All the Demands of the Temple of The Sun at Baalbec
It’s late 2015 and first glimpse (through a verdurous vista) from the sweeping avenue past the hilltop sham fort (every entrance should have one) is of a squarish main block five bays side on, four bays full frontal. Surprisingly Tyrella House isn’t covered by Mark Bence-Jones in his 1978 Guide to Irish Country Houses. The house’s character changes when viewed from the garden: the main block is elongated by a long lower wing (moonlit later). This arrangement has adapted well to 21st century use: guest accommodation fills the main block while the owner David Corbett lives at the end of the wing. Five years later, his son John and daughter-in-law Hannah would take over the house. The large glasshouse attached to the wing would become a wedding reception venue.
Princess Diana famously quipped “three’s a crowd” but not when it comes to the architectural taste of 18th century Ulster squires. Tripartite windows were all the rage. Their legacy is a series of glazed triptychs framing views of the countryside. And draughts – ménage à froid. The entrance front of Tyrella has a pearly twinset of tripartite windows. Clady House in Dunadry, County Antrim, has five. Glenganagh House in Ballyholme, County Down, six. Drumnabreeze House and Grace Hall both in Magheralin, County Armagh, eight. Craigmore House in Aghagallon, County Antrim, 10. Crevenagh House in Omagh, County Tyrone, innumerable.
Tyrella’s fenestration is really special, stretching head to toe, and like Montalto outside Ballynahinch in County Down, skirts the driveway. Its regal dining room resembles “Hardwick Hall more windows than wall”. Soon, majestic silverware will sparkle in the candlelight. The princely drawing room is like being immersed in Elizabeth Bowen’s 1942 description of her home: “The few large living rooms at Bowen’s Court are, this, a curious paradox – a great part of their walls being window glass, they are charged with the light, smell and colour of the prevailing weather; at the same time they are very indoors, urbane, hypnotic, not easily left.”
Later, at the close of the day, lying in the queen size bed as the pale transitory colours of the hour fade, dreams past and future are present. Outside, through the curved glass of the oriel window, across silent lawns, the tamed headland lies submerged in shadow while the ridge of the Mourne Mountains melts into silver drifts of cloud backlit by gold, lilac, mauve and pink lining.
The designer of the house isn’t known but whoever he was, the outcome is a meeting of mind and métier, the result mellowed and augmented through the ages. Conservation architect John O’Connell remarks, “This is a very accomplished Georgian box as they used to say.” Architectural historian Nicholas Sheaff reckons “it is an incredibly elegant county house and in some ways reminds me of James Gandon’s Abbeville outside Dublin”. Art collector and tastemaker Charles Plante compliments, “I love the front dripping with ivy and the chic Regency bow window.”
Three arched openings – a window on either side of the entranceway plus the door itself – are set behind a slim Doric hexastyle portico which celebrates the triglyph’s verticality, the architrave’s horizontality and the order’s proportional totality. “It’s Tuscan Doric,” explains architectural historian and Country Life contributor Dr Roderick O’Donnell. “Tuscan is rural, countrified, perfectly correct for this type of house. The window proportions are dictated by the portico. That’s particularly attractive.”
A stained glass window of the Craig family crest in the study is a leftover from previous owners. Notable family members included the first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, Sir James “Not an Inch” Craig (1st Viscount Craigavon), and his architect and yacht designer brother Vincent who combined both his skills when designing the Royal Ulster Yacht Club in Ballyholme. Janric Craig, 3rd and last Viscount Craigavon, lives in London and sits as a crossbencher in the House of Lords.
Vincent inserted his signature window type into Tyrella. No fewer than four oeils de boeuf grace the garden front. Charles observes, “The garden elevation is charming; the bull’s eye window in the gable is really special.” Most extraordinary of all is the first floor stained glass pane (set in a six pane casement window) which projects at an acute angle to appear permanently ajar.
David posits, “Vincent more than likely introduced the ceiling beams and light fitting in the hall. And he designed the hall fireplace. It’s very Malone Roadsy!” This airy space is painted a deep ochre which Charles calls “John Fowler orange”. Upstairs, Free Style panelling looks Vincentian. So does the recently reinstated glasshouse. Back to David, “The conservatory is actually almost entirely new except for the brickwork. It took three years to recreate. The pale green paint inside is the original colour.” Tyrella isn’t quite as Georgian as it first appears. “The middle bit behind the new Regency addition is William and Mary.” The house used to be even bigger. “My father demolished about a third of it – the cream room, jam room, butler’s pantry, the dark kitchen and so on.”
Tyrella was the seat of Reverend George Hamilton and his wife Ann Matilda, daughter of the 5th Earl of Macclesfield, at the end of the 18th century. Rural legend has it that the Reverend used the stones from the old parish church to rebuild the house in 1800. Did this slightly sacrilegious behaviour cause his downfall? He would go bust shortly afterward. Arthur Hill Montgomery bought the estate in 1831. Six years later, Samuel Lewis records in his Topographical Dictionary of Ireland: “Tyrella House, the handsome residence of Arthur Hill Montgomery, is beautifully situated in a richly planted demesne of 300 acres, commanding extensive views over the bay, with the noble range of the Mourne Mountains in the background, and containing within its limits the site and cemetery of the ancient parish church.”
Arthur was the fourth son of Hugh Montgomery of Grey Abbey House on the Ards Peninsula, County Down. Bill Montgomery, a great-great-something-grandson of Hugh, still resides at Grey Abbey House with his wife Daphne. Dwelling on the past, David comments on the subject of ghosts, “I hate to disappoint you. All the people have sold the house, left, and gone on to do something else. Spent money on it, changed hands. None of them have lingered. I don’t miss ghosts – wouldn’t want one.”
