Section:GDN 1N PaGe:33 Edition Date:190830 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 29/8/2019 18:27 cYanmaGentaYellowb
Friday 30 Aug ust 2019 The Guardian •National^33
Rory Carroll
Ireland correspondentR
unkerry House is one
of Northern Ireland ’s
grand country homes,
a landmark Victorian-
era manor overlooking
the ocean near the
Giant’s Causeway.
Built by Lord Edward Macnaghten
in 1885, it boasted 20 bedrooms,
14 acres of gardens and a beautiful
location by Bushfoot Strand in
Portballintrae , County Antrim.
It has embodied not just grandeur
but generosity, because in 1950
his son, Sir Malcolm Macnaghten ,
gifted the estate, worth £3.25m in
today’s money, to Northern Ireland’s
government. But there was, it turns
out, a less than philanthropic reason
for such munifi cence.
Newly declassifi ed documents
reveal that Macnaghten, an MP and
high court judge, wanted to keep the
property out of Catholic hands.
“I could no doubt sell it at a price
but I am very unwilling to do so
lest it ... fall into the hands of the
Roman Catholic Church,” he said in
a letter to the unionist-dominated
government at Stormont. “The idea
that the house should become an RC
monastery or convent or seminaryis abhorrent to me as it would have
been to my father.”
The admission, fi rst reported this
week by the Belfast News Letter ,
casts Runkerry House in a new and
unfl attering light as a symbol of the
brazen sectarianism of a state set up
to ensure a Protestant majority.
The disclosure also tarnishes
the reputation of Macnaghten, an
establishment scion who through his
family was linked to social reform
and left wing activism in London.
His resolve to keep Runkerry
House out of Catholic control
refl ected a mindset common to
unionist and Protestant leaders
of that era, said Graham Walker at
Queen’s University Belfast.“There was an obsession about
losing territory ... there was this
notion of holding on to symbolic
territory,” he said.
Macnaghten made his off er in a
letter to Sir William Scott, head of
the Northern Ireland civil service,
dated 22 March 1950.
The former judge and Derry
MP, then aged 80, said his sister’s
death had left him in possession
of Runkerry. He had no use for it
but feared selling lest the Catholic
church snap it up, as it had another
property in nearby Portglenone,
he said. “The house is a prominent
feature on the landscape. The
district around it is almost wholly
Protestant.” He said he would be“very pleased if our NI Government
would accept it as a gift ”.
Macnaghten’s 69-year-old letter
was among fi les from the 1990s
recently released by the National
Archives. Offi cials were studying
the letter in 1994 because of plans
to sell the estate and an attempt by
Macnaghten’s grandson, Sir Patrick
Macnaghten, to claim it.
The letter’s sectarianism
astounded Graham Thompson, a
civil servant. “It was so blatant,”
he recalled. “ It was an insight into
how people thought at that time.
You would not see such blatant
statements written down any more.”
Macnaghten was a product of
the conservative establishment.But progressive politics pervaded
his home. He married a daughter of
Charles Booth , the social reformer,
and all three of their daughters
became socialists.
Macnaghten’s hostility to the
Catholic church in 1950 refl ected
unionist anxiety that the church was
aiding the Anti-Partition League,
dedicated to a united Ireland , said
Walker. “There was this idea that
the minority ... were disloyal and
wanted to destroy the state.”
Macnaghten died in 1955. His
grandson, Sir Patrick, failed to wrest
Runkerry back from the state in
the 1990s. A developer, Seymour
Sweeney, bought the estate and
turned it into luxury apartments.▼ Runkerry House, built in 18 85,
was given to Northern Ireland’s
government in 1950
PHOTOGRAPH: CLEARVIEW/ALAMY STOCK PHOTOHeritage
Sectarian
secret
behind
Northern
Irish gift
RELEASED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws