Mount Stewart – Circe’s Garden

All gardens are to a greater or lesser extent, an outpouring of artistic expression. In this regard, Mount Stewart excels. The Formal Gardens at Mount Stewart combine a number of idiosyncratic strands which are not easy to read at first glance, but when they are pointed out, combine deliciously into an overarching theme. Lady Londonderry imbued Mount Stewart with her not inconsiderable intellect, her notable achievements and her passions. By means of a sequential tour of the principal divisions of the gardens of Mount Stewart, this text provides a means to ‘read’ this wonderfully unique creation.

Background

A garden born of the ‘golden Edwardian afternoon’, places Mount Stewart into the early Twentieth Century, but beyond this statement, all attempts to categorise the garden founder. Edith, 7th Marchioness of Londonderry was the sole designer, architect and client at Mount Stewart. She was ably assisted in the practicalities by a local builder, Thomas Beattie, a fine mason, Joe Girvan and a very able Head Gardener, Thomas Bolas.

Italian Garden © Georges Levique

Thomas Bolas was originally from Derbyshire and trained at Chatsworth. Certainly by 1911 he was a gardener at Mount Stewart for Theresa, wife of the 6th Marquess of Londonderry, who used the house for only a few weeks a year. Bolas understood the favourable micro-climate at Mount Stewart. Situated on the narrow Ards Peninsular in a south westerly facing natural amphitheatre on the east shore of Strangford Lough, there are few persistent frosts. This part of Ireland is the sunniest and has a near idyllic rainfall, some 35”/900mm per annum.

Thomas Bolas (left) © Margaret Taylor.

Eucalyptus globulus Tasmanian Blue Gum © National Trust

Lady Londonderry’s husband Charles had inherited Mount Stewart while he was fighting in France in 1915. The family’s principal seat was Wynyard in Co. Durham, where the family owned collieries. The government paid a premium for coal during World War I and so, money was no object. Theresa, Lady Londonderry died in 1919, leaving Edith to order Mount Stewart along with several other residences and on a visit, she must have met with Thomas Bolas and their ideas began to coalesce. The gardens already had strong growing Eucalyptus globulus from Tasmania planted around 1895 and Edith became aware, that the sun and relatively low rainfall would make the growing of inland southern hemisphere plants from the interior of South America, South Africa and Australia in addition to the coastal species, a possibility at Mount Stewart.

Mount Stewart WWI in 1921, with the help of 21 demobilized men, The South Terrace and Italian Garden were laid out by Thomas Bolas under Edith Londonderry’s direction. It is inconceivable that Lady Londonderry did not have a master plan for the various gardens because they relate, in terms of level and proportion so perfectly, but to date, no overarching plan has come to light. That Edith was a scholar of garden history is evident throughout her designs, with many features adapted from the more famous gardens of Italy.

The Sunk Garden

© National Trust / Peter Muhly

The Sunk Garden and the West Terrace were excavated after the South Terrace and Italian Garden in 1921 and ostensibly completed by 1922. Centred on the ‘Little Dining Room’ or ‘Breakfast Room’, the Sunk and in some ways the Shamrock Garden beyond are the only parts of the garden visible from the ground floor of the house. Lord Londonderry’s bedroom immediately above this has a panoramic view over the Sunk Garden and reveals the Red Hand of the Shamrock Garden and in times past, a long view to Scrabo Tower, built by the tenants of th Marquess. The pergola surrounding three sides of the Sunk Garden is clothed with a mixture of exotic climbers and wall shrubs mixed with more common subjects. This is the hallmark of Lady Londonderry’s planting style, the latest rare discoveries with the best of the horticultural mainstream. The southern walk of the Pergola is known as the Polemarch Terrace, one of Lord Londonderry’s race horses, who won the Thousand Guineas, St. Ledger in 1921 coming in at 50:1 and is commemorated by an inscribed stone.

