Of the four winds of heaven
The first time I visited Mourne Park, about 15 years ago, Julie Ann Anley took me on a tour of Whistle Stop. "It 'great!" She laughed. "Nobody bothers us here, because the house is architecturally important." This was not a tourist attraction such as Belvoir Castle. The house as a time capsule may have become a cliché coined in the eighties, such as Calke Abbey came to public attention, but it is certainly applied MPH.
The last time I visitedthe house in April 2003 he was with members of the public from prying abound on soon - content to be dispersed. Perfection term has begun to dissolve. Small white labels hung auction of everything including the kitchen sink. A striped awning consumed the courtyard and the building itself has been taken for research.
The auction was the result of a long and bitter family feud that erupted after the death of Nicholas Anley in 1992, which has dragged in courtuntil the beginning of 2003. The February 14 without much filial love, or a brother, was finally closed.
"It 's something that all our family is very important," Scarlett Marion Russell, said the youngest daughter Julie Ann BBC Northern Ireland rural affairs correspondent Martin Cassidy in 1994.
"We always knew that this house and his country were not negotiable and that was something that we do everything so that it would be" agreed her sister Debonair Norah NeedhamHorsman, or 'Bonnie'.
But this harmony of the thoughts ended abruptly after a disagreement on how the property should be managed. Events reached a dramatic climax when Marion will flutter away what their fair share of the contents from the house in a midnight into account. Their refusal to show the fate of these "good" as the courts insisted archaic called them, took them for a week in His Majesty's pleasure.
Five years of arduous litigation costsHundreds of thousands of pounds only ended when he was finally agreed that Marion was able to maintain their share and the other two brothers would auction off its two-thirds of the content.
MPH has been the home of the Earls of Kilmorey (pronounced "Kilmurray" - which is about the upper classes and their enjoyment of the ruling nomenclature wrong, if Calke as "punishment"? Belvoir as "Beaver" or Blakley as "Blakely") .
The family can return to his roots, a soldier Elizabethan NicholasMr. Bagnel, founder of Newry. The 4 th Earl of Kilmorey died in 1962. Shortly before his death the family inheritance re-arranged because he had no children, so his nephew and heir, Major Patrick Needham, then 5 Earl of Kilmorey, his right of succession to MPH given up in exchange for goods of equal value. And so the title back to England, where Charles I had the original viscountcy created in 1625.
This compromise allowed the 4 th Earl's widow and her two daughters, Lady Norahto continue to live in the house. Son Patrick, Earl 6 is better than Richard Needham, the former Conservative minister of Northern Ireland's economy has announced. Now is the vice president of the company aspiration and refuses to use his title Anglo Irish. But his son is called Viscount Newry and Mourne.
Nicholas, the son of the eldest daughter of the 4 th Earl married Julie Ann in the early sixties and moved to the converted stables in Mourne Park, who inherited the houseleast the title in 1984.
Julie Ann may have modestly described the house as architecturally important and there is no competition for the princely castle battlements Ballyedmond Seaforde rigorous symmetrical or House. But it is a rare example of an Edwardian country house in a county in much Victorian and Georgian is the norm.
MPH has hewn charm with its long, low elevations from local granite and its waste of green paint on window frames andDeflectors verandas and garden furniture, and plenty of French doors. Much of the interior dates from Century 20 / 1, which gives the house an air of nostalgic Edwardian.
And the environment is unsurpassed. Looms behind the house are the steep slopes of the mountain, 130m above the Knockcree oak and beech forests that make up the estate.
A Victorian visitor, WE Russell, flowed at Mourne Park, as filed by Dr Anthony Malcomson. "The scene from ...The main entrance is in fact very good. Before entering the rooms of the villa, is a lake. In addition to the lake, the rule is extended on a gently sloping hillside, hidden by the intervention of the ground until you can feel the waves of the ocean around the lawn of the park. "
The history of the house dates back to 1818, when Viscount Kilmorey 12 (1748-1832) Thaddeus uses Gaul (later Anglicized to Thomas Gallagher) of County Louth to build on the central block. It probably replaced anfirst house on the site.
Gallagher, an architect or "fellow-builders," had to Anaverna Ravensdale built a decade earlier. Baron McClelland asked the five bay two storey house near Dundalk 1807 is now home to the Lenox-Conyngham. Too big for a Glebe, too small for a house, the house of medium size, large stands, proud in his bright and beautiful wooded setting overlooking a meadow. The large skylight above the door in the middle of the three bayFront break is partially obscured by a glazed porch, but it's still intact Gallagher design. Roman arches above windows above the relief the introduction of a subject that was later used MPH. On Anaverna has proven to be a designer of considerable complexity.
