The Dining Room

Come into the dining room. The walls are painted dark red; not quite Farrow & Ball’s Eating Room Red but similar. Around the cornice are shields of Bellew wives and Irish provinces. Not enough wives are armigerous and there are only four provinces so they repeat themselves.

In the centre of the end wall is a marble chimneypiece. My grandmother brought it to Barmeath but I have forgotten where she acquired it. Either side of the chimney breast are portraits. On the south wall three windows look out on the lozenge (a rectangular lawn) and beyond that across the tennis court to the lake. The other side of the lake bullocks graze on a hillside fringed by woodland. You will have noticed that the walls are thick, though not so thick as in the old part of the house that was a Pale castle. In the left hand window embrasure a cupboard has been hollowed out big enough to hold a chamber pot; a 19th century en suite. Between the windows two pastel portraits are hung to avoid any sunlight. One of them is incorrectly labelled Rosalba. Beneath the “Rosalba” is a table used at teatime. Beneath the other portrait is a wine cooler commissioned by Punch Bryan. It has the Bryan crest, a lion passant, carved on the front and lions’ heads at each corner. A secret catch to open it is broken so we can see that it only contains a very old bottle of Angostura bitters.

Opposite the fireplace there is a huge mahogany sideboard. It has cupboards and drawers at either end and a long drawer beneath the central section. This contains napkins and placemats. On the floor beneath this gigantic piece of furniture sits a polished wood travelling case that holds decanters and glasses; a relic of the days when Bellews took their coach to Dublin. Above the sideboard is a big Italianate landscape. The scene is imaginary, depicting a deep gorge straddled by a stone bridge with a ruined castle on a crag above it. On the sideboard are decanters on silver coasters and bottles of Orange Kia-ora.

The north wall has a smaller side board with no cupboards or drawers but two side tables on either side. A long electric hot plate sits in front of the wall and there are mats in front. Above is a group portrait of van Dyck, his wife and their secretary. A dog sits looking up at them and the secretary surreptitiously has his hand on Mrs van Dyck’s knee under the table. My grandmother doesn’t think much of this picture but it is the right size to catch any grease from the hot plate.

The right hand side table is where coffee is made in the morning and tea in the afternoon. Just behind it is an electric bell. We help ourselves from the sideboard and eat at a round table in the centre of the room that just sits twelve, if there are no side plates, but usually we are four. My grandfather always sits on the west, my mother north and my grandmother east. There is always a flower arrangement in the centre. On special occasions food is brought round by a servant and we help ourselves that way – I now know this is called Silver Service, an expression my grandmother would not have understood or approved of.

The maids are teenage girls, taught to serve the food on the left and to take the plates away on the right. This has produced a lifelong neurosis whereby I irrationally dislike food being served from the right, which it usually is. I discovered a few days ago that plated food should always be served from the right. We never had plated food at Barmeath. The kitchen, incidentally, is the other side of the north wall, so quite convenient. The old kitchen is in another wing called the Old Nurseries, down a long dark corridor that twists and turns. My cousin Caroline is never too keen on venturing down it even in the Summer but that’s because Miss Murray lives there – a story for another day.