On the inner edge of the intermediary terrace is a planting of Rhododendron coccineum Speciosum and a series of lilies, L. pardilinum, L. leitchlinii and L. henryi. Lady Edith’s long-time horticultural mentor, Sir Herbert Maxwell commented to her in 1926 – ‘The lust for lilies is a contagious disease as deadly as Rhododendronitis, from which you suffer incurably already’. A further

Fig 5. Sunk Garden 1930 © Lady Rose Lauritzen

© Ken Cox

key to understanding Lady Londonderry’s planting style is her love of fragrance. She famously would not have a Rose in the garden if it did not have a decent scent. Conversely she would not have Box in the garden because she found its smell offensive. Edith made her own potpourri and mixed essential perfume oils. So, it is not surprising her taste in both Rhododendrons and Lilies favoured those with fragrance.

The four identical beds on the lowest plat are displayed just the way Edith recorded them in one of her nine surviving Garden Notebooks, 1922-55. The colour scheme is predominately blue and orange with a little red and yellow thrown in. ‘White Truimphator’ Tulips, Myosotis and orange Crown Imperials start the display, then Anchusa and ‘Major Crombie’s Strain’ of Delphinium grown in the 1920s at Pitmuies House near Forfar, Angus come next. Then blue Onions and a succession of orange Lilies hold the display before the borders peak in August with Summer Hyacinths, Dahlia ‘Bishop of Oxford’, Salvia patens, orange Gladioli and Aconitum. As these fade, two fine blue Asters come to the fore.

The Shamrock Garden

Over the steps, the Shamrock Garden beckons. Here are complex allusions to Irish mythology and folklore. The large Irish harp in Common Yew commands the scene. Originally, one of three 14’ high topiary pieces. The surviving Fomorian, a half human, half demon has now become an abstract, but was originally more menacing, blowing a trumpet, with wings folded on his back and a dragons tail, this figure is made from Irish Yew grafted on to a double round plinth of Common Yew. Its brother, now departed, was of similar composition, but the figure depicted a giant Anteater rearing up on its back legs, possibly an allusion to her nephew, Anthony the Anteater, director of Regent’s Park Zoo. A new Fomorian is now being formed from Irish Yew.

Balor’s daughter Ethlinn holding her son, Lugh the Sun God in her arms. An adaption from a design of a tarot card by Maude Gonne.

In Irish mythology, the Fomorians were descended from Noah’s son Ham, who migrated to North Africa, where, it said, his people bred with a race of demons. They washed up in Ireland after the Great Flood and their king was the redoubtable Balor of the Evil Eye, a monstrous creature with a central third eye, which when opened by some minions by way of a pulley system, caused the poor unfortunate in his line of vision to fall dead. Balor’s daughter was Ethlinn who is depicted in the family burial ground, Tir n’an Og. When the Tuatha de Danaan, the magical race of gods, goddesses, heroes and heroines came to Ireland, they fought five successive battles and Ethlinn’s son Lugh, slew Balor and the Fomorians were defeated to live a twilight existence in places like the shores of Strangford Lough, or Lough Cuan in Irish.

Fomorian Topiary 1950s © Lady Rose Lauritzen

The Red Hand of Ulster © Lady Rose Lauritzen

The Red Hand of Ulster, here represented as a left hand, brings to mind the MacDonnell legend of the two Viking brothers who would have a race in their long ships from the Mull of Kintyre to the Antrim coast, a matter of some twenty miles or so. Whoever’s hand touched the beach first would be the King of all Ireland. The younger brother Labraid was losing, so he cut off his left hand and threw it on the beach, thus winning the race. The Red Hand was adopted by the O’Neill chieftains and one of Charles ancestors was Frances Anne Vane Tempest, the Countess of Antrim in her own right and descendent of the last King of Ulster, Hugh O’Neill.

The Shamrock hedge used to be 4’ taller than it is today and hosted some twenty four topiary pieces, telling a whimsical children’s story, a collaboration between Edith and the artist, Edmund Brock. Edith had previously published the ‘Magic Ink Pot’ in 1928 with illustrations by Edmund Brock. The inspiration for the design of the figures came from Queen Mary’s Psalter or to be more precise, the marginalia, the doodles of the monks when they were bored with transcription. The story begins with the Stewart family coming to Northern Ireland in a curragh, Edith at the stern blowing a horn, the three younger children, Helen, Margaret and Mairi under the rigging and Edmund Brock at the bow with a bottle of whisky and the blue and yellow Macaw, Edward on his shoulder.

