Tuam Herald 4th September, 1920 p.2 (abridged)
A correspondent sends us some interesting details of the malicious burning of Tyrone House, the ancestral home of the St. Georges – a family settled in Ireland for over three hundred years, and for over one hundred, the most prominent and influential in the county of Galway. This splendid and imposing structure, which could be seen for miles around, was built by the late Christopher St. George, D.L., at a cost of over fifty thousand pounds. It could not be built now for two hundred thousand pounds. It was in the late Georgian style and the finest house in Ireland. The ceilings were all painted by Italian masters and were regular works of art. The mantle pieces were of rare Italian marble and very costly. In the hall was a fine full-sized marble statue of Baron St. George, again the work of an Italian artist. The head was broken off the night of the raid. All the ceilings and mantle pieces are now ruined, and the entire structure an empty shell and ruin.
There was no grounds for the report that the military or police intended or were to occupy the house, and agrarian motives are believed to have inspired and instigated this act of purely wanton destruction.
Of late years the place was freely allowed to be used by pleasure parties who came out from Loughrea and other places to have a dance which cost them nothing, and who were never prevented from having their pleasure and a dance on the spacious floor of the dining room. They can now no longer do so, where in olden days the finest balls in the county Galway took place.
