Tranquilly Perfect Calm
“It’s never been sold outside the family,” commences Chris Clements. “My cousin inherited the house which has been in the family since the 1700s and he left it to me. We asked the National Trust if they wanted it but they weren’t interested. The Garvagh Historical Society would love to have taken this place over but they couldn’t get any funding. We have a farm in Castlerock and are retiring so have decided to sell to someone who can enjoy looking after it.” Ballintemple House and its 70 hectare estate lie on the edge of the pretty village of Garvagh in the north of County Londonderry.
He shares, “The first ancestor here was my great grandfather times four Rowley Heyland. He leased it from the Bishop of Derry; in those days it was a thatched cottage. It passed to his son Arthur Rowley Heyland and then to his daughter as a dowry and she married my great great grandfather Mitchell Smyth. He was a local minister. Mitchell bought out the lease of the house and built the front Georgian block onto it in the mid to late 18th century. The house then passed to his son Arthur Clements Smyth. He was a Major in the Marines and travelled all over the world.”
“When Arthur was getting old,” Chris continues, “his four daughters had married and his son had emigrated to Canada. My great great grandmother had died so he was on his own. In 1920 he sold Ballintemple to his first cousin Dominick Heyland. So it went from Heyland to Smyth and then back to Heyland again. He left it to his daughter who then left it to my cousin Hugh and that’s how I got it. It’s really a large farmhouse; every generation has bolted on a bit which makes it interesting.”
He adds, “When Dominick Heyland took it on he married a lady called Clara Tilling who was the daughter of Thomas Tilling who owned the London Transport Company. Thomas started the first horse drawn trams in London. At one stage there were 5,000 horses on the go and she pumped money into the place. They built a dairy and bottled their milk here and supplied it locally. They had pedigree pigs too. He died quite young. When the house was being sold by Arthur Clements Smyth all the sisters got various pieces. My grandmother got quite a bit of the furniture which we brought back with us.”
As a result, Ballintemple House is a period piece. Time has not stood still though: few houses can boast of an early Georgian drawing room; late Georgian library; Victorianised dining room; bedrooms with early 20th century chimneypieces; and a late 20th century conservatory. Period pieces. Externally, grey walls (stone, roughcast render and pebbledash), grey slated roofs, and green painted window frames and doors visually bind together the various stages of its architectural evolution.
A daffodil lined sweep of avenue weaving through woodland bordering a meadow leads to the east facing entrance front. Behold! This is the quintessential Georgian country house. If Sir Charles Brett had lived long enough to write a Buildings of County Londonderry edition, he would have categorised Ballintemple at the upper end of the Middling Sized Houses not quite making Grand Houses, with true Charlie panache and humour. The slight irregularity of the five bays of the later main block hints that this part was stitched into the fabric of an older building. More anon. The yard facing rear elevation is more informal with varying heights and projections. Windows range from two pane casements to two pane sashes to four horizontal pane sashes to a 24 pane sash.
The most extraordinary architectural feature of Ballintemple House is its doorcase. Dublin is famous for its Georgian doorcases; rural Ireland, not so much. This country cousin is just as elaborate as anything being photographed by a dozen tourists on Merrion Square. Rather than an urban semicircular fanlight, a gentler elliptical headed fanlight stretches over the original wide timber door with its beaded muntin, four vertical panels and cast iron furniture flanked by panelled jambs and margin paned sidelights. Another departure is instead of the typical Dublin half umbrella spoke glazing bars, Ballintemple’s fanlight is vertically divided. The doorcase was recently fully restored with support from the Irish Georgian Society.
The conservatory overlooks an intimate side garden dominated by a pair of vast cast iron urns. No doubt salvaged from a country house? “My cousin bought them from Kelly’s auction of contents!” says Chris. People of a certain vintage will recall Kelly’s in Portrush, County Antrim, had a rather well known nightclub called Lush. These days, middle aged clubbers can enjoy a slightly more chilled experience at Lush Classical, an annual summer event held in Belfast combining trance DJs and the Ulster Orchestra. Techno strings.
