A horse, a horse... a kingdom for a horse
Queen Victoria’s visit to these parts put Kerry, and its jarveys and horses, on the tourist map... and still today the royals come
MOLLY is decked out in gleaming bling strategically positioned where several streets meet to catch the admiring eye of a passing royal entourage.
The sturdy six- year old black and white ‘gypsy vanner’ with her other half Martin McCarthy are well used to competition down here in Killarney, historically jampacked with traditional jaunting cars and their ‘jarvey’ drivers.
Still, they manage to stand out from the crowd, Molly (Malone) resplendent in highly polished brass tackle that cost €2,000 plus and her owner in a Kerry version of a Stetson, towering above neighbouring tweed caps. Molly and Martin were hopeful of giving the Royal couple ‘the spin of their lives around the lakes’, he told me.
During my stay it looked like Killarney was fast running out of ‘wet-paint’ signs, border plants and sacks of gravel as the great Charles and Camilla clean-up swung into action. Yet according to some locals the country’s top tourism town was pristine enough already without the need for any sudden spurt of royal spring cleaning to the tune of €10,000.
Painter and decorator vans were jamming up the entrances to top tourism attractions leading to Killarney National Park on Monday and Tuesday. Other beauty spots like Ross Castle and Torc waterfall we visited were put on alert for a visit by Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall. Gates and railings were freshly coated in glistening black, their spikes topped with gold paint.
AFELLA with a yard brush was lashing whitewash on to the entrance walls of Killarney House. The original structure, much of which burnt down in 1913, is where Queen Victoria, the great-great-great grandmother of Prince Charles, stayed a night when she visited Killarney back in 1861.
Tim, one of the Killarney House gardeners was cutting a neat edge on its lawns with a sharp spade. Another busy worker, painting garden seats a delicate shade of silver grey confirmed ‘they were in a sorry state, very weather beaten; hopefully the paint is well dry before the Duchess has a sit down’.
Muckross House, whose magnificent gardens would be the envy of any Royal household, was high on Prince Charles’s visit wish list. In recent memory the house and Estate has only been in lockdown once. Shut to the public yesterday the last time that happened, a staff member recalled, was when jaunting car drivers placed pickets on the entrances.
The ‘jarveys’ went on strike in protest over the National Parks and Wildlife Services demand that they attach dung-catchers ‘equine nappies’ to stop horse manure fouling pathways and roads. The drivers objected to putting diapers on their horses, claiming the overfull nappies could upset the balance of both horse and trap behind.
Queen Victoria stayed two nights at Muckross House, where months of elaborate preparations pre- ceding the Royal visit saw the arrival of specially commissioned tapestries, mirrors, silverware, musical instruments and all manner of extravagance.
A fire escape was also constructed outside her bedroom because of Her Majesty’s phobia in relation to house fires.
So lavish was the hospitality offered by the Herbert family of Muckross (who had hoped for titles in gratitude) to the Royal party that afterwards they were saddled with enough debt to bankrupt them.
The year after their visit to Killarney which had been an outstanding success and ‘she would cherish the memory for years to come” the monarch’s beloved husband Albert died. During a long period of mourning the Herbert’s titles were forgotten.
Looking back on all the interesting folklore and colourful newspaper accounts surrounding Queen Victoria’s patronage of Killarney we look out over lakes and moun- tains unchanged over the centuries from the sun-dappled outside terrace bar of the Castlerosse hotel. A local man drinking a pint jokes that ‘the only titles we care about down here in Kerry are the ones we get out of Croke Pairc’.
As luck would have it, the week that was in it I am staying in Killarney’s most historic spot when it comes to Royal connections – Castlerosse Hotel – dating back even further than those of Muckross and Killarney House.
This magically located comfortable home-from-home is located right at the spot of where The Royal Victoria Hotel, one of Ireland’s first ‘grand’ hotels once stood. In its time the Royal Victoria played host to princes, dukes, earls and other A-Listers.
Queen Victoria’s son Bertie (later Edward VII) arrived in 1858 and stayed a week at the hotel, described by noted travel writers of the day Mr and Mrs Samuel Carter as ‘a very splendid esta- bishment; its situation is probably unrivalled in the Kingdom’.
Captivated by Killarney’s magnificent lakes and mountains scenery, Bertie, Prince of Wales urged his mother to come and enjoy it for herself and she did so a few years later.
THERE’S also strong evidence that she herself visited the hotel after disembarking from a boat at the lakeside’s Victoria Pier, we explore, trying not to disturb all the resident native Irish red deer grazing nearby.
‘Queen Victoria’s visit put Killarney on the map as a tourist destination, as the place to see and be seen ; more than any other event it helped to establish the tourist industry here’ points out hotelier Con Horgan.
The Castlerosse Hotel and its unique location is a labour of love for its owner. So is the fascinating Castlerosse history Con compiled with the help of a noted historian linking it to the past.
Con tells how the last owner of much of the landscape around Killarney, Beatrice Grosvenor, niece of the last Earl of Castlerosse opened a drive-in hotel here on the same terrain as Castlerosse in 1960.
Memories of a childhood outing from County Limerick flood back.
My mother (fanatically fond of hotels) has brought us children to visit ‘an American-style motel here in Ireland, like nothing we’ve seen before’. It had a small round swimming pool, rooms with parking outside and petrol pumps. Today’s Castlerosse, of course, is nothing like that. It has moved smartly with the current times, though the gorgeous landscape out front is as timeless as ever.