Hugh Robson Glencarn Farm
We begin where every good chef, every good producer, every person who wants to serve impeccable food must begin: at the farm and with the farmer. Hugh Robson’s Glencarn Farm is cradled in a north–south valley that neighbours Father Ted’s home. No, Hugh doesn’t live on Craggy Island;
rather, the house used as the priests’ home in the beloved Channel 4 comedy series is just up the hill and over a bit from his 365 organic acres.
Neither ‘farmer’ nor ‘chef ’ might have been what was expected of the son of a Dutch nurse and
an Irish doctor who met in London during the Second World War. Though an admittedly good student, Hugh bridled at the institutionalised brutality of boarding schools in England and the
USA. Though Trinity College Dublin called him to study natural sciences, he had no intention of
following his father – by now a respected researcher in the field of tuberculosis – into medicine, nor in pursuing a teaching career after his experiences at school.
It was cooking that fuelled Hugh’s imagination from an early age. He reckons the passion was
sparked by his mother, an expert cook, who died when he and his four brothers were still quite
young. It might have also had something to do with the food at those boarding schools. Whatever the reason, Hugh excelled at catering college in Geneva, Switzerland.
Requisite placements during college brought him to Scotland and then back to Ireland, where he
worked in various management roles in hotels around the country. Then, when an opportunity arose
in Bettystown, County Meath, Hugh and his new wife, Mary, purchased a former coastguard station and set out to run it as an upmarket seafood restaurant.
Their reputation flourished, and The Coast Guard restaurant became the 1970s destination for
high-end fish, shellfish and hand-cut steaks.
Mary died and Hugh left the restaurant business and moved to farm sheep in Portarlington.
Hugh married again, to Isabell. They wanted to make the leap from high-intensity farming (they
bred some 350 ewes for lamb) to organics, and his brother lived in Corofin. So enamoured with the area were Hugh and Isabell that they spent the bulk of two years searching out a place to establish their dream of setting up an organic farm upon which to retire.
The economic crisis of the 1980s, however, saw their mortgage interest shoot well into the double
digits and the hobby farm had to turn a profit and turn it quickly.
H ugh Robson
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