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It's wintertime in Kerry
You
At the end of the last century at the height of the railway age
The great southern and western railway company built the Park Hotel in Kenmare
It was designed for the comfort and convenience of passengers traveling on to the resort of Park, Missoula
particularly the first-class passengers
The designers and managers of the hotel borrowed from the strong tradition of cultured leisure that the Irish landed gentry had developed on their rural estates and in their big houses
This place is steeped in the past, full of images of a gentler time
There's no nonsense about the architecture
Like Victorian commerce, it's massive, solidly planted in the countryside and slightly austere
The wrought ironwork is fancy but never frivolous
Even the creepers barely soften the practical outlines of its exterior
It's almost like a convent, though it's actually a temple to the commercial gods
And there's a surprising richness about the inside
When I came to the house, I inherited an old house and as a result of that, of course, antiques were the thing to fill it and to give it the atmosphere
We wanted to create a kind of family home and the antiques are known to be slightly eclectic because what we bought and when we went to buy, we just bought all over
One of my favorite antiques would be the Edwardian water tank, which was used in the private homes in London in the Edwardian times
It was used for when they had a dinner party, they filled it with warm water prior to dinner
And when the guests came, all the silver after each course was washed in the room
I'm never so sure whether it was to keep the silver from the guests or to keep it from the staff working downstairs, but all the silver was kept in the room
And then after dinner, it would be stored in the drawers underneath
A pair of tables in the dining room are a lovely example of Killarney marketry
Now Killarney, during the famine times, had no work and the Bourne Vincent family, who lived then in Muckra's house, started a marketry center to get the work for the people in the area
And it became a very famous part of the history of the area
It contains wood all from the estate, yew, arbutus, rosewood, and it's a very fine example of the work that was done at the time there
Our 18th century water tank was an interesting piece, it was used in a home in Italy, in Venice, and it was built to store water that came from the roof system
And it's done in the sea style with the sea horses and the sea nymphs and that type of thing, so it's a very interesting piece
It has a little connection with America too, because Lytton Strachey, who was married to the sister of Virginia Woolf, was in his home as a child
Because Michael Holroyd, the biographer of Oscar Wilde, has written about it as a child, he hid in it as a child, so he took the lid off it and hid in it, so it has quite an interesting history
The park closed as a railway hotel in 1977, but reopened in 1980 under new management
The emphasis is on old world style and a very personal service
People come here to enjoy the all year round beauty of the Kerry countryside and to experience a luxurious lifestyle that developed in rural Ireland
And with the passing of the landed gentry, nearly became extinct
This is the bedroom part of your suite, with a lovely little sitting area over here, and as you can see there's magnificent panoramic views of Kenmore Bay out here
But however much luxury there is indoors, the Kerry landscape outside offers mild weather, even in December, an offer which is close to being irresistible
Macross Abbey, in the Killarney National Park, was founded by the local chief, McCarthy Moore, in 1448, for the Franciscan friars
The Franciscans, with their vows of poverty and service and the inspiration they derived from their founder, St Francis of Assisi, were perhaps the gentlest of all the great medieval monastic orders
But their life at Macross was far from gentle or peaceful. Medieval Ireland was a turbulent place and they were constantly embroiled in controversy and violence
Finally, in 1583, they were driven out as an indirect result of the British King Henry VIII's row with the Pope over his marital problems
They came back again, but were again driven out by Oliver Conwell and his Puritan army of invasion in 1652
With quiet stubbornness, the friars kept on their work in the area for another 200 years, though they never again inhabited the great Irish Gothic ruins of Macross Abbey
Walls steeped in the very blood of history, walls ringing with stories, atrocity stories, walls of death
Macross House is an early Victorian mansion, built to a more romantic design than the Park Hotel
The architect chose the English Elizabethan style for the centrepiece of an estate in the wilds of Kerry
The national park which surrounds Macross House in Abbey is famous for its deer, and justly famous
150 years ago, around the time the house was built, the ancient and stately Irish Red Deer was on the verge of extinction
There were probably less than 60 animals left in the whole country and they were all on two adjoining estates, Macross and Kenmare
But the last herd of native Irish Red Deer has been carefully protected and managed, first by the landlords and now by the Office of Public Works
The park was presented to the nation by the last landlord, Senator Arthur Vincent in 1932
Today there are between 850 and 900 of these magnificent animals in the woods and hills around Killarney
And the stock has been used to start new herds in areas of the country where they have become extinct
Naturalists come to Killarney to see the wild animals and the plants
They may also, if they're interested in things wild and pure, visit the Strawberry Tree Restaurant in Killarney
