Summerhill days

I much enjoyed your piece about Elisabeth, Empress of Austria’s frequent hunting visits to England and Ireland (“If only you had never

seen a saddle”, May issue). I thought your readers might be interested to know where she stayed for a couple of seasons in Ireland. She certainly did things in style, renting one of the grandest houses in the country, Summerhill in Co Meath. Built in the early 18th century, to the designs of Edward Lovett Pearce and Richard Cassels, it was damaged by fire in 1922. It survived as a picturesque ruin until it was quietly demolished in the late 1950s, with the casual vandalism of the time. One massive archway survives as an echo of its former glories.

Matthew Dobbs, London