There is one room at Barmeath that I’m pretty sure I have never been into. It is on the upper floor of a turret and was approached by an external, rather rickety, wooden staircase.
It was where my grandfather kept his ferrets. The dogs and I would be left at the bottom of the stairs while he went up to feed them. In those pre-myxomatosis days the place was teeming with rabbits and flushing them using ferrets kept numbers down a bit and provided good sport. The ferrets’ diet was usually a rabbit’s head and this would be left out on a plate in the hall by a maid. Those were also the days when there were two, sometimes three, living-in staff at Barmeath. Visitors of a sensitive disposition would be unnerved, on their way to breakfast, by the sight of a severed head in a puddle of blood on a Willow Pattern plate.
After myxomatosis the ferrets went and the stairs to their eerie rotted away. I never got a ladder to climb up and look inside. However, you can see it in this short (4 minute) film.