Travel Log - Day Six 5/16

Killarney Continued. Passed through town to Muckross and Muckross House, another huge Manor Estate, popular because Queen Victoria stayed here in 1861, and her rooms are largely left untouched, down to the wall paper, furniture and draperies. This was the first Estate to really distinguish for us the “Gosford Park” sensibility of “above and below stairs” mentality. In fact, they could have filmed the movie here, the set-up so exactly mirrors that portrayed in the film.

Wanting an early start to the day, we arrived before the regular tours began, but the ladies in the main office wouldn’t have us come all the way and not see it, so slipped us in with a pamphlet run-of-the-house and a private German tour just beginning one room ahead. We stayed at the back as the tour was given, keeping always one room behind and getting the run of every room as all the others were clumped ahead.

Muckross House was completed in 1843 for Henry Arthur Herbert and his wife, was purchased in 1899 by Lord Ardilaun (of the Guinness family) who rented parts of it out to wealthy parties for stalking and fishing, and in 1911 William Bowers Bourn, an American, purchased the estate as a Wedding present for his daughter. Three years after she died, in 1932, her husband and parents gifted the estate and gardens with all interiors as they stood, to the people of Ireland, becoming its first National Park.

Hunting is very prevalent in the décor, as stags heads (and skull-based antlers) are hung from the Entrance Hall, the Main Hall and Upper Landing…28 of them in fact. Beginning with the Entrance Hall, above the marble mantle hangs the giant antlers of a Great Irish Elk, a species that has been extinct for over 10,000 years, and reaches as wide and tall as the fireplace itself. The Dining Room stands virtually untouched since Queen Victoria visited it, has deep red velvet-flocked wallpaper, a full collection of silver meat dishes and soup tureens on the two sideboards, a dining table 6.5 feet wide and 19.5 feet long, with Irish Chippendale chairs, each with woven horsehair seat. The draperies were woven especially for the Queen’s visit, and the surrounding paintings of decedents and owners of Muckross.

The Library is walled with oak shelves and books from encyclopedias to Senate records of the period and novels. Also on the walls: a line drawing by John Singer Sargent, portraits of the Bournes, another marble fireplace, engravings of Killarney scenery by Jonathan Fisher in 1770, and furnishings including an ornate writing desk.

The Drawing Room, Welsh marble fireplace with brass fixtures, Chinese needle work boxes and a games table inlaid with mother of pearl, prelaid for Chess, Backgammon and Cribbage , two Venetian cut-glass mirrors, original designed wallpaper by William Morris, and windows facing out into the sunken garden.

The Main Hall was where the house Balls were held, more portraits by Sargent, more antlers, and sideboards with the family coat of arms detailed in. Set against the underside of the stairs is a stove, the stand on top used to keep visitors drinks warm. Metal vents on either side of the door leading to the billiard room were used to circulate heat from the boiler room, in the basement, to the Main Hall and staircases.

The Billiard Room holds a Victorian Billiard table that weighs 3 tons, cue rests, score boards and game rules are displayed around the walls, which are covered in hand painted Chinese silk of exotic flowers and birds, installed when the Queen visited as it was to be her own private dining room during her stay.

The Stairs and Upper Landing are floor-to-ceiling along one wall of etched and frosted glasswork windows of old English crystal, allowing light into the hall, more antlers on the landing and portraits with sideboards.

The Gentleman’s Dressing Room, adjoins the west bedroom, where the valet arranged his master clothes and assisted with dressing. A hip bath (about 50% the size of a normal bathtub) was easier on the help, as all water had to be heated and hauled up from the basement scullery. Also, mahogany wash basin, and changing screen. Moving next into the West Bedroom, which is where important guests of the house were put (with the exception of the Queen.) A canopy bed, the bell-pull for servants, mahogany wardrobe lines with satin, with window facing out to the lake. The adjoining West Bathroom, had running water installed by 1876, marble and porcelain fixturing.

The South Bedroom, formerly Maud’s room, now fitted with child-sized furniture which her children used, and dolls dating from 1870, the rooms leading out from this including the nursery quarter, and a special staircase designed at half the height scale, for the ease of their entry.

The Boudoir, ivory and gold leaf, with a full length harp, sewing bales, tiled and brass fireplace and other fixtures, which was part of the suite of rooms offered to the Queen on her visit, along with the adjoining Dressing Room, which is hung with her and Albert’s portraits, and the Queens Bedroom, with it’s hand block wallpaper, polish limestone chimney piece, oval gilt mirror, the half tester bed in mahogany, the bed and window drapes of pink and gold silk, a wardrobe, and writing desk.

Below stairs: The Basement. The largest room is Servant’s dining hall, the corridor leading to it, lined with 34 bells, each located in a different room in the house, and each which rang in a different tone to tell the servants which room they were being summoned to. Also, a wine cellar with 24 pits labeled for use, under lock and key, then next the Kitchen, where no one from above stairs was permitted but the lady of the house. A full wall served the iron stove and ovens framed in plain white porcelain tile work, walls of copper cookware, a large wood table center with cutting blocks, knives, and warming tables of iron along another end. Moving into winding hallways and the canning cellar, with huge copper sinks, leading into servants living quarters, now museum space reserved for the wildlife and history of the area.

