A couple spend locks to make Irish stately home

(CNN) – In the beginning of houses, a three-story Georgian mansion on an 820-hectare estate is not bad.

When Neil Watt and his partner Kris Reid moved to the top floor of Castle Ward in Northern Ireland in March 2020, it was their first home as a couple.

Watt got a new resident job as a collector and house manager at the property owned by the British heritage body The National Trust, and they, along with a large team of colleagues and volunteers, prepared to welcome daily crowds of visitors.

In addition to the 18th-century house and landscaped gardens, people see the Victorian sawmill and wheat mill, the shore where seals sometimes nest, and the 16th-century tower house, better known as Winterfell, in HBO’s “Game of Thrones”.

Then, of course, the pandemic happened. The mansion’s mighty doors had to be locked, and the public turned away.

This corner of County Down, which housed the Ward family from the 1570s to the 1950s, has – de facto – once again become a private residence.

And as new masters of the mansion, Watt and Reid decided to give it a makeover.

Lord of the mansion

Castle Ward is the two-faced Janus of country houses.

It is an 18th-century mansion in the classic Palladian style. But walk around the corner to where the sharp windows and sidebars on Strangford Lough look out, and that’s Georgian Gothic.

This daring fusion of styles divides this building from more than 40 rooms in the middle, inside and out.

“Whenever this house was built, it would have been one of the most beautiful in Ireland,” says Neil Watt, Castle Ward’s collection and house manager. “And certainly in times of style and architecture, it was the most avant-garde.”

Like many of us when we were locked in our homes last spring, the couple first turned to strange work in the home.

In their case, it involved tasks such as scrubbing hundreds of pots and pans, taking down Victorian chandeliers and cleaning them piece by piece, and cleaning and cataloging about 2,000 antique books.

“We want this house to shine”

“We kept telling ourselves, whenever we can reopen, whenever it may be, we want this house to shine,” Watt said.

Both men are experienced conservationists – Reid is currently studying for a doctorate in heritage – so restoration work is not new to them.

What was unusual, however, was how much time they could devote to renovations, usually when they were busy with visitors.

A new dehumidification system was installed, carpets and rugs were smashed, floors were washed and silver and copper polished, from fireplaces to door knockers.

And when colleagues and volunteers were re-admitted during the summer, they rolled up their sleeves and got stuck, too. “As a charity, we are nothing without people,” Watt says.

“We did a lot of tasks that were really labor intensive, but it was very thoughtful to do that and gave us something to work on,” Watt says.

Royal engagements

In addition to the conservation work, Watt used the closing period to further investigate the history of the estate and reconsider how it is presented to the public.

“Fresh blood is so important,” Watt says, “because sometimes we tell stories, because that’s what’s been told before.”

Castle Ward was built in the early 1760s by Bernard Ward, 1st Earl of Bangor, and his wife Lady Ann, a descendant of Stuart’s royal family.

The couple traveled the world and co-architect their ambitious, modern home.

Watt’s doctorate is in Women of the Irish Country House and Lady Ann’s story is one he would love to visit again.

“She showed an independence of mind that might not have seemed like it at the time,” he says. She was rich, aristocratic and ‘she really did what she wanted’.

She was very sexually liberated, “he adds. Before she married Bernard, she had a (long-standing) love affair with a woman, Letitia Bushe. ‘

‘Family Madness’

Lady Ann, her brother, Lord Darnley, and her son, Nicholas, all came face to face with their accusations that they were a “family madness”. It is not clear whether any of this is due to what we may recognize today as mental health conditions, or simply because their behavior violates the social norms of the time.

One of the more ominous allegations about Darnley, whose home in Berkeley Square in London until 2018 was the legendary Annabel’s nightclub, was that he believed he was a teapot and was afraid of a sexual congress so she would not spout in the night would not waste.

Bernard and Anne’s eldest son, Nicholas, was a British MP but was eventually declared insane. The estate will be handed over to his cousin later after the intervention, says Watt, of the 2nd Burgh Count Bangor’s ‘many enterprising brothers who thought the estate would be better in their hands.’

There are also rumors that his brothers loosened the railroad tracks at Castle Ward to speed up the end of their brother, but Nicholas lived to a ripe old age and this idle gossip is unfounded.

‘Open and honest’

“History is revisionism; history is a discourse,” says Watt, who used the closing time to create a new home narrative to accompany tours.

This revisionism is part of a broader trend in the National Trust, which caused a stir last autumn by publishing a report on the links between the properties and colonialism and historical slavery.

John Orna-Ornstein, the trust’s director of culture and engagement, told CNN in September: “Our role is to be as open and honest as we can, to get the full history of the places and collections we care about. , to tell. ”

Today, the island of Ireland is divided into the Republic of Ireland, an independent country, and Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom. Before the Irish War of Independence (1919-21), however, the island was under British rule.

The ‘big house’

The ‘big house’ was a powerful symbol of British settlement in Ireland and these large houses of elite families were sometimes targeted during the 20th century periods of civil unrest, known as ‘the problems’.

While there are relatively few “big houses” left, especially in the Republic, “not as many houses were burned during the problems in the 20s as people think,” Watt says.

The maintenance costs in the 20th century, when the days of large households with many servants were over, meant that ‘much more simply was broken down’.

While those kept in private families often decayed, Castle Ward was really happy because it was donated to the country, Watt says.

“We really turned the corner”

“The big house was just one part of a larger structure,” he explains. “All these big houses were attached to an estate, like their sister houses in England, Wales and Scotland. In those places there was a society, and there were a lot of interconnections.”

Watt regularly receives letters from people whose ancestors worked on the estate at Castle Ward.

And while the legacy of the ‘big house’ was sometimes a politically sensitive topic in Northern Ireland, Watt says: ‘I think we really made the turn. I think people are starting to appreciate these places as the shared spaces they were. “

While Castle Ward was able to open for a portion of 2020, it has now been closed indefinitely again as part of the latest exclusions in the UK and Ireland.

Watt says it was a novelty at first to walk around the empty rooms, “by the second weekend you really want to open the doors and let people in. I think it’s really shown how important people are to historic places.”

Both men are local in Northern Ireland – Watt is from County Tyrone, while Reid is from the nearby town of Ballynahinch – but they have barely seen their families this year due to the restrictions.

But says Watt, they comfort themselves with the view of the top floor of the Gothic facade of the house, over the waters of the Lough where boats sail and people ride horses along the shores.

When you look out at night at Portaferry, the city across the side, you never feel alone, Watt says. “Every night the lights shine.”