Built in the mid-18th century by a Scottish family planted in Donegal, Bruckless House passed into the hands of an Irish family of tanners and merchants, the Cassidys. 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 remained with Fforde into the 1950s and then passed through various hands in the course of subsequent years, even becoming a country hotel for a stage in the early 1950s. 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. 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.
With the waters of Donegal Bay lapping its shoreline, the spectacular wild coast and warm welcome from the people that live here, Bruckless 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 is a part of it all.
Clive and Joan Evans, Bruckless House, Bruckless, Co. Donegal, Ireland
phone: 074 9737071
email: bruc@bruckless.com