Articles > Outrageous Behaviour at Castle Leslie

A generous fire is crackling in the huge old fireplace in the entrance hall - it’s a welcoming scene on a fairly dull Irish winter’s evening in County Monaghan. Castle Leslie has no reception desk, the first declaration that this is not a hotel, it’s a historical home where paying guests are invited to share in the legacy of generations of its owners. Locating a staff member I’m shown up the sweeping staircase to the Mauve room, an elegant reminder of the grandeur of times past. I get a glimpse through an open door on the way of an elderly well dressed man in a high backed armchair reading a book. For a moment I could be back in another era, with guests relaxing in their quarters before joining the visiting party for a pre dinner drink in the drawing room.

In the high-ceilinged Mauve room, with its tall windows framed by beautiful but faded fabrics, there are letters from John to Jack on the dressing table dated from some forty years before - Jack has been in Italy and is enquiring how the family are at home. There are curious men’s suits in the wardrobe (later I imagine that these are used in the murder mystery weekends run at the castle). Venturing into the adjoining room, an enormous free standing Victorian bath is placed in the middle of a large bathroom; the water closet off to the side is an original wooden inset. There are no showers, not to mention jacuzzis here, I have stepped back into another century where broadband hasn’t been dreamt of, television is yet to come, and the Celtic Tiger Economy is, frankly, unimaginable.

The history of the Leslie family is well documented in Ireland, with a host of generations appearing in the picture. Sir Jack, who with his sister Anita, inherited the Castle and passed it to his brother Desmond in 1964, recently printed his 90 year-long memoirs. Tales of a life lived to the full travelling Europe and the US and surviving two world wars. Nowadays he can be found in the Castle’s dining room most evenings for dinner, after which he is likely to be sighted in any of the local establishments where there is something happening. 90 years don’t impede this character from continuing to live life to the full.

Sammy Leslie, the daughter of Desmond, now runs the estate, having undertaken an ambitious project to make it a viable commercial venture while preserving its integrity and ensuring its survival. When I let slip the word ‘hotel’ into the conversation, Sammy is quick to correct me, pointing out that this is not a ‘hotel’ but a ‘castle’. It is in fact a fair distinction to make and it is part of the appeal of the place; this will never be a five star hotel – it falls outside of the norm and any attempt to fit it into the standard accreditation framework would be like trying to put a square peg into a round hole. The castle’s owners are keen to share their heritage with those who visit, they could have done something dramatically different, such as putting in a newly chic establishment with yet another golf course on the 1000 acre estate. The property is instead being slowly restored to its original splendour. With the castle covering some 26,000 square feet, it is no small undertaking, and a huge investment of 10 million euro has recently been pumped in, backed in part by a Euro cross border funded package.

The décor is faded in places, but it is a relief not to see the standard shiny red ‘hotel’ carpet considered obligatory in most places these days. Some of the castle’s features are quirky and fun, ranging from the bizarre (Winston Churchill’s christening robe adorns the wall in the drawing room) to the humorous (a number of mens’ urinals in the cloakroom suggest they are graded by size of the user).

The original orientation of the house was changed in the late 1800’s, it now looks out over magnificent grounds and onto a spectacular lake. There are opulent marble columns in places, apparently taken from Italy in their day, and marble busts appear in unlikely corners. I am told that Sir Jack does a great tour of the house for willing guests, which can take up to any number of hours dependent on the number of anecdotes included. I would have liked to take him up on his offer during my visit, but unfortuntately by the time we got a free slot the castle was given over to a private wedding . Speaking of weddings, yes - this was the venue which hit the headlines when the now-defunct marraige of Sir Paul MacCartney to his lovely soon-to-be ex-bride Heather Mills took place. True to form, it was Sir Jack that let slip to the prowling paparazzi that a secret wedding would take place on Tuesday.

The history of the estate has, of course, been largely influenced by the political climate in Ireland. The edges of the property virtually run over the old border between north and south, and there was a time during the Troubles in the 1970s when the owners, struggling to maintain it, very nearly sold it out of the family. Sammy, now in her thirties, talks of her childhood summers spent at the Castle with her brothers and sisters running wild in the grounds. I comment on a 6 foot-long old wooden table we pass in the kitchens, and she recalls them surreptitiously carrying it into the gardens to jump ponies over. This was a childhood with a difference. Today Sammy is passionate about the restoration and development of her heritage, and has surrounded herself with an impressive, largely female team to put the various projects in place. She has put the estate in a trust to ensure its security for generations to come.

Like every great hotel must have its spa, every great castle must have its Master Chef. Noel McMeel, as well as running the superb restaurant - feeding diners at long candlelit tables - runs the recently opened cookery school. Housing a spectacular Molteni oven, the largest outside Paris and very much the pride of the Chef – the school has been set up in the refurbished basement on the site of the original Victorian kitchens.

Being an utterly non-dab hand in the kitchen myself, I decided to run the gauntlet and spent a day with Noel on the daringly-named Food and Erotica course. Learning to prepare a meal for the object of your affections, the ingredients chosen are lavish - oysters, fillet of beef with a rich bernaise sauce, followed by dark flavoured chocolate. I was joined by an unlikely but interesting mixture of people thrown together to learn the tricks of the trade – a student from Sweden, a young mother escaping three small kids, and two professional couples from Belfast. We spent the day baking imaginative breads, learning to open and dress the oysters, watching Noel deftly prepare the perfect fillet and pipe exquisite chocolate deserts, and finally, sitting to sample the feast we’d prepared. The school runs a quirky range of courses, from the one day Men-Only, to Valentine Aphrodisicas and Irish Cooking by Seasons.

Castle Leslie has been turned into a private members club where visitors are welcome once as non-members and then must join to continue staying at the Castle. As part of the estate, a Victorian hunting lodge was recently repurchased and restored, after being sold out of the family 20 years ago, and a large equestrian centre has been opened.

You don’t have to be an intrepid adventurer to enjoy the beauty of the castle and surrounding estate, but if you are looking for five star precision with room service and a G and T in a jacuzzi, look elsewhere. This is a destinantion for those who enjoy history, architecture, faded elegance and great food in candle light. A sense of humour is obligatory. To quote Sammy Leslie’s father, Desmond, “the greatest sin of a country house is to be narrow minded, predictable or even worse…dull”. That it is not.

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