bestows the power of an inner privilege, a privilege of the soul, a kind of freedom which supports stepping out into the unknown and the freedom to follow one’s own desires – for good or for ill.

This is helping me to understand more - a little bit more - about why so many of the leaders of the United Irishmen from the late 1700s had come from families like Joan’s and Chloe’s. Many of them would have felt perfectly at home in many of the places where Joan's and Chloe's families had lived, not as staff, nor as a cleaning lady as I once (briefly) was, but as people who belonged. This close up and visceral kind of understanding, has begun to shape my own understanding of at least what supported some of their choices and also how these choices came to impact the arc of history. Privilege matters. Place matters.

That’s what the job of a writer is. Noticing small things. Noticing big things is for Descartes. I can’t do that. Noticing small things makes a difference. Mostly what we do, especially in relation to other people, and other people in our family, is to assume that we know them and smear across them in daily life. Mother is always in the other room complaining about something—and I’ve learned, and it’s only taken 74 years—I’ve learned to pay attention to the things people do outside of the stereotype I have of them. It’s always surprising.—Anne Carson (winner of the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature)\