House - 17th/18th century

The National Monuments Service's description

Situated on a level landscape. The Barnwall property associated with the house (ME038-029----) was granted to Robert Gorges, who had come to Ireland as the secretary of Henry Cromwell, the fourth son of Oliver Cromwell and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland 1657-59. Robert’s son, Richard, is thought to have built Kilbrew House c. 1700. The Gorges family retained the Kilbrew property throughout the eighteenth century but they sold up shortly after the 1798 Rebellion and emigrated to America (Gorges 1944). Kilbrew house was owned by W. Murphy of Dublin in the 1830s (Lewis 1837, vol. 2, 54), but by then it was already derelict.

The house built by Robert Gorges c. 1700 is a two storey oblong block (int. dims 23.45m E-W; 5.8m N-S) with masonry walls (T c. 0.6-0.8m). It is a nine bay house with tall narrow windows that only survive on the first floor as the building was adapted for agricultural purposes in the twentieth century when narrow lights were inserted in the ground floor walls. The first floor might have been supported on corbels and the stumps of two survive in the S wall. There is no evidence of original fireplaces or of a stairs, but the original entrance may have been in the centre of the S wall at the first floor. The Barnwall house (ME038-029----) was attached on the N side at its W end. A north wing was added at the E end to balance this and both these wings were supplemented with round towers added to the N ends. According to the 1836 edition of the OS 6-inch map and a view from c. 1850 (Gorges 1944) there were also round towers at the SE and SW angles, but there is no physical evidence of these now.

Compiled by: Michael Moore

Date of upload: 14 April, 2022

References

Gorges, R. 1944 The story of a family through eleven centuries. Boston, Merrymount Press

Lewis, S. 1837 A topographical dictionary of Ireland, 2 vols. London. Lewis and Co.