The library and dining room open off the powder blue entrance hall. The creamy wallpapered dining room captures the essence of the house’s evolution in one shot: 12 pane Georgian windows, acanthus leaf Victorian plasterwork and a very Art Deco timber chimneypiece. The outline of a doorway shows there was once an enfilade running along the front of the house. A portrait of a dashing military gentleman is in the burgundy library. The subject is Major Arthur Rowley Heyland and he was painted by Chris’s talented wife Chrissy. She based it on a miniature painted in Toulouse after the Battle of the Pyrenees, the only known picture of the war hero. On 17 June 1815, the eve of the Battle of Waterloo, the 34 year old Major wrote to his wife,
“My dear Mary. What I recommend my love in case I fall in the ensuing contest, is that my sons may be educated at the Military College, except Arthur, who is hardly strong enough: the hazards of a military life are considerable, but still it has its pleasures, and it appears to me of no consequence whether a man dies young or old, provided he be employed in fulfilling the duties of the situation he is placed in this world.”
“I would wish my son John, whose early disposition has made us both happy, should serve in the Infantry till he is a Lieutenant, and then by money or interest be removed to a Regiment of Light Cavalry. I trust his gentlemanly manner and his gallantry in the field will make his life agreeable. Kyffin might try the Artillery Service and make it an object to be appointed to the Horse Artillery, which he can only hope for by applying himself to the duties of his profession. Alfred must get in a Regiment of Infantry, the 95th for instance, and my young unborn must be guided by his brother John and by your wishes.”
“For yourself, my dearest, kindest Mary, take up your residence in Wales, or elsewhere if you prefer it, but I would advise you, my love, to choose a permanent residence. My daughters, may they cling to their mother and remember her in every particular. My Mary, let the recollection console you that the happiest days of my life have been with your love and affection, and that I die loving only you, and with a fervent hope that our souls may be reunited hereafter and part no more.”
“What dear children, my Mary, I leave you. My Marianna, gentlest girl, may God bless you. My Anne, my John, may heaven protect you. My children may you all be happy and may the reflection that your father never in his life swerved from the truth and always acted from the dictates of his conscience, preserve you, virtuous and happy, for without virtue there can be no happiness.”
“My darling Mary I must tell you again how tranquilly I shall die, should it be my fate to fall; we cannot, my own love, die together; one or other must witness the loss of what we love most. Let my children console you, my love, my Mary. My affairs will soon improve and you will have a competency, do not let too refined scruples prevent you taking the usual government allowance for officers’ children and widows. The only regret I shall have in quitting this world will arise from the sorrow it will cause you and your children and my dear Marianne Symes. My mother will feel the loss yet she possesses a kind of resignation to these inevitable events which will soon reconcile her.”
“I have no desponding ideas on entering the field, but I cannot help thinking it almost impossible I should escape either wounds or death. My love, I cannot improve the will I have made, everything is left at your disposal. When you can get a sum exceeding £10,000 for my Irish property, I should recommend you to part with it and invest the money, £6,000 at least, in the funds, and the rest in such security as may be unexceptionable. You must tell my dear brother that I expect he will guard and protect you, and I trust he will return safe to his home.”
The following day, Mary Heyland was widowed.
“That gentleman was my great great great grandfather,” Chris explains. “Arthur was very much an action man. He was born in Belfast and joined the army, becoming a Major of the 40th Regiment. He was court marshalled because one of his senior officers hit one of the soldiers. He was put on a charge for the offence which was pretty unheard of: you did not put a commanding officer on a charge. It was upheld though and he was put on half pay. But he rejoined the army when he heard Napoléon escaped from Elba Island. At Waterloo he had his hat shot then his horse shot from underneath him. His sword was then shattered and on the fourth go he was killed. Arthur was buried out on the battlefield. He died young.”
Major Arthur Rowley Heyland’s son Kyffin obeyed his father’s last wish and attended Sandhurst Military College before becoming a Captain in the 25th Regiment. Kyffin moved to British Guyana in 1831 to serve as a magistrate. He settled with his wife Ann and their three children in Georgetown, the capital of the colony. A family history reports, “Another child was on the way when Kyffin took ill. He was taken to Barbados where the climate was considered much healthier. There, Kyffin died the day before his 35th birthday.” Kyffin’s pregnant widow Ann wrote from Georgetown to her widowed mother-in-law Mary on 31 May 1843,
“My dear Mama. I hope you will in this time of deep affliction allow me to address you. I have today received your letter to Kyffin in answer to the one of mine saying a favourable change had taken place. I dread, indeed am certain, that the intelligence of his departure from this world will reach you before one I wrote on 19 or 20 March to Kyffin’s sister Ann telling her of the rapid change that had taken place for the worse.”
