Good fences make good neighbours, so relations can cool when they fall down, as Mark Hennessy finds when he visits Lord Waterford's estate
The view lacks for nothing other than the theme music of Brideshead Revisited: the long drive, the wide gates, the gravel crunching underfoot up to the imposing main door of Curraghmore. Drive into Lord Waterford's estate, nestled in a wooded valley divided by the River Clodagh, near Portlaw, in Co Waterford, and the centuries fall away.
Oliver Cromwell came here in 1649, with the intention of burning it, as he had done to so many other places. In the end, it seems, he had something to eat. "Family lore has it that, when Cromwell came here, my ancestor was locked up by his daughter in the dungeon, because she thought he would say the wrong thing. Then she invited Cromwell in for tea. And he came, and he left," says Tyrone de Poer Beresford, the eighth marquis of Waterford.
Then there is the legend of the Cross. Once, it is said, an IRA unit came to burn down Curraghmore, although local historians divide on the subject. The unit reportedly got to the main gates, then saw a cross on the roof, behind a stag of St Hubert, one of the family's emblems, light up. "They took that as a sign that they shouldn't do anything, and they went away," says de Poer Beresford.
The family, which has been in Ireland since 1169, has lots more colour in its history. One ancestor, Lord Charles Beresford, fought his way up the Nile in an unsuccessful attempt to rescue General Gordon at Khartoum, in 1885; another, William, serving with the 9th Lancers, won a Victoria Cross, Britain's highest award for bravery in the face of an enemy, during the Zulu War of 1879, when he and a fellow solider, Sergeant Edmond O'Toole, saved the life of a corporal.
In recent decades, the house hosted Fred Astaire and Jacqueline Kennedy, as well as Charles Haughey. "CJ was keen on hunting. I think I lent him a horse," says de Poer Beresford, who is still involved in the daily running of the main, 2,500-acre estate. The family, he says proudly, have never been absentee landlords.
Although the history of the family and building is dear to him, the marquis is more interested in his ongoing dispute with Coillte, the State forestry company, about the poor condition of kilometres of walls around 1,900 acres that the State rented from the family, on a 150-year lease, in the 1930s. "My father leased the land to the department of lands" - now the Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources - "just before he died, in 1934," he says. "The terms of the lease are very clear. The walls are to be maintained."
In many places, the stone walls, which were built to provide work during the Famine, have fallen down or are about to do so, weakened by the roots of pine trees that have been allowed to grow too near them.
The lease is specific: "The Minister will from time to time and at all times during the said term hereby granted well and sufficiently repair, maintain and keep all walls, fences, ditches and drains."
Although Coillte is but the latest organisation to be in charge of State forestry, Lord Waterford has been complaining for years that the walls were being allowed to decay. Now, ready to take legal action, he has brought in experts who have estimated that it would cost €11 million to put the damage right, as highly trained craftsmen would be needed.
In November 1989 Coillte wrote to him to say it had hired a private contractor, who was working on the walls "at present". "The damage to the walls is extensive and it will take time to repair. This is compounded by the nature of the walls and the craftsmanship and materials required to carry out repairs. I wish to state that the company will repair the damage caused to the walls and to the entrances," wrote a representative of Coillte's estate-management division, promising to have the repairs completed in September 1990.
Coillte then promised to have the walls on two sides of Beallough Wood and at Tower Hill Wood repaired during the following year and said "normal maintenance" would then continue "from year to year".
Some repairs have been done in recent months, although, according to the marquis, the work does not match the wall destroyed.
"They have allowed trees to grow right up alongside walls. I started to complain to them about this during the 1970s, but nothing got done. The leases were very badly drawn up. The rental is absolutely minimal, just 14 pence in old money per acre. Nobody thought about inflation. There were no rent reviews, though we were not unique in that."
Gerry Egan, Coillte's secretary, says the company assumed responsibility for the lease in 1989; he blames storms in 1974 and 1997 for the damage. "Coillte was faced with a major task to carry out this work. Over the past 10 years some repairs were carried out. Coillte was approached by Lord Waterford in 2005, expressing dissatisfaction with the situation."
Coillte, he says, "accelerated the repair of the walls in 2005 and 2006", but, given the extensive damage sustained "over the past 70 years, it will take time to meet these obligations fully".