Hi Siobhan, I'm not sure what an estate room is. I'm pretty sure we stayed in a Superior Deluxe which had a large room with king size bed and sitting area by the window, which looked out to the front of the property. Bathroom was very large with glass shower and separate bath. It was lovely!

Thank you for your question. Here is the history of Sheen Falls Lodge and I hope it answers your question as Sheen Falls Lodge was possibly the only Lodge in Kenmare at the date of your grandfather's birth. History of Sheen Falls Lodge Sir William Petty and the Sheen Falls Story ”For a great man who would retire this place is the most absolute, and the most Interessant place in the world for both Improvement and Pleasure and Healthfulness.” So wrote Sir William Petty in 1666 to a cousin in England. He was describing southwest Kerry, some 270,000 acres of which he by then owned. This truly extraordinary man, with whom the story of Sheen Falls and nearby Kenmare may be said to have begun, came to Ireland in 1652 at age 29 as Physician-General of the army of Oliver Cromwell. Already in his brief adulthood Petty had been a seaman (marooned on the coast of France, he was befriended by Jesuits who educated him, although he was a Protestant); a professor of anatomy at Oxford; and a music teacher in London. After the Cromwellian confiscation of Irish chieftains' lands, Petty was given the formidable job of making a systematic survey of the whole of Ireland (known ever since as the Down Survey, because it was the first to be "set down"). For the task, he trained and supervised a thousand soldiers who completed the work in 15 months. It was this achievement that started him on the path to being land-rich. In payment for the survey, he received 3,500 acres in Kenmare and Tuosist parishes, to which he promptly added 2,000 more purchased from soldiers anxious to leave Ireland for home. In 1661, King Charles II knighted Petty and gave him the remainder of Kenmare and Tuosist parishes, the latter extending many miles out the Beara peninsula on the south side of the estuary On what are now the northern outskirts of Kenmare ("Ceann Mara", Irish for "head of the sea"), he established a colony of Cornish, English, and Welsh Protestants to operate iron foundries fed by ore from nearby mines. The colony known as Neidin ("little nest" in Irish) at one time numbered more than 800 men. Petty also reopened fisheries run by Spaniards in pre-Cromwell days at Kilmackillogue and Ardgroom on the Beara peninsula, and devised new ways of netting fish. In later years, this 17th century polymath was to be one of the founders of economic thought and demographic and economic statistics, a founding member of the Royal Society, and a Member of Parliament. He enjoyed sailing a catamaran of his own design in Dublin Bay, and with it he won a race on the Liffey reputed to have been the first yacht race in Europe. He travelled frequently between London and Dublin and Kerry. His trips, which must have been rigorous, he ruefully described as his " wearies". At his death in 1687, his only son was a minor, and the estate passed to a daughter, Anne, and with her marriage into the FitzMaurice family, her husband became the first Earl of Kerry. He built a cottage at Sheen Falls, used for a long period afterwards by the family as fishing and shooting base. The structure is believed to have been on the site of today's Lodge, and one of its walls may have been incorporated in later buildings that replaced the original. Anne's second son, Henry, became the founder of the Petty-FitzMaurice family and the father of the first Marquis of Lansdowne. This family was to produce a Prime Minister of England, a Viceroy of India, a Governor-General of Canada, and other high-ranking British officials. Kenmare, as it exists today was the creation of another Petty descendant, William Petty-FitzMaurice, 2nd Earl of Shelbourne, who hired a surveyor, John Powell, to lay out the town in 1761. During the 18th and 19th centuries, the Sheen Falls property had a varied history. In 1711, the building at the falls was a fish "palaice" (a place for preserving salt flsh), operated by a family named Duckett who held the lease. Maps show a small house or cabin at the falls in 1761. From its position, the 6th Marquis of Lansdowne's book, "Glanerought and the Petty-FitzMaurices," suggests that it might later have been incorporated in the house which has since been converted into Sheen Falls Lodge. The bridge over the falls, with its distinctive stone arches, was built in 1777 and remains unchanged to this day . Various lessors and renters occupied the place until the early years of this century when the Lansdownes resumed possession. In the years prior to the 1930's, the 6th Marquis used it in supplement to Dereen House in Lauragh (still held by the family). He took an active interest in the gardens, at Sheen Falls as at Dereen,and planted many of the rare trees and exotic shrubs that today grace the Queen’s walk. In 1966, a Manchester business man, apparently having heard old stories about famous runs of salmon, trout, herring, and pilchards, saw possibilities in developing Sheen Falls into a commercial fishery. But he failed to make a success of the project and in turn, sold the property to an international corporation from which it was purchased by the Hoyer Family in 1988. In another letter to his cousin, written five years earlier than that quoted above, William Petty said: "I would have you a little to hearken after ye state of this Kerry, for my heart was ever upon it, perhaps too enthusiastically." What, one cannot help but wonder would Sir William feel about today's resplendently restored and refurbished Sheen Falls? KENMARE OLD To the west of the Sheen Falls Lodge property are the ruins of a tiny church known to have been standing when Viking raiders came up the estuary in the 9th century. On the foreshore nearby, easily reached by stone steps leading down beside the old boathouse beyond the tennis court, is a Holy Well (one of many in Ireland), the water of which is reputed to have healing properties. According to the 6th Marquis of Lansdowne's book (op.cit.), both church and well are named for St. Finan "Lobhar" (The Leper), who was believed to have been cured by the waters of the well. Finan went on to found a monastery on the Island of lnnisfallen in the Lakes of Killarney. A survey made in 1600 showed Kenmare Old as "part of the Prior of lnnisfallen's land. After the 1641 Rebellion of the Irish against the English, all church lands were declared forfeit to the Crown. It is likely that the Kenmare Old church and well area was made over to Protestant pastors of the times. Lansdowne's book suggests that the land of Kenmare Old was farmed in William Petty's day by one Rev. Thomas Palmer. Under Protestant parsons who succeeded him, it remained "Glebe" or church land until 1806 when the incumbent pastor exchanged it for a house in town. On July 19th, 1976, after a lapse of more than four centuries, Mass was celebrated close to the ruins of St. Finan's church. It continues to be celebrated there annually each July.