Fig 11. Topiary figures Shamrock hedge 1950s.

The collaboration with Edmund Brock – a whimsical children’s story. © Lady Rose Lauritzen

Following a long visit to India in 1904, Edith was very taken with the way in which the Maharaja’s palaces were animated by birds and animals and she determined to do the same at Mount Stewart. Edward flew free, there were Fan Tailed Doves in the Mairi Garden, Terrapins in the pools of the Italian Garden, tropical tree frogs in the Spanish and Shamrock Gardens, supplied by Anthony. Monitor Lizards in the sunken swimming pool near Strangford Lough and Flamingos on the Lake, a gift in 1934 from King Faud of Egypt. She herself had fourteen dogs from Scottish Deerhounds to Dachunds and Pekinese. It is for these latter, that all the ponds at ground level have concrete steps.

Returning to our narrative in topiary, next is a rider blowing a horn – Edith was a great equestrian. They are hunting the White Stag, who takes the souls of the deceased to Tir n’an Og, (note the Scots Gaelic spelling). If all the figures were present, there would be dogs and huntsmen with bows pushing some of the younger children in pushchairs. Then Edith is depicted as an Amazon, bow in hand having just ‘haunched’ the White Stag with an arrow. Gone now is the Scottish Deerhound about to bring the stag down. All this being essentially pagan, The Devil now gets involved by calling down the hawks of the air to disrupt the hunt and rides the wounded stag to safety. If all the figures were present, the last would be of a boy walking

Flamingos – Edith, Lady Londonderry at the lake © Lady Rose Lauritzen

The Devil © National Trust

home disconsolately, with nothing but a skinny hare on a pole. It is our goal one day to return the hedge to its original height and depict the story with all twenty-four topiary pieces. Later in life, Lady Londonderry, loved to extend the period of interest in her successional planting to make the most of the, usually, benign micro-climate. In the Shamrock Garden, there is a predominance of scented

winter flowering subjects. Most notable of which are the Rhododendron x nobleanum which flower from November to April and the fine pair of pyramidal

Tasmanian Sweet Sassafras, Atherosperma moschatum which flowers in March. Lily Wood

The area we now know as the Lily Wood began life as an unassuming piece of woodland forming a part of the shelterbelt around the garden. Lord Londonderry enjoyed pigeon shooting in this wood, but by 1939, Lady Londonderry had other designs. Much of the clearance work was done or overseen by Edith herself, as many of her gardeners had left to fight as WWII unfolded. Edith had a passion for Lilies and Meconopsis and many other woodland plants. These she clumped in large drifts along the various woodland margins she created. Chief among these were the Giant Himalayan Lilies, Cardiocrinum giganteum, known as ‘The Cardinals’ at Mount Stewart. These plants are monocarpic, they die after they flower, but each dying spire sends up a few offsets. Left to their own devices, these offsets would never in

Fig. 14 Tasmanian Sweet Sassafras © National Trust

Fig. 15 Cardiocrinum giganteum in the Lily Wood ©Alan Power

themselves make large flowering spikes, but by manipulating them by feeding and mulching them heavily with manure, they can be made into pretty reasonable flower spikes for the following year. In addition, Thomas Bolas would have sown fresh mature seed every year to ensure a succession of these plants and that is our approach to this day. It can take between 5-6 years to get these seedlings to flower, but they will be the most majestic of all, flowering tall with many more fragrant trumpets per stem in early July.

Lily Wood always had a wilder feel in Edith’s day than it does today. There are now semi-formal borders and the native trees have largely been replaced by exotic species. Following an extensive drainage scheme in the autumn of 2013, the Lily Wood will gradually be restocked with Lilies and Meconopsis as well as a range of hardy woodland species, where scent is a vital constituent. Because the sea level of Strangford Lough is rising by 1.9mm/annum, sooner or later, the highly evolved plants such as Rhododendron will find the ground water too saline for growth. These species will not be replanted in Lily Wood, but rather relocated to the higher ground of McComb’s Hill, Ladies Walk and Rhododendron Hill, where they will enjoy fresh groundwater and thrive.

