A Future for Irish Historic Houses - Irish Heritage Trust

Headfort, Kells, County Meath.
Headfort House is located outside the town of Kells in County Meath. Originally
owned by the Taylour family, it now functions as a preparatory boarding school
managed by a board of trustees:
- Headfort is a very large but very plain house built between 1760 and 1770
by Sir Thomas Taylour, 1 st Lord Headfort, to the design of George
Semple. The Taylour family connection with the house lasted until around
the mid-1990s when it was sold to the school that had been leasing it since
1949.
- Historically and architecturally it is extremely important because of its
association with Robert Adam who designed the principal rooms. Adam
had an immense influence on domestic architecture in Britain and Ireland.
This is his only country house work in Ireland to have survived in its
entirety.
- The importance of the Adam interiors is emphasised by the fact that the
World Monument Fund is currently considering Headfort for listing on its
100 most endangered sites in the world.
- The Headfort archive on deposit in the National Library of Ireland
constitutes one of the most comprehensive Irish country house and estate
archives.
- The house is centred on a demesne that is characterised by fine mature
woodland, most notably the pinetum which was laid out at the beginning
of the twentieth century and which contains over 250 species of trees.
Headfort began the transition to preparatory school in 1947. Because of its changing
role, a number of alterations were necessary in the past that compromised the original
integrity of the house, although it should be emphasised that most of these alterations
seem reversible:
- The ground floor rooms in the central block of the house are now used as
offices.
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