Famous visitors flocked to Mayo's Rahins estate
PART TWO
By Tom Gillespie
LOCAL historian the late Brian Hoban undertook extensive research into the Brownes of Rahins.
Locals will remember that the estate was the location for the Occasion at the Castle rock festival in Castlebar, which was staged in 1981 and ’82.
Today the Raheens looped walk overlooks the property and the ruined mansion.
According to Mr. Hoban, the history of the Rahins estate goes right back to the time of the earliest settlers in the area.
After the death of Dodwell in the 1830s his son Henry Browne took over the estate. He planted trees on both sides of the avenue and planted much of the wasteland in the Demesne under forestry.
During the Famine in 1847 he built the present house and stables and retained the kitchens of the original mansion.
He used the local peasants as cheap labour, paying them as little as four pence a day. He had no sympathy for the peasants who were starving and dying and went as far as depriving them of drinking water.
The burden of all the construction work left him with no choice other than to mortgage the estate.
He became ill and on his death his brother Neil became owner in 1870. Neil had been commanding officer of the Warwickshire regiment of the British Army that surrounded Kilclodny Wood near Cork during the Fenian rising in 1867 and killed O’Neill Crowley, a local rebel.
Neil did not run the estate for very long and passed it on to his son, Dodwell, who was popularly known as ‘The Judge’.
Dodwell had spent 34 years in colonial service in Ceylon, where he served some time at the Bar, and the remainder as a High Court judge. He returned from Ceylon in 1905.
He was unsympathetic to the cause of Home Rule and strongly opposed Sinn Féin and the IRA.
It was under his ownership that the estate was divided up and given to local farmers under the Compulsory Tillage Act. In return he was paid a yearly rent.
Dodwell had three sons - Dodwell, Keppel and O'Donnell - and a daughter, Lucy. Keppel died as a boy and Dodwell and O’Donnell were educated at Trinity College. O'Donnell became a doctor and took up practice in Naas, Co. Kildare, while Dodwell moved to Australia where he also practised medicine.
On his father’s death in 1920, Dodwell became owner of the estate. As the days of the landlord were gone he returned to Australia in 1923. Lucy joined him following the death of their mother in 1932 and she went on to marry a man named Wright who owned tea plantations in Ceylon.
Dodwell was highly regarded locally. Patients came to see him on his visits home and queued to see him outside the mansion.
He engaged the services of Will Larkins, the most rioted steeplejack in the world, to carry out repairs to the monument. Some ash seedings had become embedded in the masonry and as they grew displaced several of the stones.
The steeplejacks erected scaffolding and replaced the urn and globe using steel cables. This work was completed in a few days.
In 1933 the furniture and fittings of the house were sold. The place was allowed to become derelict as Dodwell did not pay wages to his workers or pay rent and rates on the property. In 1841 a Mr. McKenna purchased the estate from the Land Commission.
There were many famous visitors to the Rahins estate. These included John Wesley, the founder of the Methodists, who visited the estate on at least three occasions.
In his diaries he refers to what he saw on one visit when George Robert Fitzgerald was hanged.
On another occasion he preached under the lime trees on the lawn outside the house. His last visit was on the occasion of his laying the foundation stone on the Wesleyan Church on Castlebar’s Mall on May 2, 1785.
Another visitor was General Humbert. Following the retreat of the British in what became known as the Races of Castlebar in August 1798, Maria O Donel-Browne wrote to General Humbert requesting protection as several of the aristocratic ladies felt under threat.
General Humbert sent the following handwritten reply to Mrs. Browne: 'The General Humbert’s compliments to Mrs. Browne is fully sensible of her very polite and proper conduct, takes this opportunity of telling her so and also assuring her his protection; hopes Mrs. Browne will be able to succeed in tranquillising the minds of the other ladies, and also that she will be so good to have his horse taken care of.
'The General depends on the promise of Mr. and Mrs. Browne of having the honour of their company at dinner this day at one o’clock.'
It was reported that General Humbert visited the Brownes on at least three occasions.
In another letter he stated how much he valued the horse as it had once saved his life. He also got Mrs. Browne to have some laundry work done for him.