Fig. 16 Lilium auratum – Edith, Lady Londonderry © Lady Rose Lauritzen

The Italian Garden

Theatrical in its design, the ‘stage’ must be the Dodo Terrace with its classical loggia. The inspiration and its conception and architectural detail is Italian, but there is a rich seam of personal commemoration and allegory. The Dodos represent Edith’s father, Lord Chaplin, satirised as such by the Westminster Gazette in 1895. Edith’s mother died when she was three and she was brought up at Dunrobin Castle, in Scotland by her auntie Millicent, who would in due course become the Duchess of Sutherland. The twin parterres of the Italian Garden are a scaled down version of those at Dunrobin. Originally conceived as a Rose Garden, in 1925 after the Roses had failed due to the light, sandy soil, a new set of colours were painted by Edith in one of her Garden Note Books.

The Dodo Terrace ©Lady Rose Lauritzen

Fig. 19 Top west side – Lady Londonderry’s Garden Notebook 1922-27 © Lady Rose Lauritzen

Fig. 18 East side – Lady Londonderry’s Garden Notebook 1922-27 © Lady Rose Lauritzen

On the Eastern side, the colours resemble those of a sunrise, like a sunburst centred on the pool, the colours graduate from scarlet, to orange to blue to silver. On the West side, the colours resemble those of a sunset; blood red, mauve, clear pink and yellow to plum and mulberry hues. Edith thought herbaceous borders essentially dull. Her vision was to obtain this colour scheme with a blend of the exotic and the mundane in perennials and bulbs, while her gardener, Mr Bolas formed exotic flowering trees as tall standards and pyramids, through which she planted flowering climbers. Nothing like it had been seen before and she wrote about this planting in the RHS Garden Magazine in 1935. In the next few years, as new standards are formed, the parterres will again look as Edith envisaged them.

The planting in the Italian Garden follows Lady Londonderry’s colour scheme and basic divisions. There are two or more plants per partition forming a matrix of planting, with subjects flowering at different times to extend the succession. The standards and their dependent climbers are lifted each year to prevent them becoming too dominant and depleting the soil at their base, preventing the herbaceous layer from flourishing. There are some unusual selections and combinations within the parterres and the display is not static, as it is in the Sunk Garden, but rather under constant revision. Central to the Dodo Terrace is the Ark, an allusion to the Ark Club, a social group of high achievers from all walks of life, Charles and Edith initiated in 1915 in the upper

Fig. 20 East Italian Garden© Walsh, September 1934.

Fig. 21 Herms Italian Garden © National Trust

storeys of their Park Lane home, Londonderry House. Each Wednesday evening, soirees were hosted where the members of the ‘Honourable Order of The Rainbow’ congregated. Each member took an epithet; Winston Churchill was ‘Winnie the Warlock’, Neville Chamberlain, ‘Neville the Devil’, Charles was ‘Charlie the Cheetah’ and Edith was ‘Circe the Sorceress’. In Homer’s Odyssey, Circe is a rather naughty Goddess, with a penchant for turning men into animals by drugging their food and tapping them on the shoulder with her wand. When half of Odysseus’s crew come exploring her mansion on the most westerly Greek isle of Aeaea, (an allegory for Ireland), she was evidently short of bacon, so she turned them all into pigs. The herms of the Italian Garden, themselves representing the wall round Circe’s mansion, depict this with half the faces showing Circe with bunches of grapes for earrings and the rest showing Odysseus’s crew in various stages of transformation. The tall Eucalyptus globulus and other flowering trees and shrubs give a sense of the exotic wild wood of the magical, enchanted isle.

