The Hell Fire Club on Mount Pelier Hill William Conolly's Hunting Lodge The building now known as the Hell Fire Club was built around 1725 as a hunting lodge by
William Conolly, the Speaker of the
Irish House of Commons. It was named Mount Pelier by Conolly but over the years has also been known as "The Haunted House", "The Shooting Lodge", and "Conolly's Folly". On the ground floor are a kitchen, servants' quarters and stairs to the upper floors. The entrance, which is on the upper floor, was reached by a long flight of stairs which is now missing. At each side of the building is a room with a lean-to roof which may have been used to stable horses. A stone mounting block to assist people onto their horses can be seen on the eastern side. The house faces to the north, looking over Dublin and the plains of counties
Meath and
Kildare, The grounds around the lodge consisted of a
deer park. There was a prehistoric burial site at the summit of Mount Pelier Hill and stones from it were used in the construction of the lodge. Shortly after its completion, a great storm blew the original
slate roof off. Local superstition held that this was the work of the
Devil, an act of revenge for disturbing the ancient cairn. Conolly had the roof replaced with an arched stone roof constructed in a similar fashion to that of a bridge. There is little evidence that the lodge was put to much use. Conolly himself died in 1729.
The Hell Fire Club image of the entrance hall and stairs on the upper floor The Irish Hell Fire Club was founded around 1737 by
Richard Parsons, 1st Earl of Rosse, and
James Worsdale. Lord Rosse was probably the president of the club. Evidence of the identities of other members comes from a painting by Worsdale entitled
The Hell Fire Club, Dublin, now held by the
National Gallery of Ireland, which shows five members of the club seated around a table. The five men are Henry,
4th Baron Barry of Santry (who was tried for murder and convicted in 1739);
Simon Luttrell, Lord Irnham;
Colonel Henry Ponsonby; Colonel Richard St George and Colonel Clements. Accounts of the club's meetings claim that members drank "scaltheen", a mixture of whiskey and hot butter, and that they left a chair vacant at each gathering for the Devil. The club's mascot was a black cat.). image of the kitchen on the lower floor It is not clear to what extent, if any, the Hell Fire Club made use of the building. The author Michael Fewer has suggested that the remoteness of Mount Pelier's location is why there are almost no verifiable accounts of the activities that went on there. The Loftus family owned a hunting lodge – known as Dolly Mount – which was also to be found on Mount Pelier Hill. image of the stairs from the kitchen and servants' quarters to the upper floor Another story tells of a priest who came to the house one night and found the members engaged in the sacrifice of a black cat. The priest grabbed the cat and uttered an
exorcism upon which a demon was released from the corpse of the cat. One tale centres on club member Simon Luttrell, Lord Irnham, later
Earl of Carhampton, one time Sheriff of Dublin. According to the story, Luttrell made a pact with the Devil to give up his soul within seven years in return for settling his debts but, when the Devil came to Mount Pelier lodge to claim his prize, Luttrell distracted the Devil and fled. Another story recounts that, following a black mass, a footman spilled a drink on "Burn-Chapel" Whaley's coat. Whaley retaliated by pouring brandy over the man and setting him alight. The fire spread around the building and killed many members. Following the fire, the club relocated further down the hill to Killakee Stewards House. However, the club's activities declined after this incident. The Irish Hell Fire Club was revived in 1771 and was active for a further 30 years. Its most notorious member was
Thomas "Buck" Whaley, son of Richard Chappell Whaley.
Joseph Holt, a general of the
Society of the United Irishmen recorded in his memoirs that he spent a night in the ruin of Mount Pelier while on the run following the
1798 Rebellion. The Conollys sold the lands to
Luke White in 1800. They passed through inheritance to the
Massy family of Duntrileage,
County Limerick. When the Massy family became bankrupt, the lands were acquired by the State.
Prehistoric monuments The remains of the prehistoric monument that originally stood at the summit can be seen to the rear of the Hell Fire Club building. Austin Cooper, on his visit in 1779, described it thus: "behind the house are still the remains of the cairn, the limits of which were composed of large stones set edgeways which made a sort of wall or boundary about high and withinside these were the small stones heaped up. It is diameter or in circumference. In the very centre is a large stone long and broad and about thick not raised upon large stones but lying low with the stones cleared away from about it. There are several other large stones lying upon the heap." It appears from this description that the central chamber of the monument – which was a
passage grave In close proximity is a second mound, high, on which an
Ordnance Survey trig pillar stands. However, in October 2016 a further excavation discovered a huge passage grave similar to that at
Newgrange, probably dating back 5,000 years, under the ruins.
