Killua Castle is a magnificent, romantic ruin that was once the seat of the Chapman family. Hailing originally from Leicester, England, they obtained vast swathes of land in Ireland in the 16th century, thanks largely to the patronage of their famous cousin, Sir Walter Raleigh. However, it was a later family member, Benjamin, who, having fought as a captain in Cromwell's army, was awarded the confiscated lands of the Knights Hospitallers of St John at Killua. The present structure of Killua Castle was built around 1780, although the conversion that created the rambling Gothic fantasy, the ruin of which greets the visitor today, was carried out in 1830.The last of the family line to be associated with the castle was Thomas Chapman, born in 1848, who married a girl from the Rochford family by whom he had four children. The marriage was not a happy one, due largely to his wife's love of travel and her long absences from home. Tiring of the situation, Thomas Chapman finally abandoned his home, his wife, his family and his name to live with his mistress, Sarah Dunner, in Wales, where he adopted the name Thomas Lawrence. They had seven children, one of whom, Thomas Edward Lawrence, would become the enigmatic and intriguing "Lawrence of Arabia". A strange stillness hangs over this hollow castellated ruin today. The sheer number of dark empty window frames that greet your approach is enough to elicit cold shivers of an uncanny nature. The hollow rooms of the crumbling interior, where a time worn stairway clings desperately to the ivy clad walls, radiate a chilling feeling of melancholy, and you find yourself in constant fear of a chance encounter with the nebulous wraith of one of the castle's bygones residents. No one is certain of the identity, or even the gender, of the white spectre, whose shimmering shade has been seen wandering amongst the ruins at night. Suffice it to say that those who encounter it waste little time bothering to find out. Some people think that 'it' is a 'he', or to be precise, an 18th century steward of the castle who, having turned to , was consumed with the terrors and tremors of dipsomania, and in despair drowned himself in the lake in the castle grounds. However, other people voice the belief that the ghost is that of a daughter of the house who long ago met with a tragic accident, or was deserted by a feckless lover, or was subject to any one of the numerous sorrowful array of 'white ladies' to drift slowly across the pages of folklore and legend the world over.


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