Built in the mid-18th century by the Nesbitts, a Scottish family planted in Donegal, Bruckless House passed into the hands of an Irish family of tanners and merchants, the Cassidys. They were prominent in local public affairs being wardens in the Church of Ireland and members of the Boards that strived for better lives and times during the Famine. Fortunes waned in the northwest throughout the nineteenth century via the Great Famine and economic depressions. The head of the Cassidy clan sent his eldest son, Andrew, to Australia in 1889: a frequent solution in times of family decline. Andrew became well-to-do but never returned to Ireland although he inherited the house on the death of his father in 1902.
The house was sold to the wealthy Thomas Kelly Grene who in turn passed it to his nephew Arthur Warren Darley, a well known cellist who developed a nationwide reputation for collecting and recording Irish folk music. Darley supported the nationalist cause in the War of Independence and Bruckless House provided shelter for republican leaders. Darley sold the House to Thomas Roderick Fforde, a retired Royal Navy Commander who had the distinction of being a member of the Soviet Communist Party. He influenced two sons of the local landlord family, the Goold-Verschoyles, who became deeply involved in Soviet communism in England and in Moscow. One of the sons was sent by the Comintern to help in the republican side of the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s. Tragically, this young man, Brian Goold-Verschoyle fell foul of his Soviet masters and ended in a gulag in the USSR where he died. His story, and that of his brother Niall, is told vividly in the book by Barry McLoughlin Left to the Wolves and also told in the novel by Dermot Bolger The Family on Paradise Pier. Both books reflect the influence of Fforde and of Bruckless House on the Goold-Verschoyle family.
The House was involved with Irish republican politics again in the 1930s when the Irish Republican Army (IRA) flirted with Ireland becoming a socialist state and courted support from the Soviet Union. Fforde communicated with this movement through Geoffrey Coulter, a prominent figure in the IRA and one of its leading propagandists. Coulter and his family stayed here periodically with Fforde during this period.
The House remained with Fforde just into the 1950s and then passed through various hands in the course of subsequent years, even becoming a country hotel for a short time. It had developed into a first-class guest house by the 1960s but was transformed back into a family home by the Evans family, who bought it in 1973. The children were very young at that time but now have their own lives with their own families living in Dublin. Alexander is a leading biologist in University College Dublin (www.ucd.ie/agfoodvet/staff/alex_evans.hum) and closely involved in the running of the House and farm. Jane is immersed in the realms of language realization and training (www.englishlanguagesupport.com) and in addition, plays a keen part in life at Bruckless. The grandchildren make the place resound with life!
Since 1984 the house has welcomed visitors who enjoy the peace and tranquility of this traditional home. It is now also an established stud farm for Connemara ponies and an extensive informal Robinsonian garden listed in reputable guides to Irish gardens at the national level. The Family is aware of the need to run the House and its environment in a manner compatible, as far as possible, with nature and the need to conserve energy and resources. In the use of electricity, power-saving lights are utilized and night-time off-peak power is used to run the laundry and kitchen machinery. The open fires in the House are fuelled by timber from trees in the demesne damaged in storms or having died in the natural course of time - none are felled for fuel. Extensive replanting has been undertaken in recent years in efforts to compensate for these natural losses. The garden is renewed using compost and fertilizer from the yard and the stock that run on the land - no artificial fertilizers are used nor herbicides applied to flowering beds. The commercial woods on the farm at Sallows are managed ecologically, with thinning confined to the weaker trees. Natural regeneration is the order of the day there so that the woodlands remain a permanent feature in the landscape.
At Bruckless, with the waters of Donegal Bay lapping its shoreline, the spectacular wild coast and warm welcome from the people that live here, the House is a haven of beauty and repose for the discerning traveller. The record of the long history of the region is visible in stone and ancient circles throughout this parish, linking the present with a continuous and intriguing past. The House, now designated a Protected Building, is a part of it all.
Clive and Joan Evans, Bruckless House, Bruckless, Co. Donegal, Ireland
phone: 00353 74 9737071
email: bruc@bruckless.com