Townley Hall is a Georgian country house which stands in parkland at Tullyallen some 5 km west of Drogheda, County Louth in the Republic of Ireland. It was designed by Irish architect Francis Johnston for the Townley Balfour family and built between 1794 and 1798.
The house is 27 metres (89 feet) square, built in local stone with simple neoclassical lines, broken only by a Doric portico. The interior is dominated by a spiral staircase in a domed rotunda. The building replaced a previous house which once stood some 100 metres (330 feet) to the north of the present building
Boyne Lodge at Townley Hall
History
The Townley estate had belonged to the Townley family since Cromwellian times. Blayney Townley, MP had inherited the wealth of his nephew, William Balfour, in 1739 and added Balfour to his surname. The Townley estate passed to his grandson, also Blayney Townley Balfour, later the MP for Belturbet, who in 1794 commissioned Francis Johnston to design the present house. Other buildings on the site, which were designed by Johnston, include the entrance gates and gate lodge, a dovecote, walled garden, farmyard and farmyard houses.[citation needed][2]
Mrs Townley Balfour, wife of the grandson of Blayney jnr, died childless in 1955 and the property passed to her cousin David Crichton. He sold the house and 350 hectares (860 acres) of land in 1957 to Trinity College, Dublin for used as an agricultural school. In 1969 the college sold 200 hectares (490 acres) of farmland to the Land Commission and 150 hectares (370 acres) of woodland to the Forestry Department.
In 1967 Professor Frank Mitchell of Trinity College bought the house with some 25 hectares (62 acres) of surrounding land and ran it as a study centre for several years.
