Mount Charles All Over Again
We’re getting ready to join you on this beautiful life adventure. “County Down in the holidays and Surrey in the term – it was an excellent contrast,” raved Clive Staples Lewis in 1955. We couldn’t agree more and technically we do reside in Surrey albeit the hectarage swallowed up by southwest London. Tullymurry House is only five kilometres on the Belfast side of Newry but feels a world away from everywhere and everything and everyone. There are uninterrupted views across drumlins to the irregular polygon of the snow capped Mourne Mountains.
Tullymurry, blurring the line between a grand farmhouse and a modest country house, is run by the Irish Landmark Trust, founded in 1992. The Trust’s mission is to save, share and sustain. Hearth Revolving Fund restored the house in 2012 before handing it over for use as a holiday home. The Autumn 1989 Heritage Newsletter of the Ulster Architectural Heritage Society states, “Hearth has completed 55 houses and flats for rental over the last 10 years …” Tullymurry most likely originated as a single storey Scottish Planters’ house. An extension by the Weir family of circa 1700 is now the kitchen and downstairs bedroom. The L shaped two storey block with its sureness of style was then added in the late 18th century. In 1828 a farmer John Marshall bought the house and remodelled it further 12 years later. A folder beside a vase of fresh (custard yellow and raspberry red) roses on the entrance hall table details the restoration:
“Work started on the house from the top downwards; the roof tiles were taken off and replaced but fortunately the roof timbers were found to be in excellent condition and original to the house. The sash windows were taken out, repaired and painted before being put back in place. The house was riddled with woodworm so large areas of floorboards had to be replaced as necessary. The house was rewired and replumbed with the important addition of central heating and extra bathrooms. A small area of kitchen units was added with plenty of modern appliances and a utility room just across the passage for any extra equipment.”
“As much of the existing decoration as possible was retained including the wood effect graining on many of the doors, shutters and skirting. Where wallpaper had to be replaced and painting carried out, traditional ranges from Farrow and Ball were used. Much of the furniture and pictures are 19th century and were in the house before restoration began. They were removed before work began and replaced when work was complete as close as possible to their original locations. The house is now ready to face the next 200 years and has been given a new lease of life as a holiday home.” Original items include hall chairs, an organ, a piano, a family Bible, portraits and a watercolour of nearby Narrow Water Castle by Tom Irwin.
Like the Sunday school chorus, Tullymurry is “deep and wide”. The ivy cloaked south facing façade and east front are both symmetrically five bay. A very complete (custard yellow) doorcase formed of pilasters rising to brackets supporting a sprocketed hood frame the (raspberry red) door and oblong overlight with its geometric glazing. Over the façade the roof is gable ended to the west and hipped roof to the east. Single storey older parts of the house are hidden behind these two principal fronts. The dual aspect first floor principal bedrooms each take up two bays of the façade. Coved ceilings push into the roof slopes. Floor height windows add charm to all four upstairs bedrooms.
It’s a long five kilometres from Newry: almost everyone gets lost along the dark country lanes. A Friday night feast from Dong Fang Asian Fusion is eventually spread out on the long kitchen trestle table. The Aga will rest tonight. A Saturday morning walk under low hung grey skies parallel lined with cloud and mist is County Down tranquillity at its best. The lawns on either side of the avenue are speckled with snowdrops. Grey turns to blue as the sound of agricultural machinery gearing up is a reminder this is still a working farm. The burnt red ribbed metal barrel vaulted barn may be aesthetically pleasing but it’s also functional.
Sun streams in through the open door down the entrance hall passing from the glory of the day into the dim hinterland of the back hall on this late February weekend. The Victorian wallpapered drawing room, a polite space full of bygones, is turned into a cinema for the afternoon. And then in a flash it’s Saturday evening. Pre dinner cocktails are served in the drawing room while guests are serenaded by local harpist Sharon Carroll playing Sì Beag Sì Mòr and other sweet melodies. French 75s: squeezed lemon juice and gin mixed with a little sugar and shaken on ice. Pour into Champagne glasses and top up with Champagne. Sidecars: shake equal parts of Cognac Hennessy, Cointreau and lemon juice with a little sugar. Pour into cocktail glasses and place orange peel on top. A tip is to peel the lemons and oranges into the glasses so that zest and spray go over the drinks and glass rims. So that’s two of our five a day!
Chef Rob Curley of Slemish Market Supper Club arrives with the first of the evening’s dishes (service à la Russe not à la Française of course). He explains, “Wee Bites are our style of tapas. You have vol au vents filled with wild mushrooms, parsley and garlic with egg yolk jam inside them. And then you have lovage and cucumber gazpacho. You also have smoked salmon, crème fraîche with elderberry capers pickled pumpkin and fish pancakes flavoured with dolce seaweed.” Lovage is a green plant used in soups and also for medicinal purposes. Gazpacho is a tomato and red pepper based Spanish soup served cold. So more of our five a day!
The curtains and shutters in the blue painted dining room are pulled back: there are no neighbours. Rob’s dinner courses reflect Slemish Supper Club’s commitment that, “The land, sea, rivers and lakes are really important to our gastronomy. Every ingredient is chosen to honour and pay tribute to the important local resources of our cuisine.” The starter is beetroot tortilla, goat’s cheese, beetroot, liquorice, winter leaves. The main is king scallops, Rathlin Island sea lettuce, cucumber pearls, elderberry capers, potato noisette, buttermilk whey sauce. Pudding is spiced orange cake, milk ice cream, liquorice gel. Haute monde, haute couture, haute cuisine.
Just as Rob and his team wave goodbye to a thrilled dinner party, who pulls up but American chanteuse Kara Kalua with all the pyrotechnical melisma of a diva. The highly versatile drawing room is now a disco and soon everyone is singing for their supper like a scene from Saltburn, murdering Sophie Ellis Bexter’s hit Murder on the Dancefloor. It’s an eclectic late night for boon companions, older and wilder, ending in the relaxing spa carved out of the former stables with their merry assortment of lattice, casement and sash windows. “All reality is iconoclastic,” as Clive Staples Lewis used to say.
