Drishane House

Thomas Somerville was a clergyman’s son of Scots extraction whose success in the West India trade enabled him to build a fashionable new house on his small estate in West Cork. Drishane House, which was completed in 1790, stands high on a cliff on the edge of the picturesque village of Castletownshend, overlooking the bay of Castlehaven. The walls are hung with slates, protection against the famous ‘dhry misht from the say.' Drishane was famous as the home of Thomas’s descendant, Edith Oenone Somerville, co-author of Some Experiences of an Irish RM, who lived there 1858-1949.