One of Ireland’s most remarkable abbeys 

Kylemore Abbey was built in 1871 as a private residence for Manchester industrialists and multi-millionaires Mitchell and Margaret Henry. They came to this area on their honeymoon and were so enchanted by the landscape they eventually commissioned architects James Franklin Fuller and Ussher Roberts to design an enormous gothic-styled fantasy castle for their home. It covered 40,000 square feet and had over 70 rooms including 33 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, 4 sitting rooms, a ballroom, a billiard room, a library, a study, a schoolroom, a smoking room, and a gun room. The granite facade was built from Dalkey granite from Dublin that had to be brought by sea to Letterfrack. Sadly, however, Mrs. Henry contracted a fever in 1874 while on a family holiday in Egypt and soon died. She was buried in the beautiful Gothic church near the abbey that her husband commissioned for her. Kylemore was sold to an American company in 1902 and then to a community of Benedictine nuns in 1920 who had fled from Belgium during the war and still run the Abbey. This is now a top visitor attraction that sells many products grown or made on the grounds of the Abbey.