Of all the indignities suffered by Tony O’Reilly during his financial collapse, the enforced sale of the Castlemartin Estate in Kildare, where his parents are buried beside a small church in the grounds, must have wounded him the most. But it is said that he was almost as fond of his meticulously restored Dublin town house on Fitzwilliam Square.
Last week the classical Georgian house appeared on the property price register with a sale price of €6.475 million. It has been owned for the past decade by Tony O’Shea, a low-key entrepreneur from Co Meath who made his fortune making surgical kits for operating theatres and who in more recent years helped to bankroll the Press Up group’s dizzying expansion.
The new owner, who bought the house in an off-market deal, was perhaps not solely motivated by its 600sq m (6,500sq ft) of Georgian elegance. It must be far more personal for showjumper and horse breeder Cian O’Connor, who we can reveal as the purchaser. O’Connor, who owns the extremely profitable Karlswood Stables in Co Meath, was O’Reilly’s godson. When O’Reilly died last year, O’Connor described him as his “hero”, crediting the former rugby international with inspiring his career in showjumping.
Indeed O’Reilly owned Waterford Crystal, the infamous horse on which O’Connor won a gold medal at the Olympics in 2004 that he was subsequently stripped of when the horse tested positive for a prohibited substance. O’Reilly stood by his godson throughout the saga. Bringing Fitzwilliam Square back into the family fold may feel like a step towards repaying that debt.
An Irishwoman in Portugal: ‘Blue skies, bilingual children and a flight home in three hours’
Mysterious sweathouses were used widely in Ireland until late 19th century. Now sauna culture is making a comeback
Opinion: Kneecap should be commended rather than condemned
How to stop hungry slugs and snails from wreaking havoc in your garden
Trainers Aidan O’Brien and Anne-Marie O’Brien’s property move
The other big property sale of the week shows the money’s in horses. Aidan O’Brien, John Magnier’s master trainer, and his wife and fellow trainer, Anne-Marie O’Brien, are the new owners of the sprawling Fanningstown House in Piltown, Co Kilkenny, near to where Anne-Marie’s father, Joe Crowley, had his stables.
The couple bought the Georgian house through their family company, Whisperview Trading. While the property price register records the purchase at €1.25 million, that doesn’t include its adjoining 40 acres, so it’s likely to have fetched close to €2 million.
As you’d expect, it comes with five stables, outbuildings, a barn, a coach house with a loft and a mare and foal box. There’s also a sauna in case any of O’Brien’s jockeys need to make weight in a hurry.
Paddy Cosgrave joins ‘Drico’ on tennis club waiting list
Earlier this year it was reported that even the great Brian O’Driscoll is struggling to become a member of Dublin’s exclusive Fitzwilliam Lawn Tennis Club. Apparently, O’Driscoll was one of about 300 nominees whose names were put forward this year. Of those, fewer than 80 were chosen, with the club already vastly oversubscribed.
Even getting nominated is quite the palaver, with applicants needing to be endorsed by two people who have been members for at least 18 months and who know the prospective member for at least two years. Upon joining, there’s a once-off fee of €8,000, as well as annual fees of €2,500.
We hear another of those who was unsuccessful this year was Web Summit supremo Paddy Cosgrave, who strung together some decent performances playing masters doubles with nearby Brookfield last year. Presumably his Web Summit hiatus gave him time to work on his backhand.
Would Harris have plumped for Pym if he knew she was a spook?
When the journalist Eoghan Harris chose Barbara J Pym as a pseudonym for a Twitter account in which he took pot shots at various public figures (imagine what Babs would have made of Kneecap), he was presumably paying homage to the English satirist Barbara Pym. The novelist, celebrated for her comedies of manners, worked as a post office censor during the second World War.
One of her jobs was to ensure that people in Britain writing to Irish relatives wouldn’t reveal any compromising secrets about the war effort.
But would Harris have chosen Pym as his nom de plume had he known about new research by British diplomat and Pym scholar Claire Smith that suggests she was working for MI5 during her time poring over wartime correspondence? Apparently British intelligence recruited Pym, a German speaker, because they believed her writer’s eye for detail would help her detect coded messages in correspondence.
The scabrous Barbara J Pym would surely have had something to say about the matter, had Twitter not shut Harris’s sock puppet account down for breaching its “policy on platform manipulation and spam”.
The Big Brother Edgar-Jones and Irish dancing
The television adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Normal People, starring Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones, performed the remarkable feat of making O’Neill’s GAA shorts fashionable.
Another Edgar-Jones, Daisy’s father Phil, is also dipping into Irish culture with a new series for Sky on Irish dancing that airs later this year. Phil, one of the creators of Big Brother and now executive director of Unscripted Originals at Sky, has commissioned a new three-part series, The Battle of the Irish Dancers, which follows a cast of high kickers and their teachers competing at the World Championships in Dublin.
Perhaps wife Wendy, who reportedly helped daughter Daisy with her Irish accent in Normal People, gave him a heads up about the theatrical potential of the glitzy world of turnouts, tiaras and tan – she comes from Co Down.
Tidy town says No to Bible church plan
If you think Tidy Towns involves picking up a bit of litter and planting a few flowers on public verges, you’re underestimating the type of committees competing for national titles. For them, it’s a year-round vocation.
Take Abbeyleix, the overall winner in 2023 and a regional winner last year. When a local Bible church sought to extend an old Methodist church building on the town’s main street last year, the Tidy Towns committee took issue with its plans.
While Laois County Council granted Laois Bible Church permission for a single-storey flat-roof extension and some internal modifications, Abbeyleix Tidy Towns appealed the decision to An Bord Pleanála, criticising the extension’s “crude design”.
Last week the appeals board ruled in favour of the Tidy Towns committee, saying the extension would detract from the appearance of the protected structure. And that’s why they’re champions.
