One of Ireland’s most famous abandoned country houses: Woodlawn, County Galway. The original building was just the central, three-storey block, constructed for the Trench family, raised to the peerage in 1800 as Barons Ashtown. In 1859 the second Lord Ashtown had the house much enlarged by the addition of two-storey wings on either side, the whole then refaced in an Italianate manner: this work was undertaken by the local County Surveyor James Forth Kempster, who was also much employed by another branch of the Trench family, the third Earl of Clancarty. Woodlawn was eventually sold by the fourth Lord Ashtown in 1947 and has had a somewhat chequered history ever since. Part of the building was badly damaged by a fire in the 1970s although the roof was subsequently repaired. However, for much of the past 50 years the house has sat empty and a prey to vandals, with anything of worth in the interior long since gone.
