PHOTOGRAPHY JAMES FENNELL PHOTOGRAPHY
Delightful and quite astonishing converted conservatory in magnificent parkland landscape, beside Loughcrew Historic Gardens & prehistoric Loughcrew Cairns. Fine furniture & paintings, log fires & fresh flowers create a warm, friendly atmosphere.
"Three times will Loughcrew be consumed by fire. Crows will fly in and out of the windows. Grass will grow on its doorstep." Thus ran the curse on the Naper's mansion which stands beneath Slieve na Caillighe, The Hill of the Witch, and the Hag's Chair in the North of County Meath. And so it came to pass, the final fire taking its terrible toll in 1964. Mark Bence Jones, in his guide to Irish Country Houses, describes the vast stones and fallen capitals of the 1820s neo classical house, designed by C.R. Cockerell, strewn about the ground like the remains of some lost city of antiquity.
The area around Loughcrew is one of the unknown delights on the doorstep of Dublin. Though only 0.01% of the Naper's original 180,000 acres still surrounds the house, the immensely formal front gates, with the Doric lodge and long curving railings, give an air of majesty to the demesne. The Loughcrew Hills have thirty two passage graves of the Newgrange type, with strangely decorated stones and dark tunnels in which the ashes of chieftains, dead for 6,000 years, await the rising sun.
The Napers came to Ireland in the 17th century, obtaining their estates from the Plunkett family. However the various fires have destroyed most of the family treasures. In 1982 Charles Naper, with the architect Alfred Cochrane, set about restoring what is now called The Orangery. The rooms that make up the house were in fact originally the palm houses, the azalea houses and the furnace rooms. The main body of the present house was then a windowless single story shed with, at either end, very high rooms with high windows. The two entrance halls, one of which also serves as a dining room, were the palm houses. The shed is now the drawing room, 15 feet wide and nearly 60 feet long - almost two double cubes. Although the double cube is architecturally the perfect shape, it might well be that a double double cube would be too much. However, by inspired decoration and careful positioning of the furniture, the room conveys the air of a grand salon rather. Strangely, the house, though it looks most unusual from outside, works well. At one end are three bed rooms, where reigns the tranquillity that befits the rolling parkland and fine stands of mature trees surrounding the house. At the other end are the large country kitchen and back entrance to the house, with 5 more bedrooms, and a tv room
Despite its vicissitudes, there is no doubt that Loughcrew is still, as my 1830 Post Chaise Companion describes it, one of the finest seats in the county of Meath.
Loughcrew is Ireland’s best kept secret. The Loughcrew Cairns contain 5,000 year old wall carvings and form a solar calendar older than Stonehenge, older than the Pyramids. The surrounding landscape is atmospheric and serene, with rolling parklands, forests and ring forts. There is a depth of history at Loughcrew without equal in Ireland, yet it is untouched, accessible but unknown to the masses. At the centre lies Loughcrew House and Gardens. Landscaped over centuries and still enchanting. The extensive gardens contain wonderful ancient yew walks and vistas embracing the family church of St. Oliver Plunkett, a souterrain and a Moote, there is a world of history and archaeology in the gardens alone.
