| Mount Stewart | |
|---|---|
 Mount Stewart, April 2011 | |
| Coordinates | 54°33′18″N5°36′29″W / 54.555°N 5.608°W /54.555; -5.608 |
| Built | 1820–1839 |
| Built for | Marquess of Londonderry |
| Architect | George Dance,William Vitruvius Morrison |
| Owner | National Trust |
Listed Building – Grade A | |
| Designated | 20 December 1976 |
| Reference no. | HB24/04/052 A |
  Location of Mount Stewart in Northern Ireland | |
Mount Stewart is a 19th-century house and garden inCounty Down,Northern Ireland, owned by theNational Trust. Situated on the east shore ofStrangford Lough, a few miles outside the town ofNewtownards and nearGreyabbey, it was the Irish seat of the Stewart family,Marquesses of Londonderry. Prominently associated with the 2nd Marquess,Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, Britain'sForeign Secretary at theCongress of Vienna and withCharles Vane-Tempest-Stewart, 7th Marquess of Londonderry, the formerAir Minister who at Mount Stewart attempted private diplomacy withHitler's Germany, the house and its contents reflect the history of the family's leading role in social and political life in Britain and Ireland.
The original property, Mount Pleasant, was purchased with neighbouring estates in 1744 byAlexander Stewart (1699–1781). Exceptionally for an aspiring member of thelanded Ascendancy, the Stewarts did not conform to theestablished (Anglican) church. They werePresbyterians, farmers and linen merchants whose fortunes had been transformed by Alexander's marriage to the sister and heiress ofRobert Cowan, theEast India Companygovernor of Bombay.[1]
As fellow Presbyterians, the Stewarts appeared to the county's enfranchisedforty-shilling freeholders as "friends of reform", and on that basis Mount Stewart rivalledHillsborough Castle, seat of theEarls (later Marquesses) of Downshire, for control of the county's twoparliamentary 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),[3] and in 1797 his sonRobert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh (1769–1822), was appointedChief Secretary for Ireland by theLord Lieutenant, Londonderry's brother-in-law,John Pratt, Earl Camden.[4]
After helping, in the wake of the1798 rebellion, to push theAct of Union through the Irish Parliament, bringing Ireland underthe Crown atWestminster, Castlereagh went on to serve the newUnited Kingdom asSecretary of State for War and the Colonies andForeign Secretary, building the coalitions that defeatedNapoleon.[5]
In 1787, writing to her brotherWilliam Drennan (a disappointed supporter of the Stewarts' electoral ambitions, later to be targeted by Castlereagh as aUnited Irishman),Martha McTier described visiting Mount Stewart, and meeting "with no one thing worth notice, unless great wall pounds are so – much expense, no taste, every thing unfinished and dirty, grand plans for the future, nothing pleasant nor even comfortable at present".[6]
Commensurate with the family's rising fortunes, Castlereagh moved to realise some of these plans. In 1803, he choose the architectGeorge Dance the Younger to design aneoclassicalRegency replacement of the west wing with new receptions rooms.[7] A number of the present furnishings reflect Castlereagh's career, including a portrait of the French emperor,[8] and chairs elaborately embroidered for the delegates whoredrew the map of Europe at Vienna.[9]
During the three-day"Year of Liberty"[10] inArds and north Down, 10 to 13 June 1798,[11] Mount Stewart was briefly occupied by theUnited Irish insurgents.[12] In the wake of thecourts-martial that followed, the wife of the local Presbyterian minister, James Porter, appeared at the house with her seven children to plead for his life. Together with her younger sister, Lady Elizabeth, then dying of tuberculosis,Frances Stewart, Marchioness of Londonderry was tearfully persuaded. (She had often received Porter at Mount Stewart[13][14] and in correspondence with the United IrishwomanJane Greg had referred to herself as a "republican countess").[15] But Lord Londonderry was to see to it that Porter, convicted on uncertain evidence of having consorted with the rebels, was hung outside his church and home atGreyabbey.[14][16]
Other offenders (David Bailie Warden who commanded the local rebels in the field,[17] and the ReverendThomas Ledlie Birch who urged them to "drive the bloodhounds of KingGeorge, the German king, beyond the seas"),[18] were allowed American exile.[19] Porter's offence may have been to have serially lampooned Londonderry in a popular satire of the landed interest,Billy Bluff. Porter caricatured the master of Mount Stewart as Lord Mountmumble, an inarticulate tyrant who has a dog shot for the temerity of barking.[14][20]
Castlereagh inherited his father's title in 1821, but within the year took his own life. The next owner of the house was his half-brother,Charles Vane, 3rd Marquess of Londonderry (1778–1854) who had served as ambassador toVienna andBerlin. He married LadyFrances 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 replacing what remained of its 18th century fabric.
