Loftus Hall and the Hook: A Wexford Ghost Story and Three Samhain Walks
There's a stretch of road on the Hook Peninsula, not far from the lighthouse, where a big grey house sits back from the sea on its own. On a bright day in July you'd hardly give it a second look. On a wet evening at the end of October, with the wind coming in off Waterford Harbour and the beam from Hook Head swinging round behind it, it's a different story altogether.
That's Loftus Hall. If you grew up near Wexford, you'll have heard about it long before you were brave enough to sleep with the landing light off. With Oíche Shamhna (EE-ha HOW-na, Halloween night) coming up, I thought it was time we told the story properly, with a good walk on the Hook to shake it off afterwards.
What is the Loftus Hall ghost story?
The version most of us were told goes like this. One stormy night a stranger on horseback arrived at the door, and the Tottenham family, who lived in the house, took him in out of the weather. After supper the cards came out. Young Anne Tottenham dropped a card under the table, and when she bent down to pick it up she saw that their charming guest didn't have feet at all. He had cloven hooves.
When she screamed, the stranger shot straight up through the ceiling, leaving a hole in the roof that no builder could ever quite mend. Poor Anne never recovered. The story says she was kept in the Tapestry Room until she died, and that she has been seen wandering the house ever since. Most tellings put her death in 1775.
What I love is that the story changes depending on who's telling it. In the 1930s, schoolchildren all over Ireland collected local stories for the Schools' Collection, now online at dúchas.ie. A pupil in Passage East, just across the harbour in Co. Waterford, wrote down a version where there are no cards at all. It's a dance. A lady without a partner says she'd dance with the devil himself, a gentleman duly asks her, she spots the cloven foot, faints, and he vanishes through the wall in a ball of fire. Same house, same devil, a slightly different night out depending on which side of the water you live on, which I think is rather lovely. If you have a different version again, I would love to hear it?
How old is Loftus Hall, really?
Much older than the house you see from the road. Tailte Éireann, who look after the State's property records, have pieced together its history:
- The first castle on the site was built in the 12th century by the Norman knight Raymond Le Gros.
- It was replaced in 1350 and became known as Redmond Hall.
- In the mid-1600s the Loftus family were granted land across Co. Wexford and made it their main seat. An inscription reading "Henry Loftus of Loftus Hall Esq 1680" can still be found at Postersgate, a townland nearby.
- The Loftuses later became the Marquises of Ely, and between 1872 and 1884 the 4th Marquis rebuilt the house into the shape it has today.
- It became a hotel in the 1990s and was later best known for its ghost tours.
The tours stopped in 2020 and the house has been closed to visitors ever since. It has changed hands more than once in recent years, and its latest owners plan to restore it as a hotel, so for now it's private property. Please enjoy it from the road and don't wander up the drive. It's at its spookiest from the outside anyway.
Why do ghost stories belong to Samhain?
Samhain (SOW-in, rhymes with cow) means "summer's end", and for the old Irish it was the hinge of the whole year. The year had two halves, the bright and the dark, and on the night of 31 October one gave way to the other. It was the Celtic new year, and the one night the wall between this world and the otherworld was at its thinnest.
So the dead came home to visit, and families left a place at the table and the door on the latch. The Púca (POO-ka), a shape-shifter who might turn up as a black horse or a goat, spoiled any blackberries left on the bushes, which is why people still say not to pick them after Halloween. A stranger at the door on a stormy October night was exactly the sort of guest you'd be wary of.
We went into the turnip lanterns and how all this crossed the Atlantic in how Halloween started, if you fancy the longer version.
Where can you walk on the Hook this Samhain?
Late October is a lovely time to be down here: quiet roads, a lively sea and low gold light across the harbour in the afternoons. Once the clocks go back on Sunday 25 October it will be dark not long after five, so plan to be back at the car before then. Here are three we love, all a short drive from Loftus Hall.
1. Slade to Hook Head
About 5.5km · around 1.5 hours · mostly flat, starting from the car park at Slade
Start at Slade, a tiny harbour with an old tower house standing over the boats, and follow the coast out to the lighthouse. The flat rocks along the way are carboniferous limestone, and if you look down you'll see fossils everywhere, little stems and shells from a warm tropical sea some 350 million years ago. At the end is the lighthouse, around 800 years old and still working, with a café for a hot chocolate before you turn for home. We told the whole story of the tower in our post on Hook Head Lighthouse.
A gentle word of caution: the rocks at the point are low and the sea comes over them without much warning when there's a swell. Stay well back from the edge, keep children and dogs close, and check the forecast before you go. Water Safety Ireland has good advice for coastal walks at watersafety.ie.
2. Baginbun, near Fethard-on-Sea
A short cove walk · 30 minutes to an hour
A sheltered little cove with a big place in Irish history. This is where the Normans came ashore in 1170, led by the same Raymond Le Gros who built that first castle at Loftus Hall. An old rhyme says "at the creek of Baginbun, Ireland was lost and won".
3. The woods at Tintern Abbey
Looped trails from the abbey · from about 1km to just over 7km
If the wind is too wild for the headland, head inland to Tintern. The abbey was founded around 1200 by William Marshal, the knight behind the tower at Hook, who vowed to build a monastery if he made it to dry land through a storm at sea. He landed at Bannow Bay, and kept his word. The trails wind through old woodland, past Colclough Walled Garden and along the edge of Bannow Bay, with the trees turning nicely by late October. For more colour further afield, see our eight best autumn walks.
Hook Lighthouse usually marks Samhain with family events and lantern-lit tours of the tower around Halloween, so it's worth checking hookheritage.ie for this year's dates. The oldest working lighthouse in the world on Oíche Shamhna is about as Samhain as it gets.
The lights that kept the Hook safe
For the people who lived on the Hook, the real worry of the dark half of the year wasn't the devil at the card table. It was the sea, and the light that kept the boats off the rocks on nights just like the one in the story. It's one reason lighthouses keep turning up in our designs.
The Hook Head print in our shop is a small mounted print, 20 by 20cm, and there are just a few left in Midnight Blue, which suits a dark October evening perfectly.
Further west, the Fastnet stands on its rock off West Cork. We printed it in Heather Blue for anyone who loves a lighthouse in weather.
See the Fastnet Lighthouse tee →
What to wear on the Hook in late October
The Hook is flat and open, so there's nothing between you and the wind. The trick is layers you can add and take off as you go.
Start with an organic cotton tee. Ours are 100% organic cotton, hand screen-printed in our Dublin and Wexford studios, certified OEKO-TEX Standard 100 and Fair Wear. For a day on the coast, Ebb & Flow in Lilac Stone is a lovely one, inspired by the rhythm of the tide coming in and going out across the harbour.
Over that, a sweater that breathes on the walk out and keeps you cosy in the café. The Vitamin Sea sweater in Sage is the one I reach for on the coast.
Then something to stop the wind. A recycled fleece over the sweater is what you want at the point when the light is going. You'll find ours in the fleece collection.
Add grippy shoes for the rocks and a torch in your pocket in case you stay for the sunset. You will want to stay for the sunset.
A brack, a candle and a walk
However you mark Oíche Shamhna this year, I hope there's a bit of the old way in it: a barmbrack with a ring hidden inside, a candle in the window for the ones who aren't with us anymore, and an afternoon on the Hook while there's still light in the sky. And if a tall stranger knocks on a stormy night and asks to join the card game, maybe have a quick look at his shoes before you deal him in.
Every parish in Ireland has its own ghost story, and we'd love to hear yours. Tell us the one you grew up with, and for more from home, read about Hook Head Lighthouse or browse our hoodies and sweats.