Lodge played host to a king

A PROPERTY which could be said to chart the changes in the upper echelons of Irish society is now on sale in Connemara for the princely sum of €400,000.

Gowla Lodge, near Cashel in Co Galway, is about 300 years old and was once part of the Ballinahinch Estate. It was used as a fishing lodge for the Gowla Fishery, once renowned for sea trout, but alas, this is no longer the case as stocks were decimated in the early 1990s and still haven’t recovered.

However, there were plenty of fish around when King Edward VII cast his rod here and the property was then owned for a while by the Guinness family.