A great deal of the Calder-Potts family history is embedded in, Highbank Farm and coach yard with its beautiful stone-arched shop, orchards, lakes, and apples. “Highbank Farm in Co. Kilkenny was a 17th-century farmyard and the present farmhouse was built by my family in the 19th Century. How my family returned to Kilkenny is a great adventure story, some of which I relate below. My great grandfather Robert Murison, left his job as a gamekeeper on Rousey, one of the Orkney Islands, to manage the Farmley Estate for Colonel Hansford Flood in about 1880. He built and took up residence in what is now our family home. After the turbulent events of “the troubles” he, like many other employees of absentee landlords, availed of the opportunity of acquiring the small farm on which the family lived. We signed the last Land commission cheque in the 1980s. My grandmother was born on the farm whilst it was still part of the Farmley Estate. She married Joclyn Iago from Kinsale and raised their family in County Down.
