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Auction: 22003 - Orders, Decorations and Medals
Lot: 292

'The name Bleasby is indeed rare in County Cork. They came to Ballinacurra from a part of Cork City known today as Watercourse Road and remained there for almost 200 years. They were a wealthy, successful and popular family, very much involved in the tannery industry.

In 1878 William Bleasby owned or controlled 691 acres of land in County Cork.
Ballinacurra House stayed in the Bleasby family for over 170 years, having been passed down through the generations. The last member of the Bleasby family to occupy the house was Emily Leach (nee Bleasby) who died in 1967. The family is buried in nearby Tisaxon graveyard across the river from Ballinacurra House.'

The Ballinacurra website, refers.

A Great War campaign pair awarded to Staff Nurse Emily Bleazby, Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service Reserve, a long-served staff nurse in H.M. Hospital Ship Oxfordshire - and the last member of her family to occupy the family estate in Kinsale, Co. Cork

British War and Victory Medals (S. Nurse E. Bleazby), very fine (2)

Emily Bleazby - or Bleasby - was born at Ballinacurra House, Kinsale, Co. Cork, Ireland on 24 May 1881, and trained at the Royal Infirmary, Bristol, 1908-11.

She subsequently volunteered for Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service Reserve, listing Lady Charles Pratt of Troubridge as her reference, and was duly accepted.

In June 1915, she joined the hospital ship Oxfordshire at Malta, and she remained likewise employed until February 1918, when she was disembarked at Dar es Salaam; she was not entitled to the 1914-15 Star.

In the interim, according to Colonel H. C. B. Rodgers, O.B.E., the Oxfordshire 'went to the Dardanelles and served with such distinction that the Admiralty expressed its appreciation to the Bibby Line. After the evacuation of Gallipoli, she returned once more to cross-Channel duties, but was soon back in the Mediterranean for service with the Salonika expedition. Her next duty was in the Persian Gulf, embarking wounded at Basra from the Mesopotamian campaign. Her last service was with troops operating in East Africa.'

As the base hospital ship at Mudros at the time of the withdrawal from the Dardanelles, Oxfordshire deployed her own boats to bring off the wounded. Luckily, the Turks respected her Red Cross activities and did not engage her. Nonetheless, for the likes of Emily Bleazby, it must have been an anxious time.

Fortunately, for posterity's sake, the archive of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh contains an evocative series of photographs taken aboard the Oxfordshire in 1916, some of which may well depict Emily.

A brief spell of duty in East Africa having ensued, Bleazby was granted leave back in the U.K. in April 1918. That period of leave was extended on account of the ill-health of her mother, and she resigned from her military duties in July 1918.

Miss Bleazby was subsequently Sister Tutor at Lambeth Hospital, and authored, along with A. Millicent Ashdown, a textbook for nurses entitled 'Anatomy, Physiology, & Hygiene', first published in 1935, and reprinted and revised several times into the 1950s.

She was the last member of the Bleazby family to reside at Ballinacurra House and died there in 1967.

Postscript

Just recently, the Irish Examiner reported on the sale of Ballinacurra House:

'The private Co. Cork estate where the late singer Michael Jackson stayed for weeks with his three children when scouring for an Irish hideaway of his own back in 2007 has been put up for sale - with a suitably celeb-sized price tag, of €6.35 million.

Ballinacurra House, on the edge of Kinsale in Co. Cork has been operating as an exclusive, compact 25-acre private estate and corporate venue, renting at up to €40,000 per week, to the notoriously shy, and typically very wealthy range of international guests and corporate entities.

The closely guarded guest list behind its screening boundaries has included A-list actors, European royalty and brewery heiresses, musicians, and corporate behemoths, as well as being voted Ireland's Best Wedding Venue, in 2017, beating 600 other finalists.

A few years earlier, its owners revealed they had to refuse an approach for accommodation from Kim Kardashian and Kanye West when they honeymooned in Ireland in 2014 as they had a 'house full,' with a private wedding already booked in, one of about 60 a year they can do.

Now, the fully restored 14-bed and 18,400 sq. ft. Ballinacurra House, plus cottages bringing to 25 the total number of rooms possible - has just been put on the open market with a €6.35m price tag via international agents Knight Frank, for owners for the past 20 years Northern Ireland-born Des McGahan and his Australian wife Lisa.

When they bought it two decades ago, the 18th century two-storey Georgian home was run-down, and they spent four years restoring and extending, adding more land and amenities, including a riding arena and a jetty, and filling it with furniture from around the world, and from Asia where they had worked in finance and event management before relocating to Ireland after a company sale.

They say they have invested as much as €7m into the Kinsale venue, 30 minutes from an international airport and close to the Old Head of Kinsale Golf Course, and it has a landing area which has taken up to four helicopters at a time.

It employs up to 14, but the couple now wishes to sell after two decades hands on, after a recent health scare, and as their three children are now adults.

The McGahans suggest it could be bought for similar, continued high-end private hospitality and/or further developed, corporate HQ or retreat property, executive rental, or even a 'Priory' style upmarket addiction and rehabilitation centre.

The privacy of the property was evidenced after Michel Jackson stayed there in 2007 with his three children, secluded from media packs, two years before Jackson's death from a drugs overdose.

Des McGahan only broke his silence about Michael Jackson's weeks' long presence there in an RTÉ interview with Claire Byrne after the pop-star's death in 2009, praising the normality of his children's behaviour and revealing he had been asked to get KFC and other takeaway foods for Jackson, despite having a Michelin-standard chef on hand at Ballinacurra House.

Commenting on the timing of the proposed sale during a pandemic, Mr. McGahan pointed to a spike in interest, nationally and internationally, in country living and an upsurge in interest in county estates as the urban exodus gains traction - both from a lifestyle and a health and wellness perspective.'

Emily would surely have supported those 'health and wellness' perspectives. As for the rest, who knows?

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Sold for
£600

Starting price
£250