Fifteen miles southeast of Belfast on A20 sits Mount Stewart House and Gardens. To reach Mount Stewart from Belfast, take the Portaferry bus from Laganside Station (1hr.; M-F 16 per day, Sa 14 per day, Su 4 per day). From Newtownards, take the Portaferry Rd. (C4); the estate is two miles before Greyabbey. Held by many Marquess of Londonderry, the Mount Stewart House was brought to its current splendor as an upper-crust Shangri-La in the 1920s by Lady Edith, Marchioness of Londonderry. Both house and garden are now National Trust property, although Lady Edith’s daughter Lady Mairi Stewart still resides in the house. The stately 18th-century Mount Stewart House is packed with eccentricities, and its halls have been graced with summer visits by the likes of Winston Churchill, George Bernard Shaw, and European royalty. Among the treasures are George Stubbs’s life-size painting of the Stewart family horse and race champion, Hambletonian—one of the Royal Academy of Painting’s top 10 British paintings. The BBC’s “Antiques Roadshow” came to the house in July 2003 to investigate its other fascinating artifacts, including a galleon-shaped chandelier hanging in Lady Edith’s sitting room—before the gardens were built, it appeared to float on the waters of Belfast Lough when viewed from across the room. (☎4278 8387. Gardens open daily Mar. 10am-4pm; Apr.-Oct. 10am-6pm; May-Sept. 10am-8pm. House and gardens open Mar.-Sept. daily noon-6pm, Oct.-Feb. Sa-Su noon-6pm. 40-45min. tours every 15-30min.; 1st tour at noon, last tour at 5pm. Gardens alone £4.54, Gift Aid £5; children £2.72/3.)
Mount Stewart’s gardens, spanning 94 acres, are more of an attraction than the house itself and they are currently nominated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Lady Edith took advantage of Ireland’s temperate climate to create a weird and wonderful landscape of flowers, shrubs, and trees from as far as Africa and Australia. Her Dodo Terrace contains a menagerie of animal statues representing the members of her upper-crust circle of friends dubbed “the Ark Club.” Each member adopted an animalian alter-ego and Lady Edith, the group’s matriarch, was named “Circe the Sorcerer” after the character in Homer’s Odyssey who turned Ulysses’s men into swine. Other elite critters include Winston “the Warlock” Churchill and Nelson “the Devil” Chamberlain. The 8Shamrock Garden, whose name belies its shape, contains a Red Hand of Ulster made of begonias and a topiary Irish Harp planted, appropriately enough, over a cluster of the Emerald Isle’s shamrocks. The Lake Walk leads to Tír na nÓg (“the land of the ever young”), the beautiful family burial ground above the lake. The gardens also host the wildly popular Summer Garden Jazz Series on the last Sunday of each month from April to September, as well as murder mystery evenings and car engine shows. Check the website for details. (☎4278 8387; www.nationaltrust.org.uk. Open May-Sept. daily 10am-8pm; Mar. Sa-Su 10-4pm; Apr. and Oct. daily 10am-6pm.) Based on the Tor of the Winds in Athens, the Temple of the Winds, used by Mount Stewartians for “frivolity and jollity,” sits atop a hill with a superb view of Strangford Lough. To reach the temple from the house, turn left on the main road and go about one quarter of a mile. (Temple open Apr.-Oct. Su and bank holidays 2-5pm; you can walk around any time.)
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