ONE of the most iconic properties within hunting history, Bermingham House, has been put on the market by Lady Mollie Cusack-Smith’s daughter, Oonagh Mary, who felt it was now time to downsize.

Consisting of a large Georgian period house, built in about 1730, together with other dwellings and farm buildings sitting on 200 acres near Tuam, County Galway, the house was purchased by John Denis, the first master and huntsman of The Galway Blazers, in 1851.

Lady Mollie is the only titled lady who has hunted The Galway Blazers, and based her own pack, The Bermingham and North Galway Hunt founded in 1946 by her and her husband Sir Dermot, on the estate.

When she was hunting both packs, the 21 stables were full of hunters and, to get around the county of Galway, she used what were known as ‘hunt specials’, which were special train carriages to transport horses and hounds to hunt meets. The train times were advertised on hunt cards for followers and guests.

One of the highlights of her mastership was parading The Galway Blazers’ hounds in the Main Arena at the Dublin Horse Show.

If the walls could talk, what stories they could tell as for three-quarters of a century she brightened up the West of Ireland with her wit and style, as she entertained the famous and infamous from all over the world, including the Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger and his then girlfriend Marianne Faithfull.

The house, which is distinctive in its pink colour, as it was the nearest lady Mollie could find to ‘hunting pink’, was the ideal venue for dinner parties, accommodating hunting guests, and Lady Mollie’s Annual Hunt Ball, for which her gilt-edged invitations were keenly sought after. She would end the night with her favourite songs, ‘The West Awake’ and ‘The Queen of Connemara’.

Some years before she passed away in 1997, Canon Corbett, her local Church of Ireland Rector, noticed she was not attending church services. He asked her when she intended to come back to church, and she replied, ‘When you stop playing those mournful hymns’!

Her legacy lives on with her daughter Oonagh Mary, who was joint master of their pack, granddaughter Joanne, who was a joint master of the Blazers and is now a master of the County Clare Hunt, and her grandson Charles.

The sale of the properties and the 200 acres, suitable for a residential or a commercial project, is being handled by DNG John Joyce Auctioneers in Tuam and is by Private Treaty.