It is claimed in local lore to have been designed by the architect James Hoban, who was also responsible for designing the White House in Washington, D.C.[1] The house was built between 1819 and 1824 in the Palladian style, commissioned by William Morris-Reade, the owner of a large estate of some 7,000 acres near Kilmoganny.
The house passed to his second son Frederick Richard Morris-Reade, who was born in 1833 at Rossenarra but died as a pauper in the workhouse at Michelstown in County Cork in 1898.
It was sold to them by the Morris Reade descendants of Frederick Richard Morris-Reade's elder brother who were resident in Canada and where they still live.
[4] The house was also for a time the home of the American author Richard Condon, who wrote The Manchurian Candidate and Prizzi's Honor.
[5] The most recent residents of the house were American tycoon Walter Griffith and his Irish-born wife, Christine.