Overview
Right now Loftus Hall is a house you look at from the outside. The interior has been shut since 2020, and in a €3 million sale finalised over the winter of 2025–26 the estate passed to developer Patrick McDermott, who plans to turn it into a luxury hotel. Until that happens, a visit means the grounds: the restored walled gardens, the sea-facing terraces, and the grey Victorian bulk of the three-storey house itself, staring out over the Hook Peninsula a short drive from Fethard-on-Sea.
What draws people is the story, not the architecture. Loftus Hall is widely billed as Ireland’s most haunted house, and the Atlantic weather that rolls in past nearby Hook Lighthouse has kept the legends going for generations. Manage your expectations, though: you cannot currently go inside, so the famous Tapestry Room and its scorch mark stay behind closed doors. What’s on offer is the façade, the gardens and a walled setting with the sea on three sides.
A turbulent history
Norman roots and the Redmond era
The site’s story begins in 1170, when the Norman knight Raymond FitzGerald landed at Baginbun to support Richard de Clare, took local land and raised a fortification known as Houseland Castle. Around 1350, during the Black Death, the Redmond family replaced it with a more comfortable manor – Redmond Hall – which served as their seat for nearly three centuries.
The 1642 siege and the Cromwellian wars
During the Irish Confederate Wars the hall became the scene of a sharp little battle. On 20 July 1642, Captain Thomas Aston landed with roughly 90 Irish Army troops and two small cannon to seize the hall, then held by the 68-year-old Alexander Redmond. Outnumbered, Redmond and nine defenders barricaded themselves behind a thick oak door. The cannon proved useless against the timber, half of Aston’s men wandered off to pillage the countryside, and a sudden sea-mist rolled in to cover the Confederate reinforcements who routed the rest. Several captured soldiers were later hanged at Ballyhack.
The hall took further punishment during the Cromwellian conquest. Tradition holds that its defenders plugged cannon breaches with sacks of wool – a motif that later found its way into the Redmond coat of arms in 1763. After Alexander Redmond died in 1650, the family was dispossessed, keeping only a third of their estates.
The Loftus family and Victorian grandeur
The English Loftus family, who had held nearby lands since the 1590s, took over the property; Henry Loftus moved in around 1666, and by 1680 had the entrance piers inscribed “Henry Loftus of Loftus Hall Esq. 1680”. The family climbed the peerage to become Marquesses of Ely in 1800.
The house you see today was built between 1870 and 1875 for John Henry Wellington Graham Loftus, 4th Marquess of Ely, wrapping the older 17th- and 18th-century fabric in a grand new shell. Drawing on Queen Victoria’s Osborne House, he fitted a sweeping marble-treaded staircase, mosaic floors, elaborate parquetry and luxuries rare in Irish country houses at the time, including flushing toilets and blown-air heating.
20th century to now
The hall’s later life ran through institution and hotel. In 1917 the Sisters of Providence bought it for a convent and school; the Devereux family ran it as a hotel through the 1980s and 1990s; and in 2011 Shane and Aidan Quigley reopened it for guided tours and put serious work into the walled gardens. It closed to the public in 2020, was sold, and in 2025 changed hands again in the McDermott purchase now steering it toward a hotel future.
The legend of the devil
Loftus Hall’s supernatural fame rests on an 18th-century tale. The Tottenham family, who then held the estate, took in a stranger who came ashore during a storm. He stayed several days, charming the household and growing close to the young daughter, Anne Tottenham.
During a card game in the Tapestry Room, so the story goes, Anne dropped a card and looked under the table – and saw that the stranger had a cloven hoof. She cried out; he vanished in a ball of fire, bursting through the ceiling and leaving a scorch mark that locals swore stayed visible for decades. Anne, the tale continues, was never the same, confined to the Tapestry Room and staring out toward Dunmore East for the stranger’s return.
The legend has fed paranormal investigations, a 1993 documentary and the 2017 gothic film The Lodgers, shot on location. Visitors and staff have long reported cold spots, footsteps on the stairs and figures at the windows – the kind of thing that keeps a house like this firmly in Irish folklore.
What to see today
With the interior shut, it’s the outside that carries a visit:
- The façade and entrance piers: the 1680 inscription and the Victorian frontage, viewed from the roadside car park.
- Walled gardens: restored and open, with mature planting, stone paths and the sea beyond.
- Sea-facing terraces: the best of the setting, looking out over the water that carried the 1642 raiders in.
- A fairy walk: a short trail through the grounds that keeps younger visitors busy.
- Accessibility: the garden paths and car park are wheelchair accessible; the interior rooms are not open.
The hall pairs well with Baginbun Beach and its cliffs, or a short drive to Hook Lighthouse, the oldest working lighthouse in the world.
Practical information
- Location: Loftus Hall, Hook Peninsula, County Wexford, off the R734 near Fethard-on-Sea. There is no public transport to the hall itself.
- Access: reachable by car via the R734. A small, free roadside car park gives safe views of the exterior and access to the walled gardens; note a parking fee may apply, waived if you spend €10 or more on site.
- Opening times: the interior has been closed since 2020. The exterior, car park and walled gardens are open during daylight hours.
- Admission: free to the grounds and gardens.
- Future plans: a hotel redevelopment is under way, so access can change – check ahead.
Check loftushall.ie before you drive down, because garden access depends on the redevelopment work and it’s a long way to the end of the Hook to find the gate shut.