Controversially in 1847, while spending £15,000 on the refurbishment, the Marquess of Londonderry gave just £30 to local soup kitchens forfamine relief,[21][22] and as the hunger persisted rejected rent reductions. Despite reports of general distress, he insisted that only most "supine and inert" among this tenantry could "be suffering in any serious degree under the failure of the potato".[23] This was in contrast to his wife's management of her estate in Antrim. Even as she embarked upon of the construction a castellated summer residence(Garron Tower), the Marchioness not only reduced the rents of her tenants, but in dire cases ofpotato blight, waived them altogether.[24]
The Famine-era remodelling created the present exterior of Mount Stewart. The originalGeorgian building and the small portico on the west wing were demolished and the house was increased to elevenbays. On the entrance front, a huge portico was added in the centre, and a smaller 'half portico' was added to the other side.[25]
The marriage also brought in much of the Vane-Tempest property, including land and coal mines inCounty Durham.Wynyard Park, County Durham was redesigned in theNeoclassical style. The couple boughtSeaham Hall, also inCounty Durham, and then later bought Holdernesse House on London'sPark Lane. This was later renamedLondonderry House.
In 1854, EmperorNapoleon III was among the subscribers who helped raise a memorial tower to the 3rd Marquess north of Mount Stewart atScrabo.[26]
Frederick William Robert Stewart, 4th Marquess of Londonderry, married the widow ofRichard Wingfield, 6th Viscount Powerscourt and lived at her home,Powerscourt, nearDublin.George Henry Robert Charles William Vane-Tempest, 5th Marquess of Londonderry lived at his wife's ancestral property,Plas Machynlleth in Wales.[27] These long periods of neglect threatened an irreversible deterioration of the Irish property.[28]
Charles Vane-Tempest-Stewart, 6th Marquess of Londonderry (1852–1915) returned to Ireland from Wynyard Park, first asLord Lieutenant in Dublin, and then to Mount Stewart from which both he and the Marchioness, LadyTheresa Vane Tempest Stewart, served as the titular leaders of opposition toIrish Home Rule. They presided, respectively, over theUlster Unionist Council and the Ulster Unionist Women's Council (UUWC).[29]
Lady Londonderry (Theresa Chetwynd-Talbot) was valued for her family and political connections in England. In 1903, at Mount Stewart, she had hostedEdward VII and QueenAlexandra.[29] She also proved an effective organiser, helping build the UUWC into a mass organisation,[30] and in the preparation of an armed resistance to a Dublin parliament, theUlster Volunteers to whom she offered Mount Stewart as a potential infirmary and triage site.[29]
At the height of theHome Rule Crisis, theGerman Emperor had occasion to refer to the Marchioness's gardens. Meeting the unionist leader SirEdward Carson at a luncheon atBad Homburg in August 1913,Wilhelm II remarked that having seen a photograph of the gardens, he believed that they must be very beautiful. When Carson (who once proposed that he was "born to lounge and enjoy" himself at Mount Stewart)[31] affirmed that indeed they were, the Kaiser warmed to his theme. The management of gardens is very like that of states. But Britain had done little to cultivate the unity of its empire, so that when he had asked his grandmother,Queen Victoria, leave to visit Ireland she had refused him. "Perhaps she thought I would steal the little place." When after the general laughter he persisted with questions on Ulster, Carson adroitly changed the subject. Through the gardens of Mount Stewart the Kaiser had been probing intelligence that in the event of a European war conflict in Ireland might stay Britain's hand.[32]
In 1921,Charles Vane-Tempest-Stewart, 7th Marquess of Londonderry, (1878–1949) accepted office as Minister of Education in the unexpected fruit of unionist agitation, the new home-ruleParliament of Northern Ireland. In 1935, his larger ambitions in London were dashed when he was forced to resign asAir Minister. Despite having preserved the core of theRoyal Air Force when it was under attack from theTreasury, critics believed he was one of an aristocratic circle of "appeasers".[33][34][35] At Mount Stewart it was a suspicion Londonderry appeared to confirm when, following on a visit toHitler in Berlin, in May 1936 he entertained the German Ambassador to London,Joachim von Ribbentrop. Ribbentrop is reported to have landed inNewtownards with a "noisy gang ofSS men" and the four-day visit became a national newspaper story.[36]
The house retains a memento of this private diplomacy: anAllach porcelain figurine of anSS Fahnenträger (SS flag bearer.,[37] A gift fromReichsmarschallHermann Göring, after theoutbreak of war it was neither destroyed nor removed.[38][39] With talk of his internment, Londonderry retreated to Mount Stewart where, following a series of debilitating strokes, he died in 1949.[40][41] Flanked by statues of four Irish saints, he is buried in the estate's family graveyard.[33]
