1914 Inventory & Valuation of Seskinore Lodge

Seskinore Lodge, Omagh, County Tyrone

In December 1914 a detailed Inventory & Valuation was prepared for insurance purposes for Colonel John Knox McClintock, D.L., recording the contents of Seskinore Lodge immediately before the profound social and political changes that transformed the Irish landed estates during the twentieth century.

The inventory provides an exceptionally rare surviving record of the furnishings, paintings, silver, decorative objects, books, household equipment, and family possessions contained within Seskinore House during the final years of its occupation as a great Tyrone country house.

The valuation covered:

Furniture
Linen
Silver and Sheffield Plate
Decorative China and Glass
Pictures and Works of Art
Household Equipment

The total insured valuation amounted to:

£6,384 8s 6d

A substantial sum in 1914, reflecting both the quality of the contents and the status of Seskinore as one of the principal landed houses of County Tyrone.

Historical Importance of the Inventory

The 1914 valuation is especially important because many of the rooms photographed at Seskinore in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries can now be partially reconstructed using the descriptions contained within the inventory.

The document records:

the arrangement of principal reception rooms,
family portraits and paintings,
heraldic silver,
presentation trophies,
Georgian and Victorian furnishings,
and the decorative character of the house immediately before the First World War.

Together with surviving photographs from the McClintock family archive, the inventory allows aspects of the interiors of Seskinore House to be reconstructed with unusual accuracy.

The Principal Rooms

The inventory records the contents of the principal reception rooms of the house, including:

Drawing Room
Dining Room
Morning Room
Hall
Smoke Room
Billiard Room
Bedrooms and Dressing Rooms
Upper Hall and Staircase
Service and Domestic Offices

The descriptions reveal a richly furnished late Victorian and Edwardian country house interior containing extensive upholstered furniture, carpets, mirrors, bronzes, china, books, sporting pictures, and family portraits.

Family Portraits & Paintings

One of the most historically valuable sections of the inventory is the detailed listing of paintings and portraits displayed throughout the house.

These included portraits of members of the McClintock, Eccles, Knox, and related families, alongside landscapes, marine paintings, Italian scenes, and sporting prints.

Among the portraits specifically recorded were:

Dining Room

Mrs. Charles Eccles (née Isabella Blake)

Oil painting.
Dimensions: 4 ft. by 34 in.
Frame: gilt frame.
Valuation: £10 10s 0d.

Mrs. Dora McClintock

Oil painting.
Dimensions: 40 in. by 30 in.
Frame: heavy gold moulded frame.
Valuation: £10 0s 0d.

Hall

Mrs. Dorothy Knox of Moyne Abbey

Oil painting of an old lady.
Dimensions: 30 in. by 24 in.
Frame: flat gilt frame.
Valuation: £15 0s 0d.

Colonel McClintock as a Boy

Oil painting depicting Colonel McClintock seated in a mountain scene as a boy.
Dimensions: 50 in. by 45 in.
Frame: 9 in. old English gilt frame.
Valuation: £20 0s 0d.

Mrs. A. H. McClintock (Amy)

Oil painting by Costa.
Dimensions: 30 in. by 25 in.
Frame: heavy Florentine frame.
Valuation: £40 0s 0d.

Colonel McClintock in Hunting Costume

Oil painting showing Colonel McClintock with dog in landscape.
Valuation: £15 0s 0d.

Decorative Paintings

The inventory also records numerous decorative and continental paintings throughout the principal rooms, including:

Italian landscape copies
Claude-style harbour and shipping scenes
Studies of animals
Classical subjects including The Three Graces
Poussin-style landscapes
Sporting prints and hunting scenes
Steeplechasing engravings
Indian sporting subjects
Military and hunting prints

These works formed part of the carefully arranged decorative scheme of the house.

Silver & Presentation Plate

The silver recorded at Seskinore represented one of the most valuable and historically important parts of the house contents.

The collection included:

Georgian Dublin silver
Presentation trophies
Crested cutlery
Regimental silver
Hunting trophies
Victorian presentation cups
Sheffield Plate
Irish provincial silver

Many pieces carried the McClintock crest or arms and several were associated with hunting, military service, and family commemorations.

The inventory records numerous eighteenth-century Dublin-made pieces by prominent silversmiths.

Among the most notable items were:

George II and George III Irish silver
Early Dublin sauce boats
Georgian tea services
Regimental mess silver
Presentation cups won in sporting events
Trophy cups associated with Captain G. P. McClintock
Engraved family plate bearing the McClintock and Perry crests
Victorian goblets and presentation bowls
Hunting and racing trophies

Several pieces were specifically associated with the Seskinore Hunt and Tyrone sporting life.

Heraldry & The McClintock Lions

The inventory and surviving photographs also preserve evidence of the heraldic identity of the family.

Photographs of the front façade of Seskinore House show sculpted lions mounted upon the balustrade above the porte cochère, while a further pair formerly stood upon the entrance gates to the demesne.

These lions represented the McClintock crest:

A lion passant argent.

The McClintock arms were:

Per pale gules and azure a chevron ermine between three escallops.

The family motto was:

Virtute et labore
(“By virtue and labour.”)

The heraldic lions formed an important decorative and symbolic element of the Victorian remodelling of the house.

Seskinore House & the Inventory

The surviving photographs of Seskinore House can now be read alongside the 1914 inventory to identify individual rooms, furnishings, and portraits.

The interiors reveal a substantial late Victorian country house furnished in a restrained but sophisticated style, combining Georgian survivals with Victorian additions and Edwardian comforts.

Together, the inventory and photographs provide a remarkable surviving record of the architectural, decorative, and social history of Seskinore House during its final period as a private landed residence.

Surviving Related Material

The surviving archival material connected with the inventory now includes:

interior photographs of the principal rooms,
exterior views of the house and courtyard,
surviving family portraits,
estate photographs,
and documentary records associated with the McClintock family and Seskinore estate.

These materials collectively form a significant surviving visual and documentary record of a County Tyrone landed estate in the early twentieth century.

Image and archival material courtesy of the McClintock of Seskinore Collection.

Dispersal of the Contents of Seskinore Lodge

Following the death of Captain Joynson-Wreford in 1940, the contents of Seskinore House appear to have been dispersed prior to the eventual decline and sale of the estate.

Evidence for this survives in a later article written in approximately 1949, which records that a bound volume entitled:

“Maps of the Estate of Samuel McClintock, Esq., Situate in the Counties of Armagh, Louth, Meath and Tyrone, by Robert Wilson.”

came into private hands:

“when the goods and effects of Seskinore Lodge, the former residence of the late Colonel J. K. McClintock, D.L., were disposed of.”

The map volume, dated 1846, was described as a finely bound collection of coloured estate maps and reference schedules naming occupiers and tenants across the McClintock estates.

The surviving maps are now preserved within the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland:

PRONI Reference: D568
Maps of the Estate of Samuel McClintock, Esq., situate in the Corporation of Armagh, Co. Armagh and the Manor of Seskinore, Co. Tyrone, by Robert Wilson (1846).

Although no complete auction catalogue or formal record of the dispersal has yet been identified, surviving recollections suggest that a sale of the furnishings, pictures, silver, books, and household contents of Seskinore Lodge took place during the 1940s.

The apparent dispersal of the collections marked the gradual end of Seskinore as a fully furnished landed estate house and the loss of many objects associated with generations of the McClintock family.

It is hoped that further records, photographs, catalogues, or surviving family material relating to the contents of Seskinore House may emerge in future.nd fate of the contents of Seskinore House may emerge in future.