UP A BOREEN, AROUND and bend and up a lane. This is deepest rural countryside - the most unlikely place to find a vital component of the grand cosmopolitan opera festival in Wexford, and crucial back up to some of the best schools of music around Ireland.

Yet up that boreen and around that bend in St. Mullins, an incongruous pleasure awaits. At the end of the lane is an Aladdin's cave of pianos. In a specially built warehouse stand gleaming lines of Steinhovens, Eisensteins, Yamahas, Kaiwas and Kembles. Some are grand, some are uprights and all look perfectly splendid, each one a beguiling, seductive invitation to make music. The warehouse is built to accommodate a hundred of them.

'The bit I love is seeing people open that door,' says Marcella Jackson mischievously. 'I love that sense of surprise and the sense that it was worth the journey.'

For this is not a farm or a smallholding but The Piano Gallery, where pianos are sold, pianos are serviced and, occasionally, pianos laid to rest. The gallery is where Marcella and her husband Chris have their home and their business headquarters.

The story of how such a specialist concern has taken root in the foothills below the White Mountain goes back to England in 1932, the year that one Peter Jackson was born.

Around the age of 18 months, he was robbed of his eyesight by measles and he now has no memory whatever of ever being able to see. The disability proved little handicap, as shrewd career guidance propelled him to become a piano tuner. He turned out to be one of the best.

As a baby, Peter's son Christopher gurgled happily in his carrycot beneath some of the finest instruments in Britain while work was carried out by his diligent dad. The experience might have nurtured a musician but the youngster was turned off playing by an overly talkative piano teacher as a boy and he refused to knuckle down to lessons. However, when the time came for him to pick a career, he turned out to have inherited his father's gift as a tuner.

Peter refused to train him, choosing to pack the 18-year-old off instead to college at Newark near Nottingham, where his talent and professionalism were nurtured to a standard that is international class. On qualifying, he returned to the parental home to work for a short while before taking up a job in Luxembourg and then coming to Ireland for the first time, on the staff of Pianos Plus in Dublin.

It was in this country that he met his wife, a Londoner. Marcella is of good Mayo parentage and it was in a Westport pub that they first encountered each other 15 years ago, while she was in the West attending her grandfather's funeral. She is a graduate in anatomical science, at that time specialising in neuro-endochronology research in London hospitals.

Chris made every effort to disentangle himself from his growing love of Ireland and all things Irish, returning to Britain to wield his tuning fork for Chapples of Bond Street in London. The couple's first son Tom was born in the metropolis but, after little more than a year, the newly extended family were back in Dublin and scouring the Wicklow Hills for somewhere to live. In the end, they discovered that house prices were cheaper on the Carlow side of the border and bought a cottage near Tullow instead.

Following Chris's departure from Pianos Plus after his second stint with the firm, he went on to develop the Piano Gallery as one of his former employers' main competitors - up that boreen in picturesque St. Mullins.

The move into the gallery came about as teachers and other customers asked if he could supply pianos. Rather than say no, he agreed to find suitable pieces, a move that swamped the comparatively cramped accommodation in Tullow. The cottage kitchen proved capable of housing at least three pianos. Rather than risk a fourth, the Jacksons installed a portacabin and then rented a shop at Thomas Street near the Boker in Wexford town. Somewhere along the line, endocrinolgist Marcella dropped her scientific job at Trinity College and she began learning the ropes of directing a not-so-small business from scratch. The experience in Wexford convinced the couple that it was possible to develop an enterprise outside Dublin and they began to cast around for a more permanent base.

They hit on St. Mullins while out for a drive along the Barrow Valley. An auctioneer's board led them perchance to a five-acre site where sheep were free to wander in and out of a derelict farmhouse.

