If Electric Picnic is a boutique festival, then the even more intimate Garden Party could be called an accessory-sized festival. Gemma Tipton meets the couple opening the doors of their estate
Around the curve of an avenue that is thickly green with magnolias and rhododendrons appears Ballinlough Castle. With dramatic towers and battlements, picture windows that look out over lawns, and a lake stretching behind, it's the kind of place it would be hard not to fall in love with. Generations of its inhabitants have loved it, too, and its story is one of a passionate struggle to save it from the vicissitudes of some squandering ancestors and the march of history.
"It's like all your fantasies come true," says John Reynolds of the Pod, who is promoting the Garden Party - or, as he likes to put it, "the official start of the festival season", in early June. Like Electric Picnic, the boutique festival at Stradbally Hall, in Co Laois, the Garden Party is designed to appeal to people who want more than warm beer, mud and dodgy burgers at their music festivals. "Although, if Electric Picnic is boutique, we're just accessory-sized," says Alice Nugent, who, with her husband, Nick, and their two daughters, four-year-old Lucy and two-year-old Katie, lives at Ballinlough Castle, in Co Meath. Which sounds even better, particularly as the burgers and beer are being replaced by strawberries, champagne, crepes, barbecues, Thai noodles and slow-food organic burgers.
The Garden Party will be held in a walled garden to the side of the castle. It's a place that Alice had always thought would be perfect for a party, so when Reynolds contacted the couple in his search for a midlands venue, she showed him not only the lawns in front of the castle but also the secret gardens to the side. The results of that afternoon were both the Garden Party and, in July, Midlands Music Festival, which features Nanci Griffith, Emmylou Harris, Dwight Yoakam and Van Morrison, among others.
"I'm interested in the acts coming to the country-music festival," says Nick. "And I'm more excited about the Garden Party," adds Alice. "I'd been to Electric Picnic and seen the kind of thing it is. This is going to be similar: fun and quirky. There's going to be a body-and-soul area, wonderful food, a flea circus . . ."
What's in a flea circus, I ask. "Fleas," says Nick.
The Nugents are descended from the O'Reilly clan, who go back to Brian, the fourth king of Connacht. He had one daughter and 24 sons, 12 of whom are said to have been baptised by St Patrick. But in a history that mixes pragmatism with fecklessness, another ancestor, Sir Hugh O'Reilly, changed his name to Nugent to avail of a dowry in 1812.
Ballinlough is one of few great houses to have been continuously owned by a single Irish Catholic family. The O'Reilly-Nugents have lived on the lands in Co Meath since about 1415. As you walk through the diningroom and drawingroom, ancestors look down at you. There is the O'Reilly who told Cromwell's henchman that if he wanted to take the castle he would have to fight for it (Cromwell's man reportedly turned and ran).
Then there is the one who became governor of Vienna and high chamberlain of the Austrian empire. He later fled Vienna for Cracow, to fight a duel for the hand of a rich and beautiful heiress, Maria, a countess of Bohemia. The duel lasted two days; he won, married his sweetheart and lived to the age of 92.
Horses also feature heavily in the family story. Nick is director of sales at Goffs Bloodstock Sales, in Co Kildare, and he met Alice through her parents, who breed horses. Nick's grandfather Sir Hugh Nugent trained racehorses, and his father before him died in a hurdle race at Ostend, in Belgium. "Nick's grandfather put this place back together," says Alice.
In fact, he did more than that. At one point the castle was almost lost through mortgages - the results of gambling, fast living and slow horses - and the actions of Sir Charles Nugent, who in 1863 sold his life interest in Ballinlough to an insurance company for £1,000. Sir Hugh saved the castle from the Land Commission, which, having compulsorily acquired it, was planning to demolish it and use the stones for roads. In his memoir, The Sir, which he dictated to Nick after being blinded in a car accident at the age of 76, Sir Hugh describes how, "if a member of the family wanted some money, he just took a picture off the wall, took it to Dublin and sold it".
Since Sir Hugh rescued Ballinlough from demolition, his son Sir John and grandson Nick have been working on the endless task of shoring up and preserving the building. Sir John and Lady Nugent recently swapped places with Nick and Alice, moving to a smaller house in the grounds, while Nick and Alice take on more of the work associated with running the castle. "We wanted to have a 10-year run at the house before I was 50," says Nick. "And it's worked extremely well. Basically, we're now living in a house five degrees colder than we were used to, and they're living at five degrees warmer. They look five years younger, and we look five years older."
He continues: "The thing about big estates like this is that the land bank has usually been significantly reduced by inept forefathers, the Land Commission and things like that. But it's also been reclaimed by adept generations. These days you're not going to sustain a house in good condition by living off the land. Once, you built a wall round your estate to keep people out. Now, you have to open the gates and bring people in. It is people who are going to generate the resources you need to keep a place like this going. You have to share the location."
And that's what the Garden Party is all about. Although not everyone may fancy letting 5,000 revellers into their home, the Nugents are alert to the best ways to keep their castle viable. "I'm totally respectful of the history, of what's here," says Alice. "But I'm also aware that unless you do something you're not going to be able to preserve it. And if you don't make it work you won't be here to look after it." "We both take the view," says Nick, "that we'd rather fail by trying to do something than by not trying at all."
With Toots & the Maytals, Andy Cato of Groove Armada, and Asian Dub Foundation confirmed for the day, and with gourmet food, fortune tellers and the intriguing flea circus also on the menu, the Nugents are enjoying what Reynolds calls the "infectious madness" going on around them as preparations continue.
"My only experience of John prior to this," says Nick, "was being rejected entry into the Pod [Reynolds's nightclub in Dublin], about 10 years ago. A friend and I were taking two girls we fancied out, and we weren't let in. Which scuppered our romantic plans. In fact, if you think about it, if things had gone further I might not have met Alice. So I have a lot to thank John for." .
The Garden Party is at Ballinlough Castle, Athboy, Co Meath, on June 4th. See www.gardenparty.ie. Midlands Music Festival is on July 28th and 29th. See www.midlandsmusicfestival.ie
Who's headlining
MIDLANDS MUSIC FESTIVAL: Kenny Rogers, Emmylous Harris, Nanci Griffith, Van Morrison, Dwight Yoakam, Glen Campbell, Don McLean.
THE GARDEN PARTY: 2manydjs, Toots & the Maytals, Andy Cato, Asian Dub Foundation.