Daragh's dream at Barrow House

Daragh McDonogh jokes that – to the casual onlooker, at least – her decision to buy Barrow House must look like a “midlife crisis”.

After all, not only did she swap her life in London to move to Co Kerry to renovate and re-open the Georgian pile as a boutique B&B, she bought it at auction without having even seen it in real life.

“Madness,” she grins; though Irish Country Living counters that from where we’re standing – or rather, sitting, in a rather luxurious library room overlooking Tralee Bay – her story is not one of crisis, but of courage in following a long-held dream.

“It’s a shock that a dream actually had a chance of coming true,” she responds, setting out two cups of coffee and thick slices of fruit cake as rescue dogs Doris and Momo snooze in the corner.

When we arrive at the waterside property on the outskirts of Tralee, Daragh is in the middle of cleaning the bedrooms for her guests due to arrive later that afternoon. And it quickly becomes clear that “Lady Barrow”– as her neighbours christened her, tongue firmly in cheek, having witnessed her clearing drains and scything grass when she first moved in – is not afraid of getting her hands dirty.

City to country

While originally from Dublin, Daragh has always had a draw to the countryside that she attributes to holidays with her mother’s family on their farm in Co Longford.

“I have a huge attachment to the land,” she says, though admits that as a teenager in the ’80s, she could not wait to get out of Ireland.

“I was 18 and I had a bit between my teeth,” she smiles, explaining how she worked as a travel rep in Austria and Majorca before moving to London, where her sister was working for Kerry Foods.

“I was on her sofa for the first six months and I got a job with EMI Records and I thought I was the bee’s knees,” says Daragh, who later went on to work for Getty Images, before setting up her own company, Shoot Global, where she produces and directs photography and video content for clients such as the TUI holiday company and Greystar property.

However, she still kept in touch with her rural roots, with hobbies like wild food foraging, and would tell friends of her long-term dream to eventually leave the city for a house in the country.

“I bored everyone for years about ‘this house’,” says Daragh, who was working on a shoot in Turkey in late 2016 when she received a call that was to fast-forward her to the next chapter of her life.

“I got a phone call from my brother going: ‘I’ve found your unicorn,’” she recalls. “And I was going: ‘What on earth are you talking about?’”

The “unicorn” in question was Barrow House, an eight-bedroom 18th century home and coach house with a colourful history between Ardfert and Fenit, which was being brought to public auction with an asking price of €275,000, having previously changed hands for a rumoured €2m during the Celtic Tiger days.

“So I looked at it and my jaw dropped,” continues Daragh, who initially tried to convince her brother that there was “no point” in attending the auction on her behalf, as she thought she would be quickly outbid on what she could afford if she sold her flat in the UK.

“And he said: ‘Come on, I’ll take my daughter, it will be great experience for her to see an auction.’ So I had a quick scramble around to see how would I raise the funds for a capped budget and I said: ‘Well, do you know what Fred? Go.’

“I didn’t believe he’d get it.”

Flying back to the UK the morning of the auction, Daragh describes standing in her kitchen in Hackney listening over the phone (“leaning against the window because the signal was bad”) as the first bid started at €10,000 over the asking price.

“‘Five seconds, I can get back to my day,’” she recalls thinking. But soon the increments dropped to €5,000, then €2,000, as more people began to drop out, before her brother made a final bid of €355,000 on her behalf.

Then, it all went quiet.

“He just went: ‘Congratulations, you’re the owner of Barrow House,’” says Daragh. “And then I came here and saw it for the first time.”

Blood, sweat and tears

Though she freely admits that she had more than one “what have I done?” moment as she came up the driveway that first day.

“‘Is it damp? Is the roof safe?’” she recalls of the thoughts racing through her mind as she turned the key. But moreover, would she be up to the job of what was waiting for her within.

“It was always about: ‘Can I do this?’” she says of the “self-doubt” that gripped her, especially as she had put everything she had into the property.

“I had cashed in what was a nice renter and I wanted to get some return on my investment – quickly.”

Fortunately, the house was structurally sound, but in need of renovation to restore it to its former glory.

“I’ve done up houses before, but nothing like this to the scale,” says Daragh. “There’s big tools that require petrol – not electricity – put it that way.”

Fortunately, as well as sourcing a local builder, Daragh had the support of a few key people in her inner circle to call on: Paul Litewski, who manages country houses in the UK, Kate Dion, who renovates B&Bs for a living, and her mother, who previously bought a hotel in Kerry after Daragh’s father retired.

“It runs in the family,” she laughs of how history has repeated itself. There was still a huge amount of work to be done by Daragh herself, from sourcing furniture at auctions to cleaning, culking, sanding, painting… and all the other jobs that needed to be tackled.

“For about a year, I got four hours sleep a night, so it was work like it was never ending,” says Daragh, who in the early days would sleep in “two puffa jackets” because she couldn’t afford to heat the house just for herself.

“And that would make you dig deep and think about what was it all about?”

Feel the fear

What helped keep her going, however, was the welcome from people in the area, who were so supportive of what she was doing to revive Barrow House.

“You’d come downstairs and there’d be soup and sandwiches and a note: ‘We heard you’ve been working really hard and you probably haven’t got to the shops today, so here’s some food,’” she gives as one example of the kindness of her new neighbours.

But the blood, sweat and tears have obviously paid off with a boutique B&B that hospitality expert Georgina Campbell has described as a “very special place” in her guidebook – from bedrooms complete with thoughtful touches such as Egyptian cotton sheets, goose down duvets, picnic baskets and binoculars, to sumptuous breakfasts, a boat jetty and bay views.

And while many visitors use Barrow House as their base to explore Dingle or Killarney, Daragh is passionate about working with local businesses to provide unique experiences – such as sea swimming and coasteering trips with Wild Water Adventures – to showcase the beauty of this side of Co Kerry.

“It’s all about staying here, as opposed to leaving,” she says, adding that while many of her guests come from the US, UK, Germany and France, Barrow House also attracts the domestic market seeking something different.

“There’s an awfully well informed Irish tourist who knows the coast and knows how to get away from it all; and Barrow is on that list now,” she says.

Of course, running a property like Barrow House still presents a new challenge every day; but “Lady Barrow” has risen to every one so far.

“I fixed two washing machines yesterday,” she says proudly. “I just went: ‘Old Daragh would have just had to have called a plumber.’

“I have the mother and the father of a tool shed out there and I know how to use them. And that’s fighting talk!”

And as for advice to anybody who wants to follow a dream – no matter how big – Daragh reckons there is a lot to be said for the cliché of “feel the fear and do it anyway”.

“It has to be scary or else it’s just the same as usual. So if it’s not scary then you’re not doing it right basically,” she laughs.

“You have to terrify yourself!”

Rooms from €130-€190. For further information, visit www.barrowhouse.ie

Read more

Queen of the castle - meet Catherine FitzGerald of Glin Castle

Venison in the Golden Vale at Ballinwillin House