It is possible that Lady Londonderry used a painting housed at Mount Stewart as the inspiration for the crew members transforming faces. Richard Dadd’s ‘Bacchanalian Scene’, may have been the inspiration for Thomas Beattie’s mould for the herms of the Italian Garden. In Homer’s narrative, Odysseus meets his Grandfather, Hermes who gives him the antidote to Circe’s drug. There was a silver statue of Hermes in the Dairy, constructed with tiled roof of the 18th Century Ice Well.

Fig. 22 Hermes

© Lady Rose Lauritzen

The Spanish Garden

Fig. 24 Spanish Garden 2014 © National Trust

Fig. 23 Exhedra Arch Spanish Garden © Hogg 1927, Ulster Museum

The Spanish Garden forms a sunken extension of the principal axis of the Italian Garden. This main axis runs from the portico of the house, across the Sea Plantation and Strangford Lough and terminates at Slieve Donard, the highest of the peaks of the distant Mourne Mountains. Originally, Lady Londonderry created a grand exedra colonnade, flanked by twin columns surmounted by Stewart dragons, which centred on both Lord Londonderry’s and her father’s, Viscount Chaplin’s, coats of arms. Unfortunately, these coats of arms obscured the fine view from the South Terrace and central Smoking Room to the distant Mourne Mountains and Lady Londonderry had the entire colonnade dismantled, retaining the twin dragon columns. She then incorporated the two coats of arms within the portico of the house and embarked on the Spanish Garden to provide a new focus for the all-important central axis. As the volume of traffic on the A20 became intrusive in the 1970s, Lady Edith’s daughter Lady Mairi, reluctantly agreed to plant the Leyland Cypress hedge. Lady Londonderry’s design for the Spanish Garden was born of her scholarship of historic gardens with a few of her own innovations. The design of the central pond was inspired by the plasterwork of the ceiling of the Little Dining Room or Breakfast Room, the only room on the ground floor of the house to relate to the garden directly. The focal building has a beautiful hipped roof with glaucous glazed tiles, reminiscent of the characteristic roof shape of the pavilions found in the Islamic Gardens of Spain. Edith had visited many of these gardens and one in particular was to provide a further source of inspiration. The Generalife gardens were still privately owned when Lady Londonderry visited them from her uncle’s yacht prior to WWI. There is an early Sixteenth Century description by the Venetian Traveller Andrea Navagero, describing a tall wall of Cypress hedge grown to create arched openings, bounding the long, central water parterre, whose focus is the distant Alhambra Palace.

To complete the design, Lady Londonderry acquired an antique wellhead from Lombardy made from a salmon coloured limestone, depicting the Weighing of the Souls from the Chelsea Flower Show in 1926. She positioned this on a round plinth at the top of the exedra steps. This in turn, provided the rationale for the planting scheme, which should aspire to be Mediterranean in inspiration and should be a contrast of a prevalence of salmon pink flower and blue/green foliage.

Fig. 25 Well Head Spanish © National Trust

The Peace Garden By comparison to the gardens surrounding the Peace Garden, this compartment is comparatively simple and calm in its feel. The reason for this is that it was used as a rather informal cemetery for the family’s pets.

The Fountain Walk

Situated between the Mairi Garden and the Dodo Terrace, this was the main entrance from a small Car Park, east of the Bird Fountain, which lead to the servant wing of the house, the modern day reception. At some point in the National Trust’s management a single Cypress arcade lined the eastern edge of the Fountain Walk and this has been re-instated in Cupressus macrocarpa. There is now graduation of colour from the fountain from white, blue, purple, mauve, pink, yellow, orange and red at the further end.

Fig. 26 The Peace Garden © National Trust

Fig. 27 Fountain walk © National Trust

The Mairi Garden

The Mairi Garden commemorates Edith’s creation of the Women’s Legion and the birth of her youngest child, Lady Mairi, born in 1921. Edith was a suffragist at a time when many men ridiculed the very idea of women even riding a bicycle, let alone holding a career. After the outbreak of WWI, Lady Londonderry, founded the Women’s Legion. A voluntary organisation placing women into all fields

of work in order to assist the war effort. In many ways, the formation of the Ark Club, furthered Edith’s goals by connecting her to those with the influence to effect the

necessary changes. By the conclusion of WWI, women were placed in the armed services, in industry and engaged in agricultural work as the appalling casualties continued among servicemen.

