The box off ice battle of little Cornamona

With properties in Florida and the UK and millions between them, Michael and Margie Hanley should by rights have enjoyed a very amicable divorce. But the couple’s bolthole on the shores of Lough Corrib in the sleepy Co. Galway village of Cornamona became an unlikely sticking point, and their civilised divorce turned into a version of The War Of The Roses.

They lashed out £800,000 in the High Court in London on what the judge described as a ‘titanic’ battle to assert their rival claims to an obscure and little known corner of the world, where cottages can be bought for a song.

With her elderly mother living in the area, Margie felt the house was hers by birthright or as she said, sounding admittedly rather grand for a Gaeltacht girl, part of her ‘ancestral territory.’

It was her pride and joy she said, like a fifth child and she kitted it out over the years with all mod cons, a Jacuzzi and gym.

To the judge’s suggestion that the couple run a time share arrangement, Margie was dismissive adding, with a hint of Trumpesque megalomania that the ‘village isn’t big enough for both of us’.

‘There is one road in and one road out. There is one shop, one pub.’

It’s true Cornamona hasn’t changed much since I attended Irish college there or I suspect since Margie herself was a lass. Hardworking Fianna Fáil TD Éamon Ó Cuív married a local woman, throwing the area a lifeline in the form of a Co-Op and founding a Gaeltacht. When we weren’t holed up learning Irish verbs, we were cycling along the boreens, exploring the grounds of Ashford Castle and the neighbouring village of Cong, the location for The Quiet Man starring John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara.

We drank in the spectacular views where their fiery affair was played out, the fields that were the backdrop for some very non-PC scenes of John dragging Maureen home by her hair or throwing her on the bed like a sack of spuds. The constantly rowing couple fought about everything from dowries to farming but they never complained that the place was not big enough for them.

That’s because you can roam for miles in what’s often called Ireland’s Lake District and not see a living soul.

You can fish for hours with nothing to disturb your blissful reverie.

The contemplative silence where the sounds of otters moving in the water can echo across the deserted fields puts Cornamona in a different league than beauty spots that resemble overcrowded theme parks.

We tend to believe it’s easier to avoid people and get lost in the crowd in bustling metropolitan centres but it’s the opposite that is the case.

Dublin is not Manhattan but it’s the best we have in terms of big city anonymity.

Yet I can’t walk down Henry Street or up Baggot Street without clapping eyes on an old neighbour or discarded pal, on someone I’d rather stick pins in my eyes than meet, and presumably vice versa.

But in wildernesses from Glenmalure or Connemara I have never had an awkward encounter, I’ve never suffered a blast from the past in a one horse town or a rural backwater. Now obviously if the Hanleys made a habit of frequenting the only hostelry or the local church they’d be bumping into each other constantly.

But as a country girl made good, Margie would know to take her business out of the immediate vicinity.

Cornamona is not too small for her and her estranged husband.

As the locals might tell her, its problem is the very opposite. That the emigration and unemployment it has suffered has made the place too empty by far.