Tyrone House and the St George Family

About the Book

Located on a prominent site overlooking Galway Bay in the west of Ireland, Tyrone House was once one of the country’s finest Georgian mansions. Dating from the 1770s, the building was home to generations of the French and St George families, a powerful symbol of their wealth and power. The interior of the house was lavishly decorated and furnished, beginning with the entrance hall, dominated by a life-size marble statue of Lord St George. But despite their advantages, over the course of the nineteenth century, the family went into irreversible decline and eventually forsook their great residence, which was destroyed by fire in 1920. This book tells the story of the rise and fall of the St Georges and their fate, embodied in what became of Tyrone House, which is today a little more than a gaunt ruin.

About the Author

Robert O’Byrne is a writer and lecturer specialising in the fine and decorative arts. He is the author of more than a dozen books, among them Luggala Days: The Story of a Guinness House, The Last Knight: A Tribute to Desmond FitzGerald, 29th Knight of Glin, Romantic Irish Homes and Romantic English Homes. A retired Vice-President of the Irish Georgian Society and trustee of the Alfred Beit Foundation, he is currently a trustee of the Apollo Foundation and the Artists Collecting Society. Among other work he writes a monthly column for Apollo magazine, and is also a regular contributor to The Burlington Magazine and the Irish Arts Review. For the past five years Mr O'Byrne has written an award-winning blog, www.theirishaesthete.com.