The dancer Michael Flatley, who is currently in the United States busily preparing for the launch of his new show, Feet of Flames, has let it be known that his Irish home, Castle Hyde House in Co Cork, is not for sale.
This is very good news for those who feared that Mr Flatley was about to shake the dust of Castle Hyde from his multi-million pound heels. He bought the house near Fermoy three years ago and has visited it frequently, bringing his parents to stay as well. But after work carried out in the garden during the past few weeks drew the attention of An Taisce and the local conservation officer, the dance superstar was ordered to halt all cutting and felling on the estate until the planning authorities had been consulted.
Disappointment
Within days of being asked to provide the county council with a tree survey for the grounds, a historical analysis and a planting schedule, Mr Flatley instructed his staff to cease all work on the premises, to send everyone away and to lock the gates, making clear his disappointment at these demands and also letting it be understood that he planned to sell Castle Hyde.
Popular opinion was all on Mr Flatley's side: the regulations were too stringent, their imposition too harsh, all that was involved were a few bushes. In fact the bushes were hedges of beech and hornbeam, reputedly 250 years old and forming living walls of what was known as the broadwalk, an avenue which connected the interior staircase hall via a cast-iron footbridge to a long vista ending at the spire of a nearby church.
The house, whose setting is the subject of a ballad extolling the many virtues of "Sweet Castle Hyde", is built on the banks of the Blackwater, with its back to the cliff. The little bridge spans the gap between house and escarpment, with the massive hedges of the broadwalk linking interior to exterior in a way unique to the 17th-century plan of the gardens. Both this avenue and its hedges, and some equally famous yew trees (said to have been planted in the time of Henry VIII), significantly pre-date the house itself, which was built, to a design by Abraham Hargrave the Elder, in 1801.
The site was a forfeited holding of the Condons and also of an ecclesiastical foundation. Eventually it came to the Hyde family, who lasted there for a hundred years or so - a branch of the family incidentally producing Dr Douglas Hyde, the first President of Ireland - before selling in the mid 19th century by order of the Encumbered Estates Court. A later proprietor was the yachtsman William Wrixon-Becher, whose great-grandfather founded the Duhallow Hunt before 1745 and who himself hunted with every pack in Ireland (and, it is said, in England too) during a 60-year long career.
Laughlin family
The family of Henry A. Laughlin, an American publisher who numbered Winston Churchill among his clients, bought the house in 1931. More than 50 years later his son Sandy initiated a covenant of 1985 between An Taisce, Cork County Council and Castle Hyde (1931) Ltd. Under this, the owner would "at all times confine and restrict the development of the premises known as Castle Hyde House, Fermoy and preserve the premises to the extent set out in the First Schedule thereto, and [that it] would adhere to the terms of the Agreement for the term of thirty-five years from the date thereof."
According to that covenant the protected parts of the exterior included the south facade (facing the river), the gateway with its sphinxes and the structural outline of the 17th-century garden, including the wall, the central broadwalk, the cast iron footbridge and the "steps and the walk therefrom to the broad walk." The covenant, binding on any purchaser, does not mention trees or hedges.
Planning requirements
Having supported the covenant by lodging £10,000 with An Taisce, the Laughlins left in 1988. Castle Hyde, bought first by a consortium which used it as a weekend sporting base, was sold again in 1992; it is from this time that the neglect of the gardens dated, and it was this neglect that Michael Flatley's workers were intent on reversing up to last week. Unfortunately, they worked without reference to the planning requirements for listed buildings and their grounds; they cut down what Mark Bence-Jones, in A Guide to Irish Country Houses, describes as the "colossal beech hedges" reached from the cantilevered stone staircase rising from the interior staircase hall.
Now everything has been put on hold - including the planning application for work to be done to the house itself, which is estimated as likely to cost around £8 million -but now it seems that Michael Flatley has decided to stay. No matter who owns the house the planning laws will still apply, and in Fermoy the hope is that Flatley, with apologies to the old ballad, will allow "The wholesome air of this habitation/ To recreate his heart with pride".