Graham Reid | | 2 min read
When posh people fell out in the old days they often did it with a grand statement. Not for them cutting up the clothes or taking a key along the side of the car. They went for the big gesture -- at least Robert Rochfort, later to become the very nasty first Earl of Belvedere in County Westmeath in Ireland, did.
When he and his wife Mary, the mother of his four children, split up in the mid 18th century – he accusing her of adultery with his brother Arthur who lived nearby – the angry Earl imprisoned her in a garret in their Gaulstown House.
It seems the charges were untrue. Another brother George (who openly despised Mary) said he possessed some alleged love letters, the married Arthur was shocked and fled the country, and the lady herself only pleaded guilty in the hope of a divorce from her mostly absent husband. However she remained a virtual prisoner at Gaulstown for over 30 years.
The Earl, after locking her away, moved
to his recently completed Belvedere House some eight kilometers away
on his estate which had a commanding view across Lough Ennell. This
beautiful home with exquisite plaster work became the Earl's new
home.
When brother Arthur made the mistake of returning home in 1759, the Earl sued him for adultery and the hapless Arthur spent the rest of his life in a debtor's jail in Dublin.
Then relations between the Earl and his brother George, who lived in his Tudenham mansion near Belvedere, became increasingly strained and finally the Earl, in a fit of pique, built a huge Gothic wall between their homes so he needn't see the now-estranged George's house.
This massive folly – built as a Gothic ruin – still stands on the grounds of the beautiful Belvedere estate and is known as the “the Jealous Wall”.
As a gesture it is impressive, standing the equivalent of four storeys high and now overgrown in a dramatically beautiful way.
But this is not the only story at
Belvedere: a subsequent owner Charles Howard-Bury (1881-1963) had a
remarkable life of travel and adventure.
He was a soldier, botanist and later in life a politician.
He secretly entered Tibet in 1905, fought in the Somme, spoke half a dozen languages – and liked to wrestle bears.
He brought one home to the estate and there are bear statues around the grounds.
He also lead an Everest expedition so was in the Himalaya's with Mallory in 1921 – and he left the place to his friend and companion for three decades Rex Beaumont, the last private owner who died in 1988.
In this very masculine house with relics from Howard-Bury and Beaumont's adventures there is also art work of satyrs with an amusing homo-erotic quality.
The house and magnificent gardens are
open to the public, there is a delightful Fairy Garden of plants and
statuary (one area of the grounds is called Narnia incidentally) and
there are walking trails around the sprawling property which is an
hour west of Dublin.
Belvedere is rich in history and grand statements.
And the fate of the good lady Mary, isolated at Gaulstown and abandoned by friends and family?
After the death of her husband in 1774 she was finally released from her imprisonment but she was, by all accounts, a frightened and nervous woman, prematurely aged.
At Belvedere, the Jealous Wall stand as silent testimony to hatred, cruelty and the falling out of a family, so hard to comprehend in such beautiful and peaceful surroundings.
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