homes historical ireland

This gaunt-looking mansion with a 380-foot long frontage beside the road was begun in 1636-7 by Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, Lord Deputy of Ireland from 1633 to 1640. He planned it as a summer residence for himself and as a palace in which Charles 1 could live if and when he came to visit Ireland. It never served their purpose, however, because it was left unfinished when Strafford was called to London and beheaded in 1641. The eastern portion may have been temporarily finished as it...

South of the town is Loughry Manor (now an agricultural college), a plantation mansion which has associations with Dean Jonathan Swift. He stayed here as a guest of the Lindsay family, while writing Gulliver's Travels (published 1726). Portraits of 'Stella' (Esther Johnston died 1728) and 'Vanessa' (Esther Vanhomrigh died 1723) still hang in the Old Library. The Dean loved them both, and made them both miserable....

17th century house. The house and its history have been the subject of many novels and plays such as "Guy Mannering" by Sir Walter Scott. The imposing slate covered house is said not to have one, but two ghosts.

The entrance hall, dining and sitting rooms, both towers, private oratory, jail cell and restored olde worlde servants kitchen form part of the guided tour....

Lough Rynn Estate is set on an isthmus between Loughs Rinn and Errew in an area which has been occupied for thousands of years. There is a Bronze Age burial tomb on the grounds and an old castle ruin was the seat of the Reynolds Clan up to the 17th century.

Confiscation enabled the property to be granted to the Crofton family in 1622 during the Plantation period. The lands were then acquired by the Earls of Leitrim in 1750 and a house was constructed in 1832 by Nathaniel Clements. Whe...

Joseph Damer of Tipperary was granted the town and lordship of Roscrea in 1722. He married two years later and shortly afterwards built an elegant town house within the curtain walls of the old castle.

Such arrangements were common and later houses were often built beside or attached to the strongholds they replaced. The troubled state of the country meant that the Irish gentry generally found it wiser to live in castles or fortified tower houses until the end of the 17th century.