When a Cavan pharmacist bought the local 'big house', in 2001, he knew little about its past and even less about what he'd do with it in the future. Now Roy McCabe has a plan he hopes will preserve its heritage, reports Gemma Tipton.
Hidden houses and secret gardens are intriguing. Ancient high stone walls seem to be made for peering over just as much as they are for keeping people out. Although some of Ireland's grand estate houses and castles have opened, at least partially, to the public, such as Castletown, the gardens at Birr and the gardens and gallery at Lismore, others have remained closed-in enigmas: think of the mystique of Kinsealy as the fiefdom of Charles Haughey.
It was simple curiosity that compelled Roy McCabe, a pharmacist, to explore Farnham Estate in Cavan when it came on the market in 2001. Closed to public view for 400 years, and granted by King James I of England in 1610, Farnham had been handed down through generations of the Maxwell family, who became Lords Farnham in 1756. "Like most people in Cavan, I didn't really know much about the Farnham Estate as a child," says McCabe. "It was on the outskirts of the town. It was a total mystery as to what was within the walls. We knew that there were a Lord and Lady Farnham, but I never knew anyone who ever met them. They were the largest land owners in the area, controlled the politics of Cavan for hundreds of years and once represented Cavan in the House of Lords. There was a real sense of mystique about 'the Estate' when we were growing up."
Farnham was less of a mystery to many other people in Cavan, employing in its heyday hundreds of local people in the house, gardens, forests, farm, sawmill, forge, dairy and stable yards. Employees of Lord Farnham lived in cottages on the 1,300 acres of the estate, and they were well looked after. Rosaleen Sheridan, who came to Farnham when she married Paddy Sheridan, an estate worker, in 1951, remembers being given a can of milk every day, as well as potatoes and vegetables from the gardens and timber and turf for the fire. "You never went hungry," she says. "At Christmas, every man and boy was brought to the yard and given a big piece of meat and a drink to take home. And when the harvest was brought in, Lord Farnham would have a Harvest Home, with big barrels of Guinness, and no one would get to work on time the next day."
There was nonetheless a strict hierarchy. A trapdoor in a grassy bank outside leads to a series of passages under the house, so that servants could enter and move around without being seen by the Farnhams and their guests. A "moral agent" was also employed to ensure that standards of probity and rectitude were maintained among the staff.
Farnham's story is also often at odds with the ideals of the broad narrative of Irish history. The village outside Farnham's walls was torched in the Ulster Rebellion of 1641, and in the early 20th century, the then Lord Farnham was closely aligned with Lord Carson in the fight against home rule for Ireland. He was a signatory to the Ulster Covenant but was disappointed to find the estate ultimately excluded from the new Ulster state after partition, petitioning for that situation to be changed. He resigned his membership of the Ulster Unionist Party in protest.
It is difficult to have a less than ambivalent attitude to our great estates. Owned by English overlords and the result of land confiscations, they become related in the mind to old injustices. At their best, however, these houses and lands reflect a tradition of husbandry and care that has seen the planting and preservation of wonderful forests and farmlands - tracts of land unspoiled by avaricious development. It would be mistaken, however, to suggest a "good English landowners" versus "bad Irish developers" analogy: Farnham was also responsible for famine evictions, as were Irish land speculators in Co Cavan. But it is true that this type of ambivalence has led to the neglect and destruction of a great deal of our rural as well as architectural heritage.
Following family tradition, the last Lord Farnham was president of the Tree Council of England, and Farnham's woodlands contain more than 100 varieties of tree, including redwood, cedar, copper beech, Scots pine, lime, yew and some of the oldest oaks in the country. Nine of Ireland's "champion trees" (from the Tree Council of Ireland inventory) are here. There is also a unique collection of tropical trees, bought by Lord Farnham during his travels, and some of the first rhododendrons in this country. Elaborate heating arrangements in the walled gardens once facilitated the growing of pineapples, reflecting an era when rich landowners vied to outdo each other through feats of horticulture. The estate also includes three lakes and a series of interconnecting canals. Walking around, you have the blissful sense of being able to go on for ever through semi-wild nature, without hearing the sound of an engine; the forests, parklands and lakes extend a deeply calming influence.
It was a sense of this heritage and beauty that McCabe discovered while looking at the estate with his wife, Margaret. "When we got there, we were immediately struck with the magnificent land and sheer privacy. I had never imagined that it could be so beautiful. It hit me that this was a fantastic untapped asset which, if not handled sensitively, would soon be lost forever. The Farnhams were great land managers. Their legacy to us is a wonderful piece of property." McCabe's response to the beauty of Farnham was perhaps a little unusual, though: "We went for a look and ended up buying it."
Purchasing the property in its entirety (reportedly for more than €6.25 million), McCabe, his wife and their four daughters took a while to sit back and think about what they were going to do with it. "The day I got the keys and opened the gate, there was a crowd of local people who had turned out. I was taken with the real passion that Cavan people had for Farnham. In the following days and weeks, the amount of stories, photos and general information that people volunteered to me was astounding."