Son of James Gallagher, who reports in his autobiography that his father worked at MPH nine months in 1818, emigrated to New Orleans, where he performed on the dynastic tradition of designing beautiful buildings. ItsJames Gallier young nephew was a third generation architect in 1857 and his home city of New Orleans is now the Gallier House Museum.
The first of six incarnations of MPH, Gallagher was a typical late-Georgian design, two-story house with Wyatt windows on both sides of a door Anaverna is similar to a skylight above. Then a third floor was added was added, and then some time after 1859 a new two-story front of the same height was placed in front of the existing house,so that the new block the rooms have ceilings much higher in the oldest part.
The replacement of the facade is three bays wide as the original first, but instead of fenestration Wyatt split window in two shallow wells up through the two floors with relieving arches set on them. And 'the combination of paired windows and gentle curves, like eyebrows above the eyes of the palace, before a distinctive look.
Rupture of the central front in the lowRecess begins the front door, which is considered another window flanked on both sides of a window of similar size and shape. A frame rail down on a lean partially obscured the pavilion roof that surrounds the lantern roof of the hall stairs.
Temporary improvements were made to the property itself. In 1840, the second Earl (1787-1880) - the Kilmoreys had gone a step on the scale as his aristocratic father, Viscount, 12, was a count for his services todevelopment of Newry - on behalf of a "famine walls". It 'was a method the height of the famine Irish Big House many families are used to create jobs, not to starve the people. The granite walls built on the cheap has also benefited the estate. Kimmitt Dean records that the second frame Earl Tully Gate Lodge, the third of four gate houses, built at this time. Whitewater Gate Lodge was built in 1830 and Ballymaglogh Gate Lodge in 1850.
But change was in the third and4 Conti, who gave his taste Edwardian MPH. "It is not fit to live as a gentleman!" cried the third Earl (1842-1915) in his heritage. His remedies gentrification began in 1892 when he said rectangular window on the ground floor bay on the front and lasted until 1904 when he built one wing perpendicular to the back of the house. This wing contains the living and Lady Kilmorey the Long Room, completed in time for the son to 21 BirthdayCelebrations.
Between 1919 and 1921, the son, now the fourth Earl (1883-1961) large flat roof extension built on the Avenue of the house and moved the entrance to this level. Double doors flanked by pairs of squat columns form the new entrance square, symmetrical on both sides of the two windows of the pool hall and Lord Kilmorey study. The third Earl joined the farm to Green Gate Lodge, a two-storey house finished in granite the sameMPH.
A century of his mark on every generation has brought MPH in a charming building full of surprising changes of floor levels and ceilings. The main building is like three parallel slices of a cake square, each located in the nucleus. The oldest three-story window in the back of the house has low ceilings and small windows, some retaining its Georgian squares. The average peak illuminated disc contains the long corridor that runs parallel with the hall, stairsHall and the interior of the hall. The final disc contains the row of rooms: the billiard room (formerly the great hall), dining room, the Ante Room, Drawing Room Blue and above, the master bedroom, with its stained glass windows.
The back of the house, overlooking a courtyard along one side of the room, including a low two-story wing on the other side and asylum compulsory set of appendages in parallel with the house.
All ground floor roomsand first floor were opened during the weekend auction preview. I started the tour I had done ten years earlier, only with the written rather than personal guidance and without the strength of 13 Persian cats that had followed us for the first time.
"Come on, get out of this room!" Julie Ann yelled to the cat as she closed the door of each room. "Otherwise you could in a year or two will be locked!" I told her: "At least you will not have mice." She replied: "You just lookmice race. "
Now it comes to sound muffled, as if at a wake, calmly leafing through issues of The Connoisseur at the Heritage Office and looked thoughtfully into a caricature prints of passage Rosie.
The room, like a long gallery with paintings hanging on the white-paneled walls are arranged is the first in a series of rooms procession that culminates in the stairwell, the most exciting architectural MPH has to offer. The scale has been extended from 19191921 and to stretch towards the new entrance, while the original scale was maintained through an arch into the interior of the hall. Above, provide further clarification bedroom door openings and hallways with the seductive shadows of ghosts.
Near the new entrance to Lord Kilmorey the study had an air of formality in contrast with the intimacy Sitting Room Lady Kilmorey, concealment behind the house. A library oak 7m long, as a temporary useShowcase to preview (available for £ 3,000) and a Chesterfield sofa (sold for £ 800) completed the mood of the room, good Lord butch. On the other hand, femininity Lady Kilmorey Sitting Room is through the filigree double spokes arch over skirt (sold for £ 1,000) and 17 Chino century series oven on a medium golden carved (sold for £ 11,000) as in the state, living too 11 Downing Street. HOK auction employees were laid in the last minute on a poleBooks in the middle of the floor. The house did not feel more private.
The three main rooms were typical Edwardian. Chintz sofas and comfortable family portraits mixed with antiques. "Shabby Chic", another cliché of the eighties is an appropriate description. Decades of decline has been expelled descended into decay, was once the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII) from Happy Days.
