Walk with Neil Porteous at Mount Stewart Gardens (Part 6)

We have reached the Mount Stewart’s family private burial grounds at Tir na nOg on the estate and on Monday.  I showed you photographs from inside the grounds but today we are climbing stone steps into two storied stone gate built in Twelfth Century Romanesque style outside the walls. The wide stone arch houses a double gate made of Oak and the upper chamber has three windows giving a panoramic view of the garden and beyond to Strangford Lough and Slieve Donard.

The centrepiece of the burial ground is fine font on a carved columnar support. Small pools lined in the same blue tesserae as the alcoves surround the font and the arrangement of the paths and paved surfaces resemble that of a Celtic cross. On either side of these pools and arranged radially on either side of the large gate arch, are two finely carved sarcophagi.  These are the work of Morris Harding, who worked with Rosamund Praeger in Holywood in the 1930s. 

Lady Londonderry’s sarcophagus above and Lord Londonderry’s below.

Although you can see the lake from this room, it is a great distance away and we can see the Mute swans with some of their 6 cygnets on it.

This was the penultimate post in this series, the last one  will be published next Monday.

Many thanks for visiting and also for leaving comments.