The Strawberry Tree Restaurant gets its name from the Arbutus, the Arbutus unido, which is a tree that is indigenous to the area here
It will grow naturally nowhere else
The use of organic foods is very important these days, and more and more over the years I've found customers quite eager when I have something organic on the menu
And that's not just organic vegetables, it applies right across the board
Free-range meats, fowl, wild game, wild fish, wild herbs, wild mushrooms, nuts, berries, etc
And the enthusiasm of my customers have made me realise that this is a goal to strive for
With this in mind, recently we decided to convert totally to free-range and organic foods
Irish bread-making is a simple form compared to continental bread-making
In this country we would have soft wheat, whereas in the continent it would be hard wheat
And for this reason we would use other things in our bread-making to make it rise
So to two-quarters of a pound of brown flour and a quarter pound of white flour you would add butter, you would add bread soda, sugar, buttermilk and salt as well
And then the final process would be to wet the product, and that's with butter first until it comes to a crumb texture
And then add the buttermilk to make a moist, maybe something similar to what a porridge would look like
The type of wheat I like to use is obviously organic wheat, it has a better flavour
Around here locally in Killarney, Muckers House have a farm and it's farmed by traditional methods
And perhaps to get it milled in Blennerville, which is a local working windmill, and it's done by traditional methods as well
In normal soda bread-making we would keep the bread quite high for the first maybe 25 or 30 minutes, check the bread then, maybe turn the vegetable around so that one side of the bread isn't cooking fast and the other
And then drop the vegetable into the fire, onto the last hook, it's that stage then that we might put embers on top of the vegetable in which to brown the bread inside, it gives heat from all sides then
And it would generally take about 10 minutes to finish off, and that's your finished product
By evening, in the Park Hotel, there are more good things on display
This is December, late December
So Christmas is in the air, the sort of Christmas enjoyed by the discerning in the age of Charles Dickens
We've come a long way since the last century, but maybe there are some of the finer things in life which we've managed to forget in the process, things which we may have to travel to Kenmare to experience
Sleep in heavenly peace
I am a man, I am a woman, I am God, God himself
Alleluja, Engel är gläd, Kantens ord givna i stiget
Gry zanslada vort hei, Gry zanslada vort hei
The morning comes with a reminder that Kerry is not just mountains, lakes and ancient buildings
It also has a long and beautiful coastline, so off, into the West, to explore the shoreline and discover the great tradition of craft that flourishes in these parts
West Kerry must have a higher density of potters than anywhere else in Ireland
We came here in 1975 when I left my job as a cameraman in OTE and at that stage myself and my wife, and we always worked as a partnership, we intended having one other person with us, but since then our numbers at this time of the year in the winter are up to about 36 people and in the summer we go up to between 45 and 50
Our pots here function as the primary aspect and then we've tried to refine the designs over the years, we never take a big leap from one particular thing to another, we evolve gradually and that's a definite policy here
And as well as that I keep away quite a lot from other potters to try not to become influenced and have a definite line that is recognised as mine
We decorate with various oxides and have begun to use some preparations made up by the bigger companies for use to give us more colour in our decoration
But the glazes themselves are something that we have evolved over the years here and we have a wider variety of glazes than you would normally find in one single pottery
We used to export to a lot of the European countries in large quantities and because the demand is too great here we are cutting down on the amount, we are exporting, but we send pots all over the world in significant quantities and it gives me great sense of satisfaction always
The big seascapes are a source of inspiration to creative people
Art and craft are inextricably linked, particularly so when the craft is making a musical instrument, Ireland's oldest musical instrument
The first thing people tend to comment on when they hear the Ilan pipes is they are surprised at how quiet they are
The Ilan pipes are intended as an indoor instrument and they are lower pitched than the Scottish bagpipe
The other big difference is the chanter, which is the part that plays the melody, has a range of two octaves, whereas the Scottish bagpipe plays one octave and a tone below that
A rough estimate I'd say there are about a thousand parts in a set of pipes. The main materials will be leather, brass and timber. The timber I've been using mostly now has been two different varieties of ebony, but I hope to use boxwood, I hope to use more of that in the future
And the other thing is when you're working with timber you have to allow a certain amount of time, because if you take a lump of timber and throw a hole in it and turn it down and so on, it's going to change over a period of weeks of that
So it's worthwhile putting things aside and coming back to them rather than trying to rush the job, because if you try to rush with timber it will end up that the whole set of pipes will fall apart after a couple of years
