Mount Stewart

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other uses, see Mount Stewart (disambiguation).

Mount Stewart
Mount Stewart April 2011.jpg
Mount Stewart, April 2011
Coordinates54°33′18″N 5°36′29″W / 54.555°N 5.608°W / 54.555; -5.608Coordinates: 54°33′18″N 5°36′29″W / 54.555°N 5.608°W / 54.555; -5.608
Built1820–1839
Built forMarquess of Londonderry
ArchitectGeorge Dance, William Vitruvius Morrison
OwnerNational Trust
Listed Building – Grade A
Designated20 December 1976
Reference no.HB24/04/052 A
Mount Stewart is located in Northern Ireland
Mount Stewart
Location of Mount Stewart in Northern Ireland

Mount Stewart is a 19th-century house and garden in County Down, Northern Ireland, owned by the National Trust. Situated on the east shore of Strangford Lough, a few miles outside the town of Newtownards and near Greyabbey, it was the Irish seat of the Stewart family, Marquesses of Londonderry. Prominently associated with the 2nd Marguess, Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, British Foreign Secretary during the course of the Napoleonic Wars, and with the 7th Marquess, Charles Vane-Tempest-Stewart, who at Mount Stewart engaged in private diplomacy with Hitler's Germany, the house and its contents reflect the history of the family's leading role in Irish and British social and political life.

History[]

County seat of the Stewarts, Lords Londonderry and Castlereagh[]

The original property, Mount Pleasant, was purchased with neighbouring estates in 1744 by Alexander Stewart (1699–1781). Exceptionally for an aspiring member of the landed Ascendancy, the Stewarts did not conform to the established (Anglican) church. They were Presbyterians, farmers and linen merchants whose fortunes had been transformed by Alexander's marriage to the sister and heiress of Robert Cowan, the East India Company Governor of Bombay.[1]

As fellow Presbyterians, the Stewarts appeared to the county's enfranchised forty-shilling freeholders as "friends of reform", and on that basis Mount Stewart rivalled Hillsborough Castle, seat of the Earls (later Marquesses) of Downshire, for control of the county's two parliamentary seats. In the increasingly troubled 1790s, Mount Stewart quietly converted to Anglicanism and stilled the contest, agreeing with Hillsborough that each should return a member to the parliament in Dublin unopposed.[2]

Titles and office followed. In 1795 Alexander's son, Robert Stewart (1739–1821) was elevated to Earl of Londonderry (Marquess in 1816), and in 1797 his son Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh (1769–1822), was appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland by the Lord Lieutenant, Londonderry's brother-in-law, Earl Camden..

After helping, in the wake of the 1798 rebellion, to push the Act of Union through the Irish Parliament, bringing Ireland under the Crown at Westminster, Castelreagh went on to serve the new United Kingdom as Foreign Secretary.

Commensurate with his rising fortunes, in 1803 Castlereagh choose the architect George Dance design a new wing and receptions rooms for what was still a comparatively modest country house.[3] A number of the present furnishings reflect Castlereagh's career, including a portrait of the Emperor Napoleon,[4] and chairs elaborately embroidered for the delegates to the Congress of Vienna.[5]

In the Year of Liberty, 1798[]

During the three-day "Year of Liberty" in Ards and north Down, 10 to 13 June 1798,[6] Mount Stewart was briefly occupied by the United Irish insurgents.[7] In August it was the scene of a further drama: the wife of the local Presbyterian minister and a once frequent visitor, James Porter, entered the house with their seven children to plead for his life. Lady Castlereagh and her young sister, then dying of tuberculosis, were tearfully persuaded, but Londonderry and Castlereagh saw to it that, convicted on uncertain evidence of having consorted with the rebels, Porter was hung within sight of his church and home at Greyabbey.[8][9]

In view of the leniency extended to other offenders (David Bailie Warden who commanded the local rebels in the field,[10] and the Reverend Thomas Ledlie Birch who urged them to "drive the bloodhounds of King George, the German king, beyond the seas",[11] were allowed American exile),[12] it was suspected that Porter's offence was to have lampooned Lord Londonderry in a popular satire of the landed interest, Billy Bluff. Londonderry appears as Lord Mountmumble, an inarticulate tyrant who has a dog shot for the temerity of barking.[8][13]

Irish country seat of the Vane-Tempest-Stewarts[]

Spanish garden

Lord Castlereagh inherited his father's title in 1821 only a year before he took his own life. The next owner of the house was his half-brother, Charles, 3rd Marquess of Londonderry (1778–1854) who had served as ambassador to Vienna and Berlin. He married Lady Frances Anne Vane-Tempest, the greatest heiress of her time, in appreciation of which he styled himself Robert Vane and ordered a further enlargement of the house.

