Our story
A thousand years on one hundred acres.
Most places have a history. Drumhierny has a stratigraphy — fairy forts under oak roots, a Norman battle at the bridge, a banking dynasty's hunting lodge, a 1916 bloodline, and forty silent years in which the forest quietly took the deeds back. We are only its latest tenants, and we plan to be good ones.
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Three fairy forts
Ring forts in the undergrowth put people on this land at least a thousand years ago — and in Leitrim, likely far longer. They are still here. We mow around them.
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The Battle of Áth an Chip
Ten thousand men met at the river crossing below the estate; the Irish drove the Normans from the field, and Battlebridge has carried the name ever since.
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The hunting lodge
The Huguenot La Touche family — refugees, silk merchants, and eventually founders of the Bank of Ireland — built their hunting lodge at Drumhierny. Peter La Touche, MP for Leitrim, ran his Arigna iron ventures from here.
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The O’Connor years
Michael Joseph O’Connor, an Irish emigrant returned from America, bought the estate for a little under £5,000. His daughter Marion married Aodogán O’Rahilly — son of The O’Rahilly, the only leader of the 1916 Rising killed in the fighting. Our roads carry these names.
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The quiet years
The house emptied, and for forty years the wood simply grew. Whatever was lost in those decades, the oaks banked it all.
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The regeneration
A local family bought the estate and started over: 5km of trails, sixteen lodges, the Wellbeing Sanctuary in the walled garden, the Barn, solar power, and a tree-planting campaign that runs every season. Next: ten more lodges, and one day, the manor house itself.
Made by hands, here.
Leitrim artists on every wall
The art in each lodge is by local artists — the same hands whose prints you can buy at reception by the Cedaroo.
Timber from the forest floor
Furniture and finishes made from windfall estate timber — red cedar the storms brought down, given a second life indoors.
VOYA's Sligo seaweed
The seaweed baths use VOYA's hand-harvested organic seaweed from the Sligo coast — Ireland's only indigenous therapy.
Built to last, built nearby
The lodges were built thirty miles away in Co. Longford, clad in cedral and rated A++ — warm in any weather Leitrim can think of.
Sustainability
Commerciality and the wood, working hand in hand.
Ireland's native woodland covers barely two per cent of the island. A meaningful piece of what's left is ours to mind: a rare stand of ancient oak above the Shannon, protected and managed for the long term.
The practical bits: A++-rated lodges built thirty miles away in Longford, furniture made from windfall estate timber, low-flow water fixtures, solar on the way in Phase 2, and a tree-planting campaign you can join — a native tree planted in any name you choose, numbered and certified.
We host because it pays for the forestry, not the other way round.
Forty silent years. The oaks banked it all.