If you wander down a boreen near Newport in Co Mayo, you might find yourself standing in front of the ruins of a cottage and some farm buildings. There is no hint that a prince and princess, the international press and hundreds of well-wishers once gathered in the same place on a summer’s day 75 years ago.
This, of course, was the home of John Henry Kelly, the grandfather of Princess Grace of Monaco. He emigrated to the US around 1867, eventually ending up in Philadelphia, where her father John B was born.
Grace first saw the cottage in Drumilra with her husband Prince Rainier in June 1961, when the couple paid an official visit to Ireland. Their visit generated huge interest at home and abroad, and a front-page article in this newspaper on the 16th of that month, noted that the royal couple enjoyed tea and griddle cakes with the cottage owner, the Widow Mulchrone, while gardaí kept the crowds outside at bay.
The princess, who achieved stardom in movies like High Noon and Rear Window, later returned and bought the cottage and its 35 acres in 1976, with the intention of renovating it for use as a holiday home. However, in 1982, before any work was done on the house, she died following a car crash in Monaco.
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The site, still owned by the royal family, has lain idle since, but three young architects have now produced their visions for what it could become. The designs by Shannon Kenny, Conor Nolan and Fiona O’Connor formed their final-year architecture projects at South East Technological University (SETU) in Waterford and include proposals for a craft workshop, library and film studio.
The collaboration came about thanks to connections forged in Monaco by Garry Miley, the fifth-year studio co-ordinator at SETU’s Department of Architecture. He had visited the Princess Grace Irish Library in Monte Carlo years earlier, and saw an opportunity for his students.
“It’s such a curious little space, with lots of interesting things to provoke your thoughts, and I thought it would make a really good first-year project to propose a brand new space to house the collection,” he recalls.
Then, a few years ago, the library’s director, Paula Farquharson, suggested that students do a project on the Princess Grace homestead in Mayo, purely as an academic exercise.
“That would be a much more complex project, so we suggested it to our fifth years as their final project,” he says. “It turned out to be far more interesting than I thought it would be.”
The students got permission from Monaco’s reigning monarch, Prince Albert, to enter the land for site analysis. “There’s just the ruins left really and the remains of a small yard, but the site itself is fairly substantial, and goes down to a small lake,” Miley says. “There’s a wonderful sense of being on the edge of the Atlantic. Some beautiful views. It has that quintessential west of Ireland character, that sense of calm, so there was lots for the students to get their teeth into.”
For his project, Conor Nolan from Carlow proposed the Grace Kelly Craft Workshop, a centre of architectural research into the vernacular traditions of construction. He designed a building that is partially recessed into the landscape and uses thatch on the roof and walls in a nod to the original homestead. It includes classrooms, display areas, a cafe and workshops.
The Grace Kelly Library is the brainchild of Fiona O’Connor from Kerry and it includes a public library, a writers’ retreat, lecture hall, flower press workshop and restaurant. Outside, a rose garden in a sunken courtyard and a wildflower meadow pay tribute to the late princess, who was a keen gardener. When she died, the people of Newport sent a wreath of wild flowers plucked from the area.
Waterford’s Shannon Kenny also pays homage to the princess with her proposal for a film and cinematography college to highlight her movie legacy. Before she married Rainier, Grace had an illustrious career in Hollywood, winning an Oscar and three Golden Globes. This project involves an academic wing which is buried in the landscape and has dark enclosed spaces for film editing and rehearsing. Its second wing, the public wing, rises from the ground with an angular roof structure under a grass roof. The proposal also includes a three-storey observation tower at the lake, referencing her role in Rear Window.
Miley says he and the students were surprised and delighted to be invited to present their designs to Albert II at the Princess Grace Irish Library on St Patrick’s Day. It was a slightly terrifying prospect for the students, as they were conscious that the prince had an emotional connection to the site because of his mother and they feared he might not like their proposals.
“But I was really quite taken by how positive the response was by those who saw the exhibition and I was very taken by Albert’s own interest in it,” he says.
The lecturer has been involved in showcasing projects before, and says notable people often take a cursory look at the presentation and it’s all over in 30 seconds. “But Prince Albert really looked at the drawings and asked questions about what he saw and it felt like a very engaging exercise. It was really quite memorable for the students and we came away from the evening thinking it was a very worthwhile project,” Miley says.
Since the students graduated in October, all three have secured work with some of the country’s leading architectural practices. O’Connor took a job with Scott, Tallon & Walker; Nolan is with Henry J Lyons; while Kenny is working with Mola Architecture.
While this was an academic exercise for the students, it does raise the question of what will happen to the land. Since the death of the princess, sporadic reports have suggested that plans were afoot to restore the cottage or build a memorial but nothing has happened. Asked if Mayo County Council was in talks with the royal family about the future of the homestead, a spokeswoman said the council was not involved in any discussions with the palace in Monaco in relation to the lands.
Albert visited the homestead with his then fiance, now wife, Charlene Wittstock in 2011, 50 years after his parents first visited and he has been a frequent visitor to Ireland since then.
The palace declined to comment on Albert’s plans for the site, for the purposes of this article. However, in an interview for the TG4 documentary Grace Kelly: Banphrionsa Mhaigh Eo, in 2023, he said the cottage was in a beautiful spot and was a wonderful treasure to have. “There is a plan to restore it fully which hasn’t quite materialised yet but we are working on that,” he said. “Maybe her dream will come true some day.”
She came to Ireland for her grandfather’s sake
To visit the cot which is down by the lake.
Such a beautiful cot in a beautiful spot.
Where the Kellys or the Caseys never forgot.
And there she resides with a granddaughter’s pride.
In that beautiful cot in a beautiful spot.
Where the Kellys and Caseys never forgot.
Published in the Irish Times on June 16th, 1961
