College Street, Armagh, 1835

"The city of Armagh, which is situated in the province of Ulster, is not only the capital of the county of that name, but likewise the ecclesiastical metropolis of Ireland. It stands on the sloping sides of a gently ascending hill, and is generally esteemed to be the best built and finest inland town of which our island can boast. The streets are well laid out and regularly built, and the city is adorned with several public buildings, erected in a chaste and elegant style of architecture. It is surrounded on every sideby a highly improved picturesque country. A traveller who enters it from the rural village of Richhill, will be much pleased with the tasteful improvements which partly encircle the family seat of the Richardsons; but he will be delighted with the more romantic and magnificent demesne of Sir Capel Molyneux. In Castledillon, every advantage of hill and dale, wood and water, are united; and art has most judiciously perfected the grand outline which nature had so nobly drawn. Near the centre of the lands is an extensive lake, on which various species of wild fowl sport undisturbed. Hills, crowned with woods and interspersed with lawns, surround the lake, and the spires of Grange and Armagh churches, beheld through vistas, render the scene more picturesquely beautiful. As we approach Armagh in this direction, the deanery, the observatory, the Primate's obelisk, demesne and palace, and the city itself, surmounted by its ancient Gothic cathedral, burst at once upon the view, giving to the surrounding landscape, 'rich by nature and improved by art,' a nameless and indescribable charm. "

From The Dublin Penny Journal, Volume III., No.133, January 17th, 1835.

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