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JULIE SHELSWELL-WHITE GREW up in Bantry House – returning from a stint in Dublin to run the estate along with her family. Here she speaks to Ruth O’Connor about living and running the house and gardens and about her ancestor Lady Olivia – recently gracing our screens in the Netflix series House of Guinness.
Fans of the Netflix series House of Guinness will know that two of the key characters in the show are Arthur Guinness and his wife Lady Olivia Charlotte Hedge-White. The show notes describe Arthur (he of brewery fame) as Eton-educated and speaking with an upper-class accent, a lover of fine things and “something of an aesthete with aristocratic pretensions”, socially confident, gay and “horrified by the terms of his father’s will which shackle him to the brewery and a life in Dublin”.
His wife, Lady Olivia, is described in the notes as “a witty, charming, and outspoken young woman from an impoverished aristocratic family”, without money but with a title, “fully aware of Arthur’s sexuality and prepared to enter into the marriage on her own free-spirited terms”. For her great, great grand-niece Julie Shelswell-White, however, Lady Olivia or Lady Olive as she is known to her family, is “not just a Netflix character” but a beloved family member.
Living on the estate with her family and running the house and gardens as a going concern means that Julie spends her days regaling tourists with tales of her family home. “We know a lot about Olive, she’s not just a Netflix character to us, she’s family,” says Julie. “We know a lot about all our ancestors. I’m here living and breathing the family every day at Bantry House – it isn’t just a job, it’s my identity and heritage and I have a responsibility to my family to represent them in the best possible way.”
“I feel very connected to my ancestors, not just to Lady Olive. I speak about them every day and the work we do is to maintain the estate that housed all these people,” she says. “Lady Olive was an amazing person – she married Arthur Guinness, and, as philanthropists, they were extremely generous and charitable people – I have huge respect for them as a couple. They were trustees of this estate for a period of time until my great grandfather was of age to inherit it. I feel very proud of all the people in the portraits that hang on our walls.”
When it comes to period dramas there is no end to the creative license that can be taken, but Julie takes all in her stride. “I would say there was a good bit of creative license used in the show and I can’t stop people from using creative license when they are ‘based on true events’ or ‘based on real people’,” she says. “I don’t know how much Lady Olive would love it, I can’t speak for her, however we do know that they loved each other very much because there is a piece written by her about how heartbroken she was when Arthur died. They were certainly very generous – that bit is true.”
Bantry House is situated in a glorious location – overlooking Bantry Bay and Whiddy Island in West Cork. The house was originally built around 1690 and in 1739 was purchased by Julie’s ancestor Councillor Richard White who came from a family of merchants in Limerick and who was living on Whiddy Island.
White’s grandson, the Second Earl of Bantry and Lady Olive’s uncle, designed the garden and extended the house in the mid-19th Century: “The estate that you see today is his design and he also went on a Grand Tour and collected many of the beautiful items that we have on show in the house,” says Julie.
Julie and her team welcome some 30,000 visitors to the house and gardens each year. “Our main revenue stream is tourism and we have a lot of tours coming to the house. Bantry has started welcoming a lot of cruise ships so we often have people coming to take part in a private tour of the house with a member of the family,” she says of her ancestral home. “We also host weddings and have welcomed 15 couples and their guests this year alone. People come from all over the world to see the mid-19th Century formal garden as well as the special pieces we have in the house.”
This current custodian says that she has gone from being somewhat “embarrassed” about the house in her younger years to being extremely proud of it and of what her predecessors have achieved in maintaining the estate.
“My parents worked very hard on the house when we were children and really instilled the pride that I have in the house now. With great foresight, my grandmother opened the house to paying visitors in 1946, so, in that sense, we have been welcoming paying visitors here to Bantry House for nearly 80 years,” she says. “In the 1980s and 1990s my parents really grew the business that my grandparents had started, so I am really grateful to them that I had this business to come home to in my late twenties.”
“People often think that I am an innovative entrepreneur but really my parents were hosting weddings and film crews in the Nineties. My sister and her husband worked extremely hard on the estate for a decade and my brother has put a whole lot of work into the house and business too, so I am very aware of and grateful for the work of my family.”
A house of this scale also has to “work quite hard” she says, and the schedule of events at her home includes everything from tours to weddings to music festivals. “West Cork Music hosts a number of festivals throughout the course of the year – one of which is the West Cork Chamber Music Festival which takes place in June and July. We are the main venue for the festival which is also hosted in venues around the town. We also host the Masters of Tradition music festival alongside other venues in the town in August each year. Bantry is a great town with a brilliant business association and we all support each other.”
The garden on the estate was designed by the Second Earl in the mid-19th Century and the family has endeavoured to respect the integrity of his design ever since. It’s an ongoing project as there are seven terraces. “We have just restored the round beds on the front lawn. My mother Brigitte has been acting as head gardener this year and has been managing our small team of part-time gardeners all year. I rely on her hugely for her expertise,” says Julie who also credits her mother with being a “wealth of knowledge” when it comes to the running of the house.
“She’s seen it all and has ‘been there, done that’. She knows the house and gardens intimately and is as cool as a breeze with whatever comes up. I’m having to relearn the house as not just my home. I am developing a newfound respect for it as I live here and run it as a venue.”
The house has just closed for the winter season but the work doesn’t stop for its residents. The wintertime is all about maintaining the estate and planning for the next season. “We tackle the maintenance jobs that we can’t do when the house is open and in January we have a lot of wedding viewings. Come February, we are getting the B&B repainted, the carpets cleaned and interviewing people for the new season… and then come the end of March we reopen to the public,” says Julie. “This winter I’m really excited as we are hosting our extended family from around the world for Christmas. We also host a Christmas carol concert in aid of the local lifeboats each December which we always look forward to.”
Average days living and working on site can be long ones. “When we are open my day to day starts early. We’ll be setting up breakfast and serving breakfast, getting ready for opening, hosting a private tour or doing a wedding viewing, doing office work, doing an interview like this one… in the afternoon then we’ll be checking in guests or we might have a wedding on and then we could be going until 2am making sure everyone is off the estate at the end of the night,” says Julie.
“During the winter I try to do office hours to make sure I don’t lose my sense of structure. I’ll walk our dogs Dougal and Chester (who’s blind) both from the West Cork Animal Rescue and I’ll do admin and social media which is a bit more fun. However, if I don’t work hard in the winter, I don’t have much business in the summer!”
House of Guinness. Dublin, 1868. The Guinness family patriarch is dead, and his four children – each with dark secrets to hide – hold the brewery’s fate in their hands. Starring: Anthony Boyle, Louis Partridge, Emily Fairn. Creators: Steven Knight. 2025. Available to stream on Netflix now. netflix.com/ie/
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