하늘의 네 바람
내가 Morne Park를 처음 방문했을 때, 약 15년 전, Julie Ann Anley는 나를 휘슬스톱 투어로 데려갔습니다. “굉장해!” 그녀가 웃었다. “집이 건축학적으로 중요하지 않기 때문에 아무도 우리를 여기에서 귀찮게 하지 않습니다.” 이것은 Belvoir Castle과 같은 관광 명소가 아닙니다. 타임캡슐로서의 시골집은 Calke Abbey가 대중의 관심을 끌었던 80년대에 만들어진 진부한 표현이 되었을지 모르지만 MPH에는 확실히 적용되었습니다.
2003년 4월 내가 마지막으로 집을 방문했을 때, 곧 배포될 내용물을 훔쳐보는 시민들로 붐볐다. 완벽한 기간이 풀리기 시작했습니다. 부엌 싱크대를 포함한 모든 곳에 작은 흰색 경매 라벨이 걸려 있습니다. 줄무늬 천막이 안뜰을 가득 채웠고 건물 자체가 낡아 보이기 시작했습니다.
경매는 1992년 니콜라스 앤리가 사망한 후 2003년 초까지 법정을 질질 끌었던 길고 쓰라린 가족 불화의 결과였습니다.
Julie Ann의 어린 딸인 Marion Scarlett Russell은 1994년 BBC의 북아일랜드 시골 특파원인 Martin Cassidy에게 “우리 가족 모두가 매우 관심을 갖고 있는 일입니다.”라고 말했습니다.
“우리는 항상 이 집과 그 땅이 협상할 수 없으며 유지하기 위해 모든 것을 할 것이라는 것을 알고 있었습니다.” 그녀의 언니 Debonaire Norah Needham Horsman 또는 ‘Bonnie’가 동의했습니다.
그러나 이러한 생각의 조화는 유산 관리 방법에 대한 의견 불일치로 인해 갑자기 끝났습니다. Marion이 한밤중에 집안의 내용물 중 자신의 공정한 몫이라고 생각하는 것을 제거했을 때 사건은 극적인 절정에 이르렀습니다. 법원이 구식으로 부를 것을 주장함에 따라 그녀는이 ‘동산’의 소재를 밝히기를 거부하여 폐하의 기쁨에서 일주일을 보냈습니다.
수십만 파운드의 비용이 드는 5년간의 고된 법적 논쟁은 Marion이 자신의 몫을 유지할 수 있고 다른 두 형제가 콘텐츠의 3분의 2를 경매에 부칠 것이라는 데 최종적으로 동의했을 때만 끝났습니다.
MPH는 Earls of Kilmorey(“Kilmurray”로 발음됨 – Calke가 “Cock”, Belvoir가 “Beaver”, Blakley가 “Blakely”인지 여부에 관계없이 명명법의 잘못된 발음에 대한 기쁨과 상류층의 기쁨은 무엇입니까?).
The family can hint its roots again to an Elizabethan soldier, Nicholas Bagnel, founding father of Newry. The 4th Earl of Kilmorey died in 1962. Simply earlier than his demise the family inheritance was rearranged as a result of he had no sons, permitting his nephew and inheritor, Main Patrick Needham, subsequently fifth Earl of Kilmorey, to waive his proper of succession to MPH in alternate for property of equal worth. And so the title returned to England the place Charles I had created the unique viscountcy in 1625.
This compromise allowed the 4th Earl’s widow, Girl Norah, and her two daughters to proceed residing within the house. Patrick’s son, the sixth Earl, is healthier referred to as Richard Needham, former Conservative Northern Eire Economic system Minister. He’s now the deputy chairman of a vacuum cleaning company and declines to make use of his Anglo Irish title. Nonetheless his son types himself Viscount Newry and Mourne.
Nicholas, the son of the elder daughter of the 4th Earl, married Julie Ann initially of the Sixties and moved into the transformed stables at Mourne Park. He inherited the house minus the title in 1984.
Julie Ann could have modestly described the house as being architecturally unimportant and it’s no competitors for the baronial battlements of Ballyedmond Fort or the symmetrical severity of Seaforde House. However it’s a uncommon instance of a considerably Edwardian nation house in a county the place Victorian or Georgian is the norm.
