A Walled Garden, Peaches and a Priest

Deerfield was once part of the neighboring Drimcong estate and served as the residence of the estate’s land steward. During the famine years, the original house held a ‘soup kitchen’ before being demolished around 1927 to make way for a new building. Today, remnants of the early structures remain in ruins, along with the intact extensive walled garden, which is divided into Upper and Lower orchards by an internal wall. Constructed from local limestone, the garden walls stand between eight and ten feet high.

At the northern end of the Lower orchard, two fossil-bearing stones—containing brachiopods—rest on the ground beneath a small, overgrown recessed opening in the wall. Local tradition holds that, when the property was later occupied by Catholic clergy, this recess served as an altar, from which the priest would pass communion to locals gathered outside.

One such priest, Fr. Francis Xavier Blake, planted the Lower orchard with peach trees, of which only a single specimen survives today.

The property was later used as a holiday retreat by the Presentation nuns of Galway city, before being sold in 1918 for £1,500 to the ancestors of its current owners.

Site Location: 53.354140, -9.198409
Site Accessibility: Strictly No Access – Private Property