Self-catering farmhouse at Narrowwater on Carlingford Lough, Co. Louth, Ireland

The house is called 'Quarvue'. It is located about 600m south of the border with Northern Ireland. Until about 1982 this was the home of the Cassley family. They are mentioned in the Hearth Tax Rolls for Cornamucklagh townland for 1776, and in the kitchen window you will find their name in a facsimile of the rent rolls of the Earl of Anglesey’s estate from the 1780s. The earliest reference to the family is in the poem Iomáin Léana na Bhádhbhdhuin – The Football Match in Bavan (a nearby townland) thought to date from the 1750s or earlier – in which a certain Ó Casalaigh acquitted himself well. The house was single-storey until about 1938, and was at least partially thatched into the 1920s. The lower walls are 28-34 inches thick and parts of the kitchen gable are even thicker. That is probably the oldest part of the house.

 

 We dug up a four-pounder cannonball here while clearing bushes to build the barbecue. It seems an Elizabethan cavalry detachment guarding some light artillery camped here in October 1600 while campaigning against Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone. 

 

 We have some fine neighbours. Immediately across the lough is Narrowwater Castle, seat of the Hall family. The Hall Estate took over the Cornamucklagh lands on the death of the fourth Earl of Anglesey in 1854 and were landlords to the Cassley family until the Wyndham Act land reform of 1903 introduced peasant proprietorship. 

 

 There's a fine view up the lough towards Newry from the barbecue area

 But for a spectacular view of the whole lough walk a steep kilometer or so to the top of Flagstaff Hill