The site upon which the house sits has been in use since the 15 th century and was an important charcoal and iron smelting settlement. The remains of what is understood to be the foundations for the chimney furnaces are buried in the undergrowth of the garden. Power for the bellows which fed the furnace flames came from the streams cascading down the mountain behind the house. It is believed that parts of the current building, the rear, which fronts the old road behind the house, date from this period.

The current structure was developed over the subsequent centuries with the main house and its typical symmetric Georgian features dating from the 1740s. The western side of the house benefited from a Victorian style extension in the late 19th Century, and is set back from the main house complementing the overall classical style of the site.

Rev. Richard Wright was leasing this property from the Bantry estate in 1852 when it was valued at £9. It is labelled Ardrigole Parsonage on the 1st edition Ordnance Survey map but appears as Adrigole House on the 25-inch edition of the 1890s. The house evolved as parsonage connected to a protestant church to service the influx of new settlers arriving to work in the smelting works and associated industries. With the expansion of the new religion in the 18 th century the area came under the control of the local land lord, an up and coming mining family, the Puxleys, who had developed their home in the grounds of the Dunboy Castle near Castletownbere. As the Puxley family were frequent visitors to the church in Adrigole the house was upgraded to reflect the importance of the clergy and became a Glebe house, still retaining its status as a working farmhouse. The house gets a mention in Daphne du Maurier’s famous book Hungry Hill which recounts the life of the Brodrick family – a pseudonym for the Puxley family.

With Catherine Puxley’s death in the 19 th century her devastated husband Henry, who was the landlord at the time, moved away from the area settling in the south of France. With no overlord to maintain its up keep, and a dwindling protestant population, the Church in Adrigole fell into disuse and quickly became a ruin. The house on the other hand was saved from this fate as it was still a working farm and was a useful income generator for the Puxley landlords. In the later part of the 1800s and early 1900s the property was leased to the British Admiralty who used it as a transfer station for officers heading to Bere Island military base. Anecdotes tell of wild and decadent parties held in the house during this period!

After the creation of the state in 1922 the house and farmland was sold as part of the land commission reform and was purchased by a local vet who maintained the farm and ran a very successful veterinary surgery from the Victorian annex. Upon his death he left the house to his decedents but by the end of the 1960s the house had fallen into dilapidated state as no maintenance had been carried out since the 1920s and the farmland was leased . With the death of the vets daughter in the early 1970s the house and land was sold to a Belgian couple who carried out refurbishments and ran the house as a hostel and campsite. They planted an orchard in the field by the river and were pioneers in organic living holidays. In the 1980s the property was sold on to an English family who carried on the hostelry and campsite, developing an organic rare breed’s farm as an additional tourist draw.

The current owners purchased the property in 1998 and have concentrated on bringing the external part of the house back to its former glory; replacing the roof, windows, external render, repairing the chimneys, reclaiming the garden and draining the foundations.

NUI Galway have Adrigole House registered as