| Description |
The house, located on the border between counties Galway and Roscommon, was built in the late 1720s by a branch of the Ormsby family of Tobervaddy. Jane Ormsby married Robert Waller. Both Wilson and Taylor and Skinner record that Rookwood was occupied by Major Waller in the 1780s. The house was later leased by the Thewles family. Edmund Kelly purchased the lease of Rookwood from his cousin, James Thewles, in 1800. The house was occupied by the Taaffes in the early 19th century and by the Kellys from the 1830s. In 1900 Dr Charles E. Crean of Ballyhaunis bought Rookwood and sold it to the Land Commission in 1922. The house was intermittently occupied until the 1940s and gradually became derelict. |
