Prime holding in rich farm area
The second sale (see page 9) is at Scagh, Boherbue, and both units have about 70 acres a piece.
The Dripsey sale is expected to create a frisson in the highly productive local dairying area and the 74-acre holding is only one small part of the Dripsey Castle demesne held by the O’Shaughnessy family, who founded the now defunct, Dripsey Woollen Mills. The family are to retain most of their lands which includes the ruins of the McCarthy More castle.
And Joe McCarthy feels there will be a strong response to the sale:
“It’s absolutely top class and as good a piece of land as we’ve put on the market for quite a while. And it’s in Dripsey townland, more than Coachford, and the land is in six fields with 500 metres of road frontage. It’s good tillage and dairy farming land.”
The former mill buildings had been used for grinding flour, (in the 18/19th centuries, this area has been the centre of a thriving paper industry, with notes made for the Bank of England) and the O’Shaughnessys set up a woollen mill instead, creating the world-famous Dripsey blankets which were sent to the UK, New Zealand, Canada and the United States.
The new woollen mills became a centre of employment and the success led to the purchase of Sallybrook Woollen Mills in Glanmire and subsequently, the acquisition of Kilkenny Woollen Mills in 1929.
The estate which the O’Shaughnessys purchased, (and still retain) included the remains of Dripsey Castle and house, which was purchased by a branch of the Colthurst family in the mid 1800s.
The Colthursts were significant landowners in that period and owners of Blarney Castle, as well as a number of other castles and estates in mid-Cork. The Greer branch of the family purchased the Dripsey estate in 1851 when it was advertised for sale with what would be in today’s terms, an astonishing, 1,900 acres.
And according to local history, it was one of this family’s members, John Bowen Colthurst, who ordered the shooting of Francis Sheehy-Skeffington in 1916. Located close to Dripsey Cross, today’s 74 acre sale is guided at around €12,000 per acre and that includes 27 acres in stubble and the rest in rich, high-yielding grassland.
South facing, the land is sheltered to the north by woodland and has access to the Dripsey River. Because of the location, quality of the land and number of intensive farms in the area, Joe McCarthy expects very keen interest in this historic sale.