The ancestral home of the7th Marchioness of Londonderry, Edith Halen Chaplin, wasDunrobin Castle in Scotland and it was that house's gardens which inspired her reworking of those at Mount Stewart with themed plantings (the Italian, Spanish, and Mairi gardens) and the Dodo Terrace with its whimsical statuary[42] (Ribbentrop described the effect as "paradise").[33] Rather than enter her gardens through a house door she would dive in and out of a sash window, followed by her dogs – of which there were 14 at one time, ranging from deer hound to Pekinese.[43] 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 theFahnenträger) and many of the guest bedrooms. She named the latter after European cities including Rome and Moscow.[28]
The lastchâtelaine of the house (and the last surviving child of the 7th Marquess), LadyMairi 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, ofGiovanni Bellini's paintingThe 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 atLondonderry 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 thisAnglo-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.[44][45][46]
On Lady Bury's death, her daughter Lady Rose Lauritzen, wife of art historian Peter Lauritzen, became the live-in family member.[47]
TheNational 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 aUNESCOWorld Heritage Site.[48]
In 2015, the National Trust completed an extensive restoration of the house and its contents as well as the purchase of 900 acres (360 hectares) of the wider estate, thus re-uniting it, and plan[needs update] to open for visitor access.[49]
At the end of January 2025, the property lost more than 10,000 trees to the hurricane-force winds ofStorm Eowyn. The losses included "mature trees with veteran qualities and significant histories".[50]
The present house is largely a legacy of the 3rdMarquess, who beginning in the 1830s refurbished and extended the original 18th century structure alongneo-classical lines. The main entrance was shifted to the centre of the new north façade, with a largeIonic columnedporte-cochère. Two domes were introduced, one placed in the centre of the roof to light the new full height main hall, and another to light a full height room to the immediate south of this.[51]
Portions of what are now Lady Londonderry's sitting room, the music room, the Castlereagh room and the staircase were left untouched, but a new suite of rooms was added.[51] Of these the principal is the Drawing Room, which looks out onto the main gardens and, before the building along the shore of the A20, would have had a view ofStrangford Lough. The house's private chapel, with stained glass windows and Italian murals, was added after the death of 3rd Marquess in 1854, and in his memory.
The National Trust refurbishment, completed in 2015, sought to restore the interiors to how they appeared in the 1950s when the house belonged to Lady Edith, the seventh Marchioness.[49] An exception is the Ionic-columned octagonal main hall, where the chequered stone floor laid by the 3rd Marquess has been uncovered and restored.[52]
After further alterations to house's interior, the 7th Marchioness, redesigned the gardens a lavish style that took advantage of the sub-tropical local climate. As Lady Edith discovered, Mount Stewart under the general influence of theNorth Atlantic Drift, on theArds Peninsula Mount Stewart enjoys mild and humid island conditions, allowing tropical plants to thrive.[53]
Prior to her husband's succession to theMarquessate 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.[54] It was she who first realised the benefits of the sub-tropical local climate. The area is frost-free and, as Lady Edith discovered, Mount Stewart enjoys island conditions, the atmosphere is humid and, in hot weather, there are heavy dews at night. Tender tropical plants thrive here and many greenhouse varieties have been planted outside with impressive results. In 1957, she gave the gardens to theNational Trust.[55]
The present-day estate of Mount Stewart extends to 950 acres (380 ha) with a large lake and many monuments and farm buildings.
The Temple of the Winds, overlooking Strangford Lough, is an octagonal building designed architectJames 'Athenian' Stuart in 1782–83.[56] It was inspired by his study of theTower of the Winds (the astronomicalHorologium of Andronikos Kyrrhestes) in theRoman Agora in Athens which has a frieze depicting the eightwind deities (anemoi) of Greek mythology.[56][57]
Many country houses in the UK had adaptations of the 'temples' their owners had seen on their tours of theMediterranean.The temple is similar to structures atShugborough andWest Wycombe Park, both National Trust properties.[58][59]
The house was used as a location for the third series of theBBC children's TV seriesThe Sparticle Mystery.[60]
Other residences of the Marquesses of Londonderry:
To Robert Lord Viscount Castlereagh, and the Heirs Male of his Body lawfully begotten, by the Name Stile and Title of Earl of Londonderry, of the County of Londonderry
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
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