Controversially in 1847, while spending £15,000 on the refurbishment the Londonderry's gave just £30 to local soup kitchens for famine relief,[14][15] and as the hunger persisted rejected rent reductions on grounds of "personal inconvenience".[16]

This remodelling created the present exterior of Mount Stewart. The small Georgian house and the small portico on the west wing were demolished and the house was increased to eleven bays. On the entrance front, a huge portico was added in the centre, and a smaller 'half portico' was added to the other side.

The marriage also brought in much of the Vane-Tempest property, including land and coalmines in County Durham. Wynyard Park, Co. Durham was redesigned in the Neo-classical style. The couple bought Seaham Hall, also in County Durham, and then later bought Holdernesse House on London's Park Lane. This was later renamed Londonderry House.

The 4th Marquess of Londonderry married the widow of Viscount Powerscourt and lived at her home, Powerscourt, near Dublin. The 5th Marquess lived at his wife's ancestral property, Plas Machynlleth in Wales. These long periods of neglect threatened an irreversible deterioration of the Irish property

Ulster unionist manse[]

Charles Vane-Tempest-Stewart, 6th Marquess of Londonderry (1852-915) returned to Ireland from Wynyard Park, first as Lord Lieutenant in Dublin, and then to Mount Stewart from which both he and the Marchioness, Lady Theresa Talbot, served as the titular leaders of opposition to Irish Home Rule. They presided, respectively, over the Ulster Unionist, and Ulster Unionist Women's, councils.[17]

Lady Londonderry was particularly valued for her family and political connections in England, and not least to the royal family. In 1903, at Mount Stewart, she hosted Edward VII and Queen Alexandra.[17] But she was also an active organiser: on the eve of the Great War the Ulster Women's Unionist Council had 100,000 fully pledged members.[18]

Host to Hitler's ambassador[]

In 1921, the 7th Marquess, Charles Vane-Tempest-Stewart, (1878–1949) accepted office as Minister of Education in the unexpected fruit of unionist agitation, the new home-rule Parliament of Northern Ireland. In 1935, his larger ambitions in London were dashed when he was forced to resign as Air Minister. Despite having having preserved the core of the RAF when it was under attack from the Treasury, critics believed he was one of an aristocratic circle of "appeasers"[19] At Mount Stewart it was a suspicion Londonderry appeared to confirm when, following on a visit to Hitler in Berlin, in May 1936 he entertained the German Ambassador to London, Joachim von Ribbentrop. Ribbentrop is reported to have landed in Newtownards with a "noisy gang of SS men" and the four-day visit became a national newspaper story.[20]

The house retained a memento of this private diplomacy: a white figurine of an SS Fahnenträger (SS flag bearer)[21] which, notably, was not removed or destroyed by Londonderry with the outbreak of war.The gift from Reichmarshall Hermann Göring was a product of forced labour from the Dachau concentration camp employed by Allach Porzellan Manufaktur, an SS enterprise in Munich.[22][23] With talk of his internment, Londonderry retreated to Mount Stewart where he spent the wartime years debilitated by a series of strokes.[24][25]

The ancestral home of the 7th Marchioness of Londonderry, Edith Halen Chaplin (a former suffragette), was Dunrobin Castle in Scotland and it was that house's gardens which inspired her reworking of those at Mount Stewart with themed compartments and whimsical statuary.[26] For heavy work she employed out-of-work veterans of the Great War.[27] Lady Edith also redesigned and redecorated much of the interior, for example, the huge drawing room, the Castlereagh Room, the smoking room (whose mantelpiece displayed the Fahnenträger) and many of the guest bedrooms. She named the latter after European cities including Rome and Moscow.

