Insider View - Places Unlike Anywhere Else

This month Lucy Madden considers what an 80 year old friend calls ‘romantic Ireland’ - but, while mourning the passing of so much that was unique about this country, she also finds its spirit flourishing anew in unexpected places

Through a chance encounter on a beach in Co. Mayo we were recommended to visit a pizza restaurant run by three Frenchmen on a hill in Achill Island; a suggestion I would normally find easy to decline. Even the name ‘Pure Magic’ irritated. However, some hours later, and learning a lot about the geography of Achill in the process, we found a low stone structure housed a place that lived up to its name.

Essentially a centre for kite surfers, it was here that I was at last converted to the joys of pizza; those Frenchmen know what they are doing. The music of Django Reinhardt floated across a room brought alive by a collection of eclectic objects, where groups of guests lolled like contented turtles. It was like stumbling across a secret club; it was funky, jolly and most importantly, unlike anywhere else.

An 80 year old friend mourns the loss of what he calls ‘romantic Ireland.’ By this I guess he means not just a world of Celtic mysticism but one too of Gothic castles and empty landscapes, peopled by aristocrats and eccentrics and languid poets.

One is reminded of the story (possibly apocryphal) of a Countess visiting one of her tenants who lived in a cottage in some decrepitude and saying to her, “Don’t change a thing, it’s so you.” Yet it’s true that while the modernisation of Ireland in recent decades has improved life for so many people, it also swept away so much of what was unique about this country. People did come here because of the fun. This was to be had in villages, small shops and pubs all over the land, as has been chronicled by historian Turtle Bunbury in his Vanishing Ireland series.

The consequences of economic progress can be dire. The closure of so many rural pubs has surely led to lonely people sitting in their houses watching the X Factor and trundling a trolley around Lidl doesn’t replace the socialising pleasures of the village shop.

The bland sweep of uniformity, represented in the hospitality industry by the plethora of spas, golf courses and interminable blocks of bedrooms that had to be filled did away with much of the romance, and the armies of regulators who oversaw the process could not, or would not, remember about babies and bathwater.

There are few families who represent both the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ Ireland better than the Leslies of Glaslough, Co.Monaghan. A current exhibition at Monaghan Museum chronicles the story of this extraordinary family in a way that would have perhaps been unthinkable, for reasons of political correctness, a few years ago.

The Leslies have managed to produce several generations of eccentrics, current bearer of the title being the disco-dancing nonagenarian Sir Jack, who regales visitors to Castle Leslie with his tales of the past. You can argue that people who lived on large estates had the wealth and leisure and thus were privileged to live interesting lives, but those lives are part of our history.

Where else in the world other than at Huntingdon Castle in Co. Carlow would you be able to speak to the High Priestess of Isis who, as a child had tea with Yeats, or stand under the idiosyncratic ‘Jealous Wall’ at Belvedere, Co. Westmeath?

One of my favourite destinations is Westport House, not because of the Pirate playground or the train ride or any other of its myriad attractions, but because the history of the Browne family who still live there is so well preserved by photographs and memorabilia.

This is a family who can claim direct ancestry from Granuaile, the Pirate Queen who lived five centuries ago. Westport House was one of the first of Ireland’s estates to open to the public and, notwithstanding the struggles and concessions to commercialism that may not be to everyone’s taste, the current generation of the family is doing a great job in bringing the past to our attention.

If historic houses can only be maintained by crass compromises in attracting people to pay to visit, then so be it. It’s sad that so much of our heritage has indeed vanished in recent years but it seems it last we are valuing what is left.

There is nothing about ‘the Big House’ at Pure Magic, which is essentially a centre for wind-surfing and sea activities, but what it does have in common is that it’s a place where people are ‘doing their own thing’ and thereby creating a place unlike anywhere else.

Some years ago my husband asked a neighbour why he had a washing line erected across his farmyard from which hung a row of empty plastic oil cans. The farmer looked astonished to be asked the question. “Because a man has to have what no other man has,” was his explanation. And this attitude, in bagloads, is what we had in Ireland. Bring back the oddballs.

Together with her husband Johnny & family, Lucy Madden runs their magnificent 18th century mansion, Hilton Park, Clones, Co Monaghan as a country house which is open to private guests, groups, small weddings and conferences. The restored formal gardens are also open by arrangement. Lucy is a keen organic gardener and also a member of the Irish Food Writers Guild.