Country Sports and Country Life – The BALLYWALTER inheritance

“We keep an army of Dysons'”
laughed Vibse. “There is one on
each floor so we don’t have to
trundle them up and down stairs,
and we work hard. I think we have
discovered that the secret of success in this day and age is first
class machinery and equipment, no
matter what the domestic task.
Fraulein Bosch, for example, is a
godsend!
“But Debbie is a godsend too
and I also get help from our
horticultural manager’s daughter,
Anita, who always supplies floral
arrangements from her flower shop
in Belfast when we are entertaining.”
Entertaining may well be an integral
part of the future for Ballywalter, albeit
in a different context from the grand
dinner parties of a century or more
ago. In this day and age, every grand house must find a way to
pay, and
Brian and Vibse have some excellent ideas for the future.
“Of course, the farm is run as a
business venture and naturally that
helps to support the work we are doing
on the house,” Lord Dunleath explained, “but the house
too must find its niche in the world.” With Vibse’s interest
in
food and the house’s grand proportions and style, the couple plans
to
develop a niche market for limited and exclusive accommodation,
geared principally around corporate and
incentive use and visits by special
interest groups, such as architecture

and horticulture.
The restoration of the upper floor
of the house not only opened up
accommodation capacity, but also
unearthed several treasures,
including house menus dating back
over one hundred years. As a food

historian,
Vibse was thrilled with
this find, so much so, that when
one corporate party stayed at the
house recently, she was able to
recreate exactly the same dinner
menu that had been served in the
Ballywalter dining room a century
before to the very day. “It was a real
thrill for me to be able to do that,”
recalled Vibse. “I enjoyed it very
much, so did the guests and it
marked out the occasion in a very
unique way.”
Another way that the house
contributes to its own upkeep is as
a film location. Divorcing Jack, the
film of the highly successful novel
by local author, Colin Bateman, was

the Park”.
“Big houses like this are often
sought after for filming,” said
Brian, “and it is another way for the
house to contribute to its upkeep,
but it can be invasive. The film
crew will be there for weeks on end
and we normally have to be in
residence for the entire time that
they are there.
“It can also play havoc with the
rest of life on the estate. I recall
Victor [McDevitt] being appalled to
discover that we had a film crew
shooting on one of our own shoot
days last year, but it all went
amazingly well with no real
hiccups at all.”
Despite the intrusion that filming
makes on their lives, for much of the
year, Brian and Vibse do manage to
have their home to themselves and
they enjoy it very much. Ballywalter
Park is aninheritance. As Brian says,
“it’s not actually mine, I’m just its temporary custodian”.
Nevertheless,
life forged around this inheritance
has its own very special pleasures
in the enjoyment of the house, gardens and estate. Armed with not
only the maturity to recognise his good
fortune, but also the energy to enjoy
it and the skills to enhance and
develop it, Brian is, without doubt, a
very worthy ‘custodian’. It seems clear that, under his stewardship,
the house his great uncle described as
a ‘Victorian white elephant’, will
blossom to become symbolic not
only of a past worth preserving,
but also a shining example of how
the grand houses and estates of
Ireland have a vital part
to play in our present and our
future.

filmed
entirely at Ballywalter and,
more recently, Puckoon, the dramatisation of Spike Milligan’s
book was also filmed there. That
film has not yet been released, but shortly after that another film
crew moved in, this time for a television series ” The Peer
and