Loftus Hall

The Devil once came calling, according to legend, but is there something else lurking in Ireland's most haunted house?

Loftus Hall. Often claimed to be the most haunted house in Ireland, it is now a tourist attraction.

Gfox228, Loftus Hall, Wexford, Ireland - panoramio, colour by Irish Mysteries, CC BY 3.0

It is perhaps Ireland's most well-known tale of the supernatural.

On a stormy night in the early 1770's, a ship is wrecked off the Hook peninsula in county Wexford. One of the sailors washed ashore makes his way to Loftus Hall, the massive country house that dominates Hook Head. The Hall is home to Charles Tottenham, his daughter Anne and his second wife, Jane Cliffe. Charles is resting when the mysterious young stranger comes to call, but his wife and daughter take him in and offer him shelter from the raging storm.

Over the next few days, the visitor recuperates. Young, handsome and charming, he ingratiates himself with the small family unit, and grows particularly close to Anne. A few evenings after his dramatic arrival, the four decide to play a game of whist in the parlour. Anne and the stranger pair up against the elder Tottenham and his wife, and, after a few hands, the younger duo are winning quite comfortably. It is at this point that Anne makes a shocking discovery.

Having dropped a card on the floor, Anne leans down under the table to retrieve it. She is horrified to see a pair of cloven hooves where her paramour's feet should be, and screams in terror. As she scrambles from beneath the table, it is knocked over and the young stranger's diabolical nature is revealed to everyone present. The Devil--his cover blown--departs Loftus Hall as a ball of fire that shoots through the ceiling, accompanied by a deafening thunderclap.

This is the essence of the tale of the Devil and Loftus Hall, even though some details may change according to the teller. In some cases, for example, the stranger calls to the Hall because his horse is worn out and cannot ride any further. In others, Anne drops a ring, not a card. The Devil sometimes jumps through the parlour window. But the basic elements are the same. And all versions of the story hold that Anne, traumatised by her seduction at the hands of Satan himself, loses her mind and has to be confined to her bedroom--the Hall's Tapestry Room--until her lonely death some time around 1775. 

A game of whist. A popular parlour game of the time, its inclusion in the tale of the Devil and Loftus Hall helps provide a very mundane background for the revelation of the visitor's true, satanic nature.

James Gillray creator QS:P170,Q520806 Hannah Humphrey creator QS:P170,Q18671367, Two-penny whist, colour by Irish Mysteries, CC0 1.0

It should probably come as no surprise that there are strong associations between Loftus Hall and the paranormal: the site where the big house stands is ancient. The area was seized by an Anglo-Norman lord named Raymond le Gros during the Norman conquest of Ireland in 1170, and his descendants--as the Redmond family--held it until the 1660's, when a later conquest under Oliver Cromwell replaced them with the Loftus family. The original Redmond Hall was built in the 14th-century  to replace the castle erected by Raymond le Gros's immediate heirs, and the Hall itself remained relatively unchanged up to the 19th-century. It has been said that there were local rumours of strange goings-on at the Hall long before it fell into the hands of the Loftus family, and many from the area refused to go anywhere near the imposing residence.

The house itself must have seemed foreboding enough by the time Charles Tottenham (who had officially taken his first wife's surname, Loftus, in order to inherit the estate) moved in with his second wife and adult daughter. It probably also didn't help that the peninsula of Hook Head is a desolate area, often described by locals and visitors alike as a "wild and lonely place". Anne is said to have been particularly unhappy with the move, it having come about after her sister Emily's marriage. Anne and Emily were close, being the two youngest of six other children from Tottenham's first marriage, and Emily's departure made Anne miserable. It has also been suggested that she did not get on well with Jane Cliffe. That in itself would hardly be a unique experience for two grown women suddenly cast in the role of step-mother and -daughter, but it must have made life at the lonely Hall even more unpleasant for Anne. 

All of which is perhaps why the visitor to Loftus Hall left such emotional carnage in his wake. For there was almost certainly a real visitor. What is interesting about the story of the Devil and Loftus Hall is that it was Charles Tottenham himself that first put it about, which has led to speculation that the diabolical tale was designed to deflect interest in a very human scandal involving Anne. In this version of events, the young man who visits is every bit as charming as his alter ego in Tottenham's fabrication. Instead of being unmasked as the Prince of Darkness, however, he is caught having sex with Anne and promptly escapes through a window. 

