Kieran Clarke, who has died aged 52, was Ireland's leading piano technician and the restorer of Ard na Mona house and gardens on Lough Eske, Co Donegal, now acknowledged as one of the most beautiful rhododendron forests in these islands.
He was brought up in Letterkenny but moved as a teenager to London. There, he was taken on by Bosendorfer Pianos as an apprentice. His natural mechanical flair and keen ear quickly moved him up the ranks to the ultimate position in his profession: that of preparing instruments for the concert and recording work of leading pianists. Arrau, Brendel and Argerich were among his clients.
After years of hard slog on the concert circuit a return to Ireland began to seem attractive. The Irish Georgian Society had saved a unique terraced house in Ramelton in north Donegal and needed someone to prove that it could be used and lived in. Together with Amabel Marten, a friend from London, he opened a restaurant, House on the Brae, that preserved the house and added a new liveliness to the town on Lough Swilly.
Not content with merely running a business he imported a wonderful Bosendorfer piano and installed it in the main room.
A series of concerts was initiated, with the co-operation of the arts officer of Donegal County Council, when someone of real stature could be persuaded to travel to north Donegal. Fou Ts'ong and Peter Donohoe were among them.
In 1991 he and Amabel married, and bought Ard na Mona the same year. The extraordinary gardens had been planted by Lord and Lady Wallace in the Victorian era. Up to the 1950s the house had been used as a hotel but was then on the verge of dereliction.
The gardens had at their core a unique collection of rhododendron trees harvested as seedlings in the Himalayas and carefully surrounded by a pine arboretum that would create the acid soil they needed and shelter the delicate plants.
Decades of neglect had destroyed the stone aquifers that drained the boggy ground of excess water, an invasion of Ponticum was slowly strangling the rare plants and paths had become impassable.
A promise to open the gardens to the public brought the necessary assistance from FÁS and the council, but it was the vision and direction of Clarke that brought about an extraordinary resurrection of a national treasure. The entire of Ard na Mona demesne was made a special area of conservation.
The house was also restored and opened as a hotel. It was listed by the Observer as one of the best in Britain and Ireland, and the décor and cuisine that continue to be a tribute to its owners saw it listed as a holiday destination of unique excellence in several guidebooks.
Clarke bought a Steinway concert grand piano and installed it in Ard na Mona in a dedicated concert room that seated 100 people.The standard of recitals would even exceed that at Ramelton, with appearances by musicians of the calibre of Piotr Anderszewski and Marie Jones.
Coming to botany late in life he mastered the science of the plants he tended and was able, if he liked the visitors, to give guided tours around the gardens that combined erudition and charm. As a jazz pianist he reached professional standard, though it was a rare privilege for him to play for any audience.
His interest in conservation extended to helping with advice on the vernacular buildings of Donegal for those restoring and building houses. What he hated was the notion that the values and architecture of the suburbs could be brought to the countryside where they disfigured the landscape.
In 1993 he formed a group of concerned residents, including farmers and guesthouse owners, that successfully opposed a plan to build 65 houses in the grounds of Lough Eske Castle. To his disquiet, the pace of individual suburban development around the lake continued. His warning that a national tourist resource was being destroyed seems to have gone unheeded.
He is survived by his wife, Amabel, and by their children, Theodore and Mary-Anna.
Kieran Francis Clarke: born April 12th, 1952; died May 15th, 2004