More than two decades after Stephen Ralfe Evans-Freke brought Castle Freke back into his family’s ownership, the West Cork estate is still undergoing restoration. Evans-Freke, a retired Wall Street investment banker, bought the ancestral property around the turn of the millennium, after the Evans-Freke family had owned it for generations before losing it in 1921. He suggested to The Irish Times in 2025 that he had paid less than €500,000 for the property. The much larger expense has been the restoration itself: he estimated that he had spent between €500,000 and €1 million a year over roughly 20 years, putting the total at €10 million to €20 million. By June 2026, the Irish Examiner reported that Evans-Freke estimated the project had cost about €20 million while Castle Freke remained only partially complete. This extraordinary restoration journey demonstrates how deep ancestral connections and sustained commitment can gradually revive a historic estate, even when the decades-long project remains far from complete. Castle Freke's remarkable journey, blending painstaking restoration with a new family-branded gin venture, shows how deep ancestral commitment can breathe fresh life into a historic estate across decades of patient, costly dedication.
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