New Avenue Gate and Cattlegrid

Previous guests and friends alike will remember, without affection, the old red five bar gate at the top of the drive that had to be opened and closed, come hail rain or shine, to get down to the house. When there were animals in the front field we had no choice but to keep it closed. We used to tell people they were lucky, because originally two sets of gates had to be opened and that, even for us, was a gate too far.

Such was the effect of our gate on people that John McKenna mentioned it in his review following our first entry into the Bridgestone 100 Best Places to Stay in Ireland back in 2008, saying: "Okay, so you have to open a big red farm gate to get in, but that is the only problem with this delightful new destination."

And so it was that back in March of last year I trundled off to our local farm supplies with the tractor and trailer and returned with numerous lengths of steel with which to make a cattle grid, or to be more precise 83m of 100 X 50 X 3 RHS and 2 boxes of welding rods! Without a cattle grid any replacement gates would still have to be kept closed to keep the animals in.

Two days later after much cutting measuring and welding the grid was ready. At 4.2m wide and 2.6m long it looked absolutely enormous, but I was determined that no animal would get across it! It is of course extremely heavy and I would never have been able to make it without the tractor!

A mighty hole was then dug into which I poured a concrete base and then built up walls to carry the grid.

It was then a matter of putting the grid on top, building up the walls at the sides and then back filling the rest of the hole.

 We took out the 'big red farm gate' and fenced round the cattle grid.

 The new gates came from Ardagh Fencing and Gates and, I'm sure John will agree, are a big improvement. And because there is a cattle grid we can now leave them open when people are coming! Such a joy on a wet day!