Mystery of remote Mayo amphitheatre is finally solved

By Mary J Murphy

The mystery behind the inspiration of the building of Achill’s extraordinary amphitheatre, located on the grounds of Corrymore House, has finally been solved.

Exactly 100 years after Robert Henri and his artist wife Marjorie Organ bought Corrymore House (along with 15 acres, for £200) in November 1924, I believe that I now know what inspired Dermot Freyer (‘The Major’) to erect his five-tiered, 500-seat open air ‘stage’ on the side of Croghaun in 1940.

An eccentric non pareil – what else do you call a chap who owned 14 cats (all at once!), made his book cases from prune boxes, and happily allowed his socks to peep through holes in his shoes? - Freyer bought Corrymore in 1934, following Henri’s death five years earlier.

Along with architect Noel Moffat, the ‘folly’ was constructed from turf, scraw and sand, and hosted the likes of the Sadler’s Wells Ballet Company.

Invited in for a look-around some years ago, we walked the entire dimensions of the fantabulous setting, which has now been reclaimed by Mother Earth.

One of many ‘hare-brained’ schemes of the Major, who became an Irish citizen in the 1940’s and kept the island wildly entertained with his antics back in the day, it facilitated his famous crowded Sunday evening soirees, watched over by Bridie Mulloy.

Those soirees also provided ample opportunity for Dermot to indulge enthusiastically but inelegantly, in his obsession for Cornish folk dancing.

John Twin McNamara told me that one of Freyer’s cats, the fat, famous, feline, ‘Charles Osborne’, was featured in the local newspapers upon his demise.

Freyer’s prominent surgeon father - bear with me, we’re getting to the point - Sir Peter, had worked in the Indian Medical Services, as had Eva O’Flaherty’s half-brother, Purcell O’Gorman Lalor, so Eva and Dermot knew each other in London in the early 1900’s.

Both were active members there of the Gaelic League, along with other Achill notables like Cesca and Frank Power, An Paorach. Freyer, a “small and chirpy” bundle of energy, whose follow-through rarely matched his bursts of enthusiasm, ran unsuccessfully for the UK labour party on four occasions, was of friend of both St. John Gogarty and former UK Prime Minister Clement Attlee, who visited Achill back in the day.

While a student in Cambridge, Dermot edited the famous Granta magazine, and was a self-described “ chronic medical student” for twelve years."

He was a journalist with the Daily Express, but immediately prior to that had worked in St. Thomas’ Hospital in London – right next door to Philip Astley’s famous Amphitheatre!

Big enough to take 200 horses on the rampage, Dickens and Jane Austen had written of it, and painter Jack Yeats visited it often.

Indeed it was in Jack’s terrific biography, by Hilary Pyle, that I tripped across this glorious nugget recently.

Mystery solved, QED.