Castle promises life of a lord for €7m

FANCY living like a lord on the banks of the River Blackwater? — then here’s your chance. Mallow Castle comes on the market this week with a €7 million-plus price tag.

Set in 30 protected acres and steeped in history, the 12-bedroom manor style home, which boasts eight reception rooms, is owned by a US couple.

The grounds includes the ruins of two earlier castles.

White hart deer graze the lawns, said to be descended from two white harts given by Elizabeth 1 to her god-child Elizabeth Norreys.

Mallow Castle may be purchased as a private home or could become the base for a luxury period house hotel along the lines of a smaller Adare Manor, Dromoland, Castle Leslie or Ashford Castle.

Parts of the current home date back to the 16th century but most of the impressive Blackwater riverside residence was added on in the 18th and 19th centuries.

It has been owned for the last 20 years by US couple and former diplomats Michael and Judy McGinn, who worked with President Jimmy Carter.

It has been rented out at times and guests during the McGinn family tenure included Tip O’Neill, Jean Kennedy Smith and actor Brian Dennehy. One of the beds in the main rooms, is said to have belonged to President Abraham Lincoln.

Mallow Castle is upriver of Michael Flatley’s lavishly restored Castlehyde home, and other well-known Co Cork castle owners include Roy Disney and Jeremy Irons, both on the West Cork coastline.

Castlefreke also in West Cork is undergoing a multi-million euro restoration programme by its original owners, the Freke family who returned to it from North America.

A number of house sites have been sold off from the original Mallow Castle lands in recent years, and the castle was briefly put up for sale in the late 1990s but was taken off the market again.

It goes up for sale this week with joint agents Sherry FitzGerald O’Donovan in Mallow and Ganly Walters in Dublin, who last year sold Ballynatray on 400 acres along the River Blackwater for a record €11.2m.

Recalling their search around Ireland in the 1980s looking for a place to live in, owner Michael McGinn said of the impulse to buy Mallow Castle in 1985, “we couldn’t afford to buy it, but then we couldn’t afford not to either”.

If they get offers around €8m, they won’t be able to afford not to sell.