Headfort House

Walter Jones is not amongst the original grantees of land in Leitrim in 1620 (Mac Cuarta 1999, 130-2) but he probably set about acquiring as much as possible in the succeeding decades. His second son, Theophilius Jones (1666-1742) of Headfort, was one of the two MPs for Leitrim from 1692 until his death. Theophilus’ grandson, the Right Honourable Theophilus Jones, was MP for Leitrim 1761-8, 1776-83, 1790-97, and 1800, and continued to represent the county in the Westminster Parliament in 1801-02. His mother, Olivia Coote, was a co-heiress of the Coote estate centred at Coote Hall (RO007-015001-), but he seems to have lived at Headford. In 1753 his Leitrim estate had an estimated 10,000 acres. His son, Walter, continued to live at Headford but represented Coleraine in the Irish and Westminster parliaments 1798-1809 through a connection with the Marquis of Waterford, and he died in 1839 (Johnston-Liik 2002, vol. 4, 403-07). By the 1830s the family had moved to Drumard (Jones) near Lough Rinn (Lewis 1837, vol. 2, 376), and the Headford house might have been a ruin by then. Anthony Trollope wrote his first published novel ‘The MacDermots of Ballycloran’ (1847) while he was staying nearby at Drumsna between 1843 and 1845, and it is thought that he may have based the fictional castle at Ballycloran on Headfort House. The remains consist of the E and W gables of a rectangular house (ext. dims 16.4m E-W; 9.4m N-S) of three storeys with an external render and the internal plaster still present. There are partial remains of the S wall, which has 3 openings at ground level that could be original. The W gable has a fireplace (Wth 0.88m; D 0.6m; H 1m) at S with a doorway (Wth 1.25m; H 1.8m) that has a brick arch over it at the centre of the wall. The E wall also has two robbed fireplaces at the centre on the ground floor with the scar of a cross-wall just to their S. The beams for the ceiling were set directly into the E and W walls. The upper floors are completely overgrown with ivy, but a fireplace and a blocked window can be distinguished in the W gable at the first floor. Two chutes in the E gable debouch into the interior at the ground floor, and a fireplace together with a window can be seen at the first floor of this wall.