The History

The earliest official historic record we have of Farran House is from a 1792 book of maps detailing the lands of Farransheshiry (later shortened to Farran), the estate of Samuel Penrose Esq. The map clearly shows the main house and the coach house. As regards the age of the present house, all we can say is that it was built some time before 1792. The Penrose family carried out extensive improvements and extentions to the house in 1866 giving it the shape you can recognise today. We obtained the original drawings of these improvements and much of our current restoration work  was based on them. In 1868 a Cork tobacco merchant, William Clarke, bought the recently improved Farran house complete with an estate of 5664 acres. The story goes that William Clarke had made his fortune during the American civil war obtaining ship loads of tobacco by daringly defying the Northern blockades of the Southern ports. The company of William Clarke & Sons was to grow to become one of the largest producers of pipe tobocco in Britain,  one of the branches of the Imperial tobacco Company. William Clarke passed the house on to his son Thomas Clarke who in turn passed it on to his son Thomas Arthur Clarke. Thomas Arthur sold  Farran to his sister-in-law Amy Clarke in 1937 and bought one of the English Channel Islands, Brecqou, unfortunately he had to evacuate the island soon after, in his 600 ton yacht, ahead of the German occupation. Amy  Clarke lived at Farran until she died aged 101 in 1970. She left the now deteriorating house and the remaining 130 acres to her daughter who immediately sold it. The contents auction  was a major event and lasted three days. In the 70s the house changed hands a couple of times until a German property developer bought it with 12 acres.  He had the house "modernised" and converted into 7 holiday appartments one of which was bought by the Wiese family in 1979. So began the 3rd chapter of Farran House. For various reasons all other interested parties withdrew and  by 1985 the Wiese family were the sole owners of the property. In 1988 they bought another house close by and Farran House was again on the market. By 1993 the house had still not been sold, so Patricia Wiese and myself, who were living in Dublin at the time, decided to take on the job of restoration. At that stage the house looked pretty good, on the surface, It was nicely decorated, it had tasteful wallpaper, curtains and wall to wall carpeting. Closer inspection revealed serious problems. So we tore down the wall paper and plaster board, ripped up the carpets and floor boards, removed the partition walls and got stuck in. 4 Years later in May 1997 we received our first guests.