Oakfield Demesne is a house, grounds and townland in

County Donegal County Donegal ( ; ) is a Counties of Ireland, county of the Republic of Ireland. It is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Ulster and is the northernmost county of Ireland. The county mostly borders Northern Ireland, sharing only a small b ...

, Ireland, originally built in 1739 for the Dean of

Raphoe Raphoe ( ; ) is a small town in County Donegal in the north-west of Ulster, the northern province in Ireland. It is the main town in the fertile district of East Donegal known as the Laggan. It gave its name to the Barony of Raphoe, which was l ...

. Since 1996 it has been owned by Sir Gerry Robinson (who died in 2021) and his wife, Lady Heather Robinson. The demesne includes the 100-acre Oakfield Park gardens, open to the public which includes the

narrow-gauge A narrow-gauge railway (narrow-gauge railroad in the US) is a railway with a track gauge (distance between the rails) narrower than . Most narrow-gauge railways are between and . Since narrow-gauge railways are usually built with tighter curv ...

railway Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport using wheeled vehicles running in railway track, tracks, which usually consist of two parallel steel railway track, rails. Rail transport is one of the two primary means of ...

Difflin Lake Railway.

History

The house that is central to the estate was originally built by the

Church of Ireland The Church of Ireland (, ; , ) is a Christian church in Ireland, and an autonomy, autonomous province of the Anglican Communion. It is organised on an all-Ireland basis and is the Christianity in Ireland, second-largest Christian church on the ...

for the Deanery of Raphoe in 1739. It ceased to be used as a deanery after being sold to Captain Thomas Butler Stoney of the Donegal Militia in 1869. Former occupants included Captain Stoney. The

Irish Republican Army The Irish Republican Army (IRA) is a name used by various Resistance movement, resistance organisations in Ireland throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Organisations by this name have been dominantly Catholic and dedicated to anti-imperiali ...

were known to have occupied the house in the 1920s. The Patterson family, known for their music, were owners during the twentieth century. After purchasing the estate the Robinsons engaged the architect Tony Wright to transform the overgrown estate into parklands, gardens and lakes to restore the house to its original condition.

Oakfield House

The house was built 1739 as a five-bay, two-storey with a dormer constructed over a basement.

Oakfield Park

Nymphaeum at Oakfield Demense - geograph

The park was created by the Robinsons soon after the start of their stewardship; as an extension of the existing gardens which had become mainly disused. Some old trees did remain, including a 12-limbed

horse Chestnut The genus ''Aesculus'' ( or ), with notable species including buckeye and horse chestnut, comprises 13–19 species of flowering plants in the family Sapindaceae. They are trees and shrubs native to the temperate Northern Hemisphere, with ...

and a

Spanish chestnut The sweet chestnut (''Castanea sativa''), also known as the Spanish chestnut or European chestnut, is a species of tree in the family Fagaceae, native to Southern Europe and Asia Minor, and widely cultivated throughout the temperate world. A s ...

, calculated to be as old as the

Battle of the Boyne The Battle of the Boyne ( ) took place in 1690 between the forces of the deposed King James II, and those of King William III who, with his wife Queen Mary II (his cousin and James's daughter), had acceded to the Crowns of England and Sc ...

. To cater for the 2021 season in the COVID-19 pandemic additional outdoor covered seating has been provided for alfresco diners.

Difflin Lake Railway

Oakfield Park Railway Station - geograph

The Difflin Lake Railway is is length. it is one of seven operational

heritage railway A heritage railway or heritage railroad (U.S. usage) is a railway operated as living history to re-create or preserve railway scenes of the past. Heritage railways are often old railway lines preserved in a state depicting a period (or periods) ...

s in the Republic of Ireland that the Commission for Rail Regulation requires to have a Safety Management System (SMS) in place.

References

Footnotes

Sources

* * * * * * {{Cite news, last=Powers, first=Jane, date=16 July 2016, title=Under the oaks , newspaper=The Irish Times, location=Dublin, url=https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/under-the-oaks-1.602559, url-status=live, access-date=26 July 2021, archive-date=26 July 2021 , archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210726201202/https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/under-the-oaks-1.602559

External links

Official website
Gardens in County Donegal