The house is now their home, fitted with proper doors and windows. One of the fields has had the Piano Gallery added. They now have four children, as Tom has been joined by sisters Meg, Izzy and Abby. Marcella is the saleswoman while Chris spends much of the week out and about on the road, tightening wires and inspecting sounding boards. At present, he is gearing up for the annual explosion of work posed by Wexford festival opera. His mission is to make sure that all 250 strings in every piano at each rehearsal venue, along with those in the auditoria at the opera house in High Street are pitch perfect.

Around a dozen instruments have to be acquired, inspected and then installed. An ingenious hydraulic device takes the back breaking element out of hauling pianos around the place but the demands of the festival are intense and he has to be ready to jump into action at any time of day or night.

In recent years, Marcella - who spends so much of her life surrounded by pianos - has taken up playing, learning under the guidance of jazz inclined Carol Nelson. And, after two generations of tuners, the Jackson family is poised to produce a performer. Chris and Marcella's eldest shied away from the keyboard up to the age of nine, saying he thought it a girl's instrument.

The music of Scott Joplin and lessons from Sabrina Hanrahan in New Ross finally helped to persuade Tom otherwise. He graduated to classes with Donagh Wylde in Wexford and it was Donagh who recommended him - despite his ridiculously young age of 13 - to the Royal Irish Academy of Music.

So now Tom is looking forward to sessions in Dublin with the R.I.A.M.'s distinguished tutor Brian Bennett. In the meantime, he is also making progress in school under David Milne, the head of music at Kilkenny College, while also starring on his hockey team. His mother is busy looking for protective gloves to make sure that the sporting enthusiasm will not draw injuries that affect her boy's burgeoning musical prowess. Tom's sister Meg (8) would rather dance than play but at five, young Izzy is already picking out tunes. Toddler Abby has yet to declare her intentions.

Whatever she decides, she can look forward to growing up in a special, very rural, place: 'We are very proud of our location,' says Marcella Jackson, who routinely welcomes people from all over Ireland to her showroom in a county field. 'Buying a piano is a one-off purchase, so customers are happy to come and spend time here - and parking isn't a problem.

Top class piano tuners have a tendency to be ferocious name droppers. Chris de Burgh and Herbie Hancock are mentioned, but Chris Jackson is the first to admit he is happy never to have had first-hand experience of Mister Rocket Man himself, Elton John. The spangled entertainer with the over-sized specs was due to tinkle the ivories during the wedding reception of David Beckham and Posh Spice at Luttrellstown Castle in Dublin.

The tuner was called in to make sure that everything was in order. He duly set about his work when disaster struck and a bass string on the castle keyboard snapped. It was too late to find a replacement and he was left dreading the response of the great man to the defect. Mercifully, Elton never showed up, so the drama of the broken string never became a crisis.

Chris's father Peter can claim to have worked with Peter Katon, Harold Rich and the BBC's Midland Light Orchestra - Peter who?? The younger man can easily trump him in the celebrity stakes, as he has tuned for Bruce Springsteen and the late Princess Diana. While the Springsteen gig earned him concert tickets, the call to Kensington Palace never actually led to a direct audience with Her Royal Highness. Perhaps the most intriguing London assignment at Holloway women's prison where he was allowed inside the jail with a tool-box full of blades but relieved of his mobile phone by security personnel.

On this side of the Irish Sea, the Piano Gallery in St. Mullins has had dealings with Neil Hannon of the Divine Comedy and showman Duke Special. R.T.E. has been a repeat customer: When the Jackson family watch the 'All-Ireland Talent Show', they find themselves cheering on the acts that have pianos, if only so that Peter will be directly involved. Schools of music throughout the south-east and beyond are on the books too. But many customers are private householders, concerned to keep family heirlooms in decent playing order.

'Pianos are not violins and they do not improve with age,' warns Chris wife Marcella Jackson. 'At least after 80 years they can make a nice piece of furniture.'

She reveals that payment options offered by clients sometimes range beyond the usual cash or cheque alternatives. On occasion, llamas and peacocks have also been suggested as currency for settling the tuner's bill, met with polite but firm refusal, if only on the grounds that livestock would mess up the van. UP A BOREEN, AROUND and bend and up a lane. This is deepest rural countryside - the most unlikely place to find a vital component of the grand cosmopolitan opera festival in Wexford, and crucial back up to some of the best schools of music around Ireland.

