Kylemore Abbey
Watercolour and crayon
Watercolour and crayon
©2017 Charlene Brown
This magnificent estate is much more extensive than I’ve pictured it here. The famous Victorian walled garden on the mountainside in the upper left quadrant is actually some distance from the abbey, and the walk to it shown on the right,below, took close to half an hour.
I liked the 'Hundertwasser look' I imagined in this telescoping of perspective and added to it with some concentrically-lined trees and meadows.
Kylemore had a very romantic beginning,
built in 1867 by Mitchell Henry, doctor, industrialist, politician and pioneer,
for the love of his life on the location of a hunting lodge where they had
honeymooned in 1850. They had a
gloriously happy life with their nine children in this idyllic location, but
unfortunately she died (on holiday in Egypt) in 1874. After that the estate changed hands a couple
of times, in large part because of gambling debts. In 1920 it became the home
for the Benedictine nuns who arrived as refugees after their monastery at Ypres
was destroyed in World War I.
