Salvaged from Bowen’s Court, near Kildorrey, Co. Cork Bowen’s Court, Co. Cork is arguably one of the most emblematic houses of the world of Anglo-Irish literature. It was designed by Isaac Rothery and completed circa 1776. The ancestral home of the novelist Elizabeth Bowen, it played host to an Irish and international literary cast of famous writers including Evelyn Waugh, Vita Sackville-West, May Sarton, Virginia Woolf, Eudora Welty, Carson McCullers, Iris Murdoch and Sean O’Faolain. For many years Elizabeth Bowen struggled to maintain the house. In 1959 she was forced, by the absence of an heir and financial circumstances, to sell her beloved Bowen’s Court: the house was demolished in 1960. It appears in the literary memoirs of some of the most celebrated writers of the twentieth-century and its loss was a tragic blow to Ireland’s built heritage. In the early 1960’s when the interior of the house was about to be destroyed the decorative interior of the main entrance hall was rescued. The fittings remained in storage until eventually sold to in 2005. The grand entrance hall was at the core of Bowen’s Court and the space most used by Elizabeth Bowen for entertaining, principally as a dining room. This overdoor, like all the woodwork for the house is believed to be the work of a county Cork wood-carver and featured as an important architectural device. Its broken arch, carved swan-neck pediment crowned the central doorway that dominated a room extensively photographed during Elizabeth Bowen’s lifetime. The room is described in her important memoir of life at Bowen’s Court – Elizabeth Bowen, Bowen’s Court, London, 1942. Provenance: On request. 220 cm. wide