The Poet's Clumps

If you stand with your back to the entrance to Sunnybrook Farm you will notice a path leading into the wood that climbs the hill in front of you. This wood was sponsored by the Towns Women’s Guild and planted by the Conservation Volunteers. It was designed to link the avenue to the front entrance to Crawfordsburn Country Park, to make a pleasant walk back to the shore. At the top of the wood are the poets’ clumps of trees, now part of the new woodland. Browning’s clump is straight ahead, and Tennyson’s Clump is marked by the taller trees along the ridge to the left. They had written poems in praise of Helen’s Tower, dedicated by Lord Dufferin to his mother, and completed in 1850.

Tennyson was a particularly close friend, to the extent that Lord Dufferin was a pall bearer at his funeral in Westminster Abbey in 1892.[1] Tennyson’s is the most famous of the tower’s poems, and begins:

Helen's Tower, here I stand, Dominant over sea and land. Son's love built me, and I hold Mother's love in lettered gold.

Dufferin was so pleased with the poem that he wrote in an effusive letter to Tennyson that “You have indeed crowned all my Tower and all my wishes. Hundreds of years hence, perhaps, men and women, sons and daughters of my house, will read in what you have written a story that must otherwise have been forgotten…”[2] Prophetic words, as you will discover if you visit the tower and learn about its links to the sons of Ulster who marched towards the Somme in 1916.[3]

The recently restored Helen’s Tower stands ‘dominant over sea and land’ overlooking the southern end of the estate, five miles from here along the Columban Way footpath. Dufferin was a man who thrived on romance and chivalry, so it is not surprising that the poets are there, dominating this hill, to greet him when he returned from his travels.

At the pinnacle of his career, Lord Dufferin left Clandeboye in October 1884 for an audience with Queen Victoria at Balmoral before travelling to India to assume the role of Viceroy,[4] a position that he held until November 1888. He then travelled directly to Italy to take up the post as Ambassador in Rome.[5] After an absence of five years, he finally returned to Clandeboye in August 1889, and was met at the station by “the tenants and a number of other friends, who gave me a very warm reception, the tenantry accompanying me on horseback to Clandeboye House, where they presented me with an address, to which I made a suitable reply”.[6] By this time he had been elevated to the 1st Marquis of Dufferin and Ava.

[1] PRONI D1071/H/V/1/29 (12 October 1892) [2] Harold Nicholson, Helen's Tower (London: Constable and Co Ltd, 1937) 140. [3] Frank McGuinness 1985 ‘Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme’ [4] PRONI D1071/H/V/1/22 (21 October 1884) [5] PRONI D1071/H/V/1/26 (10 December 1888) [6] PRONI D1071/H/V/1/26 (14 August 1889)