Rathmullan House stands
on the edge of the village and port of Rathmullan, Co Donegal. This year the house celebrates 50 years in business as one of Ireland's leading country house hotels. Let us take a journey through the history of Rathmullan house to the present day.
A Sense of History
The man who built
Rathmullan House in around 1820 was Andrew Knox, a prominent landowner and MP
whose principal residence was the fine Prehen House outside Derry. The building
was initially called The Lodge, and was a summer retreat for Andrew, his wife
Mary and younger members of their family of ten children.
The Knoxes were
already long established in the Rathmullan area, going all the way back to 1612.
They were very much part of the Irish landed gentry - Andrew was described as
“the most extensive landowner in the parish” in the Ordnance Survey papers of
1834.
The family had a
storied past. Bishop Andrew Knox, a Scot, arrived as part of the Plantation of
Ulster around 1612. He was of the same family as John Knox, who founded the
Presbyterian Church of Scotland half a century before.
Bishop Knox was
granted the ‘Friars’ lands’ in Rathmullan (King James I also appointed 25
horsemen and 15 soldiers to help him hold on to them). The Bishop lived in a
fortified house within the old Priory, now Rathmullan’s most notable ruin.
Fortified, of course, because this was still the wild North West.
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| Rathmullan House |
‘May you live in
interesting times’ can be a blessing or a curse, and it’s certainly the tale of
the Knoxes down the generations. Bishop Knox was in the vanguard of the
Plantation; his son Andrew lived through the 1641 Rebellion, when the Priory
came under attack; and the next Andrew was an army major within the walls of
Derry during the famous siege of 1688/89.
Hanged
MacNaghten
Perhaps George
Knox, born around 1660, had an uneventful life, but his son Andrew –
grandfather of the first owner of Rathmullan House - was caught up in one of
the most sensational events of the next century. The tale of ‘Half-Hanged
MacNaghten’ is still dusted down regularly today, and was recently the subject
of a book.
Andrew, a long-serving MP for Donegal, married Honoria Tomkins and they lived in the Priory in Rathmullan before moving to Derry around the mid-1700s when she inherited Prehen House. Andrew gave hospitality at Prehen to an old friend down on his luck, the celebrated gambler and bon viveur John MacNaghten. However, the relationship turned sour when MacNaghten wanted Andrew’s young daughter Mary-Anne to be his wife. After various twists and turns, the entire affair ended in tragedy in 1761 when MacNaghten ambushed the Knox family carriage on its way to Dublin, and Mary-Anne was killed.
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| Rathmullan Beach |
MacNaghten was
sentenced to death, despite having considerable public sympathy, but at the
gallows in Strabane the rope broke three times. This entitled him to escape
execution, but he said he didn’t want to be known as ‘Half-Hanged McNaghten’
and died at the fourth attempt. Of course, ‘Half-Hanged MacNaghten’ is what
he’s been called ever since.
The oldest tablet
in the church in Rathmullan commemorates the death of Andrew Knox in 1774 and
also the loss of his only daughter Mary-Anne – ‘Mariana filia obiit November
1761’.
Andrew and
Honoria had one other child, George. It was George’s son Andrew, nephew of the
ill-fated Mary-Anne, who built Rathmullan House (perhaps it was to have an
escape from the ghost of MacNaghten, which was naturally said to haunt Prehen
House).
Andrew and his
wife Mary were part of that intricate mix of relations and connections which
made up the Irish gentry. Andrew’s mother was Jane Mahon, one of the Pakenham
Mahon’s of the remarkable Strokestown Park House in County Roscommon, and
sister of Lord Hartland. Mary herself was one of the well-to-do McCauslands
from Daisy Hill, near Limavady.
Andrew played a
prominent part in the life of the landlord class in Donegal, serving as MP and
as a lieutenant-colonel in the Donegal Militia.
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| Rathmullan Village |
The Batts
arrive
The Knoxes
maintained The Lodge as their summer retreat until the mid 1830s, by which time
their children were long grown up. And so in 1836 Rathmullan House, as it
became known, got a new owner - Thomas Batt from 4 Donegall Place in Belfast.
His wife Charlotte was also originally Knox, a distant relative of those in
Rathmullan.
Thomas was from
one of Belfast’s most prominent business families, founders of the Belfast bank
and owners of Purdysburn House (later the hospital). They also gave their name
to Batt’s Mountain in the Mournes. This Irish branch of the family, originally
Cornish, seems to have come from the New Ross area of Wexford, and indeed
Wexford and Waterford both have a ‘Batt Street’.
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| View from the House |
In the nature of
things, the family of Thomas’s wife Charlotte was also well-connected. One of
her uncles was the Earl of Ranfurly, another was a major general, and her
father and two other uncles were prominent clergymen. Her brothers-in-law
included the chairman of Dunville’s Whiskey firm in Belfast, William Dunville.
Thomas and Charlotte
outdid the previous owners and had twelve of a family. Thomas was active in
local church affairs and was chairman of the Vestry in 1840. He died in 1857,
and is remembered in a pretty stained glass window in the local Church of
Ireland.
