The site of Killarney House was chosen by Queen Victoria on her visit to Ireland in 1861. This house was the replacement for Kenmare House (1726) as the seat of the Earl of Kenmare.
It was the fourth Earl that decided to build a new mansion on a hillside with spectacular views of Lough Leane in 1872. The old house was demolished and an Elizabethan-Revival manor house on a more elevated site. The cost was well over £100,000. This house was supposed to have been instigated by Lady Kenmare (Gertrude Thynne, granddaughter of Thomas Thynne, 2nd Marquess of Bath) and inspired by Lord Bath's genuinely Elizabethan seat, Longleat, Wiltshire (which is not red-brick); but it was not unusual for the descendants of Elizabethan or Jacobean settlers in Ireland to assert their comparative antiquity in this period by building Jacobethan houses. The architect was George Devey but, according to Jeremy Williams, '... that feeling of being built up over the centuries that distinguished Devey's work was entirely lacking, partly due to the job being supervised by W.H. Lynn [the Belfast architect] at his most relentless ... The western-most gate lodge, gabled and galleried, [which survives, is] Devey at his most delightful.' The house, which in addition to its other defects apparently did not sit happily in the landscape as it had many gables and many oriels. The interior was pannelled and hung with Spanish leather. It was considered one of the finest mansions in Ireland. Sadly, it was burnt out twice - once in 1879, just after its completion, and again, and finally, in November 1913 and never re-built; instead the stable block of the older Kenmare House was converted for family use.
Killarney House and the Browne estate in Kerry were donated by Mrs. Grosvenor (niece of the seventh Earl) to form Killarney National Park.
A €7 million restoration was announced by Leo Varadkar one morning in 2011.[1][2]