Proponents of this theory hold that Tottenham was prepared to go to great lengths to back up his fanciful tale, even going so far as to have Loftus Hall exorcised by the local Catholic parish priest. As members of the Protestant landed class of Irish society, this was a highly controversial decision for the Tottenham family. Charles claimed that a spate of paranormal occurrences had begun after the eventful card game, and Father Thomas Broaders was eventually called in to put a stop to it once it became apparent that the Church of Ireland clergy could not. Father Broaders is supposed to have confined the occurrences to the Tapestry room, upon which that section of the house was cordoned off.

The Tapestry room of an English country home. Though opulent even by modern standards, it is likely that the Tapestry room of Loftus Hall was no better than a prison cell for the unfortunate Anne Tottenham.

Charles Latham (1847-1912), In English Homes Vol 2 Drakelowe Derbyshire tapestry room 31295007279283 0399, marked as public domain, more details on Wikimedia Commons

Perhaps the paranormal occurrences of the 1770's were all just part of an elaborate fiction then, intended to distract the Tottenhams' peer group from the very real disgrace which Anne's dalliance with the young visitor could bring. Anne's captivity in the Tapestry room in this interpretation becomes all the more sinister as a result, but there is another mystery: why has most of the paranormal activity reported at Loftus Hall taken place after 1775, and has focused on the very room where Anne Tottenham died? 

From the the late 1700's onwards, the Tapestry room was used as guest quarters. Hundreds of visitors stayed there, and there were countless reports of strange occurrences. There seem to have been two major phenomena that most affected the guests. There were continuous sightings of a tall lady in a stiff silk dress, who reportedly either entered the room every evening and passed through silently--exiting through the closet door--or stood quietly staring at whatever individual happened to be occupying the bed that night. Several witnesses also claimed that they were held down on that same bed by an invisible, sinister entity that growled like a wild animal. 

The phenomena in the Tapestry room continued for years, with only very slight variations. For example, one guest had a suitcase full of jewellery and other expensive items which were inexplicably strewn around the room in the morning. In the latter half of the 19th-century, a billiard table was installed in the Tapestry room, and there were reports that the balls would be knocked about at night, making a "horrid noise". The vast majority of the witnesses were high-profile, credible individuals such as Church of England clergyman the Reverend Charles Dale, who stayed at Loftus Hall while serving as a tutor to one of the children. Some of Dale's experiences there--in 1867--were identical to those of other individuals from as far back as 1790.   

A depiction of The Devil with cloven hooves. Although he probably did not appear at the Hall as the legend claims, several witnesses have claimed that there is a demonic presence that accompanies the suspected spectre of Anne Tottenham.

anonymous, Silvester II. and the Devil Cod. Pal. germ. 137 f216v, marked as public domain, colour by Irish Mysteries

In 1871, Loftus Hall was extensively renovated. The main reason for this was that the Loftus family was expecting a visit from Queen Victoria, which ultimately never materialised--even though many of the paranormal events related above were in fact collected in order to be related to the Queen. The fact that the most important guest of Loftus Hall never actually arrived was particularly galling for the family, as they had spent most of their money on the renovation and were left close to financial ruin. They lost the Hall as a result, and the property has changed hands quite a few times since.

But the renovation itself may have thrown up a possible reason for the unexplained incidents at the hall. It is believed that when the time came for work to be carried out on the Tapestry room, there was a disturbing discovery. The skeletal remains of a baby were found interred in the wall of the room. If this indeed happened, then it is likely that there were two victims of Anne's incarceration--Anne herself, and her child. Perhaps it is the restless spirit of Anne Tottenham who caused the disturbances at Loftus Hall, angered by the injustice she suffered at the end of her tragically short life. 

From 1917 until the early 1980's the Hall served as convent, first for the Benedictine Order and later for the Order of Providence. The sisters of Providence converted it into a dormitory school for girls interested in taking holy orders, but the strange occurrences associated with the house continued. Bizarre accidents were common throughout this period, and rumours of something unholy stalking Loftus Hall were rife among the students. In 1983 the house was sold to Michael Deveraux, who intended to open it us as a guesthouse. But the new "Loftus Hall Hotel" was a commercial failure, and Michael Deveraux died not long after the grand opening. Strangely, Mrs Deveraux stayed on at Loftus Hall, alone, until one grey morning in the early 1990's when she abruptly stood up from the breakfast table--leaving all of the food and cutlery that she had laid out for her meal--and simply walked out, never to return. 

There were rumours that Mrs Deveraux was tracked down years later in a nursing home in England. When she was asked why she had abandoned the house so suddenly, leaving all of her belongings there, her explanation was chilling. For the duration of her years alone there, Mrs Deveraux claimed that she had heard voices telling her to get out of Loftus Hall. All that she did that morning, she said, was to do what they asked.   

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