Trabolgan

Whitegate, Co. Cork

Rebuilt circa 1780, for the Roche family who'd held the 16,000-acre estate since about 1645. The original manor was most likely rebuilt with money from Edward Roche's prodigious marriage in 1781 to the daughter of Sir George Wombwell, 1st Bt., Chairman of the Honourable East India Company. In Irish, "Tra" means 'strand' or 'beach' and "Bolgan" is either 'bulging' or 'big wave'. Sometimes the gales off the Atlantic were so strong, it was impossible to open the hall door! Despite the estate's size, it was poor agricultural land and brought in a comparatively low annual income of £7,000...

This house is best associated with...

Edmund Burke Roche

Edmund Burke Roche, M.P., 1st Baron Fremoy; Lord Lieutenant of Co. Cork

1815-1874

Edward FitzEdmund Burke Roche

Edward FitzEdmund Burke Roche, J.P., D.L., 2nd Baron Fremoy

1850-1920

Edmund Roche was created Lord Fermoy and his eldest son and heir, Edward, 2nd Baron Fermoy, was an inveterate and apparently not very good gambler - as was his younger brother, Jim, who married the American heiress, Frances Ellen Work (1857-1947), much to the disapproval of her father. A story is told that the 2nd Baron lost the estate in a bet with a guest on a greyhound race: "He thought he had a champion greyhound, but the errant dog spotted a crow and chased the bird rather than the hare"! The story itself might be true, but the real demise of the Roche estate was somewhat more mundane: the bank foreclosed on the mortgage in 1881 and placed it on the market for a couple of years without any success. It was sold privately a few years later to the Clarke family who made their fortune manufacturing Player's cigarettes, and even grew tobacco here during the war! In 1947, the Clarkes were obliged to sell up to the Irish Land Commission. The mansion was demolished in 1982 and today the land is used as a holiday activity center. 

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Contributed by Mark Meredith on 16/11/2019 and last updated on 17/11/2019.
Housetorian: Trabolgan Country Estate; Diana's Origin's in Real Rebel Country, (August 20, 2017, Irish Independent); A Guide to Irish Country Houses (1996) by Mark Bence-Jones; Blood Royal: The Story of the Spencers and the Royals (1999), by John Pearson; Trabolgan, NUI Galway, Landed Estates Database; The Little Book of Cork Harbour (The History Press, 2019) by Kieran McCarthy; Roche of Trabolgan, Burke's Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry, 1847

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