Yet up that boreen and around that bend in St. Mullins, an incongruous pleasure awaits. At the end of the lane is an Aladdin's cave of pianos. In a specially built warehouse stand gleaming lines of Steinhovens, Eisensteins, Yamahas, Kaiwas and Kembles. Some are grand, some are uprights and all look perfectly splendid, each one a beguiling, seductive invitation to make music. The warehouse is built to accommodate a hundred of them.

'The bit I love is seeing people open that door,' says Marcella Jackson mischievously. 'I love that sense of surprise and the sense that it was worth the journey.'

For this is not a farm or a smallholding but The Piano Gallery, where pianos are sold, pianos are serviced and, occasionally, pianos laid to rest. The gallery is where Marcella and her husband Chris have their home and their business headquarters.

The story of how such a specialist concern has taken root in the foothills below the White Mountain goes back to England in 1932, the year that one Peter Jackson was born.

Around the age of 18 months, he was robbed of his eyesight by measles and he now has no memory whatever of ever being able to see. The disability proved little handicap, as shrewd career guidance propelled him to become a piano tuner. He turned out to be one of the best.

As a baby, Peter's son Christopher gurgled happily in his carrycot beneath some of the finest instruments in Britain while work was carried out by his diligent dad. The experience might have nurtured a musician but the youngster was turned off playing by an overly talkative piano teacher as a boy and he refused to knuckle down to lessons. However, when the time came for him to pick a career, he turned out to have inherited his father's gift as a tuner.

Peter refused to train him, choosing to pack the 18-year-old off instead to college at Newark near Nottingham, where his talent and professionalism were nurtured to a standard that is international class. On qualifying, he returned to the parental home to work for a short while before taking up a job in Luxembourg and then coming to Ireland for the first time, on the staff of Pianos Plus in Dublin.

It was in this country that he met his wife, a Londoner. Marcella is of good Mayo parentage and it was in a Westport pub that they first encountered each other 15 years ago, while she was in the West attending her grandfather's funeral. She is a graduate in anatomical science, at that time specialising in neuro-endochronology research in London hospitals.

Chris made every effort to disentangle himself from his growing love of Ireland and all things Irish, returning to Britain to wield his tuning fork for Chapples of Bond Street in London. The couple's first son Tom was born in the metropolis but, after little more than a year, the newly extended family were back in Dublin and scouring the Wicklow Hills for somewhere to live. In the end, they discovered that house prices were cheaper on the Carlow side of the border and bought a cottage near Tullow instead.

Following Chris's departure from Pianos Plus after his second stint with the firm, he went on to develop the Piano Gallery as one of his former employers' main competitors - up that boreen in picturesque St. Mullins.

The move into the gallery came about as teachers and other customers asked if he could supply pianos. Rather than say no, he agreed to find suitable pieces, a move that swamped the comparatively cramped accommodation in Tullow. The cottage kitchen proved capable of housing at least three pianos. Rather than risk a fourth, the Jacksons installed a portacabin and then rented a shop at Thomas Street near the Boker in Wexford town. Somewhere along the line, endocrinolgist Marcella dropped her scientific job at Trinity College and she began learning the ropes of directing a not-so-small business from scratch. The experience in Wexford convinced the couple that it was possible to develop an enterprise outside Dublin and they began to cast around for a more permanent base.

They hit on St. Mullins while out for a drive along the Barrow Valley. An auctioneer's board led them perchance to a five-acre site where sheep were free to wander in and out of a derelict farmhouse.

