Window into the past
Should I plump for the patio just outside the kitchen alongside a purring cat, a strong smell of basil in the air as one of the evening’s chefs, Gerald Esposito of Youghal’s Capri Bay Restaurant, conjures up a pasta medley for starters? Or I could opt for the covered terrace looking out over the walled-in suntrap kitchen garden, hens strutting archly around croquet hoops still embedded in the lawn from earlier when owner of Sandbrook House, Christopher Bielenberg, was offering himself up as tutor.
There’s always the music room, an airy light-filled room at the end of the house with a piano just pleading for a little light plinking if not a downright pounding. It’s the weekend and, much as I love them, I am on a night away from bairns, which means the only one getting the bottle is me and I ain’t gonna change any nappy other than my own.
In the end I come over all Cluedo and choose the library — two walls, lined with books, an assortment of great big comfy couches and armchairs, affording a fine view of the acres of parkland on either side of the drive leading up to the house and the clincher, a crackling log fire.
It may be high summer but supping on a kir royale, I’m soon purring like that cat on the patio, stretching back and listening to Christopher holding court. And when Christopher Bielenberg holds court, it’s hard not to listen; certainly, the booming voice emanating from deep within the bowels of his mighty frame — I stopped guess-timating at about 6ft 9in — is compelling; but the story of how someone born with a German surname in wartorn Berlin, yet possessing a clipped public-school accent, comes to call Carlow home and himself Irish is one that would keep you up half the night. And it does.
Christabel Burton, of Anglo-Irish stock, was studying music in Germany when she met and within two years married a young German law student Peter Bielenberg, in 1934. The marriage prompted much doubt and scepticism on both sides of the family and in taking German citizenship, Christabel had to renounce her British citizenship, further appalling her own parents. But the young couple were blissfully in love and deliriously happy and initially it was possible to dismiss the early stirrings of National Socialism — Nazism — and they were unable to believe the German people could succumb to Hitler’s manic rhetoric, even as the mood changed around them and the menace, especially the direct threat to Jews, crept more and more into daily life.
It wasn’t until one particular evening sitting in a country inn drinking wine that Christabel, too, realised how far the country had veered off any rational course. Three young Jewish men were sitting at the table next to them, talking quietly, sipping wine, when six drunken Stormtroopers came in and began directing loud, boorish comments at the three.
With the other customers rapidly drinking up, paying their bills and fleeing with eyes to the ground, Christabel had to restrain the tall athletic Peter, recalling shades of her Irish father.
“Silly Bastards!” he said out loud in his best English to discreet smiles from the three young Jewish men as they too paid their bills and departed hurriedly, Peter ensuring their safe passage to drunken jeers from the bar.
It was not the incident or the buffoons involved that truly alarmed Christabel; it was the reaction of all the other customers beating a hasty retreat with no wish to get involved with the plight of the innocent trio that truly alarmed Christabel.
It was then she realised something very nasty had come home to roost in Germany.
Within a few years there was no room for doubt as Christabel tried to raise three children in Berlin, the bombs raining down around them while Peter became more involved with a group of friends dedicated to bringing down Hitler.
Christabel had moved with the boys to the comparative safety of a Black Forest mountain village when the July 20 assassination plot against Hitler failed and Peter was arrested by the Gestapo and imprisoned. The story of how courageous Christabel helped engineer Peter’s release is the high point of her astonishing autobiographical tale of those years, The Past is Myself, which sold over 250,000 copies and was turned into a TV series and a film. It has just been republished by Corgi in a twin edition with the follow-up, The Road Ahead, which details how the couple and their three children turned their backs on Germany and Britain and fetched up in Munny House in Carlow in 1948, just up the road from Sandbrook House.
After a gorgeous dinner in the candlelit dining room cooked by Vera Brennan, Sandbrook’s housekeeper, we lumber back into the library and that crackling fire for digestifs. The only reason I eventually prise myself from a couch is the prospect of sinking down and disappearing into the most comfortable bed I have ever slept in. And, boy, do I sleep!
Sandbrook House, sleeping 18, is available to rent privately, on a self-catering basis or fully staffed, for family gatherings, parties and intimate weddings. There are regular events open to the public. Contact: Sandbrook House, Ballon, Co Carlow, Ireland; Tel: 059-9159247; www.sandbrookhouse.com
The Past is Myself by Christabel Bielenberg republished by Corgi.
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