“With peeling paintwork and overgrown courtyards, Calke Abbey, tells the story of the dramatic decline of a country house estate” says the National Trust. (The NT should read a catalogue of buildings in Ireland that have dramatically declined, as chronicled by Robert O’Byrne, The Irish Aesthete.)
The NT are proud of keeping Calke more or less as it was when Henry Harpur-Crewe gave it to them about thirty years ago. Some of the farm buildings have been converted into tea rooms, loos and a magnificent shop: probably not what H H-C had envisaged. Those that have been dressed-up to look unchanged remind me of Barmeath fifty years ago. In a courtyard at the rear of the house there was a nod to the 20th century; a petrol pump bought by my grandfather from a garage in Bellewstown that was upgrading to an electric pump. Otherwise little had changed since the 19th century. There was a hand pump to fill the lead water tanks in the roof. (Digression: was it the lead or the DDT on the veg that made the Bellews a bit bonkers?) A ballcock in the tanks rose and and as it did so a chain with a marker ball slowly dropped down a wall until it reached a mark and the pumper knew the tanks were full. This system changed when an electric pump was installed. There was an Apple House where the season’s crop was stored on slatted wooden shelves, a dairy where the milk was churned by hand. The machine had a bell that rang if the handle was turned either too slowly or too quickly.
The windmill on the top turret generated enough electricity to light the house and, on a windy day, to power an iron. This was before my time but I remember showing school friends an attic with marks on the walls in pencil. I told them it was where the prisoners were kept and marked off the days of confinement. Actually it was to record the strength of the batteries.
In the farmyards there were a room with sacking covering the window to keep out the light, for storing potatoes, a carpenter’s shop, pig styes, cow byres, stables where my sister kept her hunter and my grandfather his dogs. Behind the stables there were the remains of earth closets, the precursor of WCs. The tractor house and the silage clamp were new. A small part of the four acre walled kitchen garden was kept up by my mother. She grew redcurrant, blackcurrant, gooseberries, raspberries, strawberries, artichokes, tomatoes, peaches, nectarines and a variety of green veg. The rest of the walled garden was a wilderness. My grandmother created and maintained an herbaceous border and gardens which got a bit bigger every year.
My brother came to live at Barmeath in the 1970s and could have adopted the Harpur-Crewe/National Trust model. Or he could have given up and sold the place to a hotel or a property developer. It is to his credit that he has adapted to the 21st century and now the grounds look as good as they did when there were twelve gardeners in the 19th century. He restored the red brick walls of the kitchen garden and within created gravel paths and a (relatively) low maintenance garden.
He has resurrected an archery alley, lined with Irish yews, and made a laurel lawn. He has re-opened walks around the lake in front of the house. He has restored the Shell House in the woods and the Ice House. Oh, and he has sired sons and grandsons so with a bit of luck there will be Bellews at Barmeath for at least a few more generations.
It is an interesting idea to freeze a house and estate at a moment in time as the NT has done at Calke but in reality an owner must adapt to keep the show on the road, as Bru and Rosemary have done. Visiting an NT property is often like seeing an attractive stage set created to be admired but not real. It portrays something that is extinct, a period piece, although better NT than TNT. I’m not really anti-NT just a bit cynical; houses are for living in.
Very interesting article, as ever, Christopher. I expect it must cost bucket-loads of money to keep old country mansions ticking over.
In Northern Ireland many, if not most, large country estates have to pay for themselves in some shape or form.
Only a few come to mind that remain virtually private: Caledon Estate and Castle Dobbs; though I don’t know whether they have commercial shooting parties or not.
Isn’t it slightly to the point that that lived-in houses are exciting one way or another, but essentially private? The NT has pretty well by definition to provide a visitor experience. That means picking some sort of Year Zero and stage-setting around that. I often prefer the visitor experience provided by private owners, but they face the NT dilemma and often don’t come up with very good answers.