Rinn Castle

Located on a low N-S ridge between Lough Rinn c. 280m to the W and Lough Errew on the Cloone River c. 200m to the E. The Clements family were not amongst the original settlers in the Leitrim plantation of 1620-2 (Mac Cuarta 1999), but Nathaniel Clements (1705-c. 1800), a grandson of Daniel Clements who received a land grant at Rathkenny, Co. Cavan under the Cromwellian settlement, was the third of four sons born to Robert Clements (1664-1722) and his wife, Elizabeth, a daughter of General Theophilius Sandford of Moyglare, Co. Meath. A family connection to the Irish Treasury and his marriage in 1730 to Hannah Gore, a niece of Sir Ralph Gore, Speaker of the Irish House of Commons (1729-33), afforded Nathaniel copious opportunities to invest in land. He acquired Lord Boyne’s extensive estate in Donegal in the 1740s, the Mohill estate of the Croftons in 1749, and the Glenboy estate in north Leitrim in 1754. He went on to purchase the estate and town Manorhamilton in 1759, creating the largest landholding in the county. (Malcomson 2019, 355-60) By 1760 Nathaniel is said to have accumulated 85,000 acres, principally in Donegal, Leitrim and Cavan, and had a rental income of £6,000 (Lodge 1789, vol. 2, 577-8). He commissioned a survey by William Wogan of his land at Lough Rinn in 1750, which is now in the National Library of Ireland, possibly with the intention of living there but a house was not built until the next century. His son Robert became the first Earl of Leitrim in 1795. Before the house was built there was an ‘old stable’ here according to Wogan’s map (1750, 22). Once the house was built in 1833 for Robert, Viscount Clements, probably to a design by William Burn, it became the principal residence of the family. The house is a Tudor-Revival house, and is a seven-bay, two storey over basement house with large bay windows at the ground floor. It was extended in 1889 to a design of Sir Thomas Drew for Col. H. T. Clemens by the addition of an east wing. There is no evidence of a building older than the 1830s, and the house is now a hotel. (Bence-Jones 1978, 193-4) The above description is derived from 'The Archaeological Inventory of County Leitrim' compiled by Michael J. Moore (Dublin: Stationery Office, 2003).