I would tend to make up batches of various parts, because if you're setting up to say two pieces of brass or that, it takes longer sometimes to set up than to actually carry out the operation, so I tend to make up maybe a dozen or so very small parts
They've become extraordinarily popular in the last 10-15 years. When I got interested initially, which was about 20 years ago, I suppose I knew most people who played the pipes, but at this stage I've just given up trying to keep in touch with the circle of pipes
And it's become very international and people from all countries and all backgrounds have taken interest in the pipes
The reason why most people who play Irish music would play it would be to get down to the pub and it's the common ground, I suppose, where people meet up
I think in the past it used to be in people's houses, but I suppose there's a nice neutrality about the pub
It's just that the pub, you know
From the nice neutrality of the pub back to the intimate luxuries of the park hotel
To understand the lifestyle that has been preserved here, you have to understand that it's based on quite simple things done extraordinarily well
Country activities, country produce, country society, all refined to a point that approaches perfection
Breakfast in bed is rather a simple pleasure, but done with this amount of style, it becomes something very special indeed
I hope you enjoy your breakfast
There's one way in which Kerrion December never conforms to the stereotype of the Christmas card, and that's the weather
No snow-decked trees, no skating on the frozen lakes, but a soft, mild day that entices you to work off some of that indulgence in the good life
with healthy outdoor exercise. The simplest and perhaps the most satisfying of all forms of outdoor exercise in this sort of landscape is going for a walk
And there is a surprise to this beautiful and rocky countryside. Beneath the surface is another landscape, also rocky, also beautiful, but very, very different
Crack Cave is millions of years old. It was formed during the Ice Age. When the glaciers melted, many rivers were formed, some overground and some underground
At one stage, three rivers flowed through Crack Cave. Eventually, the floors of each river eroded into each other, and the big cavern you see here behind my back, that is how that was formed
Crack Cave was discovered here on our farm in 1983, and how it happened was the county council invited the professor of geography from the university in Cork to investigate the source of the local river here
And he went into old caves in a field just in front of our house here, and in these old caves he came to a sump, which is like a well, and he got an idea there might be something beyond that
So he got these cave divers to come from England. They dived into the well. It was 12 feet deep, and they swam through a flooded passage, 20 feet long, and came up into these caverns that had never had any form of life
They had been lying here in the stillness for millions of years, and nobody knew they were here
We decided in 1987 to develop the cave as a show cave, and the reason was that here we are, in the middle of the county of Kerry, and for generations, we've been looking for a place to build our own cave
We decided in 1987 to develop the cave as a show cave, and the reason was that here we are, in the middle of the county of Kerry, and for generations, people had been passing through Castle Island on their way to Killarney, Dingle and the Ring of Kerry
And we could see that there was great potential for development of a tourist product, particularly an all-weather tourist product
Christmas is now very close, which means activity speeds up on the complex network of local supply, which provides the staff of the hotel with the raw materials from which they fashion perfection
A mild climate and a clean environment make for ingredients which are second to none, like oysters and mussels from the nearby Atlantic coast, to supply an elegant starter course for Christmas dinner
Preparing the dessert has actually been going on for most of the year
We make the Victorian Christmas pudding as a tradition in the house. It goes very well with the old-style hotel. Originally, the Victorian Christmas pudding was in a very old tradition where they wrapped the pudding itself in buttered and floured muslin, was suspended over some simmering water, and was cooked in that for eight to ten hours
It was taken out of the water and then suspended in a cool place, generally in the larder of the old houses, for maybe two or three months, and then reheated on the day for about four hours
Every year we just make one Victorian Christmas pudding, because it's not really practical to make too many. We generally use that one just for presentation in the restaurant on Christmas night in front of the guests, and the pudding really is a highlight of the meal
When dinner hour finally arrives, there is a magic to the moment which is the essence of every good Christmas that ever was. The oysters and the mussels are there to wake up the appetite
Behind the scenes, the timing is perfect. The artists are unhurried, and today the cellars must be plundered for long buried treasures to be drunk at a feast
All this is an overture to the first great crescendo, target, of course, but with an attention to detail, a finesse that can only come from having had a hundred or more Christmases in which to practice getting it exactly right
Here in the heart of rural Ireland, at midwinter, is revealed a secret, the simple but so vital secret of enjoying yourself wholeheartedly
The skill of pleasure, cultivated for many generations in the big houses, has something to offer to the world of today
A landscape beyond time, a way of life cherished and refined in the Irish countryside
The elemental beauty of Ireland's northwest Atlantic coast in winter is a powerful and primal experience
