The Percevals + Temple House Ballymote Sligo

Temple of Room

This article is based on two visits to one of the largest privately owned homes in Ireland. In 2001, pioneers of organic farming Sandy and Deb Perceval were the hosts. By 2012, the next generation had taken over: the entrepreneurial and equally hospitable Roderick and Helena. The photographs date from the second visit. A neverending restoration and upkeep continues, while some of the rooms have been updated since, the essence of Temple House remains: it really is the quintessential Irish country house. Elizabeth Bowen could have been writing about it in 1929 in The Last September, “Exhausted by sunshine, the backs of the crimson chairs were a thin light orange; a smell of camphor and animals drawn from skins on the floor by the glare of morning still hung like dust on the evening chill.”

Lissadell, Annaghmore and Temple House. Three great neoclassical country houses resting at the foothills of rugged mountains which trace the west coast of Ireland in an area forever associated with the poetry of William Butler Yeats. Built of stone which darkens from gunpowder to charcoal grey in the persistent rain, each house has a deep Doric porch or porte cochère for shelter from the prevailing wind. Austere elevations cloak rich interiors of intense colour, style and provenance.

The Percevals have lived on their 400 hectare estate for four centuries (except for a short break). The 12th generation, the blonde dynamic duo of Roderick and his wife Helena, play host to staying guests, wedding parties and events. The remains of the original building now form a picturesque crumbling ruin nestled between the current Temple House and lake. It was a castle built in 1216 by the Knights Templar who would later be immortalised in Dan Brown’s 2003 potboiler The Da Vinci Code. Most people don’t have enough storage space in their homes. Not so the Percevals. With dozens of rooms and kilometres of corridors all lit by hundreds of windows, they never have the excuse there’s no room for guests. So they have turned this potential problem into an attractive asset. Now guests can recline in splendid isolation in one of six first floor bedrooms. “We enjoy sharing this gem,” confides Roderick.

Not all guests pay for their accommodation. “The most consistently seen ghost is Nora,” relates Helena. Nora, otherwise known as Eleanora Margaret Perceval, was the châtelaine of Temple House in the Roaring Twenties (although this being rural County Sligo the era was more about fires than flappers). A favourite haunt of hers is the Blue Bedroom. Her best friend was Lady Gaga, wife of Sir Henry Gore-Booth of Lissadell. Another ghost, this time male, has been glimpsed at twilight sitting at the writing desk in the Guest Bedroom Corridor, scribbling long forgotten letters to long forgotten lovers under the purple patchwork of reflected light from the etched windows. Helena continues, “The part of the house we use as family accommodation was derelict when we moved in. It used to have a very distinct atmosphere – a little unnerving – but this has mellowed in recent times.” A visiting American psychic found the house to be riddled with ghosts. “She even spotted a few knights loitering in the castle ruins.”

Temple House wasn’t always as massive. In 1825 Colonel Alexander Perceval (who held the honorary post Sergeant at Arms in the House of Lords) commissioned John Lynn, architect and builder of Sligo, Downpatrick and Belfast, to design and build a relatively modest but still impressive three storey five bay wide by four bay deep with four bay return wing house. Its porch is clearly discernible in the Ionic columned Drawing Room bay window of the current southeast front. The family moved into this new house while the servants continued to live in the castle. But just 33 years later financial difficulties forced the Percevals to sell up. Not for long. A knight in shining armour came riding back to save the day – and the estate. The third son of the Colonel, another Alexander, bought the estate in 1863. “Alexander also paid for a number of families who had been evicted under the interim ownership to return from Britain, American and elsewhere in Ireland and rebuilt their houses.”

“Not large enough!” Alexander declared when he first set eyes on the aggrandisement plans for Temple House. He had made a fortune trading tea in Shanghai and Hong Kong allowing him to splash out three quarters of a million pounds on rebuilding his ancestral seat. In 1865 he tripled the size of the late Georgian house, moving the main entrance to the northeast front. The designer was an unusual choice: the London cabinetmakers Johnstone and Jeanes. The attic floor ducks behind a heavy balustraded parapet which luxuriantly wraps around the new and old entrance fronts. All three storeys are visible in the central three bays of the southwest front. One year later, Alexander died aged 44. Glimpses of his far flung career live on in dashes of Chinoiserie throughout the interior. His son Alec would marry Charlotte O’Hara of Annaghmore.

Service wings link the main blocks (plural, this being Temple House) around a central courtyard. This inner sanctum, devoid of distracting decoration, displays a strange and abstract beauty, its sheer walls rising like cliff faces. Form doesn’t always follow function on the outer envelope though. In the Dining Room behind the majestic portrait of Jane Perceval (Alexander’s mother) is a false window with the sole purpose of maintaining the symmetric harmony of the exterior. Roderick reveals that during the Great Famine, “Jane Perceval used to visit the tenantry with food and medicine twice a week. She died in the winter of 1847 of ‘famine fever’. That was the fate of many good people who had gone to the assistance of the starving peasantry. She writes in a touching letter of the time to remind those around her ‘not to neglect the tenant families between my death and my funeral’.”

“We believe each generation should leave its mark on the house,” Helena states. “We’ve painted the Dining Room a rich ruby red using an authentic Farrow and Ball paint.” It used to be pale green. “Next is the Staircase Hall. We’ve identified a specific blue in the cornice which we hope to use for the walls. After that will be the Sitting Room. Perhaps ivory or off white.” Upstairs a rather more relaxed approach has been taken to the fragile interiors. “The Twin Bedroom hadn’t been decorated for 100 years,” she smiles. “But that’s a good thing at Temple House!” Signs next to the pair of tall sash windows requests guests not to pull the curtains: they’ll fall down. The bedrooms are completely dark anyway when the heavy shutters are closed at night. “Temple House boasts rooms of enormous proportions,” adds Roderick. One is called the Half Acre Bedroom with good reason. “Yet there’s a real sense of intimacy here too. The first guests we catered for were one challenge which we met and are now adept at. We love having groups of friends to stay. Then hosting our first wedding was the next challenge. Organising an arts and music festival was another exciting venture.”

Since this article was written, the great great great grandson of Alexander ‘Chinaman’ Perceval and his wife have added exclusive hire of the house to their wedding venue and bed and breakfast businesses. There are now 10 guest bedrooms. Dinner is available for non residents by reservation and historic house group tours by arrangement. Elizabeth Bowen writes in her family history book of 1942, Bowen’s Court, “Ireland is a great country to die or be married in.” To twist and mix the distinguished author’s words and the distinguished poet’s, Temple House is a great place to stay or be married in with its grand windows open to the southwest.