Browne Landowners

Mount Kelly probably took its name from Colonel John Kelly who was transplanted there in the Cromwellian period. The original name of the place was Drum. The estate passed, probably through marriage, to a younger son of the Bellews of Mount Bellew. The robbery and murder of one of the young Kelly Bellows at Ballinasloe fair in 1786 was graphically described in the Recollections of Skeffington Gibbon, published in 1829. Gibbon described the house as a:

"beautiful seat, now in ruin, called Drum House".

He also stated that the entire murder gang were executed in Galway and their bodies hung in chains in Ballinasloe for many months afterwards.

The Mount Kelly estate next passed to John Browne, Lord Altamont, of Westport and in 1800 Altamont, in a bargain with Henry Lanauze of Dublin for £2500, sold him

"the lands of Drum otherwise Mount Kelly in as full and ample manner as the same were then held by Christopher Kelly Bellow and his undertenants".

Lanauze belonged to family of small Protestant landowners and clergymen in Cavan. Lanauze fell into debt and in 1846 he sold the estate to John William Browne who was then living at Upper Mount Street in Dublin. The deed listed the lands as Gortnegier east and west Glenamadda Borough and the two Ardosloughs and Drum otherwise Mount Kelly, in all totalling 1,401 acres. The price was £10,000. John William Browne was a young son of the Brownes of Kilskeagh and Coolarne in the parish of Athenry. The family were in decline as landowners though Browne’s elder brother, Robert Browne, had the important job of "Ranger of the Curragh" for almost fifty years. Their mother was Browne of Westport. The Browne estate was increased by further purchases and in 1878 amounted to 3352 acres. John W. Browne was succeeded by his son James Browne of Mount Kelly who died in 1894.