Rattoo House, Lixnaw, Co Kerry 

Mark Bence-Jones. A Guide to Irish Country Houses (originally published as Burke’s Guide to Country Houses volume 1 Ireland by Burke’s Peerage Ltd. 1978); Revised edition 1988 Constable and Company Ltd, London. 

p. 240. “(Gun/LGI1912) A High Victorian house with trefoil shaped recesses over the windows and some Ruskinian Gothic dormer gables.” 

https://www.buildingsofireland.ie/buildings-search/building/21300909/rattoo-house-rattoo-co-kerry

Detached five-bay two-storey Venetian Gothic Revival style house, built c. 1860, incorporating fabric of earlier house, built 1836. Comprising three-bay two-storey recessed central block having trefoil-headed openings, single-bay single-storey gabled projecting porch, single-bay two-storey hipped gabled advanced flanking end bays and single-bay side elevations having canted bay window to south with gablet over. Pitched artificial slate roofs with half-hipped gables and ashlar chimneystacks. Rubble stone walls with ashlar dressings. Arched niches surround facade openings, with trefoil arches at first floor, timber two-over-two pane sliding sash windows set in square-headed windows, bay window at ground floor south wall. Off-centre gabled ashlar porch. Remains of detached four-bay single-storey rubble stone-built single-cell medieval abbey, built c. 1600, to east, now ruinous. Gateway, built c. 1860, to south-east comprising pair of cut-stone piers with cast-iron inner piers having cast-iron gates and railings. 

http://landedestates.nuigalway.ie/LandedEstates/jsp/property-list.jsp?letter=R 

At the time of Grffith’s Valuation, Rattoo House, in the possession of Wilson Gun, was valued at £20. Lewis refers to Rattoo Lodge as the residence of W.T. Gun in 1837. This would appear to be the house which Bary states was built by Wilson Gun in 1836. The 1st editon Ordnance Survey map, however, indicates “Rattoo House (in ruins)”, south west of the Round Tower, which would suggest there was an earlier house also known by this name. In 1906 it was owned by William T.J. Gun and valued at £63. The house remained in the Gun family and their descendents until the early twentieth century when it was sold to the Land Commission by Ella Browne, grand-daughter of Wilson Gun. The Irish Tourist Association Survey, however, still describes it as in her possession “a large straggling building with fourteen bedrooms and fine sittingrooms”. It is still extant and occupied. In 2010 it was offered for sale.