Curraghmore House and Gardens near Portlaw, County Waterford. (Photo: Shutterstock)
Mr Winterly and I celebrated our wedding anniversary with a trip to Curraghmore House in County Waterford. This beautiful property is the home of the 9th Marquis of Waterford and has been in his family since the arrival of the de la Poers, who were Anglo-Normans, in the middle of the twelfth century. Over 800 years have gone into the creation of Curraghmore as it is today. The tour of the house was fascinating because it focused on what I like best: family history.
A guide with fascinating stories
The weather was appalling when we arrived, torrential rain greeting us, but that didn’t matter because we spent about two hours inside, being shown around and listening to stories. Evelyn, our guide, was local and came from the village of Portlaw, which made the family history much more interesting because she was able to speak for both sides, from inside the house but also outside from a villager’s point of view. Not all the stories of the Waterford family cast them in a good light - some quite the opposite - because, as in many families, some of the characters were more likeable than others. Some had a reputation for being rather wild.
Anglo-Norman Tower House or Keep
We began the tour in the old Norman tower house at the back of the property. Standing in the cold with the paint was peeling off the walls, it really felt like we were stepping back through the centuries. The guide told us that, as a child, she had stood outside the windows and peered in with her nose to the glass, longing to know what was inside, and that was one of the reasons she applied for the job! She pointed out various members of the family in old paintings on the walls and told us one reason they survived down the centuries was because they were politically astute and changed religions when necessary to avoid having their lands snatched from them. The de la Poers were involved with the army, the Church and the State.
The de la Poer Beresford family at Curraghmore House, a photograph taken in September 1896. Lady Waterford was an invalid and this was her special carriage pulled by a donkey. (Photo: The National Library, Dublin)
We weren’t allowed to take photographs inside the house, quite rightly because it is a family home, but the first thing I was impressed with was a child’s small carriage with two horses, complete with manes and tails and what looked like real reins. The child used to sit in the carriage and Nanny or some willing relation would push it around and, when the wheels turned, the horses moved up and down. Apparently this got the horse-crazy Waterfords used to the creatures at a very young age. I’d have loved something like that when I was little.
Curraghmore House from the garden. (Photo: Shutterstock)
The structure of the house is actually made up of a series of additions over the years. The first part built was the tower house, then an elegant Georgian flanking was added with rooms still used by the family today, and walls that have original paint from the 18th century. We were told there is no central heating in Curraghmore because it would cause damage. Victorian-era buildings encased the tower house in the huge courtyard, which you can see in the photo below. In the centre of the image is the Anglo-Norman tower where we began the tour and the tea room is on the right in one of those lower structures.
The huge courtyard at Curraghmore House, Portlaw, County Waterford, with the Anglo-Norman tower in the middle of the building. (Photo: The National Library, Dublin)
Looking up at the tower from outside, I could see the emblems of the family: a stag and a crucifix. I heard (but not on the tour) that the crucifix helped to save the house during the War of Independence in Ireland in the early 1920s. Around 800 old houses were set fire to back then but when a gang of men arrived to burn down the building, the moon was shining from behind the crucifix and it cast a shadow of the cross on the ground in front of the door. This alarmed the God-fearing men enough to make them abandon their plans and run away. I don’t know if that’s true but it makes a good story. What’s enthralling about Curraghmore is the whole place is a collection of different tales.
The Curse on the HEAD OF THE Family
Of course the biggest story of all and the first question a visitor asks when they go to Curraghmore is about the famous curse (or should that be ‘infamous curse’?) placed on the head of the family for seven generations. We had to wait until we got into the main part of the house before our guide would answer that.
She told us how a young man was hanged from a tree in the courtyard for some misdemeanour and how his grief-stricken mother (or grandmother) crawled on her hands and knees around the yard seven times, muttering a curse on the eldest born son of the family. Each head of the family was to die a violent death (not in his bed) for seven generations. Ha, you might scoff, that would never come true! The strange thing is that it did, right down to the very last Marquis included in the curse. The present 9th Marquis of Waterford’s father was the first to die in his bed in his early eighties, but the others, all seven of them, died in horse riding accidents, shooting accidents, one was almost savaged to death by a lion and then drowned in the nearby river. Strange, spooky but definitely fascinating. There is no logical answer to why that all happened.
A tragic but mysterious drowning
I looked up three of the Marquises in the archives of The Irish Times newspaper and read the inquest reports on their deaths. The young man who drowned in the river was a tragic but also mysterious case because, on the night he died, he came home from hunting, ate his dinner and the butler brought him a drink as he normally would. Lord Waterford then said he was going for a stroll in the dark to look at landscaping work carried out at a particular spot along the water’s edge. He never came back and, when his wife grew anxious, she sent out men to search for him. It was odd because he’d drowned in shallow water, only a few feet deep. Perhaps he lost his footing in the dark and banged his head on a rock. We will never know.
There is a hallway with family portraits in the house, where the staircase ascends to the bedrooms above, and we heard many more stories about the men and women in the paintings. When the famine was raging in Ireland in the mid-nineteenth century from 1845 to 1852 and many starved throughout the country when the potato crops consistently failed, the Marquis and Marchioness of Waterford of that time ensured that their tenants survived.
Unfortunately they died childless and his brother, who had lofty ambitions in the Church, reluctantly took over the estate and vented his frustration on many with cruelty. I won’t give away all the story but, when he died, his children led his horse up the staircase to their mother’s bedroom as a symbolic gesture of her freedom. The horse slipped on the way down and cracked one of the stone steps. The crack is still there today.
I was watching a video of a renovated château in Provence, France on YouTube recently and exactly the same thing happened. One of the daughters led her horse up the staircase and cracked it. It must have been a popular escapade in the 19th century!
Part of the gardens at Curraghmore House, Portlaw, County Waterford. (Photo: Shutterstock)
The Shell House in the garden
The property at Curraghmore was only once passed down through the female line in its long 800 year history and that was when fifteen-year-old Catherine de la Poer married Sir Marcus Beresford in 1717. The Beresfords were Protestants in the north of Ireland. The family were known as de la Poer Beresford from then on and still are to this day.
After the house tour finished, we were taken to a folly in the garden with the interior decorated with shells of all different shapes and sizes. An incredible feat and supposed to have been completed by Catherine. She used to go down to the sea and ask fishermen to bring her back shells from their travels. We had to run through the rain to see this but it was well worth getting wet.
We finished the day with a cup of tea and lemon cake in a tea room in the courtyard. There is a lot of work to be done at Curraghmore to maintain it for future generations and the present Marquis and Marchioness are the first of the family to open the door to the public. I’m grateful they did because I thoroughly enjoyed seeing this famous historic house and hearing the tales of the people who lived inside its walls. Part of its appeal is it really looks like a family home and I’ve already recommended it to many of my friends. It’s great to see such an old house still lived in by the original descendants of those Anglo-Norman soldiers and I hope Curraghmore continues to flourish into the future.
If you’d like to see a video and photographs to learn more about Curraghmore House and Gardens go to https://curraghmorehouse.ie/ where you can also book a place on a tour.
The Gate Keeper and the Coachman
I really don’t know if the following story is true or if it belongs to folklore about Curraghmore but I thought you might enjoy it. I found it in a forum on the internet some years ago and unfortunately can’t remember where it was or who the story was written by. To listen, click on audio.
Audio story:
Suzanne Winterly is the author of mystery and dual timeline historical mystery novels set in the late 19th century and in the present. More details below:
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