From the Leinster Leader, 3 October 1936:
“ROMANCE OF THE LUTTRELLS OF LUTTRELLSTOWN
(by Doreen Mills)
The historic and beautiful castle of Luttrellstown in County Dublin for well over 500 years was in the ancient family of Luttrell, from which family the place took its name. Alas! The historic name is now forgotten and gone in these parts. This magnificent castle was built about 1100, historic records tell us, and through its long history several ghosts are interwoven. The most outstanding was the Grey Lady, once the victim, it is said, of the cruelty of Luttrell. Many people from time to time have testified having seen her wandering about the corridors at night dressed in a grey shroud to her ankles. It is believed she spoke to one person to assure them that she ‘meant no harm’. For a Luttrell’s injustice she swore to be revenged by haunting his castle, and in spite of change of ownership she could not alter her vow. On a moonlit night tradition states one is supposed to see the devil down by the ruins of what is known as the Devil’s Mill on the estate.
Luttrellstown’s third ghost is the ghost of the first Luttrell to bring disgrace on the family, namely Colonel Henry Luttrell. At one period in his life he became the most unpopular man in the country in the `17th century as he betrayed the cause of King James at the Siege of Limerick. It was only by a hair’s breadth that he escaped execution as a traitor. He was saved by a truce and he escaped from prison to the enemies’ quarters. From this he went from bad to worse. Later he took a commission in a Dutch regiment and received 500 pounds a year blood money from the crown. He betrayed his brother to William as a Jacobite and Colonel Henry Luttrell therefore came into possession of the family home, which is brother should have had.
However, he did not live long to enjoy his ill-got property, for on one November night in the year 1717 he was dragged out of his sedan chair in Dublin and murdered on his way home. Afterwards his body was not allowed even to rest in peace, for his enemies raided his grave, dug up his corpse and smashed in his skull.”
According to the Dublin Warder and Weekly Mail of 20 February 1836, the murder of Colonel Luttrell occurred in Greek Street, just behind the site of the future Four Courts, while he was on his way back to his residence in nearby Lattin’s Court.
Although there was at one time a classical school in Lattin’s Court, it was not called by that name because of the school, but because it was owned by a Mr Lattin. One suspects Lattin’s Court came first, and Greek Street later! Lattin’s Court is now gone but Greek Street survives today. It is a long, narrow street and, walking down it on a dark winter evening, it is easy to imagine the Colonel’s final journey, which must have ended quite close to the corner where the Hilton Hotel now stands – at the time one of the most fashionable quarters of the city.
Doreen Mills goes on to state, regarding the murdered Colonel, that
“Ill luck followed his children, who inherited his unhappiness. His son who became the first Lord Carhampton, lived mostly in England, and crimes even worse than his father’s were committed by him. Even his son, the second Earl, was as unpopular and cruel as his father, and he sold the ancestral home with 400 acres for 40,000 pounds. Shortly afterwards this great family was gone and forgotten. The last of the Luttrells, a beautiful girl, poisoned herself and died when a prisoner on the Continent. A great beauty in her day she gambled her money away, and ran into heavy debt. Later, abroad, she married a hairdresser and went from bad to worse. Wandering about robbing, cheating, till finally in Augsburg she was convicted for pickpocketing, thus ending the tragedy of one of the greatest families in Ireland.”
Colonel Luttrell’s son is better known as one of the founders of the Irish Hellfire Club, and his grandson, the second Lord Carhampton, was publicly accused of the rape of a 12-year-old girl, Mary Neal, in Dublin in 1788, although no prosecution was ever brought against him.
Luttrellstown Castle was subsequently acquired by publisher Luke White, of the Huguenot Le Blanc family, who also acquired the premises of the Hellfire Club at Killakee. Was Luke a white knight cleaning up property formerly despoiled by the Club, or did his purchases merely represent a transition of power within a surviving organisation now operating underground?
Top Image Credit (not Col. Luttrell’s sedan chair)
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