Tag: sheephaven bay

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Shandon Hotel + Marble Hill Beach Dunfanaghy Donegal

A Country Kilometre

There’s a wee drop of aul’ rain in Lifford and it’s bucketin’ in Letterkenny so it is, but by the time we get to Marble Hill the sun is splittin’ the trees. It’s gone from Baltic to boilin’ so it has. All in good time for a dead on wee bite of lunch in Shandon’s overlookin’ the empty beach with not a wee’ne in sight. It’s dead posh. Not like the Carrig Rua Hotel in Dunfanaghy which is dunderin’ inn. Anyone up for a wee trip in Bert’s boat later on Killahoey Beach?

Running out of Ulsterisms it’s time to enjoy a celebratory pescatarian feast in Shandon Hotel which has had the greatest revivification since avocados were mere vegetables or fruit or whatever they used to be. There are views and there are views and there’s the framed golden strand of Marble Hill with the white tipped frothy spray of waves almost lapping up to our table. Across the water on the far side of Sheephaven Bay lies Downings.

Next stop the jolly town of Dunfanaghy. It’s all abuzz around the august Market House. “This Building was erected by Alex Rob Stewart of Ards House AD 1845,” marks a plaque between its first floor windows. On the ground things are more relaxed. There’s a coffee bar, antiques store and yoga venue. And a farmers’ market in the Diamond in front of the Market House.

Opposite the Diamond is McAuliffe’s Craft Shop. It has evolved over four generations of the same family since opening in 1920 as Sweeney’s Drapery. Romantic Stories and Legends of Donegal by Harry Percival Swan, 1965, is one of several local interest books for sale. It opens with, “Donegal calls you. Situated in the North Western corner of Ireland it is one of the most fascinating playgrounds in these islands. It is part of the nine Counties of Ulster, and is the largest County in the Province (1,865 square miles). Donegal belongs to Eire, but is separated from it by County Fermanagh. Donegal’s key note is variety.”

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Architecture People

Doe Castle Donegal + Rory O’Donnell

Adhere | The Fight of the Earl | To Crown It All

The 19th century German traveller Johann Kohl maintained, “Irish ruins generally wear a very picturesque look.” That may bear some truth but if left entirely to nature’s devices, ruins disappear. Professor Finola O’Kane Crimmins, lecturer at University College Dublin, is a specialist in Ireland and the Picturesque. “There is an insouciance in English paintings of ruins,” she believes. “They are often used as framing devices. But ruins in Ireland have always been political in light of the country’s history.”

Doe Castle, sitting on a promontory jutting into Sheephaven Bay, County Donegal, is as picturesque as they come. It looks for all the world like a Scottish Highlands shortbread tin lid. Even more so recently, thanks to the addition of a striking high pitched roof bravely accentuating its silhouette. The roof is one of several daring interventions carried out by the Office of Public Works. Limewashing the keep and constructing new plinth walls are two others.

“Doe” is derived from the Gaelic word “Tuath” meaning territory. The castle was for a time the stronghold of the MacSweeney Clan who had three territories stretching from Rosgoill in the east to Gweedore in the west. It is first mentioned in the Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland in 1544 although the four storey keep is probably older. Naturally it has a history as bloody as a Donegal foreland. “The iterative cycle of land,” observes Professor O’Kane Crimmins. Historian Brian de Breffny wrote in 1977, “For many years the ownership of the castle was fought over and disputed incessantly.” Rory O’Donnell, Earl of Tyrconnell, was granted custody of the castle by Royal Warranty for a fleeting three years at the turn of the 17th century.

There’s more. Adopting a portmanteau, Brian de Breffny also wrote, “The Government then compelled the Earl to allow Sir Basil Brooke to occupy Doe and its lands. The Earl of Tyrconnell sailed for the Continent from Lough Swilly in 1607, never to return, and Castledoe was once again in Crown hands.”  Beyond the battlemented and buttressed and buffeted bawn, in sight of the haunted keep, sloping down to the water’s edge, is a well kept graveyard. The tombstone set in a wall of the wife of Captain John Sandford who bought Doe Castle in 1614 reads: “Heere Lyeth the bodie of Anne Sanforde Late Wife Vnto Captain John Sanforde Who Desesed The 13 of Jvly Anno Domeni 1621 For Whose Sake This Chapell was Ercted” [lots of sic].

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Country Houses

Downings Pier Rosguill + Mevagh Donegal

Shore Thing

The Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland, Parishes of Donegal I, 1833 to 1835 record: “The villages of Downings and Doagh are the principal fishing places. Some few persons give themselves up entirely to the trade, not having any land, and send their fish to Letterkenny and Derry on ponies and asses.”

Rosguill, historically known as Mevagh, is one of several peninsulae off the north coast of County Donegal. To its west is the gentle watered Sheephaven Bay; to its east, the rocky waves of Mulroy Bay. The 15 kilometre Atlantic Drive loops round its dramatic coastline. Downings is a low key tourist destination on the western shore of this far flung tip of Ireland.

Again, The Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland, Parishes of Donegal I, 1833 to 1835: “The climate is very moist and changeable, the parish being mountainous and exposed to the vapours from the Atlantic Ocean.”