Fifty years open to the public this year, the splendour of Westport House doesn’t happen just by chance
Feminine feats as historic house reaches new milestoneThe Family
Áine RyanYOU know the scene. It is usually when the evil villain in the James Bond movies gets his comeuppance. There’s a big explosion and chaos ensues. Of course 007 and his latest Octopussy survive. Well, some years ago, Lord Jeremy Browne considered contacting the producers of the James Bond movies and asking them to blow up his vast farmyards at his ancestral home, Westport House. He was strapped for cash and desperately needed some revenue.
“Of course we’re glad now we didn’t have to resort to such measures, but the survival of this wonderful piece of Irish heritage demands serious energy and conviction,” Jeremy – the Marquis of Sligo and Lord Altamont – told this writer in 2005.
It is fifty years ago this week since Jeremy Browne opened the doors of Westport House to visitors. Then just 21 years of age, he and his wife, Jennifer, were determined to save this historic stately home from a possible fate, common to many other historic houses, of dereliction or abandonment.
With no advertising and no marketing the family simply opened the doors and during the summer of 1960, 3,000 people visited the house, once the home of infamous pirate queen, Grace O’Malley, or Granuaile.
These days it is Jeremy’s daughters and heirs who run this unique enterprise. And later this summer, they will return to the heady days of 1960s flower power and patchouli oil, the Beatles and Elvis, the Everly Brothers and Chubby Checker, to celebrate this latest milestone in the long and colourful history of their remarkable home.
Guardians of legacy
IN an ironic twist, echoing the 16th century feminism of their seafaring female forebear, sisters Sheelyn, Karen, Lukie, Clare and Allanah will inherit the house and estate from their father. This is despite the laws governing Jeremy’s trust stipulating a male heir. But since he and his wife, Lady Jennifer, had five daughters and no son, he gut a Private Bill through the Oireachtas to enable the girls inherit their birthright.
Of course, inheriting such a grand legacy sounds far more glamorous than the every day reality, which involves the upkeep of a rambling old house and vast grounds.
Since 1960 over 4 million people have visited the house and grounds with an average of 60,000 visitors annually.
Sitting over coffee in the library last week, Sheelyn and Karen good-humouredly explained to The Mayo News how there is – quite literally – no end to their work.
A major project on the roof lasted almost five years and is now – thankfully – almost complete. But, already, the next job looms. That’s to make this majestic old house wheelchair accessible. Essentially such facilities are integral to modern tourism but, in particular, will add to the house’s attraction as a rather unique wedding venue.
Sheelyn explains: “Unfortunately, we can’t do civil ceremonies for our very special wedding packages because we have no disabled access. In fact we are just about to submit an application for developing this kind of access.”
“Last week a woman arrived to tour the house with her elderly mother and very young child. I heard her complaining at the desk about the absence of disabled access. ‘It’s about bloody time you got into the 21st century’, she said. And, of course, she’s right,” Sheelyn remarked.
In recent years Westport House has offered unique packages for weddings, conferences, and all sorts of parties,
“We’ve done a few parties for 40th and 60th birthdays. We’ve also done Halloween parties. Yesterday a German couple booked their wedding for next June. Basically, we hire the whole house out and then, within reason, the clients can decorate it whatever way they want. They might want five Christmas trees or the band in the front hall and not the gallery,” Sheelyn said.
“There is nowhere else like this throughout the country, with all the rooms the way they were in the past,” she adds.
The eldest, Sheelyn runs the house while Karen is in charge of the park, with youngest sister, Alannah, running Gracy’s Café bar in the demesne.
The recreational area has recently been branded and themed as – what else – a Pirate Adventure Park. Whether the seafaring spirit of Grace O’Malley, which is ensconced in an imposing bronze statue in the grounds, would approve of this, is the least of her ancestors worries.
After all, unlike Granuaile who reputedly slept with the rope of her boat tied to her big toe – always on alert for uninvited guests – her descendants have a different attitude to visitors.
Moreover, there is a certain serendipity surrounding the fact that five sisters will inherit a house whose foundation stones are steeped in the feminism of the ancient Brehon laws.
“It’s hugely significant for us that the house and estate is going back to women. Granuaile was such a force in her time but since then, historically, it has always been about the Marquess, even though the Marchioness was often the real force,” observed Karen.
Of course, both girls are quick to add there is little time or place for grandeur or pomp in their busy lives.
“Yes we look like proper ladies alright, when visitors find us in the middle of a tour changing a light bulb or with our heads stuck down a loo.”
They’re both laughing as they rush off in different directions.
Historic houseThe History
Áine RyanWESTPORT House was built on the site of a stone fort once home to infamous pirate queen, Grace O’Malley, or Granuaile.
Five hundred years later, Grace’s direct descendants still own the stately house and 300 acres of surrounding parklands, encompassing a lake, gardens, terraces. It also boasts dramatic views of Clare Island and holy mountain, Croagh Patrick.
Designed in the 1700s by architects Richard Cassells, James Wyatt and Thomas Ivory, the house was built in a number of phases.
The original house was erected by Catholic Colonel John Browne, a Jacobite, who was embroiled in the siege of Limerick, and his wife Maud Bourke, a great granddaughter of Grace O’Malley’s. Back then the house neither had a lake or a damn, with the tide from nearby Clew Bay rising and falling against its walls.
The historic house’s physical and natural connectedness to the town of Westport was altered when its front garden was compulsorily bought by the local authority in 1960 to build houses.
While relations nowadays are good between the family and the townspeople, with the house and grounds creating valued employment, unsurprisingly, this was not always the case.
The Brownes once owned vast tracts of Mayo lands and had thousands of tenants – peasant farmers, small shopkeepers and artisans. At the beginning of the 20th century there were protracted negotiations between the 5th Marquis of Sligo and the Congested Districts Board about the handing over of the lands to the local people. Branches of the Land League and United Irish League vigorously defended the rights of the tenantry. There were cattle-drives and court cases, with animals impounded and land-agents abused.
One of the first mass meetings, addressed by Charles Stuart Parnell, and organised by Michael Davitt, had been held in Westport on June 8, 1879. The grey spectre of famine and destitution still overshadowed the majority population.
Ironically, poverty was not only the privilege of the 19th century peasant. During the Great Famine of the 1840s, the Brownes were forced to abandon their stately home due to an inability to pay rates and, for a time, live in relative penury in a town house.
While they returned, it still remains a challenge to maintain and preserve their historic home over 150 years later.
