My favourite room: ‘My mother held the last ball here at Dromana House. The invite said: bring a bottle, Champagne only’

Barbara and Nicolas Grubb are the 26th generation of the same family to make their home in Co Waterford. The ancestors are a big part of their Big House, but comfort is not forgotten and there’s beauty everywhere — particularly in the spectacular gardens

Nicholas and Barbara Grubb with their Much Wenlock dog, Coco Chanel, in the drawing room of Dromana, Co Waterford, which is home to portraits of many of Barbara’s ancestors. Photo: Tony Gavin

Mary O'Sullivan

With programmes like Who Do You Think You Are? and the proliferation of genealogy websites, it’s become a thing to give gifts of vouchers for ancestry tracing. People want to find out all about their forebears — secretly hoping, of course, that they have some blue blood or at least heroic ancestors.

Barbara Grubb doesn’t need any such gifts. Not only does she know who they all were — going back 800 years and 26 generations — but also in her period home, Dromana House, in Cappoquin, Co Waterford, she is surrounded by portraits in oil of many of them. She knows their stories intimately — and, it’s fair to say, some do have blue blood, some were heroic, but some were also very naughty and not nice at all.