An Abandoned Mansion In The Irish Forests

An Irish mansion that was home to an aristocratic family before they were driven out is set to be renovated after becoming completely overgrown by the surrounding forest.

Moore Hall in County Mayo was built by famed Irish politician George Moore between 1792 and 1795 and was a bustling family home until it was destroyed by the anti-treaty Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the civil war in 1923.

Abandoned and left to rot, drone photographs show its overgrown ruins sitting on Muckloon Hill overlooking Lough Carra, after the local council bought it last year for £350,000.

At the time of the fire Colonel Maurice George Moore, a former British Army officer, was a Senator in the newly formed Seanad Éireann of the Irish Free State, Ireland having gained its independence from Britain with the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921.

During the Irish Civil War, waged between those who were for the treaty and those who were anti-treaty, the IRA were attacking homes belonging to Senators and on February 1, 1923, the ancestral Moore home was torched.

The owner was not, in fact, Colonel Moore, but his brother, the novelist George Moore, who wrote a letter to The Morning Post two weeks later quoting a description of the drama: 'I was sitting in my lodge reading when armed men who were perfect strangers to me came to the door and demanded the keys ...