Loftus Hall

OVERVIEW

A large country house on the Hook peninsula in south Wexford, built on the site of the medieval Redmond Hall and rebuilt in its present form by the 4th Marquess of Ely in 1870–71. It has been in turn a family seat, a landlord's house, a convent for two different orders of nuns, and a hotel run by the Devereux family in the 1980s. The Quigley family bought it in 2011 and ran it as a visitor attraction with guided tours and, in season, paranormal events. The whole townland carries the house's name, and the hall can be seen from Hook Lighthouse.

HISTORY

The legend is set in the eighteenth century, when the Tottenham family were in residence: a ship put in during a storm, a stranger was given hospitality, and during a game of cards a dropped card showed a cloven hoof under the table. The stranger is said to have gone up through the roof in a ball of fire, and Anne Tottenham, the daughter of the house, to have lost her reason and been shut in the tapestry room until she died. A hole in the ceiling was for generations pointed out as his exit.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

The tradition is one of the most fully recorded in Ireland: the card game, the cloven hoof, and Anne's ghost in the tapestry room. Rick Whelan's documentary The Legend of Loftus Hall (1993) dramatised it; Ghost Adventures filmed at the house; the gothic film The Lodgers was shot here in 2016. Visitors on tours have reported cold, footsteps and figures. The entry records a legend with a long paper trail and a house that has traded on it — both facts stated.

VISITING

Private property. Tours and events have run on and off since 2011 and the house has changed hands; check before travelling and do not enter the grounds unannounced.