It’s time to enter the dining room. Plat du jour de nuit. A love song to Northern Irish cuisine. Spinach and ricotta tartlet; stuffed sea bream; and mascarpone, raspberry and lemon tart. No spirits of any kind but plenty of Pinot Grigio (Renideo 2009) and Sauvignon Blanc (Pays d’Oc 2012). The dining experience isn’t always this tranquil according to the host. When Country Life visited in 1996, dinner was interrupted by ebullient bovine neighbours nosily emerging from between the rhododendrons. He smiles, “The magazine published ‘during dinner a herd escaped and raped the garden like a Mongol horde’. Marauding overweight rogue cattle licking the dining room windows wasn’t the look we were going for at all!”
Descendants of the previous owners, the Robert Neill and Sons Ltd dynasty, recall early 20th century life. Coline Grover says, “I lived in the house with grandparents and relatives various from 1940 until they sold it in 1949, and moved with them to Old Forge House in Malone, south Belfast. Tyrella House was wonderful with a swing house underneath the nursery wing. It was incorporated into the property and had two marks on the ceiling where if you went high enough your feet touched the ceiling! And there was a rock garden with a two storey playhouse called Spider House.”
Coline’s cousin-in-law Ian Elliott adds, “The Georgian house had a boudoir and some lovely Arts and Crafts additions – and that fabulous view to the Mournes. In the 1920s after the 1st World War it was bought by the Neill family – brothers Jack, Samuel and William – as part of their businesses of coal, construction and farming. They already owned East Downshire Fuels in Dundrum as well as Neill’s Coal in Bangor, Kingsberry Coal in Belfast, and Bloomfield Farm in Newtownards where the shopping centre is now. The family circle elected Billy Neill to live and farm there with his wife Vera. She was formerly Phelps of Kent, a direct descendant of Jane Lane who helped Charles II escape from the Battle of Worcester in the 1640s. They raised their three children there. The Corbetts, whiskey distillers from Banbridge, have owned it since 1949.” Coline’s brother Guthrie Barrett concurs that “Billy Neill sold Tyrella in 1949”.
“I haven’t been back to Tyrella House since 1949,” says nonagenarian Beresford Neill, known to all as Uncle Berry. He lives in Deramore Park, Malone, now. “A most wonderful childhood. Absolutely beautiful. Tyrella was completely and utterly the back of beyond. For goodness sake, it was completely feudal. There were no neighbours. We had our own entrance into the church next door and our own pew. My father got married in February 1917 and he bought the estate: 300 acres, a 3.5 acre walled garden, a 48 roomed house.”
He continues, “There was no electricity. In 1906 a gas heating machine was installed. It had huge pipes and a great big cage in the kitchen. There was no telephone until 1933. How Mama coped I don’t know. We’d a cook, housemaid and three gardeners. There were three bathrooms – one for staff, two for the family. We always had dogs – mostly Labradors. There was a large wood to the side of the house and a rock garden. The rocks were transported in 1890 from Scrabo to Tullymurry by train, then by horse and cart to Tyrella. It was a tremendous effort!”
“Berry reminisces, “In 1944 I enlisted as a private soldier in the Rifle Brigade. It’s now called the Rifles. It was a very swish regiment. After the War, I got transferred to Ballykinler Camp. I spent the whole of 1946 there. I’d a marvellous time! I could walk over the fields from Tyrella to Ballykinler in 10 minutes. We had the most enormous beech tree at Tyrella but a storm split it down the middle. It was sawn up by a gardener of course but a stump remained. One quiet Sunday afternoon I decided to blow up the remains of the tree. I thought I was the last word in explosives! I got seven anti-tank mines. I made a fuse and set them off. Bang! The birds stopped singing. Silence. Then … tinkle tinkle. Several of the windows in the house shattered. Sheer bloody stupidity! I should’ve opened the windows first!” Neill Guy Beresford “Berry” Campbell would die peacefully in Malone in 2020.
“We don’t usually open to paying guests in November,” admits David due to people not understanding that large Irish country houses aren’t overheated hotels. Heavy curtains and concertina shutters are good at keeping out the chills though in the guest bedrooms. A newly installed biomass boiler has added a level of contemporary comfort. “I’ve kept the 1906 boiler with its original instruction manual. It’s beautiful – like the beast of a furnace on the Titanic!” That would be Uncle Berry’s huge pipes and great big cage.
And bags at dawn. Peering over the bedroom landing, the oval staircase resembles a gargantuan pencil sharpening, a banister bordered carpeted curlicue, a variation on the Fibonacci spiral. Downstairs, breakfast is laid out country house style – buffet on the sideboard. “I do recommend Lindy Dufferin’s Greek Style Yoghurt,” says David. Historian Dr Frances Sands opined during an exclusive visit to 20 St James’s Square London, “Breakfast was the only meal of the day you served yourself. That’s why there is side furniture in the breakfast room. If there is no separate breakfast room, really then the dining room should be referred to as the eating room. There was a huge fear of odour in Georgian times. The eating room would have had no curtains, carpet or silk wall hangings. Seating would have been leather.” The dining room or rather eating room at Tyrella House was originally the billiard room.
It is impossible to leave Tyrella without mentioning the beach. The Mountains of Mourne thrillingly tower over kilometres of unspoiled golden strand between Clough and Killough. Coline Grover observes, “Tyrella Beach never changes of course.”
