Clonalis House (),

Castlerea Castlerea (; ) is the third largest town in County Roscommon, Ireland. It is located in the west of the county and had a population of 1,992 at the 2016 Census. Roughly translated from Irish, Castlerea is generally thought to mean 'brindled ca ...

, County Roscommon, Ireland, is the ancestral home of the

O'Conor Don The O'Conor family (Middle Irish: ''Ó Conchubhair''; Modern ga, Ó Conchúir) are an Irish noble house and were one of the most influential and distinguished royal houses in Ireland. The O'Conor family held the throne of the Kingdom of C ...

, who is a direct descendant

Cathal Crobhdearg Ua Conchobair Cathal Crobhdearg Ua Conchobair (Anglicised as Cathal O'Connor/O'Conor and Cathal the Red-handed O'Conor) (1153–1224), was a king of Connacht. He was the youngest son of the High King of Ireland Tairrdelbach Ua Conchobair and brother to the ...

King of Connacht The Kings of Connacht were rulers of the ''cóiced'' (variously translated as portion, fifth, province) of Connacht, which lies west of the River Shannon, Ireland. However, the name only became applied to it in the early medieval era, being named ...

, a younger brother of the last High King of Ireland,

Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair Ruaidrí mac Tairrdelbach Ua Conchobair ( Modern Irish: Ruairí Ó Conchúir; anglicized as Rory O'Conor) ( – 2 December 1198) was King of Connacht from 1156 to 1186, and High King of Ireland from 1166 to 1198. He was the last High King o ...

. Clonalis was constructed in 1878 by

Charles Owen O'Conor Charles Owen O'Conor, O'Conor Don PC ( ga, Cathal Eóghan Ó Conchubhair Donn; 7 May 1838 – 30 June 1906),John P. McCarthyIreland: A Reference Guide from the Renaissance to the Present p. 379 was an Irish politician Life The eldest son of Den ...

as a replacement for an earlier house on the same site which was frequently damaged by flooding. Built of mass concrete, its design by

Frederick Pepys Cockerell Frederick Pepys Cockerell (March 1833, 87 Eaton Square, London – 4 November 1878, 66 rue François Ier, Paris) was a British architect. He was the second son of Charles Robert Cockerell, also an architect, whose favour for French architecture ...

is of a mixture of styles drawing on the traditions of

Italianate The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style drew its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century Italian ...

and Queen Anne Style architecture. Its history reflects the turbulence of

Irish history The first evidence of human presence in Ireland dates to around 33,000 years ago, with further findings dating the presence of homo sapiens to around 10,500 to 7,000 BC. The receding of the ice after the Younger Dryas cold phase of the Quatern ...

having once been occupied by the

Irish Republican Army The Irish Republican Army (IRA) is a name used by various paramilitary organisations in Ireland throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Organisations by this name have been dedicated to irredentism through Irish republicanism, the belief th ...

before it was shelled and captured by Free State Forces during the Irish Civil War. Some 100,000 volumes are contained in the family archives and library of the

which are still held at Clonalis House, making it a valuable repository of Irish history.

External links

{{coord, 53.7667, N, 8.5000, W, source:wikidata-and-enwiki-cat-tree_region:IE, display=title Buildings and structures in County Roscommon Houses in the Republic of Ireland O'Conor dynasty Historic house museums in the Republic of Ireland Museums in County Roscommon

Further reading

External links