The Stewards House Further down the hill, along the Military Road, is a two-story house, known as The Stewards House or as Killakee House (not to be confused with the now-demolished Killakee House that served as the residence of the Massy family who owned the adjacent Killakee Estate). It was built around 1765 by the Conolly family as a hunting lodge. Over the years, it has served as a
dower house and as a residence for the agent who managed the Killakee Estate. To the rear is a
belfry; this was once a common feature of large farmhouses and was used to call the workers for meals. Stories regarding the origin of this spectre connect it either with the account of the priest who exorcised a cat at the Hell Fire Club or with a cat that was doused in whiskey and set alight by members of the Hell Fire Club before escaping across the mountains with its fur aflame. The best documented account of these hauntings occurred between 1968 and 1970. The
Evening Herald and
Evening Press newspapers carried a number of reports regarding a Mrs Margaret O'Brien and her husband Nicholas, a retired
Garda superintendent, who were converting the house into an arts centre. One night, a friend of the O'Briens, artist Tom McAssey, and two workmen were confronted by a spectral figure and a black cat with glowing red eyes. McAssey painted a portrait of the cat which hung in the house for several years after. In the documentary a
clairvoyant called Sheila St. Clair communicated with the spirits of the house through
automatic writing. In 1971, a plumber working in the house discovered a grave with a skeleton of a small figure, most likely that of a child or, perhaps, the body of the dwarf alleged to have been sacrificed by the members of the Hell Fire Club. now known as Lord Massy's Estate. This was a two-storey, thirty-six roomed
stucco-faced house. It had a
Tuscan-columned entrance and large three-windowed
bows on the back and sides. In 1838, he engaged the services of Sir Ninian Niven, former director of the
Botanic Gardens in Dublin. Niven laid out two Victorian
formal gardens of gravel walks, terraces and exotic trees decorated with statues of Greek and Roman gods. When Samuel White's widow, Anne, died in 1880, she bequeathed the estate to her late husband's nephew,
John Thomas, 6th
Baron Massy. The Massys were a
Protestant Ascendancy family who had come to Ireland in 1641 and owned extensive lands in Counties
Limerick,
Leitrim and
Tipperary. Massy used Killakee House to entertain guests while shooting game on nearby Cruagh and Glendoo mountains. He also used the house to host parties during major events on the Dublin social calendar such as the
Dublin Horse Show, the
Punchestown Races and the
Dublin Castle Season. During these events long lines of guests' carriages could be seen stretched along the road leading to the house. However, as a result of declining rental income and poor investment decisions, John Thomas Massy was in considerable debt when he died in 1915. The Massys initially moved into the Stewards House before taking up residence in Beehive Cottage, the estate's gate lodge, by agreement with the bank. Hamon Massy, unable to find a job on account of his alcoholism became dependent on his wife, Margaret, whose modest salary from a job with the
Irish Hospitals' Sweepstake was the family's only income. In the years up to his death in 1958, Hamon Massy, who became known as the "Penniless Peer", could be seen collecting firewood in the woods of his former family estate. Following the eviction, Killakee House was briefly used as an operations base by the Detective Unit of the
Garda Síochána in 1931 while they hunted
IRA subversives who were hiding explosives at Killakee. When the bank was unable to find a buyer for the estate, it was acquired by a builder who stripped the house and then demolished it in 1941. In the late 1930s, the Director of Forestry, a German called Otto Reinhard, laid out the area as an
urban forest. In 1978, the archaeologist and historian Patrick Healy discovered the remains of a prehistoric
wedge tomb in the woods. Most of the stones were removed to build the low stone wall that runs across the front of the tomb.
Carthy's Castle On the northern slopes is another ruined building, known as Carthy's or McCarthy's Castle. This is all that remains of Dolly Mount – also known as the "Long House" and "Mount Pelier House" – a large hunting residence built by
Henry Loftus,
Earl of Ely towards the end of the eighteenth century. At each side of the house was an arched gate from which extended a range of ancillary buildings, terminating in a three-storeyed tower with an
embattled top and pointed windows. The interiors were noted for their marble chimneypieces and
stuccoed ceilings. The
Charles Tottenham, who inherited the Loftus estates after Henry Loftus died in 1783, subsequently abandoned the residence. The building soon fell into ruin, mainly at the hands of a tenant called Jack Kelly who wrecked the house to ensure his tenancy would not be disturbed. All, except for the tower at the western end, which is now known as Carthy's Castle, was demolished in 1950.
Orlagh House In the land adjacent to Carthy's Castle is Orlagh House which has been owned by the
Augustinian Order since the mid-nineteenth century and is a
retreat and conference centre run by the friars. It was built in 1790 by Mr Lundy Foot, a wealthy
snuff merchant, who named the house Footmount. Foot was subsequently murdered in 1835, an act that was attributed to relatives of the Kearneys. In fact, Foot was killed by James Murphy, the son of an evicted tenant farmer whose land Foot had bought following the eviction. In 2017, Orlagh House was sold to a private buyer. With the decline in the Church, it was no longer economic for the small group of elderly Augustinians to live in such a large residence. In a field opposite Orlagh House is a
holy well associated with
Saint Colmcille. A statue of the saint, designed by Joseph Tierney, was erected at the site in 1917. Pilgrims either drink the water or apply it to sore ears. ==Access and recreation==