Mount Stewart is one of Northern Ireland’s best National Trust properties, having undergone a major programme of renovations that lasted for three years and cost £8m, seeing completion in 2015.
Having previously been owned by the families of Montgomery and Colville, Mount Pleasant, as it was originally known, was acquired by Alexander Stewart when he purchased the manors of Newtownards and Comber for £42,000 in 1744. Like the Montgomerys and the Colvilles, the Stewarts were originally from Scotland. Stewart was from Ballylawn in County Donegal and had been MP for Londonderry. He used some of his wife Mary’s fortune (inherited from her brother who had been Governor of
Bombay) to buy the estate.
Alexander Stewart’s eldest son Robert became an MP in 1769 and a peer in 1783, rising to Marquess of Londonderry in 1816. He died in 1821 and was buried at Newtownards Priory in the family tomb. His son was Lord Castlereagh, the Chief Secretary of Ireland who forced through the Actof Union in 1800 and later the British Foreign Secretary at the time of the Congress of Vienna of 1814-15.
The house was constructed over decades and much of its present appearance dates from the late 1840s.The most distinguished building on the property is the Temple of the Winds, built in the 1780s, which is in the first rank of Classical buildingsin Ireland.
With an incredible collection of plants as well as great ingenuity in their design, Mount Stewart’s gardens are among the finest in the world. Edith, Lady Londonderry, was instrumental in the development of these gardens. Look out for the Red Hand of Ulster flower bed as well as topiary shaped like an Irish harp.
