Travellers on the Athy to Carlow road will be aware of the gaunt ruin of a house on an eminence above the river Barrow.
This house was once the home of the Weldon family. The Weldons came to Ireland around 1600 and acquired considerable estates in Counties Laois and Kildare. It is through john Weldon of St. John's bower, Athy, Co. Kildare that the direct line of the Weldon family in Kildare can be traced. In 1613 he was MP for Athy and in 1624 High Sheriff of County Kildare.
Over the next three centuries, members of the Weldon family played an active and prominent role in the life of Co. Kildare. The family papers in the National Archives show the family's social contacts in the early years of the 20th century through correspondence with such prominent people as Winston Churchill and Dr. Doughlas Hyde. The family was essentially a military one and many members served the British Empire in India, Africa and the Far East. Captain George Anthony Weldon of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers was killed at Glencoe in October 1899 during the Boer War. Another member of the family, Major Arthur Stewart Weldon, served in South Africa and the Great War and was killed in action in March 1917. His brother-in-law Colonel Croshaw died of wounds received in the Great War in September 1917. The old British Legion Hall in Naas (Now the Scout Den) was dedicated to their memory. The last of the male line of Weldons to live at Kilmorony was Sir Anthony Arthur Weldon who became the sixth Baronet of Kilmorony on the death of his father in 1900. Sir Anthony died in 1917 as a result of shell shock received while fighting in France.
The main entrance to Kilmorony estate was on the Athy-Carlow road but has been obscured by road widening. The entrance avenue to the house was unique in that it crossed over the Barrow Navigational Canal and the River Barrow. The Canal Bridge is of cut stone and the Barrow Bridge is of a steel construction. Part of this bridge has now collapsed into the river.
Referred to as "Sportland" on the 1783 Taylor map of Kildare, Kilmorony was a fine Georgian house built some time after 1752 (It does no appear on the Noble and Keenan Map of 1752). The main block was of two stories over a basement of five bays and a balustraded roof parapet and a lower two-story wing of four bays. The house was dismantled in the late 1930s. The coach house of Kilmorony has survived and is now a private dwelling.
Kilmorony House is located two miles south-east of Athy on the Carlow road