MPH oozes allure with its lengthy low elevations hewn out of the native granite and its lavish use of inexperienced paint on window frames and porches, bargeboards and backyard furniture, and the abundance of French doorways. A lot of the interior ornament dates from the early twentieth century which lends the house a nostalgic Edwardian air.
And the setting is second to none. Looming behind the house are the craggy slopes of Knockcree Mountain rising 130m above the oak and beech woodlands that make up the estate.
A Victorian customer, W E Russell, waxed lyrical on Mourne Park, as archived by Dr Anthony Malcomson. ‘The scene… from the entrance entrance is certainly very fine. Earlier than you, within the precincts of the mansion, is a lake. Past this lake, the demesne stretches away with a gently rising slope, which hides the intervening land, until one can fancy that the sea waves lap the lawns of the park.’
The genesis of the mansion dates from 1818 when the twelfth Viscount Kilmorey (1748-1832) employed Thadeus Gallier (later anglicised to Thomas Gallagher) of County Louth to construct the central block. It most definitely changed an earlier house on the positioning.
Gallagher, an architect or ‘journeyman-builder’, had already constructed Anaverna at Ravensdale a decade earlier. Baron McClelland commissioned this 5 bay two storey house close to Dundalk in 1807. It is now the home of the Lenox-Conynghams. Too grand for a glebe, too modest for a mansion, this middling dimension house, tall, light and good-looking, stands proud in its sylvan setting overlooking a meadow. The big fanlight over the doorway door in the midst of the three bay breakfront is partially obscured by a glazed porch, however in any other case Gallagher’s design is untouched. Semicircular relieving arches over upstairs home windows introduce a motif he was to later make use of at MPH. At Anaverna he proved himself to be a designer of appreciable sophistication.
Gallagher’s son James, who recorded in his autobiography that his father labored at MPH for 9 months in 1818, emigrated to New Orleans the place he carried on the dynastic custom of designing fine buildings. His grandson, James Gallier Junior, was a third technology architect and his 1857 New Orleans townhouse is now the Gallier House Museum.
The primary of six incarnations of MPH, Gallagher’s design was a typical late Georgian two storey nation house with Wyatt home windows on both aspect of a doorway just like Anaverna’s with a fanlight over it. Subsequent, a third storey was added was added after which a while after 1859 a brand new two storey entrance of the identical peak was plonked in entrance of the prevailing house, in order that the rooms within the new block have a lot increased ceilings than within the older half.
The alternative façade is three bays vast like the unique entrance however rather than Wyatt home windows is bipartite fenestration set in shallow recesses rising by each storeys with relieving arches over them. It’s the mixture of those paired home windows and mild arches, like brows over the eyes of the constructing, which provides the entrance such a definite look.
Within the central breakfront the shallow recess begins over the doorway door which is handled as one other window, flanked on both aspect by a window of comparable form and dimension. A low parapet over a slim cornice partly conceals the hipped roof which wraps across the roof lantern of the Staircase Corridor.
Contemporaneous enhancements had been made to the estate itself. Within the 1840s the 2nd Earl (1787-1880) – the Kilmoreys had gone up a rung on the aristocratic ladder when his father, the twelfth Viscount, was made an earl for his services to the development of Newry – commissioned a ‘famine wall’. It was a way used on the peak of the Irish potato famine by many Huge House households to create work to maintain locals from ravenous. The cheaply constructed granite partitions additionally profited the estate. Kimmitt Dean information that the 2nd Earl constructed Tullyframe Gate Lodge, the third of 4 gate lodges, presently. Whitewater Gate Lodge was constructed within the 1830s and Ballymaglogh Gate Lodge within the 1850s.
Nevertheless it was the alterations of the third and 4th Earls which gave MPH its Edwardian flavour. “Not match for a gentleman to reside in!” exclaimed the third Earl (1842-1915) upon his inheritance. His remedial gentrifications started in 1892 when he added rectangular floor floor bay home windows onto the entrance and continued till 1904 when he constructed a single storey wing perpendicular to the again of the house. This wing incorporates Girl Kilmorey’s Sitting Room and the Lengthy Room, the latter accomplished in time for his son’s twenty first birthday celebrations.
