The Strange & Strained Eviction Of Eileen Gunning

Not-so-pretty vacant…

s ugly as evictions usually are, one of the ugliest happened right here in Greystones last Thursday.

In truth, the eviction started in December, when all the windows of this 200-year-old home were smashed. Just to make life inside that little bit more stressful.

Situated in Blacklion, just a stone’s throw from the church, Chrysanthemum Cottage has been home to the Gunning family since the 1800s. And on Thursday, that family line was effectively ended, as 64-year-old nurse Eileen Gunning as thrown out on the streets, along with all her belongings.

It was nearby neighbour, Siobhan Hanley, who brought this sad turn of events to our attention. “With the windows and doors taken out,” she said, “Eileen had no choice but to go. I can’t help feeling that, if it was 30 or 40 years ago, a woman who had lived somewhere for 64 years would be left there, but now, greedy developers want the land for apartments.”

Oct 2010

And so, Eileen Gunning had to go. Again.

Eileen has put up one hell of a fight over the years, with the Supreme Court issuing orders in October 2015 preventing the Greystones woman from bringing any fresh litigation about the property without court permission. Ms Justice Mary Laffoy said at the time that it was “impossible to disagree” with the High Court’s conclusion that further litigation “can only add to the misery which this tragic dispute over home ownership has caused“.

Not that the long and winding road to this sorry end is all that simple. After all, this is not the first time that Ms Gunning has been evicted from her home of 64 years, the cottage having been at the centre of an ugly inheritance dispute for over three decades now, following the death of her father, Patrick Gunning, in 1984.

Eilleen leaves Mountjoy March 2014

It’s a saga that we first became aware of when chatting with Grattan Park sage John Connolly back in November 2016, where talk of how much of Greystones was once under the all-embracing arm of the Orpin estate led to the family of that powerful family’s gardener, Eileen’s grandfather.

This was the man who held Chrysanthemum Cottage under a 50-year lease dated 1935, an annual rent of £5 having been agreed with two women (most likely Orpin descendants) based in the UK.

That lease ran out a year after Patrick Gunning passed in 1984, his will appointing Eileen as executrix, and leaving a half-interest in his property to his widow, Sarah and the other half to his two daughters,

Fatima and Eileen in 2010

Eileen and Mary. Just before his death, Patrick Gunning had tried unsuccessfully to maintain the original contract under the Ground Rents Act, Sarah and Eileen also later failing in their efforts to be registered owners of the cottage.

And this is where the story starts to get murky. In 2002, eleven years after Eileen and her young daughter, Fatima, moved into Chrysanthemum Cottage , her mother, Sarah, tried and failed to have them evicted. A year later, Sarah was successful though in removing Eileen as executrix of her father’s estate, on the grounds of not observing her duties as a trustee. As this Circuit Court case was underway, Eileen had secretly begun making inquiries about becoming the cottage’s sole owner.

When Sarah Gunning passed away in 2005, she left her share of the cottage to her daughter, Mary, and the rest of her estate to Mary, a grandson, and Eileen’s daughter, Fatima. There was no mention of Eileen.

Having been appointed by the High Court in 2003 as the administrator of the estate, solicitor Brian Sherry took proceedings against Eileen Gunning in 2007 for possession of the cottage. The final possession order came in 2009, resulting in the county sheriff evicting Eileen and her daughter in the autumn of 2010. Eileen subsequently broke back into Chrysanthemum Cottage, and was later sent to Mountjoy Prison for contempt.

Through it all, Eileen Gunning represented herself, leading Ms Justice Laffoy to note that she would “undoubtedly have benefitted” from professional legal advice, given the complexity of the case. Today, legally, she’s not allowed with 500 metres of the house, and is also banned from talking to the media about the ongoing dispute.

Trying to find out what happened to Eileen’s daughter, Fatima, opened up a whole other kettle of curious, an online search throwing up a controversial October 2013 interview about the Blacklion property dispute as well as Fatima Gunning-Hameed’s outspoken role in the Pro-Life organisation, The Life Institute. Ten years later, she’s a journalist for gript.ie, concentrating largely on crime, with the slogan ‘Uncomfortable Reading For Some‘.

Suffice to say, beyond the legals wrongs and people’s rights here, a sad end, in more ways than one, to what was, for 200 years, a family home.

Whatever the future may hold for Eileen Gunning, it would be wonderful to think that a warm bed and some peace of mind might just be a part of it…