The Circle Turns
Nobody encapsulates nature better than the late American poet Mary Oliver. And nobody embodies country living more than the Irish châtelaine Patricia Cantlon. “My house is in the most beautiful part of Ireland,” states Patricia with good reason. Her mother opened their 300 year old home to paying guests last century and Patricia has made hospitality her own life’s work. Mary Oliver, Wild Geese (1986), “Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again.”
There are multiple places in Ireland called Ballyduff, Edenderry, Kells, Monkstown and Stradbally but only one named The Rower. Patricia’s home, Cullintra House, is a few country kilometres outside the village at the foot of Mount Brandon. In spring, daffodils line the driveway which gently rises towards the house and rear outbuildings. First impressions of Cullintra conjure up Charles Baudelaire’s The Beacons (1857) as translated by John Tidball (2014), “Shaded by verdant pines in forests evergreen.”
A gated wall in front of the façade creates a garden within a garden. Ivy blurs architecture and nature. The three bay two storey with high attic pitched roof house is grander than a farmhouse yet more modest than a country house. Large rooms; low ceilings. A small one and a half storey wing is attached to the end gable. The site continues to rise beyond the façade so that the back of the house is lower, being wedged into the hill.
A drawing room and dining room flank the central staircase hall. The kitchen is in the wing off the dining room. Upstairs, the Oak Leaf Room is over the drawing room and the Poppy Suite (three interconnecting bedrooms) is over the dining room and kitchen. On the attic floor, the Lilac Room is above the Oak Leaf Room and the Bluebell Room and Hydrangea Room are above the Poppy Suite. There’s capacity for 14 guests. Patricia converted the outbuildings into further accommodation and an artist’s studio. Her paintings of local scenery, many of Cullintra Woods, decorate the interiors. A painting of a relative’s residence, Altamont House in County Cavan, hangs in the Oak Leaf Room.
She designed the outbuildings conversions, inserting Postmodern circular windows in the stone and corrugated iron elevations. A keen eye for design is also apparent in the interior design. In the drawing room, Patricia has hung four of her own large painted panels of forest scenes on two of the walls which together with a window and a French door on the other two walls blurs interior design and nature. Mary Oliver, Evidence 1, 2009, “Beauty without purpose is beauty without virtue. But all beautiful things, inherently, have this function – to excite the viewers toward sublime thought.”
“Cullintra House would have been the agent’s house on Lady Annaly’s estate Gowran Castle,” the great conteuse explains. “That’s the huge big house where she lived. I called the kitten Annaly after Lady Annaly. My three cats come with me for a mile of a walk every day. One day the plumber was out and my phone rang and the person on the end of the line said they were doing a programme on cats for Japanese television. And I said, ‘Well the young lady is not here at the moment!’ That was Isabella my cat – she was out hunting. ‘You can rearrange to talk to us.’ So they came over in 40 minutes. I said to the plumber you better go home now and come back another day to do the work. The Japanese television crew interviewed Isabella and my other cat Charlie too.”
Patricia’s talents also stretch to cooking and baking. Breakfast is scrambled egg (beautifully presented of course), scones and her famous wheaten bread accompanied by butter with a sprig of mint. She relates, “Last night I did mashed potato with peas and venison with ruby port and crème de cassis which was lovely. Another main course I like to cook on my Aga is pork chops with orange sauce and Dauphinoise potatoes.” She makes her own clothes, always wearing a full length evening dress to dinner.
Patricia leaves a handwritten note of instructions beside the 18th century front door on how to access Brandon Cairn for a sunrise climb. Beyond the farmyard with its converted outbuildings, the driveway becomes a laneway turning and twisting up the hill before terminating at a timber viewing bridge. Patricia has land rights over the bracken and gorse carpeted summit which she protects as a nature reserve. She explains, “The cairn is about 3,000 years old and was a burial chamber. You can see six counties from the top of the hill: Carlow, Kilkenny, Tipperary, Waterford, Wexford and Wicklow.” Light streaks across the sky over this ancient vortex. Prehistoric stones are piled heavenward forming a low pyramid. Mary Oliver, Sunrise (1999), “This morning, climbing the familiar hills in the familiar fabric of dawn.”
Patricia reminisces on the now derelict Butlers pub in The Rower: “It was burnt down during the troubled times then newly rebuilt in 1920. Everybody appeared for the pub and the people who didn’t want to spend money would come and sit round the corner. They were all there on the corner on a nice evening. All the fellas would sit there as there was no television. It was just a place where they’d get all the news. It’s not beyond repair. Sure Notre Dame was burnt down and was restored and is reopening this week!” Mary Oliver, Evidence 2 (2009), “Memory: a golden bowl.”
Cullintra is also a few country kilometres from Inistioge, the village made famous as the setting for Maeve Binchy’s 1990 novel Circle of Friends. A late 18th century bridge designed by George Smith – triangular buttresses between 10 arches on one side, Ionic pilasters on the other – spans the River Nore which forms the eastern boundary of the village. “At Inistioge you have to have a timetable because the river is tidal,” says Patricia. “Have you ever heard of the Olympic swimmer Michelle Smith de Bruin? One day I went in at Inistioge and I said Michelle never swam as fast as I did such was the current. I was lucky to get out alive!”
Opposite the former Butlers pub, a sign on the boundary wall of the Board of First Fruits Church of Ireland church in The Rower lists birdlife spotted among the gravestones of the bygone elites. Barn Swallow, Blackbird, Blue Tit, Buzzard, Coal Tit, Dunnock Chick, Flycatcher, Greater Spotted Woodpecker, Goldfinch, Greenfinch, Jay, Lacewing, Pied Wagtail, Red Poll, Redwing, Robin, Sparrow, Sparrow Hawk and Wren. Mary Oliver, Evidence 2 (2009), “And consider, always, every day, the determination of the grass to grow despite the unending obstacles.”