Donation to the National Trust[]

The last châtelaine of the house (and the last surviving child of the 7th Marquess), Lady Mairi Bury (née Vane-Tempest-Stewart, Viscountess Bury), gave the house, and most of its contents to the National Trust in 1977, together with a capital endowment partly funded by the sale in 1977, by Lady Mairi, of Giovanni Bellini's painting "The Madonna and Child with a male Donor, a landscape beyond" which had hung over the altar in the chapel at Mount Stewart (having formerly been at Londonderry House, London). Lady Mairi, born in the house, was the last Londonderry family member to live full time at Mount Stewart, and the last member of this Anglo-Irish family to live full time in Ireland. She died at Mount Stewart on 18 November 2009, at the age of 88, in the same four poster bed, hung with red silk damask, that she had been born in.[28][29][30]

On her death her daughter Lady Rose Lauritzen, wife of the American art historian, became the live-in family member; she lives also in Venice.[31]

National Trust[]

The National Trust took over the house and gardens in 1977. The Trust operates the property under the name "Mount Stewart House, Garden & Temple of the Winds".

In 1999, the Mount Stewart Gardens were added to the United Kingdom "Tentative List" of sites for potential nomination as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.[32]

In 2015, the National Trust completed an extensive restoration of the house and its contents as well as the purchase of the wider estate re-uniting it and plan to open for visitor access.[33]

House[]

Mount Stewart was in almost permanent use when the 3rd Marquess was alive and was greatly extended to become the principal family residence. It was increased in size greatly with a collection of new rooms which were suitable to house the family's growing art collections, furnishings and general treasures. The main room was (and still is) the 'Drawing Room'. This looks out onto the main gardens and in the past it would have been possible to see Strangford Lough. Another main entertaining room was the 'Dining Room' which looks out onto the entrance front and was almost twice its present size, but was altered to make a new kitchen some time after its construction and lavish decoration. One of the most stunning rooms at Mount Stewart is the private 'Chapel'. This hidden gem is a double-height room with stained glass windows and Italian paintings on its walls.

Gardens[]

The lake at Mount Stewart

After the house's interior, the Marchioness redesigned the gardens in the most lavish way possible. Prior to her husband's succession to the Marquessate in 1915 the gardens had been plain lawns with large decorative pots. She added the Shamrock Garden, the Sunken Garden, increased the size of the lake, added a Spanish Garden with a small hut, the Italian Garden, the Dodo Terrace with its 'menagerie' of cement animals, the Fountain Pool and laid out walks in the Lily Wood and rest of the estate.[34] In 1957, she gave the gardens to the National Trust.

Characteristically luxuriant planting contained within formally clipped edging

Estate[]

Mount Stewart Lake, October 2015
The Temple of the Winds

The present-day estate of Mount Stewart extends to 950 acres (380 ha) with a large lake and many monuments and farm buildings.

Temple of the Winds[]

The 'Temple of the Winds' is an octagonal building inspired by the Grand Tour the 1st Marquess of Londonderry took in his youth. It was designed by the neoclassical architect James 'Athenian' Stuart in 1782–83.

Many country houses in the UK had adaptations of the 'temples' their owners had seen on their tours of the Mediterranean. The temple is similar to structures at Shugborough and West Wycombe Park, both National Trust properties.[35][36] The classical model was the Tower of the Winds, a clocktower in Athens which has a frieze depicting the eight wind deities (anemoi) of Greek mythology.

See also[]

  • Dunduff Castle, South Ayrshire, property of the ancestors of the Stewarts of Mount Stewart

Other residences of the Marquesses of Londonderry:

References[]

