Legend has it that when Sir Patrick Barnewall was granted lands at Turvey near Donabate during the time of Henry VIII, he decided to build his family house on lands occupied by the convent of Grace Dieu. But when he went to dispossess the abbess, her nuns dropped to their knees and cursed his family, praying that it might "never want an idiot or a lawsuit, and that the rightful owner should never see the smoke of its chimneys".
Perhaps there is a curse on Turvey. The Barnewalls, one of Ireland's oldest Norman families, built their 56-room mansion in 1565 and survived there until they were forced to sell in 1918. The Counihan family bought it for £28,000, but went bankrupt and had to sell the property and its 155 acres in 1968.
Turvey saw the up and downs of history over many centuries. Oliver Cromwell camped nearby. Soldiers returning from the Battle of the Boyne engraved their names on the east-facing drawing room window. In 1933, the skeleton of a man in leg-irons was found in a small stream nearby; it is believed the man was hanged for a murder he committed in 1770.
None of this history survives on the dry, dusty files of Dublin County Council, which is where the last part of Turvey's story is played out. Joseph Murphy Structural Engineering bought the estate in 1968 and let the house go to rack and ruin, Mr James Gogarty has told the Flood tribunal.
This is confirmed in documentation in the care of Fingal County Council which has been seen by The Irish Times. By 1973, the house was "being allowed to deteriorate", a council official noted. Fireplaces had been ripped out, the windows were gone and the door was permanently open.
The council told JMSE to board up the building and erect a notice to warn people to stay away. Nothing happened for 12 years.
It was February 1986 before the building came to the attention of the council again. Turvey House was now "beyond redemption", senior executive architect Mr Maurice O'Brien concluded after a visit.
"The upper floors are non-existent in places and totally beyond redemption in others. The roof is open to the elements generally," he wrote.
Mr O'Brien estimated the cost of restoring the house at £1,050,000. By contrast, it would cost £70,500 to demolish the house and its outhouses.
Turvey House had "no great architectural merit apart from its antiquity" and the department had "no hesitation" in recommending its demolition, he concluded.
The planning officer said he was opposed to demolition, but in just over a year the house was pulled down anyway.
The correspondence reveals that:
JMSE did not get the required permission to demolish Turvey, but the Office of Public Works considered it "futile" to sue as the firm acted on a demolition order issued by the council, itself a preservation authority under the National Monuments Act.
There was "great uneasiness" in the OPW about the council's "withholding" of information about the impending demolition.
The former assistant Dublin city and county manager, Mr George Redmond, played a major part in the controversy which blew up after Turvey was demolished, but there is no evidence on the file that he was involved beforehand.
Correspondence shows that council officials were fully aware of Turvey's status as a listed building. Mr Redmond told The Irish Times at the time that he had no knowledge of the demolition and that he didn't know Turvey was a listed building.
The council had an "operating arrangement" whereby the demolition of listed buildings deemed to be dangerous "took precedence" over planning and preservation requirements.
An Taisce sought disciplinary action against the architect who recommended demolition.
However, mystery still surrounds a number of aspects of the case. In 1986, a year before it was pulled down, the council's file on Turvey was found to be missing. An official was dispatched to search for it but concluded it had been missing for some years.
Then someone in the council rang the OPW concerning Turvey in May 1987, two months before it was demolished. The OPW has no record of this phone call; the only indication that a call was made is in an unsigned, undated note written on a council letter.
After the house was pulled down, Mr Redmond insisted the OPW had been contacted. "It is evident that the persons on both sides of the telephone conversation were not in full possession of all the facts in relation to the structure, but if they had, would the outcome have been different?" he asked in a draft letter which was sent to the OPW in the name of a more junior council employee.
Later, Mr Redmond prepared a further letter to the OPW expressing his regret that the official had "neglected to mention" the council's intentions. This was due to an oversight, he explained. This letter was not sent.
In a subsequent report to the council, Mr Redmond argued that the council was in a "no-win" situation. "If it ignores the danger and an accident occurs it will be held responsible, while its actions in ordering demolition will inevitably be held up to ridicule as an act of `public vandalism' or `sabotage'."
The council issued a demolition order. JMSE told its contractors that "time is of the essence" in carrying out the work.
Today, Turvey is the site of a golf course and apartments, with the clubhouse built on the site of the house.