Woodbrook, Boyle, Co Roscommon 

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. 286. “(Kirkwood/LGI1958) The seat of the Kirkwoods, featured in David Thompson’s widely acclaimed evocation of Anglo-Irish life, Woodbrook. No longer owned by the family.” 

not in national inventory 

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

Keenehan and others state that Woodbrook House was built around 1780 by the Phibbs family although there may have been an earlier house on the site. The Kirkwood family purchased the property sometime in the early nineteenth century. At the time of Griffith’s Valuation Sarah Mary Kirkwood was leasing a house at Usna, barony of Boyle, valued at £14, from Robert H. Brewster French. From the 1890s-1911 Woodbrook was a very successful racing stables run by Colonel Tom Kirkwood. Life in the house in the post-WWI era has been made famous by the memoir ”Woodbrook” written by the Scottish author David Thomson, a tutor to the daughters of the family. In 1946 over 50 acres of the estate was sold to the local golf club while the Land Commission subsequently divided the remainder. Woodbrook House is still extant.   

Woodbrook House, near Ardcarne, just north of Carrick-on-Shannon, on the road to Boyle. The setting for David Thomson’s classic autobiographical love story and social history, Woodbrook, published in 1974, Thomson came to Woodbrook as a tutor to the Kirkwoods in the 1930’s. This photo appears in the final chapter of my book: ‘The Landed Estates of County Roscommon’. Woodbrook is still extant albeit without the wings shown in this photo. (see details of Thomson and his book here: https://www.independent.ie/…/books-delicate-intriguing-tale… )