To
understand this post you need to read and look at Monday’s post HERE. This is Dr Neill Watt with Lady Rose who is
the granddaughter of Lady Edith. She and
her husband Mr Lauritzen still live in part of the Mount Stewart house and she has been a tremendous help not only to Neill but to everyone who
is trying to bring the house back to the way it was when Lady Edith lived here and
as Lady Rose remembers it as she has many happy memories living here with her
grandmother. You might like to read Lady
Rose’s memories of how it was then HERE
Neil
explained that we are so fortunate to have some very precious items which have
been lent to us in the collections like the Marble bust of Helen of Troy by
Antonio Canova and the desk on which the Final Act of the Congress on 9 June
1815, and the Treaty of Paris on 20 November 1815, were signed. The desk came
into the possession of Lord Castlereagh who was the 2nd Marquess
of Mount Stewart.
In Lady Edith’s
day she organised various events which she opened to the public and still today
Mount Stewart have wonderful Jazz afternoon and recently there waa the third year of the Conversations event and many more happenings.
Of course everyone
likes to dress up and Lady Edith was no exception and still today Mount Stewart
has Murder Mystery evenings where everyone is in costume.
In 2015 Mount
Stewart acquired the remainder of the demesne which now amounts to nearly 1,000
acres. The Rangers and volunteers are hard at work, working on the WILD side of things. They have made a wonderful natural children's playground based on the magical characters from a book called The Magic Inkpot written by Lady Edith.
They are opening
up paths to the public that the Stewart family would have used and next year
they will have completed another 11 miles of walks to explore through the
beautiful forests and countryside of the estate.
During the next
5 years there will be great changes to where the reception area and restaurant
etc will be and this is due to over the past number of years the footfall has
increased dramatically and new plans are underway to address this matter. This is an aerial view of the extensive farm
buildings where the new areas will be and below is an artist impression of what
it could be like.
Finally I leave you with Lady Edith and her beloved dogs and Neil’s last slide.
A wonderful talk about a magnificent house. Many thanks Neil.
I hoped you enjoyed seeing this 2 part series as Neil took us through some of the history and updates on the Mount Stewart Property, near Newtownards.
Many thanks for visiting and also for your comments.
