The crumbling 19th-century castle on a derelict farm in what was nicknamed “bandit country” during Northern Ireland’s Troubles had fallen into such disrepair that its last inhabitant, unable to afford the upkeep, had moved into a caravan outside.
The place certainly didn’t look much, but what Mick Boyle spotted in the ramshackle ruin at the foot of the Slieve Gullion mountain near where his parents had grown up — and where he himself was born, before the family emigrated to Australia in 1968 as “Ten Pound Poms” — was a future luxury hotel.
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