| Description |
Killua Castle, in an extensive demesne, is named on the first edition OS map. It is a multi-bay three-storey over basement castellated Gothic Revival castle built about 1780 (boi). Originally it was a large Georgian house known as St Lucy’s (Leet 1814) which has been enlarged on various occasions and towers added. It was the home of the Chapman family baronets until the death of the 7th Baronet’s death in 1919. Described by Lewis in 1837 as ‘the handsome castellated residence of Sir T Chapman Bart, and contains a fine collection of paintings by the old masters’. The building was valued at £100 at the time of Griffith’s Valuation (publ. 1854) and remained at that valuation when Sir Montague R Chapman Bt was resident in 1906. O’Brien writes that it was inherited by Major Gen Richard Steel Rupert Fetherstonhaugh who sold it to William Hackett from Co Laois who set up a golf course at Killua in the 1920s. By the late 1950s, having passed through the hands of other owners, the interior of the castle was dismantled and it became a ruin. It has been rebuilt and now belongs to the Montpascal Foundation, the family foundation of the Krause family, see https://killuacastle.com/ |