“My dearest, beloved husband! It was in God’s appointed time. Oh, the perfect calm that reigned in his final withdrawal of his thoughts from this world and a firm hope in our Saviour, would have been his. As it is he always appears in my remembrance in this state of happiness and we have reason to hope that he is now and forever happy. To tell you that I feel desolate and that each day increases the knowledge of my loss of kind, cheerful affection and solicitude and to remind me more fully of my bereavement is sating little, but I bow with submission to the will of Him who thought it right to afflict me.”
There is an extraordinary looking brass lock on the entrance door with an equally extraordinary provenance. “Major Arthur Rowley Heyland’s son Alfred Heyland also joined the army and fought at Crimea He lost his arm and was nursed back to health in Florence Nightingale’s hospital,” notes Chris. “Engraved on the lock is, ‘Taken From The Hospital at Sebastopol Lieutenant Colonel Heyland 95th Regiment 8 September 1855’. Everyone has visions of the one armed gentleman leaving the hospital with this lock under his good arm!”
Leading off the library, the deep green drawing room has a pair of tall windows gracefully skirting the floor. A sketch of Castleroe Castle hangs on the wall. The family history states, “Dominick Heyland came to Londonderry from England in 1611, either as a settler or with a garrison. The old castle of Castleroe was built in the 14th century. Hugh O’Neill, the Earl of Tyrone, was wed and spent his honeymoon there in the time of Elizabeth I. It was replaced by a fine new Plantation castle, also called Castleroe, 45 feet long with stone walls 32 inches think. The castle stood on a commanding eminence above the Bann River. The Heylands continued to occupy Castleroe until Rowley Heyland demolished it in 1767, so the story goes, to economise on the window tax. The family lived at Gortnamoyah for a while, then Rowley rented and later bought a Plantation style house in Garvagh. Ballintemple has been home to the Heylands to this very day. It had been built originally in the early 17th century and was later added onto several times.”
Another picture in the drawing room is the earliest extant illustration of Ballintemple House. This watercolour clearly shows the bowed wing which contains the current drawing room. Attached to the bow is a single storey block where the main house now stands. The single storey block has a doorcase not dissimilar to the current one. Could it have been salvaged from the earlier house? The bow wing is not an addition to the main house as the Listing suggests. It predates the main house.
The Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland, Parishes of County Londonderry, 1830 to 1840, provide a description of Ballintemple: “The cottage is partly half circle, thatched and stands one storey. There is a large range of the dwelling attached to the back part of the cottage. It is also thatched and stands partly two storeys. There is a good fruit and vegetable garden enclosed by a quickset hedge. The demesne consists of about 30 acres and well enclosed with quickset hedges and iron gates. The demesne is also improved by plantations of various kinds of forest trees. The cottage stands on an eminence over a large glen and river and commands a delightful prospect of the neighbouring hills.”
Heading back into the depth of the house beyond the entrance hall, Chris concludes, “We call this the Corridor to Nowhere! This passageway used to lead into more rooms but in the 1970s a wing was demolished.” A kitchen and a pantry and lots of other nooks and crannies fill the back of the house. The seaweed green staircase hall in the centre of this 560 square metre house is the most Victorian interior. A tall arch headed stained glass window, internal peephole windows, roof glazing, tongue and groove panelling, encaustic floor tiles, rifles and taxidermy create a baronial appearance. A travel trunk with Earl of Leitrim stamped on it is a reminder of an aristocratic family connection. A very early electrics board attached to the landing wall shows how previous owners kept up with modern technology. Four bright and airy bedrooms – three with floor touching windows, all with head space entering the eaves – are spread across the first floor. Two further bedrooms, one originally for three servants, are on mezzanine levels.
A new chapter awaits the beautiful and unique Ballintemple House.
