The Abbey that wanted to be a Castle

Sunday, 15 June 2014

Today we all slept in!!  :)  Oh, how wonderful that was!  We finally got up and had breakfast for lunch-scrambled eggs, cereal, toast (with Irish soda bread).  Then we got going to Kerrymore Abbey.  Debbie (the owner of our cottage) said that it would be best to plan 4 hours--well, that was pretty close!  You are only able to see about 5 rooms in the Abbey itself.   Of course, there is also the miniature cathedral, the mausoleum, and the Victorian Walled Garden.  And numerous walking paths if you still have the time.   Once upon a time,  Mitchell Henry and Margaret Vaughan married (actually in 1850) and honeymooned in Connemara.  Margaret was so charmed by the area, that Mitchell returned and purchased a 15,000 acre estate that, at the time, included only a hunting lodge and about 125 tenant farmers.  He proceeded, out of his love for his wife, to build her a castle there.  Thus Kylemore Castle was created.  They eventually had nine children and in 1874, the couple, with six of their children, holidayed in Egypt.  Margaret fell ill with dysentary and 16 days later died.  Mitchell was devastated and had the body embalmed to bring back to Ireland.  He had a mausoluem built for her remains and then had a miniature Gothic cathedral built as a memorial to her.   The Henrys were good to their tenants; they bought windows for them (most of them did not have windows in their cottages due to a huge glass tax) and when they hired 300 people for jobs at the castle, any tenant who wanted to work was given a job.  They were paid a good enough wage that with two months of work they earned enough for their full-years rent.  I could go on and on with what we learned but I won't.  Except one more fact!  :)  For the castle's water, they used a lake located nearby and piped the water to the castle.  Then they realized that they could use this piping of water to provide electricity to replace their gas lights.  They created their own hydro-electric plant to provide their electricity.  The Henrys went from paying 200 pounds a year for gas to 50 pounds a year for electricity!

The first photos are of the front of the castle and the inside:

Next are photos of the grounds.  There were no trees in this area--it is very rocky.  Mitchell Henry planted thousands of trees.  The main road used to run in front of where the castle is.  Mitchell Henry rerouted the road to the other side of the lake.  There are extensive walking trails around the estate.

The mausoleum:

The miniature cathedral:

The undercroft, viewed from a barred window in the back of the cathedral

The pillars are created with marble from the four different provinces of Ireland.

The Victorian Walled Garden:

The formal gardens

The formal gardens

There were originally 21 greenhouses, all connected.  The ladies used them to walk in when the Connemara weather was foul.  They grew all of the food for the estate on the grounds.  This  includes bananas, figs, and mangoes grown in the greenhouses.  They fell into disrepair when the house was bought by the Duke and Duchess of Manchester in 1903, leaving only the foundations.  Two have since been restored. 

This is the head gardeners cottage--quite posh compared to the dwelling of the under-gardeners.

The building on the left is where the six under-gardeners lived.  When we visited, a small peat fire was going leaving the rooms smoky and smelly.  The peat fire in the head gardeners cottage was not smoky or smelly.

Vegetable gardens

This is the Herbaceeous Border.   It was unseemly for the Victorian upper-class to see the vegetable gardens (the working part of the garden) or to see the gardeners working the garden, so the Herbaceous Border was installed with the hedge behind it for them to walk in.

This is the Fernery.  Victorians collected ferns.  This is a woodland walk through ferns and trees with a small stream going through.  Very peaceful.

Another photo of the formal gardens.

This is the first view visitors would have of the gardens as they pulled up in their carriages.

The door through which the visitors entered in their carrages.  (The gardens are quite a distance from the park..)

The gardens also included a lime house where they burned limestone found in the area to heat 15,000 feet of pipe which ran under the greenhouses to heat them radiantly.  The resulting lime was then used as fertilizer on the gardens.  The estate tried to be as self-sufficient as possible.

The Duchess of Manchester made many changes to modernize Kylemore.  It was eventually sold to a banker due to financial difficulties who used caretakers until a new buyer could be found.  Benedictine nuns in Ypres, Belgium had lost their abbey in World War I and bought the castle.  It then became Kylemore Abbey.  The nuns opened a school for local girls and boarding.  Young ladies from around the world came to the school.  Eventually the school closed in 2010.  The nuns still live at the abbey.

After visiting the Abbey, we detoured to Clifden to the large grocery store there, then brought our groceries home.  After dinner, Randy and Anneliese went out for a walk to use their cameras and I went for a walk in a different direction to just walk, see the area and enjoy being outside.  Wearing a sweatshirt, skirt, and sandals, I was completely comfortable!  At 10:00 at night!  Although it was still daylight out!  Soon after, we made popcorn and had a movie night, then went to bed late.

Here are some photos from my walk:

The local castle (what's left of it!)

The huge slugs that are everywhere in Ireland.

Here's some perspective on one of the slugs I saw.