The instructions to find Grenane House in Co Tipperary come with a plea to ensure the gates are closed behind me while driving up the avenue. The property is also part of a working stud farm, and there are many leggy foals in the fields surrounding the house.
Philippa Mansergh Wallace is waiting for me at the door of Grenane House, her family home in some form or other since 1700. A wing was added in 1740. I don’t know how many historic houses in Ireland that are 300 years old have remained in the same family all that time, but Grenane House is one of them, and anyone can go and see it on certain designated days of the year.
Grenane is one of Ireland’s historic houses and gardens that have been approved to qualify for section 482 tax relief. This provides the owners with a tax-free relief for various repairs or maintenance on the approved building and/or garden. In return, the owners have to make their houses or gardens available to the public for visits for 60 days of the year, one of which must be during Heritage Week, which takes place this year August 17th-25th.
All the section 482 properties have different opening times, and some charge a small fee for a tour of houses or gardens. The tour of a number of rooms at Grenane, and gardens, is €20. The real attraction, though, is that the tour is conducted by owner Mansergh Wallace, who grew up here and still lives in the house. (Mostly, the residents of section 482 properties give the tours.)
“The house was never damaged,” she says, as we stand in one of the grand rooms, with its original Wyatt window. Her ancestors gave employment to locals during the Famine. There was a wall-building project, including the walled garden. She credits the acts of her ancestors as being a key reason why Grenane was never targeted during the Civil War. “A cordon of local people was put around the house, and no one was allowed through.”
“This is one of the oldest lived-in houses in Ireland. It has never been bought or sold.” The estate originally had some 2,000 acres. A profligate ancestor lost 1,700 of those acres. What remains is still considerable by the standards of those of us who reside in dwellings on land not measured in acres. “It’s not an overly big house,” says Mansergh Wallace. “There are eight bedrooms and five reception rooms.”
We are standing in a lovely Georgian room with its original walnut and mahogany Georgian bookshelves, and a thoroughly modern large sofa and television. Along with the set of Winston Churchill memoirs, there are thrillers on the shelves, showing this is a family home, as well as a historic one.
In the drawingroom, there is the original Wedgwood frieze around the ceiling. Another has an Adam’s fireplace. “I go into every room every day, but I won’t say we use them every day,” she says.
There are many striking family portraits on the walls. One of them is of Alexander Seton, who is credited with coining the phrase “women and children first” when the ship he was aboard, the Birkenhead, struck rocks off Cape Town in 1852. The writer Elizabeth Bowen was a cousin of the Mansergh family, although her family home, Bowen’s Court, is sadly now long demolished.
In the hall, a memorial has been created to the seven family members who died in the first World War, some of whom do not have graves. They include two poppies that formed part of the astonishing 2014 installation of 888,246 ceramic poppies at the Tower of London’s moat, each one representing a death during that war. A pair of boots that belonged to her grandfather stands underneath them. “He lost his favourite Irish hunter [horse] at Passchendaele.”
I’ve never been on a house tour like this one, which shows some of the bedrooms upstairs. One belongs to a daughter away in London. Another is a guestroom, called “the Cat Room” due to the original illustrations of the Victorian artist Louis Wain. One ancestor eloped out of this bedroom window and went to live in Australia. There is a portrait that Mansergh Wallace admits to “playing tennis balls against when I was a child, much to the horror of my mother”.
There’s another large sittingroom, full of trophies for all manner of horse- and pony-related achievements. Large paper bags literally overflow with rosettes, many of them for one daughter’s side-saddle-riding prowess. This room used to have a large billiards table, now gone. It also once had the heads of many dead animals, hunting trophies from another era. Mansergh Wallace’s mother decided they had to go, so they went.
The garden terrace was laid out by a great-aunt. It’s not raining, so we go out to see the extensive gardens. Mansergh Wallace speaks proudly of her ancestors as she points to various portraits on the house tour, but she clearly loves her garden just as much. She knows every new tree she has planted. “I want to have one of every type of beech tree there is.”
There is the walled garden, the walls of which were part of the estate’s Famine project. In 1946 there were seven full-time gardeners, and the walled kitchen garden supplied all the food for the family. “We were completely self-sufficient. The excess was sold to shops in the town.” There were also orchards. Now there is one gardener, who comes once a week during spring and summer. Back then there were some eight staff in the house.
I am shown the “only hazelwood walk in Ireland”; a beautiful, atmospheric arch of hazel trees, planted by her grandfather. Everything has a story. There is a wisteria arch, which leads into a rose garden. A laburnum arch. There’s a large pond. There is so much garden that a couple of hundred people could play hide and seek in it, and nobody would be visible.
In a quiet corner, there is a grand pet cemetery, commemorating the many deceased dogs and cats of the estate. “Paws For Thought” reads the inscription. This tradition began in 1910. Some of those dogs remembered here are Fido, Sooty, Twinkle, Sparkle, Scamp and Harry Spotter (a Dalmatian). The cats: Whiskey, Splodge, Smudge, Tootles and Bubbles. “We don’t have a dog at the moment. Usually a stray lands here at some point, and that becomes the new dog.” The most recently deceased dog, Cupid, is awaiting his name to be added to his forebears.
I’m shown into the diningroom, which has a striking pitch pine ceiling, where the enormous table is laid for two. First I think it’s for Mansergh Wallace and her husband for dinner, but no. It’s for us. Cups of Earl Grey tea appear and freshly baked scones, and as we sit there drinking the fragrant tea, the experience is like being an extra in some lovely period movie. (Tea and scones with the owner are not part of the usual section 482 tour.)
The constant maintenance of a house of this size is always a challenge. Mansergh Wallace dreads storms. “It’s €75 to replace every slate on the roof that comes off in a storm.”
As she tells it, they try to carry out one big job on the house or contents every year, or one small one. Last year, restoring the Wyatt windows was the big job. This year, the small job has seen an antique rocking horse “who wasn’t young when I had him” being sent away for restoration. “As my mother used to say, this is a house where you always have to keep the paintbrush moving.”
What kinds of things have people on the tours asked her over the years? “‘Why do you live in such a big house? Why don’t you build a bungalow instead?’” she laughs. “I don’t really have an answer for that. And then, when we are walking around the garden, people have said, ‘The birds make too much noise’. I say, ‘It’s a bit tricky to switch them on and off.’”
Mansergh Wallace was an only child: when she married, her husband came to live here. What was it like growing up in this vast place? “I absolutely loved it. It was all dogs and cats and playing tennis against the paintings.”
Grenane House, Tipperary, E34 EP22, is open to the public August 17th-25th, and September 1st-30th, but closed Sundays 2pm-6pm. Adults €20; students/OAPs €10. hfhtours.ie. The opening hours of the Section 482 houses and gardens are here: https://www.revenue.ie/en/personal-tax-credits-reliefs-and-exemptions/documents/section-482-heritage-properties.pdf
