Eyrecourt Castle

In 1662 Colonel John Eyre, an Englishman, was granted the 800 acres of Eyrecourt land, with the power to empark it, as reward for his part in Cromwell's campaign in Galway. On land that had held an earlier fortified house he raised an early example of a classical country house in Ireland — seven bays and two storeys, its central staircase and hall taking up nearly a third of the plan — and house, estate and the nearby town all took his name.

Its glory was the woodwork: ambitious carvings, massive doorcases and one of the first grand Baroque staircases in Ireland, acanthus leaves rolling down the banisters from grotesque masks — "by far the most exuberant piece of wood carving surviving from the 17th century". Dutch craftsmen are believed to have worked there. Over the main hall door ran the motto "Welcome to the house of liberty", and local tradition says Ginkell's Williamite army camped in the grounds after the Battle of Aughrim in 1691.

The house descended through generations of Eyres — including "Proud Eyre" and a Baron Eyre whose peerage died with him, childless, in 1781 — and fell into decline, becoming a ruin in the twentieth century. The famous staircase was removed in the 1920s and later given to the Detroit Institute of Arts; the demesne gates were bought and restored by the National Heritage Council in the 1990s.