Planning permission granted to restore prominent Shannon landmark

DÚCHAS Na Sionna CLG has been granted permission by Clare County Council to restore the iconic near-200 year-old Hasting’s Farmhouse building in Shannon.

The voluntary group will also build a services facility using traditional packed clay walls as in the riverside farmhouse. The farmhouse which was the family home of the Hastings family, is situated between the crematorium and Illaunamanagh Graveyard, and was first mentioned in the Ordinance Survey of 1840.

The house was at the centre of a busy 27-acre farm for many generations until John Hastings death in 1968. The farmhouse, a beautiful lime-washed building, with its mud-packed walls built directly from the surrounding clay soil, suffered badly from vandalism in the 1970s, and after the thatch roof was burned, vines and vegetation took hold and the rain and wind devastated the walls over the following four decades.

However, in 2012, locals rediscovered the remains of the farmhouse and a group of volunteers battled the briars, cleared the site and began their conservation work.

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Now, 13 years later, following technical studies and feasibility reports, remedial work and community workshops, and Heritage Council-funded courses in craft building methods, the fortunes of the Hastings Farmhouse are on the rise again with the volunteer group waiting in the wings for the final go-ahead from Clare County Council.

“We’re delighted to receive the news that Clare County Council has granted Dúchas na Sionna planning permission to restore the farmhouse and to build a new services facility,” said the voluntary group’s chairman, John O’Brien.

“We’re not quite there yet in the planning process and we will also have a lot more work to do before the rebuilding starts early next year, but it seems to me that 13 years after we started on this project it’s a very lucky day for the farmhouse and for Shannon.”

“The building served the Hastings family very well for more than a century and deserves to be restored. The community in Shannon is lucky as well that the farmhouse was discovered in the nick of time, before it was lost forever,” the chairman added.

“We are so pleased with the planning decision,” added Olive Carey, the secretary of Dúchas na Sionna. “We’re really looking forward to restoring Hastings Farmhouse and opening the exhibition gallery space, the meeting venue for the community and the training facility for local companies and organisations.”