Between 1919 and 1921 that son, by now the 4th Earl (1883-1961) constructed a sprawling flat roofed extension onto the avenue aspect of the house and relocated the doorway to this elevation. Double doorways framed by pairs of squat sq. pillars shaped the brand new entrance, balanced on both aspect by the 2 home windows of the Billiard Room and Lord Kilmorey’s Examine. The third Earl accomplished the estate buildings with Inexperienced Gate Lodge, a two storey house completed in the identical granite as MPH.
A century of every technology making their mark on MPH has resulted in a captivating constructing full of unusual modifications in floor ranges and ceiling heights. The principle block is organized like three parallel slices of a sq. cake, every totally different in essence. The oldest three storey slice behind the house has low ceilings and small home windows, some retaining their Georgian panes. The center high lit slice incorporates the Lengthy Hall which runs parallel with the Corridor, the Staircase Corridor and the Interior Corridor. Lastly the latest slice incorporates the enfilade of reception rooms: the Billiard Room (previously the Massive Drawing Room), the Eating Room, the Ante Room, the Blue Drawing Room and above, the principal bedrooms with their plate glass home windows.
The again of the house overlooks a courtyard enclosed by the Lengthy Room on one aspect, a low two storey nursery wing on the opposite aspect and the compulsory row of outbuildings parallel with the house.
All of the rooms on the bottom and first flooring had been open through the public sale preview weekend. I started the tour that I had gone on a decade earlier, solely with a written relatively than personal information and with out the troop of 13 Persian cats which had adopted us across the first time spherical.
“Come on, get out of this room!” Julie Ann bellowed to the cats as she shut the door of every room. “In any other case you can be locked in for a 12 months or two!” I commented to her, “At the least you will not have mice.” She replied,” They simply watch the mice race by.”
Now folks had been speaking in hushed murmurs as if at a wake, quietly leafing by problems with The Connoisseur within the Estate Workplace and thoughtfully gazing at caricature prints within the Rosie Passage.
The Corridor, organized like an extended gallery with work held on white panelled partitions, is the primary in a processional collection of areas which culminates within the Staircase Corridor, essentially the most thrilling architectural second MPH has to supply. The staircase was prolonged between 1919 and 1921 to stretch out within the course of the brand new entrance whereas the unique flight of stairs by an archway into the Interior Corridor was retained. Above, extra archways and openings afford tantalising glimpses of bed room corridors crammed with the shadows of ghosts.
Near the brand new entrance, Lord Kilmorey’s Examine had an air of ritual in distinction to the intimacy of Girl Kilmorey’s Sitting Room which is tucked away behind the house. A 7m lengthy oak bookcase, used as a brief show cupboard for the preview (bought for £3,000) and a chesterfield sofa (bought for £800) accomplished the butch temper of the nice Lord’s room. On the opposite hand, the femininity of Girl Kilmorey’s Sitting Room was exaggerated by the fragile double arched overmantle (bought for £1,000) and the seventeenth century Chinoserie cupboard on a carved giltwood stand (bought for £11,000) just like these within the State Drawing Room of 11 Downing Road. HOK public sale staff had been making final minute notes on a pile of books in the midst of the floor. The house not felt personal.
The three essential reception rooms had been quintessentially Edwardian. Chintz sofas and family portraits combined comfortably with interval items. ‘Shabby stylish’, one other Eighties cliché, is an apt description. Many years of decadence had descended into decay, the place as soon as the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) had whiled away halcyon days.
Within the Billiard Room an off-centre timber and brick chimneypiece defiantly declares this room thus far from the Nineteen Twenties. Paint was peeling, curtains had been crumbling.
An air of pale grandeur pervaded the Lengthy Room. Triumphal flags now in tatters and colored wall lamps dulled by the passage of time hinted at previous glories and events lengthy forgotten. A collection of oak bookcases was provided by John McArevey of Newry to suit between the rows of home windows operating the size of the Lengthy Room. One pair bought for £3,000.
The kitchen had misplaced its lived in look which I remembered. It was neater now with rows of copper jelly moulds and tin pots organized museum-like alongside the painted pine dressers. Excessive up on the wall above, the clock had stopped.
The principal bedrooms with their easy names – the Avenue Bed room, the Nook Bed room, Caroline’s Room, the Greatest Bed room, His Lordship’s Bed room and Her Ladyship’s Bed room – had plain sturdy furniture. A mahogany breakfront wardrobe and matching half tester or 4 poster bed dominated every room, accompanied by an identical desk and pot cupboard. On common the wardrobes bought for £3,000; the beds for £5,000.
