Edenvale House

Edenvale House

Associated families: 

O’Brien, Patterson, Stacpoole, Clare Board of Health

Townland

Eden Vale (Killone) .

Location

E off the Kilrush road, 3.5 km SSW of Ennis

Present condition

House: Standing. lnhabited (nursing home)

Demesne: Many mature trees. Yards and utility buildings standing and used. Gate lodge standing inhabited. Original driveway. Well maintained.

Features

Restored and embellished in the nineteenth century, Eden Vale is a two-storey, nine bay, hip-roofed house with wide eaves, facing south-east over Eden Vale lake, with a porch- protected, slightly offset front door, with three bays to the south-West and four on the other side. At the south-west end here are Venetian windows on both floors, and at the other side there is a one-storey, gable-ended lean-to connected to a large return. Yards and utility buildings adjoin this to the north-east. The balustraded and pilastered porch was erected in the late nineteenth century. Above it is an unusual feature n that two bays have a raised roof thereby giving this a three-storey, or tower effect. The now ruined Killone Castle stood to the south end of the lake which was graced by a boathouse and a summer house. The main drive was from the south, but here was another from the north-west opposite the entrance »f which stood a one-storey, hip-roofed gate lodge.

History

The old Killone Castle which, in 1580, belonged to the Baron of Inchiquin, stood at the southern end of the lake. In 1646 it belonged to Christopher O’Brien of Ennistymon, and, in 1699, to Colonel John O’Brien. By 171 1, Killone formed part of Sir Donough O’Brien’s Inchiquin estate. William Stacpoole moved from Armagh (qv) to the hundred and forty-eight acre demesne of Eden Vale in 1776. He was the Son of George Stacpoole of Annagh whose grandfather had been transplanted by the Cromwellians. He was High Sheriff in 1784, and married Dorothea Burton of nearby Buncraggy. He erected the garden walls in 1778. His descendants by his second wife ‘Honora, daughter of William Stamer of Carnelly (q.v,g continued to intermarry with the leading Clare families. In 1864, Ellen O’Brien, of Eden Vale second daughter of John O’Brien, Member of Parliament for Limerick married ‘Robert Daniel of County Westmeath Fourteen years later, Richard Stacpoole, J.P., (High Sheriff’ l864) of Eden Vale was recorded as owning seven thousand, three hundred and eighty-one acres (rateable valuation £264). Frederick Stacpoole, the nineteenth-century engraver, was a member of the family. The senior representative, Colonel P.Stacpoole, now lives in England, while his brother George Stacpoole (whose wife is the Italian fashion expert, Michelina Stacpoole) runs a Limerick antique business. ‘The house was sold to Clare  Board of Health for four thousand pounds in  December 1928. I[It is now in private hands]

Weir, Hugh, W. L. Houses of Clare, Ballinakella Press, 1985

With kind permission of the author.