| Description |
Gallstown/Gaulstown House was a large country house with extensive grounds as shown on the first edition OS map on which the house is named as Castletown, although the Taylor and Skinner map of the late 1770s refer to the house as Gaulstown Park. Its name changed to Gallstown House on the 25 inch map. It was an 18th century, three storey, seven-bay Palladian style house built by the 2nd Earl of Belvedere to replace the house in which his mother was imprisoned for over thirty years. In 1784 Sir John Browne of The Neale, Co Mayo, later 1st Baron Kilmaine, purchased the house from the 2nd Earl of Belvedere. Lord Kilmaine was recorded as resident in 1814, 1837 and at the time of Griffith’s Valuation (publ. 1854). Lewis refers to Gaulstown Park as the ‘splendid seat of Lord Kilmaine in the grounds of which is a very large larch tree, planted by Dean Swift’. The house was valued at £66 in the mid-19th century. O’Brien writes that the 5th Baron Kilmaine sold the house at Gallstown in 1918 and it was burnt in 1921 and the ruins demolished in the 1950s. |
