Old School
A former school, and one-time home of the esteemed Coote family, Ballyfin in Ireland’s County Laois is now a luxury country house retreat. Ellie Fazan meets the schoolboys turned butlers to find out how life has changed here…
“THE ONLY WAY I CAN DESCRIBE it is seeing something burst from black and white into colour,” says butler Declan Cuddy, who first came to the Ballyfin estate as a schoolboy in 1985. “On my first day back here as a butler, all these memories came flooding back as I came up the driveway. The school had been damp, cold and dilapidated. In truth I thought, ‘Who would want to stay there?’ But then I walked through the door…”
Viewed from the sweeping driveway, the Regency mansion is an awesome sight. It’s easy to see how it might have instilled a sense of trepidation into small boys. “The current house was built in the 1820s, and it was built for a family – the Cootes – who occupied it for 100 years. In the 1920s it was turned into a Patrician Brothers boarding school for up to 500 boys,” says Glenn Brophy, another old pupil turned butler. “Can you image what that would do to a place? There was no money to restore it, and what furniture and art the original family didn’t take with them the Brothers gradually sold. Where you see chandeliers now, they were single light bulbs in the time of the school.”
Declan joined the hotel two months prior to its opening nine years ago. “The morning of the opening it was all hands on deck – we were grouting the tiles in the bathrooms! We opened for a family of 10, who took the whole place.” Lovingly restored by American businessman Fred Krehbiel and his Irish wife Kay, alongside landscape designer Jim Reynolds, Ballyfin’s interiors are now opulent, captivating and inviting. On entering the grand hallway the first thing you see is a glittering mosaic floor, brought
back from Pompeii on one of the Coote family’s Grand Tours of Europe. “The door to the main house was always open,” says Declan, casting his mind back to his school days. “But if you were in here, it meant you were in trouble.”
HOUSE AND HERITAGE
It took 100 expert craftsmen nine painstaking years to bring the house back to life. There were highs: discovering that the Brothers’ housekeeper Mrs Barry had taken up the original inlaid floor (one of only two made in the style, with the other in Buckingham Palace) piece by piece, numbered it and hidden it in the cellar, fearing the Brothers might sell it. And lows: the recession hit, and there were concerns the project might never be finished.
Fred and Jim collected furniture, art and artefacts to fill the house, in much the same way the Cootes would have done: eclectically, with style and panache. The chandelier in the glorious gold drawing room once belonged to Napoleon’s sister; 4,000 antique books were selected to fill the great library; and original artwork was acquired from the Coote family. A 10,000-year-old elk head, found in a bog in County Tipperary and bought at auction, accompanies the mosaic floor in the entrance hall – but this was a room where the Brothers had more exotic tastes.
“They had an order in India, and the hall was hung with exotic skins and tiger heads. Imagine being an Irish kid growing up in Ballyfin in the 1960s and 70s and seeing that,” says Declan. “It was such a mysterious place, and we wondered what went on in here.”
Indeed, while the house feels safe and warm, there’s an element of intrigue. There is a ‘whispering room’ where you can quietly share a secret from one corner to the other; a hidden doorway in the library; a bedroom where the walls are hung with 17th-century Flemish tapestries; and a Roman sarcophagus bath, a trophy from 9th Baronet Sir Charles Coote’s Grand Tour collection.
The luxury here is time, which seems to stretch into infinity. “Lunch is when you want it,” says Glenn as he shows us into the orangery. Built in the 1850s by Richard Turner, the most important glasshouse designer in Ireland, its ultimate purpose was to try and grow pineapples – a symbol of wealth and hospitality.
At school food was basic, and meagre. “The boarders would always be stealing the day boys’ food,” remembers Declan. Today, much of the food is grown in the walled kitchen garden that’s filled with a rich variety of fresh fruit, vegetables and herbs, and the 600-plus acres of grounds provide a diverse collection of ingredients too, from wild garlic in spring to hedgehog mushrooms in autumn. Ballyfin’s hens provide fresh eggs each morning for breakfast, and the honey is produced on-site too. Highlights of the eight-course tasting menu might include lightly cured John Dory (locally fished, of course) with tomatoes from the garden, trout roe and anchovies, and a delightful desert of garden blackberries, frozen milk and almond cake.
A game of chess by the fire after dinner might be in order, or a soak in a vast marble bathtub. All rooms in the house are beautifully appointed, yet individually designed to mirror the unique style of the original house. One room, formerly Lady Caroline Coote’s boudoir, has a gracefully elegant rococo stucco-work ceiling and soft cornflower-blue wallpaper that transforms the room into a lavish tent-like enclosure. The colour complements the early-Georgian portrait over the chimneypiece – showing Henry Meredyth of Newtown, County Meath, by the Irish artist Charles Jervas – but more importantly it’s the perfect match for the lake, glittering invitingly beyond the windows.
FOLLIES AND FABLES
Alongside Ireland’s largest man-made lake, Ballyfin’s grounds include some extraordinary 18th- and 19th-century ornamental features, with wonderful woodlands, and water features on each side of the house bringing the landscape to life. But it’s by taking to a pony and trap that the full folly of the Georgians is revealed.
“This is the grotto,” laughs head butler Lionel Chadwick from the driver’s seat, “where the boys would have scared the bejesus out of each other with ghost stories.” Today it’s a place for guests to picnic – or, indeed, wed. “We can do anything for our guests. For one couple we filled it with candles for a secret wedding party. And we’ve filled the top of the watchtower with flowers and served a Champagne brunch for a special proposal.”
The tower is the ultimate folly. “It was made to look 1,000 years old, like the remnants of an old castle. There are 97 steps within and from the top of the tower on a clear day you can see a quarter of Ireland. The Coote family would have said that they owned all the land you could see, but of course they didn’t. When the boys were here the floors had fallen away and only beams remained. It was a great game to climb to the top – the Brothers would shout, but they were too old to climb up and get them down.”
Another delightful feature is the 19th-century fernery, accessed through a tunnel. “You forget that they had no televisions or radio when this was built. Their entertainment was storytelling – they told tales of tunnels and secrets, and to give the stories substance they built mock tunnel entrances.” There’s a rock garden too, that was only discovered halfway through the renovation, as it was completely overgrown with bamboo, brought back from Asia to show the family’s wealth and travels.
Although normally Ballyfin only accepts children over nine, when the whole house is rented they can come from any age. “Kids absolutely love it. Fred used to think, what would a child want to do here? But they have the freedom to roam, and their imaginations run wild, just like ours did,” says Declan. “Plus there’s horse riding, archery and boating, as well as magical wildlife. At 7pm, a herd of deer come down from the mountains, and you can watch them from the lawn. It’s heaven for children.”
The Irish patter – and easy way the butlers share their stories, and their passion for the house and its inhabitants – reflects the informal and friendly way of life at Ballyfin. This is a place you feel instantly at home, while having everything you could ever want to hand. “We build up great rapport with guests,” says Declan. “When the general manager came he couldn’t believe we were on first-name terms with them. We had to teach him the Irish way.”