Overview
Mulroy House was built for a landlord remembered as one of the most hated in Irish history, and designed by a man best known for workhouses. It stands on a sheltered peninsula on Mulroy Bay, near Carrickart in north-west Donegal: a Tudor-Revival mansion with a crenellated tower, steep slate roofs and mottled grey-and-pink granite walls. It is a private house and estate, so this page is about its history and architecture rather than a place to visit.
Is Mulroy House open to visitors?
No. The house and grounds are private, and there is no public access to the house, the driveway or the estate. The National Inventory of Architectural Heritage records the house of 1865–66 and its later extension. For a public outing in north Donegal, choose a marked trail at Glenveagh National Park, and check the park’s seasonal opening notices before travelling.
A hated landlord and his house
The house was commissioned in the 1860s by William Sydney Clements, 3rd Earl of Leitrim. The Clements family held large estates across several counties, and Mulroy was built less as a family home than as the administrative headquarters for those estates. The 3rd Earl was notorious for the mass eviction of his tenants, and in April 1878 he was ambushed and killed in Cratlagh Wood, not far from here, one of the most infamous landlord killings of the era.
The estate passed to his nephew, Robert Bermingham Clements, the 4th Earl, who took a very different line: he rehoused displaced families, invested in local infrastructure, and ran a steam-ship service from Milford to Glasgow via Derry to move estate produce. Under him, Mulroy became a proper country seat. His son, the 5th Earl, and the countess turned to gardening, beginning an ambitious planting scheme in 1936.
Architecture and design
The original block was designed by George Wilkinson, an architect better known for Irish workhouses and asylums, which is why an early critic thought the exterior “a little hard and institutional for a private residence.” Built in 1865–66 for £5,782, it was a modest three-bay, two-storey house with a central porch.
Around 1890 the 4th Earl commissioned an extension that more than doubled its size. The architect is not recorded for certain, but the work is generally attributed to Thomas Drew, who designed nearby Holy Trinity Church in Carrickart. The additions brought a recessed three-bay wing, a three-storey crenellated tower and a run of gabled dormers, giving the finished building the look of something grown over centuries when in fact it went up in two 19th-century phases. The walls are of snecked granite with pink stone dressings.
Gardens and grounds
The 5th Earl and countess’s planting brought rare and hardy species to this Atlantic-facing site. Rhododendrons planted along the drives in the 1930s were later joined by magnolias, eucryphias and other exotics. A walled garden sits north-west of the house and a kitchen-garden courtyard to the south-west, a hint of its former self-sufficiency. Shelter belts, some dating from the 1860s, were badly damaged by Hurricane Debbie in the 1960s but have been replanted. To the west stands Winter House, a former steward’s residence of around 1900, extended in the 1930s. None of this is open to the public.
Practical information
Mulroy House is a private family home with no public opening hours or tours.
- Access: the house and grounds are private. Please respect posted signs.
- Public alternative: the marked trails at Glenveagh National Park; check the park’s seasonal opening notices before travelling.
- Facilities: none at the house. Carrickart is the nearest village.
Nearby
- Holy Trinity Church, Carrickart – a Victorian church by Thomas Drew, built with help from the Clements family.
- Rosapenna Hotel and Golf Links – a coastal resort originally developed by the 4th Earl to bring tourism to the area.
- Slieve League – high sea cliffs, a drive south-west along the Donegal coast.
- Glenveagh National Park – mountain trails, wildflower meadows and a lakeside castle.
Heritage status
Mulroy House is on the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage (Reg. No. 40901712) with a Regional rating, recognised for its architectural, artistic, historical and social interest. See the NIAH record.