Burial place of May, the mythic warrior queen, the ancient mystic presence of Ben Bulban in dappled light inspires awe and reverence and wonder
For this is Yate's country, the physical landscape of Sligo which nurtured and fired the imagination of the young poet
By Temple Lake, the Percivals of Temple House preserve the traditions and values of the old Anglo-Irish way of life by tenaciously adapting to modern circumstances
Sandy Percival is a farmer who welcomes guests to enjoy the traditional country life winter pursuits
I'm a sheep farmer, I've just over a thousand ewes, there's 200 of them have lambed already and therefore they lambed about Christmas, but 60% of my land is only suitable for shooting, it's woodland and bogland, so that's why I organise the shoots in the winter
If you've got a house that size you need help to keep the roof on, besides it gets lonely, you can just imagine two or three people rattling around in a house like that, it's much more fun to have eight or nine guests and learn about different parts of the world
Less than a stone's throw from this splendid Georgian mansion lies the ruins of an extraordinary historical anachronism, the Knights Templar Castle at Temple Lake
They came to Sligo in the year 1200 and wholly out of place in medieval Ireland, this militant order dedicated to the liberation of Jerusalem from Mohammedan heresy was no match for the guile of the Ohara clan, the local chieftains
By the early 1300s the knights were vanquished and the Ohara banner flew over Temple, they held sway before yielding to the Croftons at the time of the Reformation
In 1665 entered George Percival, father of the present Sligo family, who by marrying Mary Crofton established one of the great Anglo-Irish dynasties, the Percivals of Temple House
Unlike many other Anglo-Irish landlords, the Percivals stood by their tenentry during the great famine of the 1840s, with remarkable generosity in attempting to provide famine relief, the Percivals themselves fell on hard times
My great-great-great-grandmother died in 1847 of famine fever, trying to keep the tenants alive, and her son then had to sell up in the late 50s under the Incumbent Estates Act because we were bankrupt
And the new landlords, the Hordes, made life very miserable for the tenants, so they asked the agent to write to Hong Kong to the third son, and he managed to buy it back
And then the house was rebuilt and refurnished in 1864 when the Chinamen came back and bought it back after the famine
So it's entirely refurbished from London, mail order from Hong Kong really, and so it means that the mirrors and the dining room table, they were all actually made for the room that they're now in, and they were actually assembled in the rooms when they came over
Up till the first war, at the beginning of the century, there was eleven girls and five men working in the house
So we got maidens laying for the girls and bats to walk upstairs for the bachelor servants
There were five men, seven boys working in the garden, there were five girls working between the dairy and the poultry, five gamekeepers, and twenty-three on the farm with about twenty horses
From the coach horses to the Clydesdales and Irish draught for working on the farm
But Temple House was not immune to changing times and the escalating costs of maintenance, the Percival's began to consider opening their house to paying guests
We first had friends from Dublin to shoot for us, with us, and then the tourist board said, well why don't you do it on a bigger scale, so that was in about 1981, and then they said, well if you're doing that, why don't you take summer business as well
So we started in a very small way, with very few guests to start with, but over the last thirteen years it has built up now
Traditional country pursuits attract many winter visitors
Well the shoots are organised about six months in advance and we usually cater for parties of six to ten people at a time
Early morning at Temple House and the estate manager John Davis is in charge of the day's shoot
Shooting parties of six to eight people are favoured by John, in keeping with the local tradition of providing good sport to convivial company, in a spirit of fair play
The snipe shooting season starts on the first of September, but we don't generally start shooting that early because there wouldn't be that many there
We wait for the big migrations of birds from Europe, which generally come in probably the end of October, beginning of November, depending on weather
The type of shooting we offer here is by no means easy, and although we can probably show them a lot of birds, at the end of the day the bag wouldn't be anything like the type of thing that pheasant shooters expect
A driven pheasant shoots where they shoot hundreds, we don't have that type of shooting, but we have good quality sporting birds in a lovely environment and I think that's what people appreciate
As we're walking across the bog, the dogs are working out in front of us and we're hoping that some snipe will get up
We normally walk into the wind because that way the sound of your approach is masked a bit, and snipe generally sit tight in when it's good and windy anyway, and they also fly into the wind
So if the wind is fairly strong as it is today, a bird getting up and flying into the wind is held up a little and it makes it a bit easier for you to hit it
In Drumcliffe Churchyard, a place of pilgrimage at the foot of Ben Bulban, William Butler Yeats, arguably the greatest English language poet of the 20th century, lies buried
No marble, no conventional phrase, on limestone quarried near the spot, by his command these words are cut, cast a cold eye on life, on death, horseman passed by
