Glenbeigh Towers, County Kerry was built 1867-71 for the Hon Rowland Allanson-Winn, its design by English architect Edward Godwin. The latter, whose other Irish commission was Dromore, County Limerick (see Une Folie de Grandeur, 30th December 2013 and More and More Dromore, 3rd March 2014). Both properties suffered the same problems: the budget overran and the walls perpetually leaked. Whereas Godwin’s patron at Dromore, the third Earl of Limerick, suffered these inconveniences, Allanson-Winn was not prepared to do so and sued the architect for the cost of employing someone else to rectify the issue. The defendant settled the case before it came to court but thereafter would advise ‘When offered a commission in Ireland, refuse it.’ Glenbeigh was only ever occupied by staff until taken over by members of the British Military Command during the First World War. It was subsequently burnt by the IRA in 1921 and has remained a striking ruin ever since. Incidentally Allanson-Winn’s son Rowland George Allanson-Winn became fifth Lord Headley following the death of a cousin in January 1913: eight months later he converted to Islam and made a pilgrimage to Mecca the following decade (after which he was known as Al-Haj Shaikh Saifurrahman Rehmatullah El-Farooq). He is also remembered for having been twice offered the throne of Albania, and refusing on both occasions.