Results of €11m Fota revamp unveiled

The Irish Heritage Trust has unveiled the results of an almost €11m four-year restoration programme at historic Fota House.

IHT chief Kevin Baird led tour bus operators on a behind-the-scenes tour of the Co Cork period home yesterday to encourage them to bring more visitors.

And he defended the closure of the house for up to six months of the year.

“We are in an annual cycle where we cater for visitors over the peak tourist season from April to September,” he said.

“We then put the house to sleep slightly. We run our regular group events on the estate but we don’t do tours of the house because it allows our team to rest the rooms and to do more specialist cleaning than in the open season when we’re open seven days a week.”

He was responding to criticism from former Professor of Agriculture at University College Cork, Tom Raftery, who played a key role in the rescue and initial restoration of Fota House.

The former Fine Gael MEP and senator said he was “outraged” the house was closed for half the year.

“When Fota Trust was responsible for the house, we had it open for 362 days of the year, and it was making a surplus,” he had said.

“Now it’s closed for six months of the year. And Fota Wildlife park next door is one of the top tourist attractions in Ireland. And there should be guided tours of the garden.”

But Mr Baird said the trust, which took over responsibility for the house in 2007, has raised almost €11m through donations and grants, including the €6m art collection donated by the McCarthy family — one of the finest collections of Irish art in the country — since then.

Money has been spent upgrading the estate road network, car parks and signs, he said.

A tremendous amount of specialist interior restoration work has been done inside the house, including:

* The relaying of original floor boards in rooms on the first floor.

* The installation of state-of-the-art air monitoring and fire safety systems.

* And the major restoration of a “secret garden” which had lain derelict for 50 years.

“We spent €1.5m on behind-the-scenes stuff that nobody will see,” Mr Baird said.

“Four years is really fast for that kind of work. There’s enough restoration work to keep us going for another 100 years. It’s a big house, it’s constantly requiring care, and sensitive and gentle conservation.”

Fota Estate was originally the property of the Smith-Barry family and Mr Raftery visited the house yesterday with Patty Butler. She was the last housekeeper to work for Dorothy Bell, who died in 1975, being the last of the Smith-Barrys.

“I think it’s lost something. I think it has. The atmosphere, I think,” Ms Butler said.

She began working for the family in 1947 as an in-between maid, and was housekeeper when Mrs Bell died in 1974.

“It was different in my time. There was a lovely atmosphere. It was a very pretty house,” she said.

“And I don’t like the drapes now. We never had drapes like that on the windows.

“When you were inside Fota House in my time, the windows were so beautiful, the trees and the landscape almost came in to the house. It was very pretty.”