The house was built in the 1770s by Henry Cole Bowen (died 1788) and the design has tentatively been attributed to Isaac Rothery or his sons who designed nearby Doneraile Court and was also involved in the completion of Mount Ievers Court.[3][4][5]
The Bowen family were minor Irish gentry, of Welsh origin traced back to the late 1500s resident in County Cork since Henry Bowen, a "notoriously irreligious" Colonel in the army of the regicide Cromwell, settled in Ireland.[6][7]
In 1786, the house was referred to as Faraghy, the seat of Mr. Cole Bowen.
It was held at one time by Mrs Eliza Bowen (died 1868), wife of Henry Cole Bowen (1808-1841), when it was valued at £75.
The house was then inherited by their son Robert St John Cole Bowen.[8][9]
Bowen's Court remained the Bowen family seat until 1959. The last owner was the novelist Elizabeth Bowen. She had a nervous breakdown in the 1950s and abandoned Bowen's Court leaving unpaid wages and bills, then sold it and stayed with friends and at hotels, before she rented a flat in Oxford.[10]
Bowen's Court was purchased, then demolished, by a developer in 1959.[11]
The majority of the contents of the house were sold at auction in April 1960[12] while the contents of the library were sold in 1961.[13]
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Elizabeth Bowen wrote a history of the house, entitled Bowen's Court, in 1942 and it is featured in her 1929 novel The Last September.[14]
