With a busy few summer months ahead, Clodagh McKenna is looking forward to taking the opportunity to spend a few days at home in Ireland, catching up with family, and in particular with her mum.
Clodagh and her mum are very close, with chef describing her mother, who instilled in her an ambition and a love of cooking, as her hero.
The Cork-born resident chef on ITV’s This Morning recalls her mum working as a law clerk by day, before coming home to start preparing meals for her four hungry children.
She juggled home and work life with studies for a law degree in the evenings and provided her daughter with an ‘amazing life lesson’.
‘What I learned from my mum was commitment and diligence – she worked hard, looked after us and got her law degree in the end,’ says Clodagh.
Clodagh continues: ‘She is my hero and every time I think I have something to complain about, I focus on my mum and think, what am I tired from? I’ve nothing to complain about.
'Our mothers in Ireland paved the way for the rest of us. They had so many mountains to climb and we have it easy compared to them.’
Clodagh also picked up some culinary skills when she took part in a school exchange with a French family, at the age of just 11 years old.
She learned about French and Italian cuisine from another inspiring woman, the mother of the family, and has kept in touch with her over the years.
‘They were like a second family to me – they still are – and I learned so much from that amazing woman,’ she says. ‘She was over for my 50th birthday recently and told me that even then, she knew I was going to be a chef someday.’
At the age of 50 – a milestone birthday she celebrated recently – Clodagh has found her ‘happy place’. But while she admits she’s living her best country life in Highclere Park, just a few fields away from Highclere Castle, where Downton Abbey is set, it’s also taken hard work, long hours and unwavering commitment to breathe new life into Broadspear and make it a successful farm.
‘It’s all about that search for peace and happiness and I’ve definitely found my happy place, in that I love the silence of being in nature,’ says Clodagh. ‘When I’m lying out in the middle of the woods, I don’t need anything with me. I just lie there and look up at the trees and nothing can replace that for me.
‘I just love being around the animals, getting up in the morning and going down. I know people might gawk at this and think, “Jesus, I wouldn’t be doing that”, but I love cleaning out the chicken and duck houses. I love getting it all set up, power-hosing everything down, cleaning out the feeders and watering cans.
‘On a Saturday morning, when there’s no one else around and it’s all quiet and the chickens and ducks are delighted and jumping in and out of the houses while I’m putting in fresh straw for the weekend, that’s when I’m happiest. I love it.’
Clodagh, who is married to her husband Harry Herbert, who was born at Highclere Castle and is the managing director and founder of Europe’s leading racing company, Highclere Thoroughbred Racing, is a firm believer in choosing to be happy, crediting Oprah Winfrey for encouraging this way of thinking.
As a child, she was ‘besotted’ with the American chat show host and recalls her saying that every morning she woke up, she made the decision to be happy.
‘It’s not that I’m mad happy or running around like a clown, telling everyone that they have to be happy,’ says Clodagh. ‘It’s not like that at all. It’s more like trying to enjoy the experience of your work and your day because this isn’t a dress rehearsal. We don’t get to do it all over again so we have to do whatever we can do to make ourselves happy.
‘I’ve noticed that over the past ten years, when I’ve focused on being happy, eating well and really looking after my health, that work has been going really well and right now I’m doing things I could only ever have dreamed of.
'I started my career 26 years ago, and I feel very blessed and lucky to be where I am now, at the top of my career and I want to keep it there, but I also want other women my age to feel that our time isn’t running out.
‘When you get to your 50s, it’s just the beginning or when you get to your 60s, you can start again. If we look after ourselves, if we eat well, look after our mental health and focus on the word “happiness”, we can make good things happen.’
What can I do to make myself happy? Then I do it. ‘I eat well, I juice, I meditate and I try not to let work stress me. If it’s all getting too serious, I’ll have a little laugh at some points during the day. I always laugh at myself if I’m getting too serious. Then if all else fails, I’ll cook a lovely lunch or dinner and eat myself happy.’
Growing up in rural Cork, Clodagh always loved the countryside, but she enjoys the benefits of city life too.
She divides her time between London and Hampshire, spending her working week in the city when she’s in the This Morning kitchen or running cookery days before escaping back to Broadspear for the weekend, when the farm work takes over.
The weekends are for entertaining and she’s in her element cooking for family and friends. That’s when she gets to ‘create moments’ by dressing up the table, planning menus and giving her guests the first-class hospitality they’ve come to expect.
‘We are so lucky with the beautiful land that we have but we’ve worked incredibly hard to make it so beautiful,’ she says of Broadspear, which contains an 18th-century walled vegetable and fruit garden, five working bee hives, fruit orchards and wildflower meadows, not to mention the animals.
‘When we arrived seven years ago, it had been neglected for over 100 years. There wasn’t anything growing except for a couple of apple trees and mature cedar trees, but there were no roses or lavender plants or vegetables. We worked tirelessly on it. It took over our lives – and still does.
'Even at the weekends, I’m up at 5.45am to make sure the watering is done, to check on the animals and clean out the chicken and duck houses.
‘It takes a lot of commitment and it’s been such a labour of love for both, but it was a decision we made to create this beautiful space, and we only have one farm person working with us Monday to Friday, so a lot of it lands on our laps.
‘As anyone with farm animals knows, you can’t go on holidays for any longer than six days, so two-week breaks are now gone. But then we get to wake up in this beautiful place and get to pick the vegetables and eat from our land, which was always my dream.’
Clodagh has recently branched out into her own lifestyle brand, Honey By Clodagh, based around entertaining at home.
She has created a range of specially curated lifestyle products, such as the Lemon Grove Linen Collection, a nod to the Amalfi coast and which includes tablecloths, napkins, aprons, candles and cushion covers.
Over the next few months, new products will be added, and Clodagh says she’s been inspired by the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow’s wellness and lifestyle brand Goop. But while she spends her weekends in her comfiest clothes, her London life sees her glamming it up.
Clodagh loves getting the chance to put on her finery and on the fashion front, likes 1970s and 1980s-inspired styles, such as tailoring, flared trousers and pinched waists.
She’s a huge supporter of Irish designers like Paul Costelloe, Louise Kennedy, Don O’Neill and Philip Treacy, and is looking forward to getting back to Ireland later this month to be the lead judge for the Dubai Duty Free Irish Derby’s Best Dressed Competition.
The festival runs from 27-29 June, with the Derby itself taking place on the Sunday at the Curragh Racecourse in Co Kildare. The Ballymaloe-trained chef will be joined on the judging panel by lifestyle and fashion writer Bairbre Power and Alpana Cidambi, representing Dubai Duty Free.
Clodagh will be on the lookout for someone who has an individual sense of style and who channels creativity, uniqueness and clever accessorising.
The prestigious Dubai Duty Free Irish Derby Best Dressed Competition takes place on Sunday, 29 June, at the Curragh Racecourse in Co Kildare.
