England is positively heaving with Stately Homes you can visit on a rainy day...everything from enormous castles with a Wild Life Park of their own to the more modest moated Early Elizabethan houses...many have gorgeous treasures for you stand and gaze at...a piece of delicate embroidery said to have been worked by Mary Queen of Scots while she was imprisoned...suits of armour...beautiful furniture, the wood glowing with the patina of age.
Some have incredible libraries...shelves filled with ancient leather bound volumes...all carefully roped off of course in case of visitors sticky fingers...others have great halls stuffed to over-flowing with dead animals heads...shot while on safari in Africa or in the private forests and woodlands of the estate...
There are often long galleries hung with old oil paintings of the illustrious ancestors...stiff and formal poses in their best finery...lace bedecked wrists and silver buckles on tight pointed shoes...
If you live within reasonable travelling distance, then one of those places makes a day out for when it's raining and you have people staying on holidays...you can join the ordered throng as you take a guided tour and then have tea in the adjoining tea rooms and gift shop...spending money on a set of tablemats portraying the house in all its glory or a lavishly illustrated guide book you'll put in a drawer when you go home and never look at again.
There are a very,very few large houses open to the public in Ireland...we rebelled you see and knocked them down or set fire to them...all too often with the occupants still in residence...hundreds of years of English rule made us twitchy about how much the landlords owned and how little we had...
Not allowed to practice our religion nor speak our native tongue...even having Irish dancing banned as being ungodly...sneaking around in the countryside always watching for the militia men, while brave priests said Mass for the faithful in remote locations using a rock for an altar...
Bailiffs were shot from their horses backs and cattle were hamstrung in the middle of the night...secret societies sprang up, plotting rebellion and bloodshed...one short-lived secret society called The Whiteboys, from the distinctive white smocks they wore, used to meet in the upper level of our neighbours barn.
The small minority of landlords who learned to speak the Irish and helped their tenants out, were ostracised from English society and found on their return to London that they were no longer welcome at social events...some stayed here...others tried their luck in the Colonies.
Now the once grand houses with their raked gravel paths and neat flowerbeds are no longer...over-grown with nettles and brambles they remain in ruins...their furniture, brought by boat from the best of the London dealers, broken up for firewood or used to mend gaps in a hedge.
There are no stuffed Deer heads with huge antlers to grace the walls of the hallways and studies...no enormous Pike displayed in glass cases or portraits of long dead ancestors hung on panelled walls...
I could, I suppose, take you to Park House if you honestly wanted to go...but the poor guide is useless and the kitchen is the only section of the house worth seeing...the man who owned that was shot while travelling up the high street in his carriage...he used to get his minions to clear the streets of the town before he went out so he didn't have to look at the peasants...
We could go to the remote places though...the houses now home to squalling Jackdaws...rusted signs saying No Entry...Dangerous Ruins...we could walk about the perimeter and wonder what happened to the stables and the boys who lived above the horses...we could peer into the enormous kitchens where the ranges still stand and think of the child or the small terrier dog who endlessly turned the spit...running round for hours like a hamster on a wheel...
There'd be fragments of pottery hidden in the tangled grass and perhaps a coin or two...a smell of decay and haunted by the ghosts of the lonely English women who loathed their lives here...unable to even speak with their servants because of the language barrier and openly laughed at by the lad who drove the carriage into town...their husbands ensconced in London society...visiting rarely.
Sometimes items of the furniture from the great houses appear at auction...but the clothes they wore and the small minutiae of their everyday lives have long gone...
There is always a strong connection to the past though...the stately homes of England with their roped off areas and neatly printed signs to tell you not to sit upon the over-stuffed chairs or touch the hangings on a four-poster bed lack the sense of past lives which still remain in the ruined great houses of Ireland.
Vashti! you've done it again! transported me to the olden days, I was right there and you can take me anywhere you choose I'd be sure to enjoy it! Thank you Now after that delightful post it's Brandy and bed for me ! night night, huff zzzzzzzzzzzzzzxxxxx
I'm jealous. Your tales of yesteryear are giving all of us who follow you a sharp and clear insight into bits of our history that are sometimes a little bit painful. The wrongdoings of our recent ancestors that have left ripples that have ripped our societies until very recently, and still have effects now.
My own investigations into the past of my family have thrown up very little of any connection (yet) into Ireland, except for one family centred around one name in Co Wexford, the Stedmond family. They are really the only poor part of my family where I have found solid evidence of tragedy. Robert (1809 - 1892) ended his days in the Enniscorthy Lunatic Asylum. I have only recently come across his existence and so far have little to flesh out his life, except that his wife died a couple of years after he passed. They had four children who moved to the Liverpool/Manchester region around 1850 and prospered.
Some of my previous ancestors are recorded as having short periods in Ireland, mostly in a military capacity. But of those excursions, I have only scant details. Maybe more will surface. Time will tell.
Vashti, what you see and tell us of has echoes of anguish and maybe some resentment, and that can make some of us uncomfortable with our past. But. It makes us think, and hope that those mistakes?, errors?, infringements? of the past do not get repeated.
Your storytelling has life, and the detail you tease out and point us to puts meat on the barest bones of fact that you deduce from your rummaging about in old ruins. Those Stately Houses in England, or craggy still lived in castles in Scotland that you mention, while they may be rich in grand furniture and carefully posed pictures, they don't tell us about the lives that produced that wealth, through blood, sweat, and tragedy many years ago.
Ireland has wealth now,but I suspect that most of it came from abroad by those who left in poverty, but found tremendous opportunity, and then came back, pulled by strong roots. But that's another tale you might tell us one day.
Your replies and comments mean much to me...thank you John.
Enjoyed your story as always. The last place I visited was Castle Howard. I felt very uncomfortable walking around . seeing the luxouious trappings acquired by the wealthy whilst thinking of children of that era walking about barefoot, going hungry and in poor health. x Joyce
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It'll always be the same Joyce...the poor getting poorer and the rich getting richer...
Thought for the moment you were describing the Normans in England, or the civil war, Vashti. Wherever we are we can see signs of the history of those that have, treading down those that don't have. But as always a fascinating glimpse of your world.
Once again traveling back. Remembering that we studied the conflicts Ireland endured but never really understanding. This word picture you have drawn brings a lump in my throat and tears to my eyes!!! Once again Thank You!!
Just love your story's, I have visited many grand houses on our travels with our Caravan,I also live just a few miles from Belvoir Castle,which has a very intersting past,and only 40+ miles from the beautiful Chatsworth House.
Don't forget Vashti the English poor were downtrodden as much as the Irish, I'm sure the Irish aristocracy played their part . Im not sure it's nations or religions but money,rich or poor , it calls the shots.
Wonderful evocative essay. Have you heard of Lismore Castle, owned by the Duke of Devonshire?. Big battlements and thick walls. No doubt they were necessary.
As has been said, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer. I rather think much depended on the character of the owner, how well or badly the villagers were treated.
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Now after that delightful post it's Brandy and bed for me ! night night, huff zzzzzzzzzzzzzzxxxxx
