Rokeby Hall

Rokeby Hall is a country house near Dunleer in County Louth commissioned by Richard Robinson, Archbishop of Armagh. He engaged Thomas Cooley, an architect famous for his chaste, neoclassical designs, but after his early death in 1784 it was executed by his more famous pupil, Francis Johnston. Robinson named the building after his Palladian family home on the borders of Yorkshire and Durham. Rokeby is an elegant symmetrical dwelling of two stories over a basement, with precise cut-stone facades and a beautifully planned and detailed interior, set high on a rolling hillside near the village of Grangebellew, with distant views of the Irish Sea.