Film-maker’s farm set in epic grassland
The memory of these events is strong — so much so that the renaissance in Irish film has been strongly marked by the biographical story of our recent past.
Maurice O’Callaghan’s screenplay — which he had made into a short film that launched at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival — went on to form the basis of the film The Wind that Shakes the Barley.
Now, many books and films later, his thumping, historical novel, In their Dreams of Fire, is one of the best selling novels of the Troubles and still sells ‘thousands and thousands of copies’ consistently since its publication in 2011.
And why? Because it’s a local story, and people love local stories.
Loosely based around his own family’s home place at Laravoulta, Enniskeane, which is now up for sale (the land will come with its own biography, so to speak), the novel has characters that are recognisably local people, and his family are fiction-alised in the story, O’Callaghan says.
A non-residential grassland farm, it has been leased out for some time, but finally O’Callaghan has now made the difficult decision to sell the 52-acre farm located at Laravoulta, Enniskeane, Co Cork, by private treaty.
And who better to sell it than distant cousin, Paddy Murray of Paddy Murray Auctioneers, whose grandmother grew up on the farm.
He says it’s located between Enniskeane, Castle-townkenneigh, and Newces-town, and is laid out in two blocks, with the smallest lot, a 3.5-acre field divided by a public road, and the remainder in one block.
The land’s road frontage is good, with about 400 yards in total, and the land comes with no waste, he says, and no buildings.
Leased for some time, the proper ty has been well farmed and is in good heart.
“It’s very fertile, level, a lovely stretch of land, the whole environment up to it is good and farming is very intensive in that whole area,” he says.
The guide price is between €700,000 and €750,000, says Murray, who’s open to offers on this 52-acre grassland farm. On that basis, the land quality must be good — as the breakdown is about €13,500 per acre.
And that’s without including the biographical rights of Maurice O’Callaghan, whose father fought Tom Barry and was a contemporary of Collins, and his mother came from a more genteel, Redmondite family, but had strong republican sentiment, nonetheless.
“In their Dreams of Fire is situated in the farm,” says O’Callaghan, and he draws on his young father’s experiences in the narrative: “He was very young, only 17, when he joined the IRA. He was possibly the youngest in the IRA at the time. His experiences are woven into the novel, which is based on real events,” he said at the time of the launch.
O’Callaghan directed the 1995 film Broken Harvest and 19 years on, The Lord’s Burning Fire was shown at the Cork Film Festival, and this feature film will be a highlight of the Schull Film Festival on May 21.
He brings a short film, starring comedian and actor, Jon Kenny, based on one of his short stories and titled A Day by the Fire, to the Fastnet Film Festival.
O’Callaghan lives in Dublin (he’s a lawyer in the day job) and has a holiday home at Roaring Water Bay, so he doesn’t use the home place as much in recent years.
