Ballynahinch Castle sits on a picturesque lakeshore in a rugged area of Connemara known for its 12 Bens (peaks). Photo / Derek Cheng
Ballynahinch Castle sits on a picturesque lakeshore in a rugged area of Connemara known for its 12 Bens (peaks). Photo / Derek Cheng
Welcome to the wonderfully colourful Ballynahinch Castle in Ireland’s Galway, where a cricket-loving maharaja, an animal lover and unforgivable chocolate sins all come together to make a delightful stay, writes Derek Cheng
It must have been quite the spectacle, an elegant Indian man arriving in a poor, peasant-filled part of western Ireland.
Dressed in a silk coat, white leggings and a turban showcasing a large emerald, he stepped off the train with dozens of Indian and Arab servants in tow, one of them carrying a cage with his pet parrot - and maybe leading an elephant too.
This would crane necks even today, but in 1924, it was probably the first time many of the pale locals had seen a non-white face, whose ostentatious arrival would have challenged stereotypes about race, class, wealth.
The much-anticipated arrival announced the new owner of the prestigious Ballynahinch Castle and its surrounding estate. Colonel Kumar Sri Sir Ranjitsinhji Vibhaji II - or Ranji, to his mates - had already challenged racial stereotypes in England, where he had become a world-class cricketer in the late 1800s - a time when most non-whites were thought of as good for little beyond subservience.
Ranji had shown no such subservience on his test debut, when he scored 62 and 154 not out with an unorthodox repertoire that included the leg glance, a shot he is credited with inventing. Back home in India, Ranji was not accustomed to anything but the royal treatment; his bloodline made him a Maharaja, and he eventually became ruler of the state of Nawanagar.
And one of the richest men in the world, who could buy a large castle estate in Ireland on a whim.
A portrait of His Highness the Maharaja Colonel Kumar Sri Sir Ranjitsinhji Vibhaji II of Nawanager, or "Ranji" for short, hangs in the hotel bar. Photo / Derek Cheng
He had long ago hung up his cricket bat by the time of his neck-craning arrival to Ballynahinch, an estate nestled quietly in the rugged Connemara region, an area with little economic heft due to poor quality soil. The name, meaning “household of the island”, refers to the original castle on a wee island on Ballynahinch Lake, built by the O’Flaherty clan in the 16th century.
The present castle is in a more practical position at the lakeshore, and has seen constant upgrades and renovations since it was built, originally as a hunting and fishing lodge, in 1756.
By then it had passed to the Martin family, whose colourful descendants included a man known as Hair Trigger Dick or Humanity Dick. Richard Martin’s pistol work in over 100 duals earned him the first moniker, while the latter came from his love of animals; he banished those who were cruel to cattle to the island with the remains of O’Flaherty’s castle.
He took this principled stance further when he became an MP, spearheading a law through Parliament in the 1820s preventing cruelty to farm animals. This led to a famous guilty verdict for a cruel farmer, immortalised in a historic painting of Martin presenting a tortured donkey in a courtroom amid an uproar.
Today the castle is a luxury lodge, where plaques at the entrance each pay tribute to Humanity Dick and to Ranji, whose face appears in portraits on the walls of the hotel bar. This was one of the prince’s favourite rooms, the scene of his legendary annual birthday party when he took great pleasure serving guests as well as hotel staff. This is also where we were told about rumours of a pet elephant he once brought with him, though no elephantine evidence has emerged.
Lavish parties were not the only path into locals’ hearts. Ranji also became the largest employer in the area, landscaping the enormous gardens and building fishing piers and huts along the nearby streams and river.
And on arrival every summer, he bought five luxury cars including two limousines, which he left to the locals every year when he returned to India. After almost a decade of annual visits before his death, the mostly rural region must have been an odd spectacle, with more per-capita limousines than most.
Many of the exquisite communal rooms of the Ballynahinch Castle have open fire places, wall-filled artworks and chandeliers. Photo / Derek Cheng
There’s unsurprisingly no sign of any luxury limousines on any of the 16km of nature trails that follow the lakeshore and river banks, where fly fishers try their luck in salmon-filled waters. Our guided walk was a relaxing stroll through an explosion of autumnal colours near the castle, and then through the dense woodlands where we were alert for red deer among the oak, maple and willow trees, as well as edible funky fungi feeding off the forest floor.