In the billiard room of an off-center brick and wooden mantle said defiantlythis territory date back to 1920. Paint was peeling, curtains were crumbling.
A touch of faded grandeur reigned in the Long Room. Flags triumphant tired now in ruins, wall lamps and colored by the passage of time pointing to past glories and parties long forgotten. A number of oak bookcases were delivered by John McArevey from Newry to move between the rows of windows running along the Long Room fit. One pair sold for £ 3,000.
The food had lost its look lived in, I remembered. Theordinary museum was organized with rows of copper pots and tin along the gel forms painted pine box drawers. High on the wall above, the clock had stopped.
The master bedroom with its simple name - Avenue of the bedroom, the corner bedroom, the Caroline, the best rooms, room his Lordship and your grace bedroom - it was clear, rugged mobile. A mahogany armoire and matching breakfront half tester or four poster bed dominates every room, accompanied by asuitable desk and pot cupboard. He has sold an average of £ 3,000 for cabinets, beds for £ 5,000.
The rooms seemed a bit 'low. Maybe they were filled in happier times. Bedrooms and the servants 'children' have brass beds (which is in the room housekeeper for 70 pounds sold), lower limits are seen less dramatic and full of disorder. Not for long.
"People say that it is as if time stopped in the house," said Philip Anley the opening day of the auction. "This is a tributeMom, "he added, recognizes the efforts of Julie Ann MPH to obtain consent.
Sales had taken place at Mourne Park. Shortly before his death, Nicholas had more than half of 800 acres of the estate, sold at Mourne Park Golf Club, which consists of a nine-hole course expanded to 18 holes. A decade earlier he had removed in the interests of his aunt, Lady Hyacinth, that of their family heirlooms different, instead of all the actions have also meant the house. The legacy of the title and the property wasalready divided in 1960. But this sale was different. He announced "the end of an era," says Philip.
Herbert Jackson Stops "Introduction to the 1920 sale catalog Stowe comes to mind." There is a feeling of deep regret that the auctioneer posts the first lines of a sales catalog, and more to destroy the glory of the house, and disperse, the four winds of heaven, its wonderful collections, leaving only memories of glorious past '. A rare level of honestythan the last apology from the sale of family silver 'to share with other furniture "to" optimize the collection. "
Sarah Kenny by HOK Fine Art Auction took the increase, a total of 1.3 million pounds. The prices were high compared to race against local dealers collectors. "My father worked in the company, so I want some kind of remembrance," I heard the tenderers. It seemed that everyone wanted their piece of history MPH.
Excitement peaked auctionlast day, as many in 1391 for the sale. It 'was the Red Book of Shavington, in the county of Salop, the seat of the Right Honble [sic] were Viscount Kilmorey. "For those who do not know, Red Books of the creation of Humphrey Repton (1752-1818), a pioneer in the field of landscape architecture. He has created or edited more than 200 British possessions. Mantras its natural beauty, enriched by art. His practice was to provide a comprehensive book red for each customer.
Shavington The Red Book was a small volumewrapped in red leather, with its proposals for "improvement" in the writing described and illustrated with copper cleaner maps, plans, drawings and watercolors. Different bidders appreciated its historical significance and exquisite beauty. In the end it went under the hammer for £ 41,000.
The third Earl of Kilmorey had Shavington, the family seat in Shropshire, in 1881 sold to pay the debts his father had accumulated. He has filled much of the furniture in MPH. Shavington Auction ItemsWorks included two Top 19 Gillows century of Lancaster, both sold for £ 11,000: The bedroom closet and desk, the architect of the library.
Mourne Park Estate have not benefited from the romantic touch of Humphrey Repton, but its robust character, derived from granite wall Knockcree remains unchanged compared with 19 faded photograph of the landscape. The same can not be said for the interior of the granite wall of the house.
"I will always remember the day whenvisited Mourne Park, "Julie Ann. Walking through the old unit, he continued," collapsed during the day the house boat. "
And actually, the boat pitched roof house, which was for centuries, not so much together, as gently toward the sea like a girl aunt, who slipped a jump in the water. After a few waves, it's gone. Forever.
Fifteen years later, and miscellaneous works, a record in London live in their natural environment, now gone, just like the house boat. Theis a sad end for the collection that formed the soul of the great houses of Ulster. Sad for the family and for the people of Newry and Mourne, whose work could earn a fortune in family antiques.
Half of the 320 acres still owns the house, robbed of their contents, such as classical statues that once graced the bare meadows around the lake, awaiting his fate.
Since this article was published, Marion Russell MPH Scarlett placed on the marketKnight Frank for £ 10,000,000. The price is now reduced to £ 6,500,000. It 'still for sale.
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Price : $72.00