Fig 28. Mairi Garden © National Trust

Fig. 29 The Mairi Garden 1930s © Lady Rose Lauritzen

Lady Londonderry gave the Women’s Legion the emblem of a Tudor Rose and the Stewart family colours, blue and white. Today, there is a succession of loosely blue and white flowers from March to October. The Margaret Wrightson bronze was set in place by 1928 and commemorates the gift of a late uniquely photogenic child, Lady Mairi. Conceived as a child’s garden with the fountain turned up on hot days for children to play in and decorated with small wicker furniture and small statues of fawns and squirrels. Edith animated this garden with Fan-tailed Doves in four small dovecotes and a larger one on top of the summer house, designed by Edith’s daughter, Lady Margaret and built by the builder, Thomas Beattie of Newtownards in 1923. Tir n’an Og

The family burial ground, Tir n’an Og translates from Scots Gaelic into ‘The Land of the Ever Young’. Built on a south facing slope on the opposite side of the Lake from the rest of the Formal Garden, the three turrets glimpsed above the trees and shrubs has the air of a fairy-tale. Approached by a network of sloping steps, the turrets and masonry retaining wall between is decorated with small reliefs of heraldic motifs by the sculptor Morris Harding. A yew hedge encloses the burial ground to east, west and north, but around the east and west gates are stone arches also decorated by Harding. The beautiful gates are from a local blacksmith, Godfrey Walker. The reverse of these arches house two alcoves decorated with tesserae of light blue. Three of the four alcoves house statues designed by the artist and family friend Edmund Brock. St. Patrick and St. Bridget are housed at the western end and St. Columcille stands alone on the eastern side. These are inscribed in Scots Gaelic. A third entrance to the burial ground is through a tall, two storied stone gate built in Twelfth Century Romanesque style. The wide stone arch houses a double gate made of Oak and the upper chamber has three windows giving a panoramic view of the garden and beyond to Strangford Lough and Slieve Donard. There is an Oak bench bearing Edith’s monogram and

Fig. 30 Tir n’an Og © Alan Power

above it in red sandstone and engraved slab with a poem to the garden. To the west side is a small fireplace.

The centrepiece of the burial ground is fine font on a carved columnar support. Small pools lined in the same blue tesserae as the alcoves surround the font and the arrangement of the paths and paved surfaces resemble that of a Celtic cross. On either side of these pools and arranged radially on either side of the large gate arch, are two finely carved sarcophagi. These are the work of Morris Harding, who worked with Rosamund Praeger in Holywood in the 1930s. The western sarcophagus belongs to Lord Londonderry, who died in 1949. Lord

Londonderry’s tomb is the more weathered of the pair and the tall sides depict on the foot of the sarcophagus the badge of the Royal Air Force, Lord Londonderry served as Under Minister for Air in Ramsey McDonald’s Labour government. Lady Londonderry’s is perhaps the more personal of the two, depicting her beloved books, her pets and her garden amongst her honours and arms. Eastward, next to Lady Londonderry lies her beloved youngest daughter, Lady Mairi, who died in 2009. There is a strong link to the Shamrock Garden with The White Stag and the Formorians. In the eastern turret at Tir n’an Og is a relief by Margaret Wrightson depicting Ethlinn, the daughter of the king of the Formorians, Balor

Fig. 31 Tir n’an Og © Lady Rose Lauritzen

Fig. 32 Tir n’an Og © National Trust

of the Evil Eye, holding the baby Lugh, the Celtic Sun God. Wrightson’s design is based on a design for a tarot card, first published by Maude Gonne McBride in her book ‘Cow of Plenty’, published in 1910. The only difference is Lugh is holding a cross. There are very fine reliefs by Morris Harding and the Twelve Apostles are depicted in a higher sequence of reliefs. The western turret has two of its three windows housing fine wrought iron frames and exquisite stained glass.

Fig. 33 The White Stag © National Trust