Tollymore Forest Park in Co Down, planted over centuries by green-fingered noblemen, looks like it has sprung from the pages of a European fairy tale, writes Eileen Battersby
A rounded, high-arched bridge spans a gulch over a river as it flows into a deep pool and on downstream. It is a romantic sight, even on a dull winter's day as the nearby beech trees stand wet and bare. Inspired by a similar one, once seen on an Alpine trip to Italy, this bridge was once believed to have been created in honour of a beloved wife. Family history knows better. When it was built in 1787, it was dedicated to one of two young nieces named Harriet.
This is Foley's Bridge, one of several bridges to be found in the graceful setting of Tollymore Forest Park on a ridge of the Mourne Mountains near Newcastle, Co Down.
Long before it was formally opened in 1955 as Northern Ireland's first national forest park, Tollymore, with its rivers, streams, mountains and glens, had been a source of pleasure and excitement. You are free to wander, explore, exercise and investigate the many stone monuments and architectural features and, above all, to consider the lives that were played out here over the centuries.
GENERATIONS OF VISITORS, on entering through the elaborate barbican entrance with its Gothic archway, have come to admire the trees - including the splendid arboretum - and enjoy the forest walks. Many family outings have culminated in picnics, and rock climbers and future mountaineers have developed their skills here. Set on the northern flanks of the Mourne Mountains, the physical setting of Tollymore - Tulaigh Mhór: large hill or mound - comes from the pages of the European fairy tale. It also showcases the wooded, hilly and rugged beauty of the finest of Ulster landscapes.
This is a place that was first developed from about 1710 as a deer park, before becoming the heart of a large 18th-century demesne, dominated by a great house.
Unlike many such demesnes, Tollymore was not built on the hardship of others. Its history, as sympathetically told by the present Earl of Roden in Tollymore - the Story of an Irish Demesne, is not one of conquest and vicious squabbles. Tollymore "was inherited, not expropriated". A William Hamilton acquired it in about 1650 through his marriage to Ellen Magennis, whose family were significant Co Down landowners. The couple's grandson, James Hamilton, became Viscount Limerick in 1719, and eventually, a few years before he died in 1758, the first Earl of Clanbrassill. His eldest son, also James, became the second Earl of Clanbrassill, and on his death, without an heir, the estate passed on to his sister, who had married Robert Jocelyn, the first Earl of Roden.
There is no doubt that the Limericks, father and son, were men of the Enlightenment, and alert to the practicalities of a large domain, constructing some 29 kilometres of roadways through the land. Their lives spanned the 18th century, with the son dying just before 1798 and the subsequent Act of Union. It was Viscount Limerick who invited his friend, Thomas Wright, English mathematician, astronomer and instrument-maker, in his architectural and landscape planner capacity, to Tollymore. Wright's influence remains strong, through the survival of the barbican gate and the Clanbrassill Barn, with its distinctive clock tower steeple designed by the second Earl of Clanbrassill in the Wright style. It looks like a small Gothic church, and it was used as his farm offices and later served as a theatre.
Clanbrassill liked to build with a purpose, and he was also fond of bridges - practical structures that are also beautiful - and Tollymore has its share of them. Both he and Wright shared an appreciation of the natural physical beauty of the place and neither man was drawn to displays of wealth; even the garden follies at Tollymore were intended to serve a practical function.
VISCOUNT LIMERICK AND his son were committed to forestry. The legacy of their planting has endured, as have the bridges, including the Horn Bridge, built about the same time as the barbican gate, and again with its crenellated effect very much in the style of Wright - who almost certainly designed it. The Horn Bridge, with its hint of a fairy-tale castle, has piers with recessed niches, which were apparently intended to display stags' horns. Today the bridge overlooks a modest modern bridge. The Horn Bridge would have once formed part of the view from Tollymore House, which, although it survived a serious fire in 1878, was later demolished, after some years of dereliction, in 1952.
Tollymore's heritage, aside from its natural splendour, is in its trees. Considering the importance placed on planting by Limerick and his son, the second Earl of Clanbrassill, this is more than fitting. After his father's death, the son continued to expand the woodland plantations. In 1774 he was awarded a gold medal by the Dublin Society for his tree-planting at Tollymore; some years earlier he had received one for his ash tree planting in Co Meath. His almanac for the year 1789 records, in his own hand, that he planted some 337,318 trees in the 12-year period from 1777, mostly within the area of the original deer park. Many of the trees were larch, as the soil of the Mourne Mountains is particularly suited to larch, fir and Scots pine.
He held his own theories about planting trees and in 1783 published a treatise, An Account of the Method of Raising and Planting the Pinus Syvestris - that is, Scotch fir or pine - as now practised in Scotland. He also advocated planting trees close together. In time he discovered that larch grown on the north-facing slope grew more slowly and produced better timber.
HE ALSO PLANTED extensive numbers of Rhododendron ponticum, believed in the late 18th century to be an ideal plant to "brighten up sombre woods". Little did he suspect the invasive potential of this most determined species, which by the 1840s, long after his death on February 6th, 1798, would have overrun the woods.
A particular tree worth looking out for at Tollymore is the Picea abies "Clanbrassilliana", a type of dwarf spruce first discovered by Clanbrassill, according to JC Loudon, author of The trees and shrubs of Britain (1844): "when out hunting in what had been Sir Arthur Rawdon's estate at Moria in Co Down". A small, compact and very slow-growing bushy tree, it lives to a great age and is rare. The original example, having survived an encounter with a military jeep during the war years, is still alive and to be seen at Tollymore.
THE PRESENT EARL of Roden, who was born at Tollymore while his family was still in residence, has approached the story with care and impressive detachment. He can remember when the house served as a billet for soldiers during the second World War. Although the various owners, many of whom were bachelors whose custodianship was brief, are present throughout, and there is a sense of lives lived, the story of Tollymore as told by Roden is well placed in the context of the social and political history of almost 300 years. The Roden family took over on the death of the second earl, when his sister, Anne Countess of Roden, inherited the property. By then she was a widow.
Tollymore is a beautiful place with an interestingly civilised history.
There are no tales of violent deaths or cruel betrayals. No unhappy ghosts appear to lurk here. It was never planned as the backdrop to a great house; instead it evolved as a celebration of nature, with the assistance of inspired planting. Time, neglect and the loss of the main house have done little to diminish its beauty. Many pages of history have been written since that first deer park was planned, but Tollymore, at the foot of the wonderful Mournes, is as alive and as mysterious as ever. Somehow, as the bluebells begin to surface, here is a place capable of being all things to all visitors, the adventurous and the more sedate.
Tollymore - The Story of an Irish Demesne by the Earl of Roden is published by the Ulster ArchitecturalHeritage Society, £20