Bantry House Cork
Bantry House stands on the shore of Bantry Bay in County Cork, one of the largest natural harbours in the world, and is one of the finest and most beautifully situated country houses in Ireland. The house was built in the early eighteenth century and enlarged into its present impressive form during the early nineteenth century for the White family, later Earls of Bantry, who assembled within it one of the most significant collections of Continental European decorative art and furniture to be found in any Irish house. The building is still occupied by the White family and is open to visitors, making it an unusually authentic example of a great Irish house that has retained both its contents and its family connection.
The exterior setting of Bantry House is exceptional. The house looks south across the full width of Bantry Bay toward the mountains of the Beara Peninsula, with the long blue-grey expanse of the bay and the dramatic mountain backdrop creating one of the most compelling views from any house in Ireland. The formal terraced gardens stepping up the hillside behind the house provide elevated viewing platforms from which the relationship between the architecture and its spectacular landscape setting can be fully appreciated. The combination of the house, the terraces and the bay makes this one of the most photographed locations in west Cork.
The interior of Bantry House contains an extraordinary accumulation of French and Continental European furniture, Gobelin and Aubusson tapestries, Russian icons, Spanish leather panels and decorative objects assembled by successive generations of the White family during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The quality and breadth of the collection is remarkable by any standard, reflecting both the family's wealth during the peak of their prosperity and their access to the great houses and auction rooms of Europe. The Armada exhibition in the courtyard adds a further historical dimension, commemorating the French fleet that took shelter in Bantry Bay in 1796 in an abortive attempt to land troops in support of the United Irishmen rebellion.
Bantry itself is a pleasant market town with good restaurants and the weekly Friday market, and the surrounding west Cork landscape of Sheep's Head, Beara and Mizen provides some of Ireland's finest coastal and mountain scenery.