His stay in Sligo, it's an extraordinary thing, was comparatively brief, a fairly protracted period of his youth, certainly as a child and as a young boy and as a teenager if you want
But then there were only fitful visits back, but if you read his autobiographies, it's extraordinary how much that staying here in his youth took possession of his psyche
Where the wandering water gushes from the hills above Glencar, in pools among the rushes that scarce convey the star, we seek for slumbering trout and whispering in their ears give them unquiet dreams
Leaning softly out from ferns that drop their tears over the young streams, come away oh human child to the waters and the wild with a fairy hand in hand for the world more full of weeping than you can understand
He tried to fashion a vision, a philosophy that tried to get away from I suppose the Christian understanding back to an older ideal of an heroic Ireland
And at the same time to escape the limitations of what it is to be bound in the physical and to get into what he calls the eternities and Ben Baldwin symbolises all these
When we come at the end of time to Peter sitting in state he will smile on the three old spirits but call me first through the gate
For the good are always the merry saved by an evil chance and the merry love the fiddle and the merry love to dance
And when the folk there spy me they will all come up to me with here is the fiddler of Dooney and dance like a wave of the sea
The violin is probably the proper word for it, fiddle, I don't know where it originates from, different than a fiddle player and a violin player
The fiddle player is a classmate like myself, they don't read music, they play by ear and I think the violinist would be the one who plays from music, stand or whatever it is
I would say that would be my best way of explaining it anyway
Well I started way back in 1953 in England, I was a blacksmith by trade but I was always interested in fiddle making
I got him with a German fiddle maker in Coventry in England and I went from 1953 until 1969 as night classes, going a few hours at night and Sunday morning and Saturday afternoon and I took it from there
An innate modesty prevents Michael O'Shannon from telling the whole truth
In a country renowned for great music and superb instrument makers, an O'Shannon fiddle is much sought after, many famous players place a premium on the tone, timbre and resonance built into his creations
The sycamore is a favoured choice of wood, but that's just the beginning, the craftsmanship may also be taken for granted, but what Michael O'Shannon brings to his work is a rarity indeed, an intuitive understanding of the music itself and its place in the Irish psyche
An instrument made by a man possessed of such an understanding is indeed a work of art
You can tell the handmade job anywhere, I mean it's not that it's not a great, it is a good finish in there, but there is something about the handmade instrument or tool or whatever it is like, it just stands out like, you know, it proves its success, you know that it is handmade
The O'Shannon fiddle is a work of art, but it's not that it's not a great, it is a work of art
We have probably, I would imagine, the best course fishing in Europe I would think, in Ireland generally and Sligo is no exception
We're going fishing for pike today on the lake, we'll do some drift fishing and just casting from the boat then, so it's cast, retrieve, cast, retrieve
And when you're drifting with the wind you can cover a fair bit of ground and hopefully a hungry pike somewhere on the way
Nice cast
I thought you'd gone numb then
Sorry?
I thought you'd gone numb
That's cool more than
Traditionally a winter pursuit pike fishing, I think that's because, it's because of the salmon fishing in England I think that you know that the methods are similar, spinning
And it was to prevent ne'er-do-wells fishing for salmon and pretending they were fishing for pike, the pike season opened on the 1st of October
So it was just a winter time sport, although actually you get far better pike fishing in the summer time
There's a French couple who, they've been coming every year for a few years now and they lay siege to the same pike every year, you know the pike are territorial, they never move very far from their own area
And they go and fish in the one area for their week or two, however long they stay, and they generally catch the same fish and they're very nice to it and they return it, and I believe they're on first name terms now
It doesn't take long to get the knack of it, all you want there is a fish
Sligo boasts some of the most rugged and unspoiled coastline in all of Western Europe, with clear water, empty beaches and wind and air, the sense of freedom is intoxicating
In the crisp air of a winter evening, the Sligo sunset can be spectacular
With light and shade emphasizing the simplicity of a landscape where myth and beauty coincide
Well it's lovely to meet so many people from so many different countries, and I like cooking so it's great fun to cook for so many people so much
Oh it's great fun, most interesting, we couldn't live here if we didn't do it, and some only stay one or two nights, but some of them come back for ten days or two weeks, three weeks
Because we only have eight or nine people and they're from so many different parts of the world, we make friends and then we get letters later saying they've met up with the friends that they've met here, so it's not like sitting at separate tables in a big hotel, they actually join the family
Of the many well kept secrets which the Irish like to reserve for themselves, Temple House in County Sligo is one of the most beguiling
If you want to live at home, then this is one of the best ways of doing it, because it keeps the house alive instead of turning it into a museum
Music
Music
Music