The house is now their home, fitted with proper doors and windows. One of the fields has had the Piano Gallery added. They now have four children, as Tom has been joined by sisters Meg, Izzy and Abby. Marcella is the saleswoman while Chris spends much of the week out and about on the road, tightening wires and inspecting sounding boards. At present, he is gearing up for the annual explosion of work posed by Wexford festival opera. His mission is to make sure that all 250 strings in every piano at each rehearsal venue, along with those in the auditoria at the opera house in High Street are pitch perfect.

Around a dozen instruments have to be acquired, inspected and then installed. An ingenious hydraulic device takes the back breaking element out of hauling pianos around the place but the demands of the festival are intense and he has to be ready to jump into action at any time of day or night.

In recent years, Marcella - who spends so much of her life surrounded by pianos - has taken up playing, learning under the guidance of jazz inclined Carol Nelson. And, after two generations of tuners, the Jackson family is poised to produce a performer. Chris and Marcella's eldest shied away from the keyboard up to the age of nine, saying he thought it a girl's instrument.

The music of Scott Joplin and lessons from Sabrina Hanrahan in New Ross finally helped to persuade Tom otherwise. He graduated to classes with Donagh Wylde in Wexford and it was Donagh who recommended him - despite his ridiculously young age of 13 - to the Royal Irish Academy of Music.

So now Tom is looking forward to sessions in Dublin with the R.I.A.M.'s distinguished tutor Brian Bennett. In the meantime, he is also making progress in school under David Milne, the head of music at Kilkenny College, while also starring on his hockey team. His mother is busy looking for protective gloves to make sure that the sporting enthusiasm will not draw injuries that affect her boy's burgeoning musical prowess. Tom's sister Meg (8) would rather dance than play but at five, young Izzy is already picking out tunes. Toddler Abby has yet to declare her intentions.

Whatever she decides, she can look forward to growing up in a special, very rural, place: 'We are very proud of our location,' says Marcella Jackson, who routinely welcomes people from all over Ireland to her showroom in a county field. 'Buying a piano is a one-off purchase, so customers are happy to come and spend time here - and parking isn't a problem.

Top class piano tuners have a tendency to be ferocious name droppers. Chris de Burgh and Herbie Hancock are mentioned, but Chris Jackson is the first to admit he is happy never to have had first-hand experience of Mister Rocket Man himself, Elton John. The spangled entertainer with the over-sized specs was due to tinkle the ivories during the wedding reception of David Beckham and Posh Spice at Luttrellstown Castle in Dublin.

The tuner was called in to make sure that everything was in order. He duly set about his work when disaster struck and a bass string on the castle keyboard snapped. It was too late to find a replacement and he was left dreading the response of the great man to the defect. Mercifully, Elton never showed up, so the drama of the broken string never became a crisis.

Chris's father Peter can claim to have worked with Peter Katon, Harold Rich and the BBC's Midland Light Orchestra - Peter who?? The younger man can easily trump him in the celebrity stakes, as he has tuned for Bruce Springsteen and the late Princess Diana. While the Springsteen gig earned him concert tickets, the call to Kensington Palace never actually led to a direct audience with Her Royal Highness. Perhaps the most intriguing London assignment at Holloway women's prison where he was allowed inside the jail with a tool-box full of blades but relieved of his mobile phone by security personnel.

On this side of the Irish Sea, the Piano Gallery in St. Mullins has had dealings with Neil Hannon of the Divine Comedy and showman Duke Special. R.T.E. has been a repeat customer: When the Jackson family watch the 'All-Ireland Talent Show', they find themselves cheering on the acts that have pianos, if only so that Peter will be directly involved. Schools of music throughout the south-east and beyond are on the books too. But many customers are private householders, concerned to keep family heirlooms in decent playing order.

'Pianos are not violins and they do not improve with age,' warns Chris wife Marcella Jackson. 'At least after 80 years they can make a nice piece of furniture.'

She reveals that payment options offered by clients sometimes range beyond the usual cash or cheque alternatives. On occasion, llamas and peacocks have also been suggested as currency for settling the tuner's bill, met with polite but firm refusal, if only on the grounds that livestock would mess up the van.