CO GALWAY: €2.5M AMVONE OF the most interesting grassland estates to be offered for sale this year, comes up for auction in the Shannon Oaks Hotel, Portumna on May 15th.
Derryhiney House, called after the neighbouring Derryhiney Castle, lies on 340 acres on the banks of the Shannon, about three miles north of Portumna in east Galway.
It is being sold by Sherry FitzGerald Armstrong, which is quoting an Advise Minimum Value (AMV) of over €2.5 million.
In the 1950s it was owned by Rickard Deasy, around the time the Oxford-educated farmer was helping found the National Farmers’ Association, later renamed the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA), of which he became president in 1962.
Rickard’s son, also Rickard, recalled last week how his father had done extensive work on drainage. It was, he said, a brief tenure at Derryhiney, but one which Rickard believes “laid the groundwork for the fine farm it became”.
Next to arrive at Derryhiney was Frank Madden, this time a Cambridge-educated master of agriculture, whose thesis had been on grassland farms.
Frank was an innovator who expanded the farm and built two cattle sheds, one up near the cut-stone farm buildings around the house, the other at the far end of the farm near the Shannon.
Between them both, and around the farm, he built internal roads, silage pits, and a sheep shed.
He was one of the first farmers to have slurry pits electronically agitated, to retain oxygen and help with decomposition.
Mr Madden also copied the Danish experience with pigs to help set up a co-operative in Portumna in the 1960s/1970s and toyed with using the pigs’ own methane to provide winter heating – a move which almost half a century later is still regarded as cutting-edge.
Over the years Mr Madden bred an excellent strain of sheep which became so well known, that at the sale earlier this year, buyers from Donegal arrived at Portumna Mart enquiring as to where were “Frank’s sheep”.
Remaining a bachelor all his life, Madden put his best efforts into the farm, and the single-storey house, which retains touches of grandeur, such as a ha-ha wall, iron railings, fig and yew trees, and could benefit from a homemaker’s touch.
Potential buyers might want to convert the attractive cut-stone, two-storey buildings in the yard.
Family lore has it that these date from pre-Edwardian times when the farm was owned by a lady of the Featherstone-Haugh family, whose close friendship with Edward, then Prince of Wales, was useful to the family fortunes.
Slater’s Commercial Directory of Ireland lists a Lieut Colonel William Featherstone as being resident in Derryhiney from 1881.
History buffs may however be more interested in Derryhiney Castle, an O’Madden stronghold dating from 1643, although Frank Madden never claimed any kinship with the former inhabitants.
From references in the Irish Annals and ruins still to be seen today, we know that the O’Maddens built strongholds at nearby Eyrecourt, Meelick, Lismore (near Meelick), and Derryhiney Cloghan (in Lusmagh, Co Offaly) and at Portland in Co Tipperary.
The Princess O’Madden from Derryhiney, whose father was chief of the O’Madden clan, often visited Portumna Castle, where she married Lord Richard de Burgh, second son of the Marquis.
Derryhiney House, near Portumna, Co Galway
340-acre farm for auction on May 15th has AMV of €2.5m
Agent:Sherry FitzGerald Armstrong