But, as he points out, "the way the Estate had been operated in the past is no longer viable today. Estates have always been dynamic environments. There is no point in making a museum of them that chokes their future. The Farnham estate had always continuously evolved, starting out with simple fortifications and ending up with a grand mansion house. It then went into decline as its means of survival became less relevant."
So choosing a new means of survival came to preoccupy the McCabe family over the next two years. They settled eventually on the idea of opening it as a hotel and spa. McCabe also retained the services of Joe McConville, a consultant arboriculturist, to explore the history of Farnham's land and gardens.
Restaurants and hotels have become one of the main ways by which we are allowed to peek into the mysterious interiors of our surviving grand houses. A few hundred euro a night will buy you the right to explore beyond the doors of Ashford Castle, Moyglare Manor or Castle Leslie. The best, and usually the most expensive, of these also retain the feel (sometimes illusory) that the only things that have changed since the days of the lord and lady of the manor have been the addition of numbers on the bedroom doors, the necessary inconvenience of a desk at which to part with your credit card and, with luck, an update of the plumbing.
More intrusive are the alterations to places such as the two Powerscourt houses, one in Dublin and one in Wicklow, both converted to shopping and eating emporiums, the chief genuine elements being the surviving structural walls. Here, although the places are pleasant, they present the pleasures of quick-turnover consumption, not being designed to make you want to linger. But the interiors of grand houses were not created with the needs of shopping or a contemporary hotel in mind, and although grand in itself, thehouse at Farnham was not large enough to accommodate visitors in significant numbers. The solution to this is an extension: three storeys of hotel rooms extending from the rear of the main house and designed to enjoy stunning views of the Co Cavan landscape. The architect for the project is Des McMahon of Gilroy McMahon, whose previous credits include the National Museum at Collins Barracks and the extension to Dublin's Hugh Lane Gallery (due to open in the spring).
For McMahon, Farnham's most significant features are its classical three-storey period house and the surrounding landscape. "Both house and lawn look out towards an uninterrupted vista framed by extensive woodlands and lakes. The place is beautiful." To tackle the project, McMahon's approach is to create contrasts between the contemporary and historic parts of the hotel, all the while using salvaged materials to echo the original parts in the new. While preferable to pastiching the original building with a replica extension, it is nonetheless a potentially risky strategy, and time will tell its success. Large picture windows in the bedrooms, and a great glassed-in reception foyer, are strikingly modern in design, yet the building is intended to sit within the landscape, so that it will seem to belong there. As McCabe puts it: "It's not a sense of creating an atmosphere but of getting the hotel to fit in with the atmosphere we already have."
So how is that to be achieved, and what do people want in a contemporary hotel anyway? The London-based firm Project Orange, which was responsible for the penthouse suite at Dublin's Fitzwilliam Hotel, has been working on the hotel's design. Project Orange director James Soane says demands have changed. "The Hip Hotels books have popularised hotels as destinations. Now people might enjoy something they wouldn't choose for their home - modernism, for example. Since we've started designing hotels, we get calls from hotels whose guests are wondering where they can get hold of the taps in the bathroom."
Gordon McKinnon of Radisson SAS, which is operating the hotel, also notes the change. "The world is more design-conscious, better travelled; it's media-savvy, IT-savvy . . . Farnham will be one of Ireland's first truly contemporary country-house hotels."
Soane adds the desire for "comfort and service, escape and relaxation" to the modern hotel guest's requirements; Des McMahon includes the importance of "a sense of arrival, an element of surprise and novelty, as well as great comfort, plus a feel for the uniqueness of the place and a sense of intimacy".
That idea of the hotel as destination now means that hotels are increasingly offering more than just bed and board. Equally, ever since "health farms" became "spas" and "fitness" became "wellness", having a bit more than a swimming pool and a hairdresser at your hotel has become a big draw. Hotels are now focusing on the idea of going away and coming back not just rested but also massaged, waxed, sea-clay wrapped, healed and probably subjected to some aromatherapy for good measure. The spa at Farnham is being designed by Heinz Schletterer, an Austrian. It includes treatment rooms, a meditation garden, a relaxation room (complete with waterbeds) and an infinity pool that lets you swim from the inside of the building into the open air. The restaurant will follow the trend of "wellness", not with "health food" but by serving organic produce, including wild garlic and herbs from Farnham's gardens and grounds.
For Roy McCabe, however, the most important aspect of Farnham is the landscape. "I love a hotel where I don't have to leave for other distractions, somewhere I can relax and be my own person. I suppose I like a certain amount of anonymity and privacy. Atmosphere to me makes a great hotel. The balance between having lots to do but also finding your own special hideaway is important. Living in the city, I find I love to just stroll through the countryside."
Farnham's fishing, horse riding and walking trails are "not about managing a hotel - that's what Radisson will do - but rather about creating a plan for the 21st century for a great Irish historical estate", says McCabe. "Every member of the family is passionate about the responsibility we have to maintain and develop this unique place."
Radisson SAS Farnham Estate is due to open in the spring