Hilton Park

In its present guise Hilton Park is a classical Victorian building, twelve bays wide and of two stories over a high basement. The house, which has been home to the Madden family since the early eighteenth century, occupies an elevated site, surrounded by lawns and impressive specimen trees, overlooking a wooded demesne in the Drumlin country of South Monaghan. The grounds and park, which were laid out by the Scots gardener and landscape architect Ninian Niven, curator of the Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin in the late nineteenth century, have been wonderfully maintained and are very beautiful.

In 1734 the Rev. Samuel Madden, a cleric and philanthropist who had helped to found the Royal Dublin Society, purchased the Hilton estate near the market town of Clones for his younger son. He built a house, possibly incorporating parts of an earlier building on the site, and the family has lived here ever since. 

In 1803 Hilton House was accidentally destroyed by fire and slowly rebuilt over the next fifteen years to form a pleasant, late-Georgian residence, with the main rooms on the piano nobile and a wide flight of steps leading to the front door. There was a good deal of agrarian unrest in 19th century Ireland so the present owner’s great-great-grandfather looked to his defences. He excavated the area surrounding the house, installed heavy steel shutters and a new steel door in the basement. This became the main entrance as the front steps were removed and replaced with a grand internal staircase. These new arrangements gave the main rooms an uninterrupted field of fire and the house could probably have withstood a small siege.

To soften these martial features Hilton was refaced with Dungannon stone and given a vast classical Porte Cochêre with a giant order of columns in the manner of a grand Italian palazzo. Internally, many of the main rooms were lavishly redecorated at this time and Hilton still retains a very fine family collection.

The Hilton estate is comprised a series of drumlins (little rounded hills, often with lakes in between) and is extremely beautiful.. Lucy Madden is a well known food writer and an accomplished gardener while her husband Johnny is a knowledgeable forester. They have recently handed over to their son Freddie and his wife Joanna, who live at Hilton with their young family today.