Narnia and Nostalgia in Mullingar

Last weekend when I was at the Labour Party Conference in Mullingar at the Park Hotel I took some time out from the proceedings on Saturday afternoon to explore Belvedere House outside Mullingar on the shores of Lough Ennell. It was a place I was curious about as I had seen in signposted when en route to the INO (nurses' trade union) conference in Cavan some years back. Also when the film of C.S. Lewis's Narnia Chronicle "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" was released a few years ago Belvedere House was described as the Irish Narnia. A Narnia Trail had been developed in the grounds of this old estate, and it was a popular attraction for Narnia fans.


It was a beautiful sunny spring day, a rarity in itself after so much bad weather recently, so I was glad to get out and explore a part of the country I had never visited before. Mullingar is a garrison town in Co. Westmeath, in the Irish Midlands, and it is famous for the late Joe Dolan, who was known as "The man from Mullingar". Joe boosted our fragile national pride back in the '70s when we were still very insecure, there were no jobs and everyone expected to emigrate, as he had international hits with "Make me an Island" and other popular songs. He is immortalised in Mullingar town centre with a bronze statue made by Genesis, a local company.

I tried to take a photo of Joe's statue as I was driving through town and managed to get a shot while stopped at the lights, as it was impossible to get parking on the street. So much for the bypass, the town was jammed with traffic. Of course I discovered later that I could have gone to Belvedere House by another route, but I wanted to see the statue as there had been so much hype about it, and while I wasn't a hardcore Joe fan, I did spend many a night dancing to Joe Dolan and the Drifters in their showband heyday, which coincided with my Dancehall Days!

The showband era in Ireland is a peculiarity of this island and much has been written and filmed about it, most famously in the film version of William Trevor's short story The Ballroom of Romance, coincidentally made by a Lismore man, the internationally renowned film director Pat O'Connor, who is married to Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, the film star.

Belvedere House and Gardens

Back to Belvedere House. It was bought in 1992 for the price of a semi-detached house today - IR£250,000 - by Westmeath County Council, who seem to have handled the stewardship very well, in that it is well-maintained, and preservation is sensitive to the original design in the house and the gardens. So they are doing a good job from what I saw on my short visit. The history is fascinating, as there were a host of eccentric aristocratic and bohemian characters in residence from 1740 right up to the 1980s when the last resident died. No children were ever born there so there were no inheritors when the last owner, Rex Beaufort, died. It is a very imposing house, a Georgian Palladian villa, and has lovely Italianate formal gardens laid out in terraces down to the shores of Lough Ennell. The midlands of Ireland are full of lakes, and many drain into the River Shannon, the longest river in the British Isles.



The grounds of Belvedere House are parkland dotted with obscure follies which reflect the owners' vanity as well as their state of mind at the time. The most fascinating is the Jealous Wall, the largest folly in Ireland, which was built to hide a more imposing mansion, Tudenham House, now in ruins, that the brother of the 1st Lord Belvedere, Robert Rochfort, had built nearby and was visible from the terraces of Belvedere House. He couldn't bear to have to see this daily reminder of his brother's wealth so he blocked it with this facade! A classic case of status anxiety, and obviously keeping up with the Jones's isn't a 20th Century invention. Robert seemed to have been paranoid, and a thoroughly nasty piece of work. He was known as the Wicked Earl, as he kept his wife, Mary Molesworth, imprisoned in the house for 31 years for alleged adultery with another brother.

The grounds are laid out in pathways along the lakeshore, and through forestland. It is wonderful to see how the Narnia settings and locations are incorporated into the landscape, which is all a bit magical, and even though there wasn't a snowflake in sight, you could see how captivating it is to children. There is a lovely octagonal folly, denoting Cair Paravel, and a pretty convincing Beaver Dam. I liked the way you stumble upon the various scenes as you wander around, and there is an adventure playground with ropes across a Bridge to Terabithia, with its Narnia reference. There is the inevitable coffee and souvenir shop, incorporated into the outbuildings, and a wonderful Victorian Walled Garden with the original fully restored glasshouse.

I thoroughly enjoyed playing tourist in Mullingar and the visit to Belvedere was a fascinating snapshot of how the other half - no, perhap a fraction of that - lived in an era of noblesse oblige for the privileged aristocracy.

The irony of visiting the local "Big House" during the Labour Party Conference wasn't lost on me - after all, Belvedere House was the setting of the now-defunct "Mullingar Accord" between Labour and Fine Gael in 2004!

We stayed in a nice B&B in a pub near Mullingar, as the hotels were either full or charging over the odds for the conference weekend. Mary Lynch's Pub is on the banks of the Royal Canal that goes all the way to Dublin from the Shannon for 146km. It was pleasant, warm and comfortable, with a delicious full Irish breakfast to start the day, and the pub itself was a real old world local - not an ersatz Irish pub with faux artefacts like so many are nowadays.