Breaffy House estate’s chequered history

By Tom Gillespie

SET on 90 acres, the Breaffy House Resort in Castlebar consists of the four-star Breaffy House Hotel and three-star Breaffy Woods Hotel. Today it is a Mecca for visitors to the county town but the property has had a chequered past.

Local historian, the late Brian Hoban, traced the history of the estate and found that the Browne family were first connected with the lands at Breaffy in 1680. John Browne was granted 200 acres in the period of the Cromwellian Settlement at the end of the 17th century.

Dominick Andrew Browne built the present Breaffy House in 1890. The premises is a Scottish baronial mansion and is Victorian in style, designed by architect William M. Fawcett from Cambridge.

The house has boldly recessed facades, a polygonal corner turret with battlements and pointed roof, a second turret set at an obtuse angle to the facade and stepped gables.

The entrance front has a single storey battlement porch. The building has tall, slender chimneys and there are dormer windows on the roof.

The building has been extended and is run as one of the most popular hotels in the west of Ireland.

Built on gently rising ground in a well-wooded and picturesque park, it commands beautiful views of Croagh Patrick and Nephin.

The stone used is a fine, hard white boulder stone found in the neighbourhood. It is finished with a broken or rock face, and the dressings and red sandstone were quarried a few miles away. The roof was slated with Killaloe slates.

The building had been some time in progress, owing to the difficulty of getting any responsible contractor.

Mr. Browne had to make his own bricks, burn his own lime, quarry the stone himself, and most of the work was done by workmen in his immediate employment under the direction of Mr. Fawcett.

The Browne estate was expanded in the 18th century during the period of the Penal Laws.

The estate was leased by William Rhodes. He was an absentee landlord and his agent, William Kearney of Ballianvilla, managed the estate, which came back into the ownership of the Brownes towards the end of the 19th century.

When Dominick Browne died in 1902, his oldest son, Dominick Sidney, then aged 36 years, known locally as the Major, inherited the estate.

He died in 1927 and was succeeded by Brigadier Dominick Sidney Browne, O.B.E., who was the last of the Browne’s of Breaffy.

Under the terms of the Wyndham Land Act of 1903, most of the estate was sold to the tenants, except for the demesne.

In 1961 the remainder of the estate, comprising of 400 acres, was sold to the Land Commission. Part of the land went to the forestry department and the house and 40 acres was sold to Una and Michael Lee who opened it as a grade A hotel in 1963.

However, on the morning of Tuesday, November 18, 1969, fire gutted the hotel and a 15-year-old boy was the hero of the pre-dawn blaze.

The outbreak completely destroyed the main building, causing an estimated £150,000 worth of damage, but was prevented from spreading to a new extension which was opened at a cost of £103,000 the previous year.

After the alarm was raised by John Lavelle of Breaffy when he came on duty, guests and staff leaped or clambered down drain-pipes or knotted bedsheets in their night clothes from smoked-filled rooms.

Six people were injured while escaping the blazing building and were taken to the County Hospital, where two of them were detained.

A badly charred briefcase containing £3,888 in cash and cheques, the property of a tobacco company representative, was recovered beneath debris from his bedroom.

A garda spokesman said the contents of the briefcase were virtually undamaged.

The fire, which started in a ground floor residents’ lounge, spread rapidly and within a very short time had completely gutted the main building.

Firemen from five towns fought the fire - the worst ever in the area - and prevented it spreading to the new extension.

Extensive renovations were undertaken to restore the hotel and today it is still one of the most luxurious resorts in the region, offering traditional old world Irish charm and hospitality with their excellent Breaffy Spa and Breaffy Leisure Club facilities and magnificent grounds for

rambling.

In 2018 the new owners of Breaffy House Resort, Owen, Kelly, Gerry Murphy and Cyril Duffy from Balla, achieved a special goal by regaining its prestigious four-star status from Fáilte Ireland after a lapse of 22 years.

The announcement was seen by management and staff as an endorsement of the substantial €4 million investment in the property over the previous four years.

The property enhancements included upgrading to the 106 bedrooms with the addition of four junior suites, two executive suites and a new bridal suite, improvements to Breaffy Leisure Club and Spa, development of the south terrace and a repointing of the magnificent 18th century Victorian façade.

Significant investment also targeted the enrichment of the entire grounds encompassing new woodland walkways and the addition of a wonderful natural timber playground, all of which are located on the 90-acre woodland estate which is Breaffy House Resort.

This cycle of development, started in January 2015, was the catalyst which led to the regeneration of Breaffy House Hotel.