Kilmorna, Listowel, 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. 174. “(Gun/ LGI1912; O’Mahony, sub Mahony/IFR) A Victorian Tudor house with battlemented turret. Occupied by Sir Arthur Vicars, former Ulster King of Arms, who was murdered 1921 and the house burnt.” 

In 1897, Vicars published An Index to the Prerogative Wills of Ireland 1536 -1810, a listing of all persons in wills proved in that period.

As Registrar of the Order of St Patrick, Vicars had custody of the insignia of the order, also known as the “crown jewels”. They were found to be missing on 6 July, and a Crown Jewel Commission under Judge James Johnston Shaw was established in January 1908 to investigate the disappearance. Vicars and his barrister Tim Healy refused to attend the commission’s hearings. The commission’s findings were published on 25 January 1908. Vicars was dismissed as Ulster five days later.

Vicars left Dublin and moved to Kilmorna, near Listowel, the former seat of one of his half-brothers. He continued to protest his innocence until his death, even including bitter references to the affair in his will.

In May 1920 up to a hundred armed men broke into Kilmorna House and held Vicars at gunpoint while they attempted to break into the house’s strongroom. On 14 April 1921, he was taken from Kilmorna House, which was set alight, and shot dead in front of his wife. According to the communiqué issued from Dublin Castle, thirty armed men took him from his bed and shot him, leaving a placard around his neck denouncing him as an informer.

Listed in Vanishing Country Houses of Ireland by The Knight of Glin, David J. Griffin and Nicholas K. Robinson, published by The Irish Architectural Archive and The Irish Georgian Society, 1988.

p. 82…. seat of the Mahony family….