THE TIMELINE for a major project to rebuild and restore a near 200-year-old farmhouse has been revealed at the closing event of National Heritage Week in Shannon.
The announcement was made by the chairperson of Dúchas na Sionna at the cultural event held at Hasting’s Farmhouse.
John O’Brien told the packed attendance that Clare County Council granted planning permission to rebuild the farmhouse and the barn, and to build a new services unit, using the same traditional packed clay walls on the two-acre riverside site.
“That was fantastic news,” he said to huge applause from the appreciative audience, “but what’s even more exciting is that the capital funding has been secured with the assistance of the Michael Guinee Charitable Foundation.”
“Michael Guinee was the CEO of Ei and has recently retired. He has set up a charitable foundation and they have shown confidence in us, a very small group of people, as an organisation. This confidence has enabled us to progress. It has been a total game-changer. The planning permission was a big, big milestone, but this, to cap it all, is wonderful. We are now confident that construction of the farmhouse will get underway as early as next spring,” he said.
The farmhouse, which was the family home of the Hastings family, is sited between the crematorium and Illaunamanagh Graveyard in Shannon, and was first mentioned in the Ordinance Survey of 1840, and was at the centre of a busy 29-acre farm until the death of John Hastings in 1968.
The lime-washed building with mud-packed walls, built directly from the surrounding clay soil, suffered badly from vandalism in the 1970s, and after the thatch roof was burned, vines and vegetation took hold, and the rain and wind devastated the walls over the following four decades.
The remains of the farmhouse were rediscovered in 2012, and a group of volunteers battled the briars, cleared the site, and began their conservation work.
13 years later, following technical studies and feasibility reports, remedial work, community workshops, and Heritage Council-funded courses in craft building methods, the volunteer group is waiting in the wings as the traditional-building specialists complete the preparatory work for construction to begin in the spring of next year.