Further afield, there’s a network of sealed cycleways where you can venture to several smaller lakes, exploring the barren scenery from where the 12 Bens (from the Gaelic term ‘beann’, meaning peak) thrust skywards. My attempt to do this was heightened by face-stinging horizontal rain, which further opened the senses to the expansive, sweeping landscape.
Entering the castle is like stepping into an exquisite period drama: chandeliered rooms with open fireplaces, well-loved first-edition books in the library, and Ballynahinch-inspired artwork on the walls.
It’s no wonder that it was a favourite sanctuary among artists. Nobel Prize-winning writer Seamus Heaney spent many an afternoon contemplating the library and writing letters to contemporaries filled with said contemplations.
His poem, Ballynahinch Lake, speaks of “a captivating brightness ... Eked into us like a wedge knocked sweetly home, into core timber”. Irish writer and philosopher John Moriarty also spent time inhaling the ambience; he was the local gardener while composing his first published work Dreamtime, published in 1994.
The lush autumnal colours form a warm wrap around Ballynahinch Castle. Photo / Derek Cheng
It felt almost like a dream when I entered my bedroom. Everything was so perfectly manicured that touching anything would sully it, upsetting the balance of the universe. Instead, I dropped my bag by the door and contemplated the perfect symmetry of the sitting chairs, the grandness of the windows looking out to the river, the finer details of the lampshades.
My meditations were interrupted when a knock at my door revealed a staffer offering a ‘turn-down service’. Unfamiliar with the customs of such luxury establishments, I had to ask what this meant and was informed it was preparing my room for sleeping. I insisted he enter the room to see for himself how unsullied it was - no air particle had been ruffled in the slightest - and how it needed servicing like the surface of the sun needed a hot water bottle for added warmth.
He diligently ignored me and started adjusting the pillows from standing vertical to lying horizontal. He peeled back the sheet by precisely 17.6cm.
“What are you doing? I’m trying to tell you the room is so untouched and perfect that it’s in need of nothing.”
“Turn-down service,” he repeated. He then lay a wee chocolate bonbon on each of the two top pillows.
The service turned out to be helpful, though I didn’t realise this until after that evening’s dinner had enveloped all of my sensory capacity. The castle restaurant uses as much produce from the vegetable and herb parts of the enormous walled garden as possible, as well as any foraged mushrooms. Our menu included a woodland mushroom starter, roast scallop, braised beef cheek with smoked bone marrow, and, to ensure total tastebud overload, coffee-infused chocolate cake for dessert.
How pleasant it was, after returning to my room, to require the least exertion of energy to slip into bed. Maybe I’d have been able to flip the pillows and peel back the sheet myself. Maybe not, so ready was I to put all my contemplations to rest.
But I woke in the middle of the night to the unnerving feeling of lying on something that shouldn’t be lain on.
I didn’t realise the extent of the chocolate disaster until, full of dread, I pulled back the covers in the morning. This amount of chocolate smear resembles something else entirely, of course. In trying to leave the room as untouched as possible, I’d somehow sullied it with what seemed, at first glance, the greatest possible sully: a toilet calamity.
I scribbled a lame apology note and left it next to the flattened chocolate wrapper on the bed, irrefutable proof that the offending substance was, in fact, chocolate. But the guilt was too much, and I soon confessed to the hotel manager who assured me, perhaps even truthfully, that this sort of thing happened all the time.
Sister Genevieve, 76, who kept the lights on at Kylemore Abbey by making chocolate after the boarding school closed down. Photo / Derek Cheng
How fortuitous that our next stop, Kylemore Abbey, was also perhaps the only place in the world where I could seek forgiveness for my chocolate sins. The property shared many similarities with Ballynahinch: a grand castle with a Victorian walled garden next to a lake. A notable difference, however: it’d been bought by a bunch of nuns whose livelihoods now depended on their making and selling chocolate, or, in my view, Holy Chocolate.
They had arrived in 1920 as World War I refugees, and established a boarding school for girls while also running a farm and guesthouse. At one stage there were 49 nuns, and today there are still 12, including 76-year-old Sister Genevieve Harrington.
She was here in 2010 when the school closed, shutting down their main source of revenue. “Nuns have to earn their living,” she told us. “I took a basic chocolate course and built up from there.”
And how it’s been built. They now have several chocolate machines, as well as a professional chocolatier who runs the show.
Sister Genevieve’s favourite? Milk chocolate, rather than dark. That’s all the indication I needed.
I bought a handful of milk chocolate sheep and enjoyed them immensely, not only for their undoubted deliciousness, but also their undeniable power to cleanse me of my chocolate sins.
