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Irish Examiner
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Examiner
Golden Age swagger at €875k Kerry property with sunken garden
The decorative louvre window shutters at the front of The Kerries give the extras spacious Tralee property a little of the look of a French manor house. Inside, the décor in the high ceilinged drawing room is everything you would expect in a 19th Century house while the two large chandeliers and rich gold swag curtains give the room a touch of the glamour and elegance of a French salon. 'I wanted it to look 18th Century,'' says the owner, who when renovating in the 1970s and 1980s was well ahead of her time in creating open plan living space and adding en suite bathrooms. When she and her late husband moved into the house in 1968, it had already been in her husband's family for almost 20 years. 'The rooms were smaller, closed off and dark – I wanted to make it so that I could walk from room to room downstairs and I wanted more light,'' she reveals. What followed was a slow – room by room renovation - which involved the knocking of walls and the addition of more windows and patio doors. Grand staircase at The Kerries 'We put in large en suite bathrooms - this was before houses had small en suites, she says adding that the local builders came back so often over the years that they became friends. Her favourite story about her home involves the sunken patio garden at the western side. 'One sunny day I said wouldn't it be nice to have garden sheltered from the wind '' she says, explaining that she didn't mean this as anything more than idle throwaway remark. But shortly afterwards her husband called to tell her that he had the use of a digger which had already arrived and to ask her how deep she wanted the sunken garden to be. 'This digger had been hired by the film crew of Ryan's Daughter and my husband got it for a few hours when it wasn't being used.' And for the last 56 years – the sunken walled patio area – accessed by a short flight of steps – has been the centre point of the gardens , providing shelter from the south west winds , just as she wanted. As previously mentioned, The Kerries is an exceptionally spacious – property with 374 sq metres of living space which includes a 50 sq metre ground floor apartment in a converted outbuilding which has a bathroom, a kitchen and a bedroom. While the layout of property may be a little more modern than you would expect, the décor is old world and elegant and the furnishing are period appropriate The entrance hallway still has its original elaborately carved mahogany staircase and timber panelled walls as well as a chandelier added by the owner for a touch of glamour. The long high ceilinged drawing room – which stretches from front to rear – used to be two rooms. 'There was a drawing room and a breakfast room- but we turned them into one,'' says the owner who decorated it in 18th century style and filled it, and the rest of the house, with antique furniture and period paintings. An artist, who painted and sold her work in earlier years, she has also hung some of her own paintings and included some modern ones. Alongside the drawing room is a formal dining room which has a lower ceiling and smaller chandeliers as well as a set of glass panelled double doors which open into the kitchen. The terrazzo floored kitchen has timber ceilings, a large antique dresser which came from Carmarthen in Wales, a selection of fitted units and another set of glass panelled doors which open into a smaller less formal sitting room/ music room with flagstone flooring and rooflights. Beyond this is the former boot room, where the owners used to keep guns for winter shooting , but which has long since turned into a sauna room. The upstairs originally had six bedrooms but now has three, including two with en suites. The main bedroom has three large windows including two which overlook the sunken garden and face west towards the coast. Its marble tiled en suite has a corner jacuzzi bath and a full height window. 'I wanted to be able to sit in the bath and look out on the gardens and the mountains,'' explains the owner. The bathroom and both en suites are elegantly finished in high quality marble tiling. Surprisingly for an 1880s built house, The Kerries has a C3 BER. The owner says they replaced the windows twice over the years and also fitted oil fired central heating. The 1.1 acre acre of lawned and wooded gardens which surround the house were also landscaped and replanted over the years while the long driveway has been fitted with electric gates. Creating colour in the garden was, the owner discovered, much more difficult than in the house. 'You needed to know about soil, varieties and other things,'' she says, admitting that had plenty of time to gain this knowledge over the years. Amongst the multitude of plants and ornamental shrubs and trees she planted to provide all year round colour are Camelia, Rhododendron, Azalea, wisteria and hydrangeas. Listing The Kerries with a guide of €875,000 Paul Stephenson of Sherry FitzGerald Stephenson Crean says it's a wonderfully unique home with beautiful gardens." Located close to the edge of Tralee, it's just three km from the town centre, ten km from Fenit Beach and three km from Cockleshell Beach.' VERDICT: A remarkably elegant home with large private walled gardens. it will require careful modernisation.