Next on: the Gardens: a Walled Garden at center, a Maud Bourn Vincent memorial, and the Rock garden.

Obviously, several hours spent there. Hit up the giftshop for a book on the house and its history, waited while Mom got chatted up by a flirtin’ Irishman, and off we went again, back through Killarney, and onto Farrahfore, Castleisland, Abbeyfeale, Templeglantene, Inchabaun, Newcastle West, Rathkeale, and Croagh to Adare.

Adare is called “Ireland’s pretties village,” and they can pretty much own that claim. This is the capital of thatched-roof housing (least from where we stand), and has been as such since 1200 AD (the town, not the thatched roofs, though those are several hundred years old and some still privately owned.) We hit up the Visitor’s Center, and set out to see the Village Fountain, the Trinitarian Friary (1230), Parochial House (1872), St. Nicholas Church, Dunraven Arms Hotel (1792), Augustian Priory (1315), Dove Cot, and the Thatched Roofed Houses (one of which we ate at: The Blue Door, and experienced the “Bap”…like a hearty hamburger bun sandwich.)

Then it was off through Patrickswell, Limerick (and the first look at the River Shannon), onto Bunratty and it’s castle and folk park. It’s like a medieval working village in there…a time warp you wouldn’t believe. First of all the Castle, you wouldn’t believe, it is so gigantic that you really need to see a picture of a person beside it to get the idea. For its age, it is by far in the best condition of the castles, and in fact you could live and work and eat there still, and some people do.

Built in 1425, it’s adjoining village estate is part of the working museum…the thatched cottages are fitted per theme of the worker’s job duties and people are actually doing them, the same way they would have then, each with it’s own peat fire burning in the fireplace. A woman was churning butter, men stalking with their hounds, they have fishing huts and farms set up, all of which you can just wander around and look at before entering the castle itself.

A million circular stone steps reach the turrets you can climb up to for views, they have kitchens and dungeons, and a Great Hall where they still host medieval feasts and roast up half a cow and you have to wear a slicker to eat dinner. They have Private Chapels, ancient paintings and armor, Robing rooms, Battlements, Main Guards, Basements, and about 15 or 20 other rooms we either didn’t have time to see, or just couldn’t climb any more damn stairs for. Serious insanity of awesomeness and easily a full-day’s worth of wonder for the history buff.

Next: Newmarket-on-Fergus, Clarecastle, Crusheen, Gort, Ardrahan, Kilcolgan, Clarinbridge, Cloonboo, Castlequarter, Headford, Glencorris and finally into Cong.

Now, Cong is a very big deal for us, mostly for film nerdish reasons that this tiny village was where the 1951 John Ford movie, “The Quiet Man” was filmed. Every Irish actor in the world (and their families) all worked on this film here, and we just wanted to walk in their footsteps a bit, because really now, who doesn’t love that movie who has seen it?

Passed Pat Cohan’s pub on way to find a B & B, ours (aptly named) “White O’ Morn,” just across the street from “Danagher’s” ( B & B pub.) Then, with the last hours of daylight left us, it was off to explore our immediate surroundings: that is the Courthouse (1853), the Cong River, and Cong Abbey.

The Abbey was founded in the 7th century, burned down in the 12th century and was rebuilt around 1135. A few surrounding walls and part of the courtyard are still present, along with the attached graveyard, many of the graves just giant plates of stone on the ground, are engraved but worn from weather and walking traffic so you can rarely make out who they are. More recent nineteenth and twentieth century headstone are readable still, and the church just adjoining still holds mass (of which we got caught up in the traffic of twice…not that there are more than oh 30 people present, but these roads are not made for cars…you get 12 of them scrunched in there and it’s impossible to get out.)

The Abbey itself is almost alive with some kind of “presence.” It’s the first “building” I’ve been in where I actually got almost creeped out in. A nervous energy about the place…can’t really explain it, but once out of it and into the courtyard, that feeling dies away, as you go out into the Monk’s walk and wander where they did. This is another place where the age of the trees and their size was amazing…not caught at all in a photograph, unless you get the idea from the pictures inside the courtyard facing out to them. A hug puff takes up nearly the whole frame in the background: that is one tree. One. There were maybe seven or eight of them like that. Just enormous.

Behind this, the Cong river itself, high, high tide, and the Monk’s bridge and their fishing house which led further onto nature walks in their originally forged pathways. We climbed to the top of the Abbey tower for some pictures, before jaunting back across the street for some eats, down the road from “The Quiet Man Coffee Shop,” to The Crow’s Nest pub, where we ate super yummy sirloin, and watched the UK Irish lose the Guinness Cup to England. Then: Home to sleep.

~

Pia, our Proprietress, is German. This is only important to note as by my bed is a book titled: “Glennkill.” (See pictures.) The book, being in German, I have no idea the theme of, my only clue is the cover: A green pasture, dotted with cartoonish drawn sheep…all of them white, but one black one. And a spatter of blood just under the title name, but nowhere near any sheep at all. I don’t know why, but I think it’s a comedy.