Qualla: Mount Stewart

Mount Stewart: Introduction

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kay Atherton, CC BY-SA 2.0. On a Strangford Lough morning in May 1936, the German ambassador Joachim von Ribbentrop arrived at Mount Stewart with what the newspapers described as a noisy gang of SS men. The visit lasted four days. Their host, Charles Vane-Tempest-Stewart, 7th Marquess of Londonderry, had recently been forced out as Britain's Air Minister and was attempting his own private diplomacy with Hitler's Germany. The visit made national news. As a parting gift, Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring later sent an Allach porcelain SS flag-bearer figurine that the Marquess displayed on the smoking-room mantelpiece. When war came, neither the figurine nor the Marquess's reputation was quietly disposed of. Both were left exactly where they were. The figurine is still there today, in the house the National Trust now opens to the public, a small, awkward object that refuses to let the past be tidied away.

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Image: Kay Atherton | CC BY-SA 2.0

Mount Stewart: Linen, Marriage and an East India Fortune

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sitomon, CC BY-SA 2.0. The original house, called Mount Pleasant, was bought in 1744 by Alexander Stewart. The Stewarts were Presbyterians, farmers and linen merchants in a county where the established Anglican church dominated political life. They became wealthy because Alexander married Robert Cowan'...

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Image: Sitomon | CC BY-SA 2.0

Mount Stewart: Castlereagh and the Map of Europe

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ross, CC BY-SA 2.0. Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, grew up at Mount Stewart and went on to become one of the most consequential British politicians of the early nineteenth century. As Chief Secretary for Ireland, he helped push the 1800 Act of Union through the Irish Parliament after the 1798...

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Image: Ross | CC BY-SA 2.0

Mount Stewart: A Marquess Refuses Famine Relief

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit James Godsell Middleton, Public domain. Charles Vane, 3rd Marquess of Londonderry, inherited the house from his half-brother. In 1847, at the height of the Great Famine, he spent fifteen thousand pounds remodelling Mount Stewart and just thirty pounds on soup kitchens. He refused to lower rents. The most supine and ine...

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Image: James Godsell Middleton | Public domain

Mount Stewart: The Garden Edith Built

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ulsterbeef, CC BY-SA 3.0. Edith, Lady Londonderry, took over the gardens in 1915 after her husband inherited the title, and over the next forty years she made something almost without parallel in Ireland. The Ards Peninsula sits in the warm path of the North Atlantic Drift; Strangford Lough creates a humi...

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Image: Ulsterbeef | CC BY-SA 3.0

Mount Stewart: The Temple of the Winds

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Erl Johnston, CC BY-SA 4.0. Down at the lough's edge, an octagonal stone building catches the late light. It is the Temple of the Winds, designed in 1782-83 by James Stuart, the architect known as Athenian Stuart for his pioneering studies of Greek antiquities. He modelled it on the Tower of the Winds in th...

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Image: Erl Johnston | CC BY-SA 4.0