Go Niche

SHORT NOTICE, I know, but if you’re down Connemara way this evening, or at a loose end anywhere else in the country and prepared to put in a few hours in the car, check out “an evening by the river” at Ballynahinch Castle tonight.

The luxury Connemara hotel has a long association with literature and the arts, and also with raising funds for Cancer Care West.

Three years ago it published a collection of writings from such regular residents as Seamus Heaney and Brian Friel, which raised €10,000 for the charity. A second tome, celebrating poet Peter Fallon and the Gallery Press, was published the following year.

This year the hotel is running an evening of music and conversation for the charity, with broadcaster John Kelly and, among others, composer Bill Whelan, singer Julie Feeney and sculptor Dorothy Cross. Tickets cost €150 for dinner and concert with limited special packages of €225 for dinner, concert and B&B.

While you’re there, check out the hotel’s memorabilia of cricketing superstar Prince Ranjitsinhji, Maharajah of Nawanager.

In July 1924, he became the first head of state to make an official visit to the newly-founded Irish Free State.

Ranji, as he was known, met with then taoiseach WT Cosgrave in Dublin and then travelled west on his private train carriage to Ballynahinch Castle in pursuit of his passion for fly-fishing. He loved the estate so much that, Victor Kiam-style, he bought it, returning there every year until his death in 1932 and helping put Ireland on the world’s holiday map in the process. An Irish-Indian cricket match is still held every year in Trinity College, Dublin, sponsored by the hotel, in his honour.

ballynahinch-castle.com