The Rt Hon. Hercules Langford Rowley (1708-94), was the son of Hercules Rowley MP, who had built Summerhill House, County Meath from 1731, possibly to the designs of Sir Edward Lovett Pearce (c1699-1733). In 1732 Langford Rowley married Elizabeth Ormsby Upton (1713-91) (created 1st Viscountess Langford in 1766). He also served as a member of the Irish Privy Council, and succeeded to his father’s estate in 1741. In addition to Summerhill, Langford Rowley also purchased a Dublin townhouse on Mary Street in 1743. Mary Street had been laid out in the mid-1690s by Sir Humphrey Jervis. One of the largest houses on the street was Langford House, as it came to be known, being a 90-foot wide, four-storey, five-bay townhouse.

In 1765 Langford Rowley commissioned Robert Adam to make designs both for an extension to Summerhill, where nothing was executed, and for redecorating the two first-floor drawing rooms at Langford House on Mary Street. Adam never visited Ireland, but his schemes for both drawing rooms are known to have been installed, and it is presumed that the extant drawings show the executed schemes.

Langford Rowley was succeeded by his son, also Hercules Langford Rowley, who followed his mother as 2nd Viscount Langford. Langford Rowley’s daughter Jane married Clothworthy Taylor, Earl of Bective, another Adam patron at Headfort House, County Meath. It is worthy of note that Adam’s back drawing room ceiling design for Langford House (Adam volume 11/123) was reproduced in the drawing room – later the Chinese room – at Headfort, and this survives in situ.

Langford House survived until the early twentieth century when much of Mary Street was rebuilt during the Edwardian period. The plot is now the location of a large Marks and Spencer, built in 1979 to designs by Scott Tallon Walker Architects.

See also: Summerhill House, Country Meath, and Headfort House, County Meath.

Literature:
A.T. Bolton, The architecture of Robert and James Adam, 1922, Volume II, Index p.p. 10, 86; J. Harris, Headfort House & Robert Adam: drawings from the collection of Mr and Mrs Paul Mellon, 1973, pl. 38; D. King, The complete works of Robert & James Adam and unbuilt Adam, 2001, Volume I, pp. 225, 237; C. Casey, The buildings of Ireland: Dublin, 2005, pp. 109-110

Frances Sands, 2014