State is failing to keep historic house in order

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Archiseek / Ireland / News / 1999 / August 09 1999: State is failing to keep historic house in order

'Disintegrating slowly, its ghostly spectre haunts the countryside and our interest - surely some accountability is in order?" The words of one of a group of US citizens on the dramatic ruin which is Tyrone House in Kilcolgan, Co Galway. It believes that the State should intervene to take over the derelict house, which was torched during the War of Independence in 1920 and has been subject to continued looting ever since. Designed by John Roberts, the 18th-century Co Waterford architect who was also responsible for Co Mayo's Moorehall, Tyrone House's significance overlooking the famous oyster beds of Kilcolgan is widely regarded as more historical than architectural. It inspired Somerville and Ross's The Big House of Inver, and has been used as illustrative material, most recently in Yeats's Images of Ireland by Alain Le Garner and Bernard McCabe.

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