Killyon Manor

The Loftus family were resident on the Killyon Manor estate at the far western edge of County Meath from the 16th century, possibly in a tower house within the house that ‘Loftus the Magnificent’ built in the mid-18th century. Rather unusually the house remains one room deep, although a ballroom was added at the rear sometime in the late 18th or early 19th century; there is also a perpendicular wing - the oldest part of the Georgian building. The façade was redone c. 1800 and a small Ionic portico added as well as long flanking screen walls with blind arches. It passed to the Magan family in the 1850s when William Henry Magan of Clonearl in County Offaly married the heiress Elizabeth Georgina Loftus. Their combined fortunes included 20,000 acres in Westmeath, Offaly and Shankill, Co. Dublin in addition to a house on St Stephen\'s Green, where their daughter Augusta, jilted as an unsuitable match, is said to have left her wedding breakfast uncleared for 30 years (and as such was possibly the inspiration for Miss Haversham in Great Expectations). Over her lifetime, she became a hoarder and by the time of her death had filled the ballroom to waist-height with her impulsive, largely unopened purchases. A protracted decade-long legal battle over Augusta’s bizarre will ultimately led to the loss of much of the fortune. It was sold out of the family in the 1960s by Brigadier Bill Magan, who in retirement published a well-regarded memoir called ‘Umma-More’, which tells the story of the various houses owned by the family. Currently owned by the Purcell family, the estate, on a tributary of the River Boyne, is being rewilded and has become an important biodiversity zone.