The bedrooms seemed barely sparse. Maybe they’d been fuller in happier instances. Minor bedrooms and servants’ rooms had brass beds (the one within the Housekeeper’s Room bought for £70), decrease ceilings, much less dramatic views, and had been stuffed with muddle. Not for for much longer.
“Folks say it is as if time stopped within the house,” Philip Anley stated on the opening day of the public sale. “That is a tribute to mum,” he added, acknowledging Julie Ann’s efforts to take care of MPH.
Gross sales had taken place at Mourne Park earlier than. Shortly earlier than his demise, Nicholas had bought greater than half the 800 hectare estate to Mourne Park Golf Membership which prolonged from a 9 gap to an 18 gap course. A decade earlier than he had purchased out the curiosity of his aunt, Girl Hyacinth, which meant her family eradicating varied heirlooms in lieu of any stake within the house itself. The inheritance of the title and estate had already break up in 1960. Nonetheless this sale was totally different. It heralded “the tip of an period” in line with Philip.
Herbert Jackson Stops’ introduction to the Nineteen Twenties sale catalogue of Stowe springs to thoughts. ‘It’s with a sense of profound remorse that the auctioneer pens the opening strains of a sale catalogue which can destroy for ever the glories of the house, and disperse to the 4 winds of heaven its fantastic collections, leaving solely reminiscences of the spacious previous’. A uncommon stage of honesty in comparison with latest excuses of promoting off the family silver from ‘eager to share chattels with others’ to ‘streamlining the gathering’.
Sara Kenny from HOK Fine Art carried out the public sale, elevating a complete of £1.3m. Costs had been excessive with sellers bidding in opposition to collectors in opposition to locals. “My dad labored on the estate so I need some form of souvenir,” I overheard one bidder say. It appeared everybody wished their piece of MPH’s historical past.
Public sale pleasure reached fever pitch on the final day when lot 1391 got here up on the market. It was the Purple E book of Shavington, within the County of Salop, a seat of The Proper Honble [sic] Lord Viscount Kilmorey’. For many who do not know, Purple Books had been the creation of Humphrey Repton (1752-1818), a pioneer within the subject of panorama structure. He created or remodeled over 200 English estates. His mantra was pure magnificence enhanced by art. His follow was to finish a Purple E book for every consumer.
The Shavington Purple E book was a slim quantity encased in pink leather-based containing his proposals for ‘enhancements’ outlined in neat copperplate handwriting and illustrated with maps, plans, drawings and watercolours. A number of bidders appreciated its historic significance and beautiful magnificence. Ultimately it went underneath the hammer for £41,000 구해줘홈즈 시골집.
The third Earl of Kilmorey had bought Shavington, the family seat in Shropshire, in 1881 to pay for money owed his father had accrued. He crammed a lot of the furniture into MPH. Shavington objects auctioned included two early nineteenth century items by Gillows of Lancaster which each bought for £11,000: the Nook Bed room wardrobe and the architect’s desk from the Library.
Mourne Park estate could not have benefitted from the romantic contact of Humphrey Repton however its rugged character, derived from the granite face of Knockcree, stays unchanged from pale nineteenth century panorama pictures. The identical cannot be stated for the interior of the granite face house.
“I will at all times keep in mind the day you visited Mourne Park,” Julie Ann stated. Strolling up the old drive she continued, “Because the day the boathouse collapsed.”
And certain sufficient, the gabled boathouse, which had stood there for hundreds of years, not a lot collapsed as gently slipped into the lake like a maiden aunt taking a dip within the water. After a number of ripples, it disappeared. Eternally.
Fifteen years later, masterpieces and miscellany, a document of Edwardian residing in its authentic setting, at the moment are gone, identical to the boathouse. It’s a unhappy ending for the gathering that shaped the soul of one in all Ulster’s Huge Homes. Unhappy for the family and for the folks of Newry and Mourne whose toil allowed the family to amass a fortune in antiques.
In the course of the 320 hectare estate nonetheless stands the house itself, stripped of its contents, bare because the classical statues that when graced the lawns across the lake, awaiting its destiny.
Since this text was printed, Marion Scarlett Russell positioned MPH in the marketplace with Knight Frank for £10 million. The asking worth has now been lowered to £6.5 million. It’s nonetheless on the market.