  1. ^ Bew, John (2011). Castlereagh: Enlightenment, War and Tyranny. London: Quercus. pp. 6–7. ISBN 9780857381866.
  2. ^ Brendan, Clifford, ed. (1991). Billy Bluff and the Squire [1796] and Other Writing by Re. James Porter. Belfast: Athol Books. pp. 12–13. ISBN 9780850340457.
  3. ^ "Mount Stewart and its role in European History". National Trust. Retrieved 10 September 2021.
  4. ^ Trust, National. "Napoleon I, Emperor of France (1769–1821) 1542319". www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk. Retrieved 10 September 2021.
  5. ^ ntmountstewart (16 June 2015). "Mount Stewart and the road to Waterloo". Mount Stewart - House & Restoration. Retrieved 10 September 2021.
  6. ^ Stewart, A.T.Q. (1995), The Summer Soldiers: The 1798 Rebellion in Antrim and Down Belfast, Blackstaff Press, 1995,ISBN 9780856405587.
  7. ^ The National Archives, Reference U840/C562 (1797–1809). "Insurgents in occupation at Mount Stewart", John Petty to Frances Stewart, Marchioness of Londonderry.
  8. ^ Jump up to: a b "Porter, James (1753-1798)", Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, 46, retrieved 10 September 2021
  9. ^ Waters, Ormonde D. P. (1990). "The Rev. James Porter Dissenting Minister of Greyabbey, 1753-1798". Seanchas Ardmhacha: Journal of the Armagh Diocesan Historical Society. 14 (1): 80–101. doi:10.2307/29742440. ISSN 0488-0196. JSTOR 29742440.
  10. ^ Courtney, Roger (2013). Dissenting Voices: Rediscovering the Irish Progressive Presbyterian Tradition. Belfast: Ulster Historical Foundation. pp. 133–134. ISBN 9781909556065.
  11. ^ quoted by J. C. Robb, Sunday Press, 1 May 1955. The source is not given.
  12. ^ McClelland, Aiken (1964). "Thomas Ledlie Birch, United Irishman" (PDF). Belfast Natural History and Philosophical Society (Sessions 161/62-1963/64). Second Series, 7. Retrieved 18 November 2020.
  13. ^ Bew (2011), p. 101
  14. ^ University College Cork records on the Irish Famine Archived 22 October 2007 at the Wayback Machine, ucc.ie; accessed 20 December 2015.
  15. ^ Kineally, Christine (2013). Charity and the Great Hunger in Ireland: The Kindness of Strangers. London: Bloomsbury. p. 53. ISBN 978-1441117588
  16. ^ "Irish Famine: How Ulster was devastated by its impact". BBC News. 26 September 2015. Retrieved 10 September 2021.
  17. ^ Jump up to: a b Finley-Bowman, Rachel E (May 2003). "An Ideal Unionist: The Political Career of Theresa, Marchioness of Londonderry, 1911-1919" (PDF). Journal of International Women's Studies. 4 (3): 15–29.
  18. ^ Women's Museum of Ireland. "The Ulster Crisis and the Emergence of the Ulster Women's Unionist Council". Retrieved 9 April 2020.
  19. ^ Griffins, Richard T., Fellow Travellers of the Right: British enthusiasts for Nazi Germany, 1933-9, Constable, 1980, p. 1
  20. ^ Little, Ivan (20 July 2015). "Ulster aristocrat who welcomed Hitler's Nazi henchman to Co Down". belfasttelegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 9 September 2021.
  21. ^ Trust, National. "SS Fahnenträger 1220314". www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk. Retrieved 9 September 2021.
  22. ^ "The Avalon Project : Nuremberg Trial Proceedings Vol. 13". Archived from the original on 12 September 2006. Retrieved 9 June 2006.
  23. ^ "Art Unlocked: National Trust at Mount Stewart | Art UK". artuk.org. Retrieved 9 September 2021.
  24. ^ Aldous, Richard (13 November 2004). "A swastika over Ulster". The Irish Times. Retrieved 9 September 2021.
  25. ^ Kershaw, Ian (2004), Making Friends with Hitler: Lord Londonderry and Britain's Road to War. London: Penguin/Allen Lane. ISBN 0141014237
  26. ^ Porteous, Neil. "Garden of the imagination: Lady Londonderry's Mount Stewart". National Trust. Retrieved 9 September 2021.
  27. ^ "Lady Mairi Bury of Mount Stewart, socialite". www.scotsman.com. Retrieved 10 September 2021.
  28. ^ Death of Lady Mairi Bury, scotsman.com; accessed 20 December 2015.
  29. ^ "Lady Mairi Bury: Chatelaine of Mount Stewart who met Hitler and von Ribbentrop". The Independent. London, UK. 27 November 2009.
  30. ^ "Lady Mairi Bury". The Daily Telegraph. London, UK. 13 January 2010.
  31. ^ "Lady Rose of Mount Stewart shares memories of a magical childhood growing up on her family's estate, its famous visitors and her life now, split between Strangford Lough and Venice". Belfasttelegraph.
  32. ^ "Mount Stewart Gardens". UNESCO. Retrieved 20 December 2015.
  33. ^ "Mount Stewart House restored in £8m refurbishment". BBC News. 17 April 2015.
  34. ^ "Garden of the imagination: Lady Londonderry's Mount Stewart".
  35. ^ "Temple of the Winds at Shugborough Hall".
  36. ^ Historic England. "Temple of the Four Winds (1160544)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 29 January 2020.

External links[]

Retrieved from ""