RTE star Maura Derrane’s family home as photos show ‘transformed’ Galway house

Maura Derrane had a quintessentially Irish childhood growing up on the Aran Islands in the 1970s, the Galway broadcaster told Galway Beo’s sister site RSVP Live.

The RTE Today host had no running water or electricity when her parents, farmer Mattie and homemaker Bridgie, built their home in Inis Mór. They had a cow out the back that they would use for fresh, warm, milk each day and lived off the land as much as possible.

The home looks very different today after undergoing a lot of modernisation over the years and a large extension a decade ago. Maura revisited the home with Brendan Courtney for the RTE series, Keys to My Life, and explained how the house looked totally different when she lived there.

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She said: “It was a single-storey house, it didn’t have electricity. It was very basic. This little porch wasn’t here when I was a kid. There were just stone floors, 1970s lino. There was just a sitting room , my grandmother’s bedroom and a teeny little scullery, rather than a kitchen.

“I have memories of candles lit, gaslights, big fires. I don’t even think we had a fridge in the beginning. Our cow was in the garden and that’s where we got our milk and we’d drink it like that, warm.

Laughing with Brendan, Maura explained: “I know that sounds weird now, but I remember the first time I tasted pasteurised shop milk, I thought it was really sweet. Because we literally used to drink it straight from the cow. We all milked the cows. We grew everything, we were very self-sufficient.

“We had to cycle three miles over the road and bring water from the well over to the cattle every day. And there was no boy, I’m one of four girls. Normally if you had a lad in the family they would do a lot of that. But we’d no choice, we had to do it”.

“Even now when I come back here, if there’s anything on your mind or you’re stressed, this is always where I want to come to feel grounded. It’s the cornerstone of our life really”.

About ten years ago, a large extension was added on to the home and today it is still in the Derrane family and somewhere Maura likes to visit often.

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