1878 – Killarney House, Killarney, Co. Kerry

Designed as a replacement for Kenmare House of 1726 as the seat of the Earls of Kenmare for Valentine Augustus Browne, 4th Earl of Kenmare. Legend has it that the site was selected by Queen Victoria on her visit to Ireland. The old house was demolished and this Elizabethan-Revival manor house by George Devey, assisted by W.H. Lynn, was constructed. The cost was well over £100,000. The plan was Z shaped, with the east wing terminating in a chapel and the west wing housing the offices. The entrance front or north front had a porte cochere leading to a wide corridor which ran across the entrance front and gave access to the main rooms. Probably not the most successful of Devey’s designs, the relentless red-brick gave it an institutional feel. It was destroyed by fire twice, once in 1879 just after its completion, and again in November 1913 and never re-built. The ruins of the house were eventually demolished in the mid 1950s. Instead the stable block of the demolished Kenmare House was converted for family use. Killarney House and the Browne estate in Kerry were eventually donated to form Killarney National Park.