The Guardian
26-02-2025
- The Guardian
‘We try to put applicants off': couple chosen as live-in caretakers on uninhabited Irish island
A young couple in search of a new chapter in their lives are swapping creature comforts for life on an otherwise uninhabited island off the coast of Ireland with no hot water, stable electricity or cars. Camille Rosenfeld, from Minnesota in the US, and James Hayes, from Tralee in County Kerry, have been chosen to be this year's live-in caretakers of Great Blasket, the largest island of the most westerly archipelago in Europe. They will live in a stone house next to some ruined cottages abandoned in the 1950s and situated on a windswept hill overlooking the ocean, with gulls, seals and sharks for company. 'I think we will enjoy watching the sunsets, looking at the stars with no light pollution and winding down with a book in the candlelight,' said Rosenfeld, 26, who has never been on the island that will be her home from 1 April to 31 September. 'We are just really comfortable being uncomfortable,' she added. Life will be simple. Water on Great Blasket comes from a spring and must be boiled, while electricity for phones and head torches comes via batteries charged from a small wind turbine. The couple, who got married last summer, were selected from hundreds of applicants to run five holiday cottages and a coffee hatch for day-trippers. 'I genuinely think we will fall in with the rhythm of our new life and sense of freedom,' said Hayes, who himself has only been on the island once. 'We won't have the responsibilities of our jobs or day-to-day life, so it's a chance to live a simpler life.' Viewed from the mainland's Coumeenoole Beach, the setting for stormy scenes in the movie Ryan's Daughter, the islands are renowned for their rugged beauty and marine life, including basking sharks and dolphins. But the weather can be unforgiving, with howling winds, driving rain and powerful waves that can turn Trá Bán (white beach) into a rapidly shifting landscape. 'I just love coming out here and fixing things up. You just get a sense of satisfaction. You know you can just watch the seals and the beach and the wildlife and enjoy the solitude and how untouched it all is,' said Billy O'Connor, whose grandfather, local solicitor Peter Callery, and Peter's brother Jim bought part of the island in the 1980s. It was O'Connor and his partner, Alice Hayes, who picked the new caretakers. 'I just love being here. It is almost like stepping back in time. There are not many places in the world you can go and have totally pristine lands and water and totally switch off.' April, he said, is one of the most magical times to visit, with the great white beach blackened with thousands of seals. Last year's caretakers spoke of 2,000 seals and the seabirds that 'screeched eerily at night' and rested on the hill behind the house during the day. Sign up to Headlines Europe A digest of the morning's main headlines from the Europe edition emailed direct to you every week day after newsletter promotion The sense of isolation is what attracted Ireland's former prime minister Charles Haughey to buy neighbouring Inishvickillane island, but also the reason it drove families away, including Peig Sayers, whose 1936 biography used to be a compulsory part of the Irish language curriculum. When O'Connor and Hayes first advertised the live-in seasonal job in January 2020 they were inundated with 80,000 applications. They have now capped the number they consider at 300. 'First we try to put them off because if anything it is quite romanticised; the island, the sunsets and the beautiful places. But during the season it can be quite intense for the caretakers,' said Alice Hayes, who is no relation to James Hayes. 'Most people when they finish work go home to their safe haven and relax. But I often say to people going out there that they won't have that,' she said. 'You close the half door where you were serving coffee and you are home.' 'But I think the attractive thing is that pure sense of switching off. You are surrounded by nature and beautiful scenery. Even when it is miserable out there, it is still so stunning and there is just something about it that brings people to it.' James, who trained and worked as an architect in London, met his wife on the Burren in County Clare, another area of outstanding beauty and wilderness, where Camille was finishing her studies in arts and business. Further cementing their love of nature, they got engaged on another storied island, Inis Mór of the Aran Islands, off the coast of Galway, and ever since they have dreamed of doing the Blaskets job.
