The elder John continued his father’s acquisition of land near Waterford City. In particular, he acquired in 1759 the lease of property belonging to the Christmas family of Whitfield. Here he settled, and two years later we find him described as “of Mount Congreve”. We may therefore assign the building of the house to about 1760, and an account-book in the Mount Congreve archives shows that the builder was the Waterford architect John Roberts. (Of all Roberts’s buildings in and around Waterford, including the two cathedrals, this is the only one of which we have direct evidence of his involvement.)


John assembled the Mount Congreve Library, and many of the older volumes bear his bookplate, comprising the arms of Congreve impaling those of Ussher. His grandson and namesake compiled a catalogue of the library; of which he had some copies printed locally in 1827 (See Lots 770, & 779); to his own copy he added further acquisitions made down to his death in 1863. Superbly restored in recent times, the library forms an interesting and valuable collection.


John and both his sons were enthusiastic supporters of the Volunteer movement and participated in the affairs of the Irish parliament. The rebellion of 1798 and the Act of Union in 1801, however, put an end to these activities. Ambrose Ussher Congreve died in 1809 and was succeeded by his son John, who in 1827 married Louisa Dillon of the Clonbrock family. Their son and heir, the third Ambrose Congreve, succeeded to the estate in 1863 and married his first cousin Alice Dillon of Clonbrock. Life at Mount Congreve during their time is depicted in the photographs of the Clonbrock Collection, some of which featured in the National Library’s recent “Power and Privilege” exhibition in Temple Bar.


Their son, Major John Congreve, succeeded his father in 1901, and married Lady Irène Ponsonby, daughter of Edward Viscount Duncannon, later eighth Earl of Bessborough. Lady Bessborough’s mother was the redoubtable Lady Charlotte Schreiber. Her first husband was Sir Josiah John Guest, (See Lot 71), manager of the Dowlais Iron Works near Merthyr Tydvil, which became the largest of its kind in the world. After her husband’s death she took over complete management of the works. Then in 1855 she married Charles Schreiber, a classical scholar, left Dowlais, and together with her husband travelled Europe collecting objets d’art, especially ceramics, (See Lot 200).


4


MEALYS EST 1934


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