It seems his son,
also Thomas, took over the estate. He carried out a major renovation of the
house in 1870, which doubled it in size and added the three distinctive bay
windows with wide overhanging eaves. He died in 1897.
Records show that
in 1876 Thomas Batt was one of the bigger landowners in Donegal, with 4,377
acres. However, times were changing. Land reform was heralding the beginning of
the end for the landlord class. The Batt estate was transferred to tenant
ownership in 1902.
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| The Gardens |
A bracing
walk
Members of the
Batt family stayed on in Rathmullan House until just before the Second World
War. The house was put up for sale in 1939. An auction of house contents was
held, and Philadelphia millionaire and art collector Henry P. McIlhenny got many
items for Glenveagh Castle, which he had recently bought.
A Batt relative,
G.O. Batt, writing from London in August 1939, commented, “Lovely Rathmullan
House – it is very sad for me to think that it has all gone out of the family
with all its memories and I do not know yet what exactly may become of it.”
In fact,
Rathmullan House was to turn rather spartan. The new owners were the Holiday
Fellowship, a walking group founded by the Rev T.A. Leonard in England in 1913.
It seems he embraced walking as an alternative to what his young parishioners
were getting up to on their annual holidays in Blackpool.
His walking
holidays proved popular, and over the years the Holiday Fellowship bought a
series of hotels and guest houses. Rathmullan House was a new location.
Visitors got as far as Derry, then by train and later double decker bus to
Fahan, and finally across Lough Swilly on the ferry.
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| Rathmullan Beach |
From accounts of
Holiday Fellowship guesthouses elsewhere in those days, it was all very
organised. Packed lunches were provided with the clear instruction that “lunch
rucksacks will be carried by the men.”
Notices announced that, on excursions, “gentlemen will leave the party
for a short time after lunch to allow both sexes to attend to the needs of
nature.”
There was
entertainment in the evenings, including ‘sing-songs’, discussions, lectures
and a home-grown concert on the last night. Upstairs in Rathmullan House was
converted into dormitories with rows of sinks for muddy boots, and the
electricity generator was turned off at 8pm to encourage an early start in the
mornings.
The Holiday
Fellowship, now known as HF, is still operating, but on a more luxurious level
these days. It has 18 “fine Country House hotels” in England, Scotland and
Wales.
During the war
years, Rathmullan House was also used as a base by the Irish army reserve, the
Local Defence Force.
The
Wheelers
The current
owners, the Wheeler family, come into the picture around 1962. Bob Wheeler was
brought up in London of Irish parents
and spent a lot of time on family holidays in Marble Hill, near Dunfanaghy.
Later his mother bought Cloghan Lodge outside Ballybofey.
Although Bob
trained as an interior designer, he found himself drawn to the hotel industry,
not least because of his time helping out the legendary Mr Bertie Barton in the
halycon days of the Portsalon hotel, welcoming leading Dublin families like the
Bewleys and the Jacobs.
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| The Drawing Room |
Bob worked for
three years in hotels in Rhodesia, and on his return became a partner in the
Milford Hotel in Milford. When Rathmullan House came up for sale, he and his
wife Robin put together a consortium and bought it. At that time Seamus, the
famous house donkey, was still meeting guests at the pier and collecting their
luggage, as well as ploughing the walled garden.
After extensive
renovation, Rathmullan House re-opened as a 21-bedroom hotel.
Bob recalls, “We
got a very good boost early on because news of our opening was carried on
Ulster Television and the wife of the governor of Northern Ireland, Lady
Margaret Wakehurst, came to stay. That raised our profile. It also meant we got
an all-night telephone service – until Lady Wakehurst arrived it went off at
8pm!”
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| Bedroom |
The Rathmullan
House success story was beginning. In 1969 there was an investment programme,
including the distinctive ‘tented’ pavilion dining room designed by celebrated
architect Liam McCormick.
However, there
were clouds on the horizon. Across the border in Northern Ireland, the Troubles
began.
“In 1970 it was
just a disaster – we had 90% cancellations. We opened for two months in the summer,
and in that year we lost more than it cost us to set up the place. But we were
rather determined we wouldn’t give up.”
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| Cozy open fire |
With grit, hard
work, a continuing commitment to quality and some imaginative marketing,
Rathmullan House survived and began to thrive again. The swimming pool was
replaced and a new bedroom wing added in the 1990s.
Bob and Robin
have since handed over the reins, although they both continue to take a close
interest in the business. Bob’s bailiwick is the gardens. Nowadays Mark and Mary
Wheeler are the second generation of the family to welcome visitors to
Rathmullan House. 2012 sees them celebrating 50 years of Irish Country House
hospitality.
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| The View |
Major
changes
In important
ways, the history of Rathmullan House charts major developments in the history
of Ireland itself – the ascendancy of the landed gentry, the rise of the Ulster
business class, the age of land reform and finally new roles for the ‘Big
House’, including its re-invention as one of Ireland’s most charming
institutions, the country house hotel.
That sense of
history, coupled with the continuing tradition of quality, hospitality and
elegance, is part of what makes a visit to Rathmullan House a special
experience.
