Blackwater beauty: The hidden treasures and tales of Ballynatray House

Carol O’Callaghan pays a visit to Ballynatray House and discovers tales of serendipity, love-at-first-sight and hidden treasures.

Did you know it was Horace Walpole who in 1754 coined the word ‘serendipity’? He revealed this while corresponding with a friend about uncovering a Persian fairytale called The Three Princes of Serendip. It appears this royal triumvirate were in the habit of making discoveries by accident and sagacity, “of things they were not in quest of”, wrote Horace.

Wind on 200 years to another letter by a different Horace, this time Horace Holroyd-Smyth, the then owner of Ballynatray House, who in the 1960s hosted a guest, Timothy Gwyn-Jones. Later, Timothy wrote to Horace expressing his interest in buying the house should it ever come on the market. He received an emphatic reply that the house would never be for sale, a tale recounted to me recently by Timothy’s son, Henry who, by another stroke of serendipity, happens to be Ballynatray’s current owner.