Telegraph
21-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
My film star mum claims I witnessed Burt Reynolds murder her lover
When we think of the great on-set tales from Hollywood history, many of us hold them at a distance, treating them like myths and legends populated by stars who feel so removed from our own lives that they might as well be fictional. That, of course, isn't the case. For every story there's a kernel of truth; for every star there's a real person and a family behind them; for every event there's a witness. I should know, having grown up surrounded by legends. My mother is the actress Sarah Miles, who starred in The Servant and Blow-Up and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for David Lean-directed Ryan's Daughter. My father was Robert Bolt, who wrote the screenplays for Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago and A Man for All Seasons, receiving two Oscars and three Golden Globes in the process. This made for an unusual childhood, to put it mildly. As well as in London, I grew up on film sets all over the world, from the Pacific island of Bora Bora, where Dad made The Bounty with David Lean, to Gila Bend, Arizona, where my mother made the Western The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing. The latter took place in 1973, and became the setting for not just that film, but one of Hollywood's greatest unsolved mysteries: when my mother's manager, David Whiting, died on set under circumstances that were, to say the least, suspicious. And 51 years on, I'd be dragged back into it. At that time, I was four years old and fascinated by all things Wild West – an obsession no doubt fermented by my father's enthusiasm for them, as well as our occasional communal viewings of The Magnificent Seven. Given that, you can imagine my reaction when I arrived on set in Arizona and met Burt Reynolds, who was starring with Mum. Reynolds was cool, really cool. When I first met him he was dozing: boots up, hat over face. Once awakened from his slumber, he could tell I wanted to draw – as they say in the Westerns – since I'd been loaned a gun belt and holster from the props department, and my fingers were twitching. As he got up to about-face for the customary 10 paces (and full of fear, I could tell…), he spat out some goop from the corner of his mouth. It was so cool that I stopped the role play to enquire as to what it was and if I could have some. 'It's chewing tobacco,' he said, offering me a bit from a pouch he had tucked into his cowboy boot. Though that's Mum's account – it could have been snuff or even strong gum. Naturally I partook, though of course within 10 seconds I wish I hadn't, such was the fireball that started to rip its way through my face. To this day I still don't remember if we ever got to the draw. Though, yes, perhaps a little irresponsible of him if viewed through today's lens, that was then. Besides, I'd be smoking weed with Mum in only six years' time anyway. I was comfortable on sets at that age, and confident enough around adults to have no reservations about speaking up. During one scene in the film, Burt and Jack Warden were to have a brawl, wrestling over a gun, then punching one another through a sugar-glass window. Given the hours it took to install, you can appreciate that the director was already very grumpy about having messed up the previous take, hence needing this reshoot. 'Action!' The clapperboard snapped down again. As they went bouncing off the walls, smashing props in the process, I suddenly noticed the barrel of the rubber gun they were wrestling over was bent. 'Cut!' I shouted, impulsively, from where I was standing, way behind and to the side of the camera. The sudden silence was deafening. All 30 or so members of the crew looked at me in total disbelief, including my hugely embarrassed mother. 'The rubber gun, it… it's bent in half!' I said, in a trembling voice. Burt glanced at his hand. 'Yup, that's a banana,' he said, holding it aloft to everyone's relieved laughter. He then patted me on the back for having saved yet another false window being smashed or, worse still, another day of costly repetitive filming. The attention felt good. That was the last of the 'good vibes' I remember from that production, as shortly afterwards, David Whiting died. David had been a fairly regular presence in my life over those few years. He'd previously had an affair with my mother, and was the final catalyst of my parents' divorce. A year earlier he was even sent to watch over me while hospitalised in an oxygen tent as Mum and Dad were filming Lady Caroline Lamb with Richard Chamberlain and Sir Laurence Olivier. In the Arizona desert, I was staying in the Travelodge Motel with my nanny in an adjacent, connecting motel room to Mum. It was in Mum's bathroom, on February 11 1973, that David's body was found. How he got there, how he died, and a dozen other questions relating to the evening, have been debated and disputed ever since. Though Mum's version of events has changed over the years, usually meaning they're inconsistent with the many other investigations, both official and journalistic, it is