Strokestown Park House and Famine Museum began as a large estate, granted by King Charles II to Nicholas Mahon for his support in the English Civil War. Descendants of Mahon lived here until 1979, even after the estate was purchased in its entirety by Westward Garage, then a small company looking for land to store equipment. When they went through the house, boxes of original documents that chronicled the history of the house, much of which related to the years of the great famine of the 1840's, were found. The idea was borne to tell the story of the famine through this estate and its tenants.
The last family to live in the house hired an architect to remodel and make a modern kitchen. Luckily, the architect persuaded them to simply partition over the existing kitchen. When the house was restored and the partition was removed, the original kitchen was all there.
Above, is a 1920's addition - tin to cover a walkway so that the British soldiers that were billeted here in 1920 wouldn't get shot at as they walked from their living quarters! Below is a 12th century ruin - all that remains of a church.
The Famine Museum uses a combination of original documents and images from the Strokestown archives to explain what happened to tenant farmers in 1847-1850 when the potato crop failed due to a blight caused by a fungus. Poor tenant farming families depended on the potato crop for their main food source - with its complete loss due to the blight, it is estimated that over a million people died and up to 2 million emigrated. The museum stands in stark contrast to the house we had just toured - quite a powerful way to tell the story of such disparate lives based on the circumstances of one's birth. It was a sobering visit.
The estate included a six acre walled garden, also restored and featuring Ireland's oldest glass greenhouse dating from 1780.
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