CarTrawler founder Niall Turley buys Galway castle for €5.8 million

Tech millionaire Niall Turley has boughtTulira Castle, a meticulously-restored 16th-century tower and Victorian house on 265 acres in Co Galway, for a sum close to €5.8 million.

Contracts were signed in recent weeks and it’s understood Mr Turley plans to use the seven-bedroom property near Ardrahan as a holiday residence. He had no comment to make when asked about the deal. The sale will rank among the topproperty transactions of 2015.

Turley and his brother, Greg, founded Irish technology firm CarTrawler, which produces car-hire software for airlines and travel agencies, and sold for about €450 million last March. In 2011 the brothers netted up to € 90 million when UK private equity group ECI Partners acquired between 50 and 100 per cent of the company’s equity. However, they retained a minority shareholding in the business, and would have further benefited from last year’s sale.

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Country house market

Tulira was built in the 1880s by Edward Martyn, co-founder of Dublin's Abbey Theatre, and his mother Annie Mary Josephine. It first went on the market in October 2013 with an asking price of €6.5 million. Joint agents for the sale, Sherry FitzGerald and Ganly Walters, declined to comment on the details of the deal.

While the majority of properties over €2 million in recent years have been sold to international buyers, Celia Lamb, head of country sales with Ganly Walters, says the Tulira sale is indicative of a rising confidence in the country house market among bidders looking for mansions for holiday use. “The second-home market is coming back in vogue and making good money, if they are good quality and well-located. We haven’t seen that in a while.”

Tulira Castle and its surrounding lands were meticulously restored by its previous owners, Dutch couple Ruud and Femmy Bolmeijer, who paid about £2 million for the estate almost two decades ago, after Ruud retired from his post as a senior executive with the Mars corporation in the US.

Tulira still has its original 16th century tower, linked through an oak door to a fully-refurbished east wing, dating from 1843.

Woodland

The main house was designed by architect George Ashlin, whose ecclesiastical influences are evident throughout. It features a Great Hall with a 40ft-high vaulted timber ceiling, a polished granite-topped staircase and elaborate reception rooms with Irish marble mantelpieces and pine floors imported from the US.

The house is surrounded by Georgian courtyard buildings, a walled garden, a long driveway and 95 acres of woodland.