understandable that time might distort the truth. An allegation I might well suffer with the release of my forthcoming book, which is predominantly about recovering from drug addiction. Still, it wouldn't be possible for me to have been clean and sober for 38 years now, having given up drugs and alcohol at 18, should I not practice at least a modicum of self-honesty in my life. I distinctly remember some four years after the event, while living back with Mum again in Beverly Hills, that she suddenly became extremely stressed because there had been some regurgitative press about the incident on American TV. It sent her into a panic – though the strongest finger of suspicion had been pointed at Burt at the time of David's demise, it also wagged at her. The night he died, she had been in Burt's room, after an argument with David. Mum had been at Burt's birthday party, to which a select few were invited, but not David. When she returned, having briefly partied with some wranglers at the hotel afterwards, David, full of rage and jealousy, physically attacked her. Mum screamed for my nanny to fetch Burt, who eventually came to her rescue as David scarpered into the desert night. Burt gave chase, telling Mum to take refuge in his room, but he returned saying he couldn't find David, so they thought it safer if she remained with him. The dark Hollywood legend has it that Burt murdered David Whiting, but given he was fast becoming the hottest property in Hollywood, having just finished Deliverance, he was protected – by MGM, by the studio system and by Hollywood. The movie world was powerful at that time; the local cops of this Hicksville town were no match, it seemed. In the morning after David died, I was playing in Mum's bedroom, having come to look for her. David's body lay in the en suite bathroom. When she discovered the corpse, the scene looked like a perfectly staged overdose: pills scattered around the body, all in keeping with David being manic depressive. The slight problem was that not only was David apparently sporting a new, unstressed shirt, but he had several injuries, along with a gash on the back of his head that seemed consistent with a spur kick. There were also allegedly not enough pills in his system to have caused his death, according to one autopsy. Plus, the pill bottle mysteriously went missing. In the maelstrom and panic after David's body was found, movie moguls, plus the relevant heavy-hitting lawyers who told everyone to say and do nothing with the police until forced, flew in from LA. This being Mum's first Hollywood movie, she was happy to listen to their 'advice'. The death was initially recorded as suicide, but it soon changed to a murder investigation, before reverting again to suicide. Because Mum was also under suspicion, she needed as many character references as she could muster, and so asked Dad to be one. He obliged on the condition that he was given custody over me, as he felt Hollywood was no place for a child (he was proved right in the ensuing years), and even less so with a mother embroiled in a potential murder investigation. Eventually both Mum and Burt had their day in court, but with the support of the studio lawyers, were more than a fair match for the local judge, a part-time plumber who, by most accounts, seemed pretty infatuated with Mum. He didn't stand a chance – though Burt did have to return to Gila Bend to give further evidence three months later. He always denied any involvement. All of this seemed removed from me, despite some strong memories of that time in Arizona. Or it did, at least, until a recent podcast interview in which Mum, who is now 83 and retired, suggested the reason she knows Burt killed David – a belief she firmly holds – is because I told her, which must mean I witnessed it. I don't think for a minute this is true; I think it's just what Mum felt like saying on the spur of the moment in the interview. But it's interesting that I've had a recurring nightmare throughout my life that I've murdered someone. That, and the blanks I feel I needed to fill in about that time in Arizona, is why I found myself on a plane last year to visit the very same motel 51 years later. Who knows, I thought, perhaps it'll all come flooding back and I'll end up handing myself in… In the end, I stayed the night in the very same room where David died. I went in search of closure, more than answers, and in the end, far from handing myself in, I felt remarkably little. Perhaps I was simply too young for any appropriate recall, or maybe there is just too deep-rooted a memory blockage. I am not religious, but in that fateful room in Gila Bend, having spent the night experiencing no ghostly encounters, I said a little prayer where David's body was found. Burt Reynolds died in 2018, and with him, the best shot at the truth about all this. But there are surely people still alive who know what really happened all those years ago. Like so many Hollywood tales, this is a complex, disputed and altogether tragic story. And at its heart is a real person with a family behind them. David Whiting's family lost him that night. He deserves to be remembered.
