As you know Barmeath throws its gates open to visitors from time to time. This year it will be a virtual tour and I am your guide.
As you drive up notice the oak tree on the left. I remember sheltering under it during a thunder storm as a child and getting a severe telling-off. Oaks are the most vulnerable trees to lightning strikes apparently. As it’s about to rain, the cattle are starting to lie down, let’s look around the inside before making a tour of the gardens for which Barmeath is so justly famous.
Here we are in the main hall, the two rooms you passed through just now serve no purpose except to exhibit the antlers of Irish Elk disinterred from the Gallagh bog in the 19th century. Facing you is a door leading to a second flight of back stairs and then into the modern kitchen – it was in a different wing some considerable distance from the dining room. The small gouache above the door is interesting. It is by Evie Hone and is of this room. She painted it during the time she lived at Barmeath. The front stairs are broad and the bannister ends in a swirl of polished wood. Look closely and you can see that some vandal has scratched “I want to go to the sea”. Now turn left through that arch into the main part of the hall.
The table is of bog oak, intricately carved. Above it is a large still life of birds in the style of Melchior d’Hondecoeter. The flying birds seem strangely lifeless as if the artist suspended his models on strings, which is exactly what he did. It also seems incomplete as if it was cut down to fit its elaborate frame, which it was. To the left are two small views of the Liffey painted on copper panels. The black and white stone flags have been polished in honour of your visit. Now turn around and see the rest of the hall.
You get an impression of the thickness of the walls in this part of the castle by the depth of the embrasure to the window on the left. This window is in fact a door leading out to the garden on the south front. The plasterwork in the centre is in a style known as Irish rococo. (I just invented that but you wouldn’t expect a guided tour to lose anything in the telling.) Now come through the door on the right into the dining room.
At this point we may sit down; I don’t think it’s too early for a glass of sherry, do you? The walls are painted what Farrow and Ball call Eating Room Red a colour chosen by my grandmother in the 1930s probably by mixing the paint herself. She also bought the fine chimney piece and I cannot remember where. To the left is a large carved wooden wine cooler. Look carefully at the cornice and you can see a succession of coats of arms in plaster of significance to the family when they were executed in about 1830.
The weather seems to be improving but first I will take you up the main staircase …
(To be continued)
It is customary to tip your guide. In case you slip off to The Bellew Arms and do not return for the next part of this tour you might like to make a donation to The Benevolent Society of St Patrick.
Tripadvisor review: Today’s visit was billed as a ‘Private tour’. On the visual, our guide pasted together some (public) images previously published in a (very good) Country Life article several years ago (I would postulate these were reproduced without permission). It was like attending a private recital, only to discover the only instrument being played was a CD recording; tut tut. I would imagine that many followers here, like me, are regular Country Life readers, so I wonder what the ‘Private’ nature of the tour was?
I had expected a ‘behind the ropes’ experience, especially as our guide had a personal connection to the residence, which would bring the house alive through anecdote and personal reminiscence. To say our guide presented the information in an vapid manner would be an understatement. To quote an example: ‘the front stairs are broad and ends in a swirl of polished wood’ & ‘the table is of bog oak, elegantly carved’. I almost expected him to say ‘this is the dining room, which is used for eating’.
It is evident that our guide has inherited those blimpish Bellew genes, as he has all the interest of an eighteenth century absentee Irish peer who fritters away his life in London. Thankfully Barmeath is not his primary residence, and its current incumbents have much more affection for the place.
“TripAdvisor reviews are useful but I have no doubt that some cannot be trusted and may be simply malicious.” Daily Telegraph, 2nd April 2012.
I had hoped to visit Barmeath Castle with the Irish Garden Plant Society on the 6th June; picnic then tour of the garden, sadly this was cancelled due to Covid-19.
So thank you Christopher for the guided tour of the castle.
Maybe next year?
I hope the “TripAdvisor” review hasn’t put you off! Actually the garden hasn’t been at its best this summer and Rosemary tells me she’s glad that real visits are cancelled. The gardens today are as or more impressive now than they were in the middle of the 19th century when there were twenty gardeners. My grandmother was a real horticulturist but Bru and Rosemary have re-imagined the four acre walled garden in the sprit of Capability Brown. A wilderness has been transformed and what we called the Wild Garden has become an arboretum.
As someone who is not a Country Life reader ( are there still any?) and who does not know Barmeath I thoroughly enjoyed the private tour that you gave me and will look forward to hearing more of the house and gardens.. Unlike Hibernophile I thought that it did show real affection for the house. I find it very difficult to understand how your relationship with the house can be likened to that of an “eighteenth century absentee Irish peer”.
Christopher often talks affectionately and interestingly about his family home and especially of his grandfather. Like others I have much enjoyed walking the tour with him especially having never visited Barmeath. It has often be tabled as a possibility on our trips to the Wexford Opera Festival and I hope one day it will become a reality.
I very much enjoyed the virtual tour which reminded me of our actual visit several years ago. But I did miss the thrill of wondering if the dogs might surprise us in the open which hung over us on that visit. As I remember we were on our guard because one of them had recently bitten its mistress, your sister in law. If they got out we were advised to form a circle, rather like in the wild west, but it was not at all clear what we were to do next…
What fun, Christopher. Thank you for the tour of your fascinating family home. Somehow, I missed the article in *Country Life* a few years ago (weekly editions often arrive here in the Western U.S. four or five weeks late and in clumps of two or even three, so I do get behind and skim them sometimes).
Grumpy readers (of a free blog, at that) longing for more personal detail might perhaps benefit from a reminder of previous posts like this one — https://christopherbellew.com/the-dining-room/ — which popped up when I googled to see If the CL article was available in full online. (Sadly, I long ago ran out of room to keep back issues of the magazine — books squeezing out everything else — but at least the children have taken an interest in cutting out pictures that catch their eye when I’m done with my reading.)
It would be delightful to visit in person someday.