Reuniting a family collection

An ambitious restoration project undertaken by the National Trust in collaboration with the donor family has transformed one of Northern Ireland’s most important country houses.

- John Goodall

MOUNT STEWART stands on a narrow isthmus of land—the Ards Peninsula—that divides Strangford Lough from the Irish Sea. The exceptionally mild climate it enjoys has made the formal gardens here, laid out in the 1920s by the Marchioness of Londonderry, internationally celebrated. Much less familiar, however, is the house itself. Since 2009, this building has been the object of a major restoration project by the National Trust. Through the generosity of the donor family, its collections have also been augmented and redisplayed to brilliant effect.

In 1737, the Presbyterian linen merchant and landowner Alexander Stewart of Ballylawn Castle and Stewart Court, Co Donegal, married his cousin, heiress Mary Cowan. Both had strong ties to Londonderry, the most important town associated with the 17thcentury plantation of Ulster. Mary’s immense fortune—estimated at about £100,000— was largely inherited from her brother, a governor of Bombay. Several extant family heirlooms derive from his ventures, including an 18th-century collection of Chinese export porcelain—presently displayed at Mount Stewart—and a set of jewels incorporated into a parure known as the Down Diamonds, now on loan to the V&A Museum.

In 1744, Mary’s trustees invested a portion of her inheritance in a substantial estate in Co Down. Within this, some years later, at a site called Templecrone on the shore of Strangford Lough, the couple planned a house. It is first referred to in 1776, when Arthur Young in his tour of Ireland noted ‘some new plantations which surround an improved lawn, where Mr. Stewart intends to build’. Nothing is securely known about the form of this building, but the site was christened Mount Pleasant, presumably in reference to its spectacular views.