The White family built Killakee House on the estate in the early nineteenth century. This was a two-storey, thirty-six roomed stucco-faced house. It had a Tuscan-columned entrance and large three-windowed bows on the back and sides. Luke White's second son, Colonel Samuel White, inherited the estate on his father's death in 1824 and invested considerable effort in developing its gardens. In 1838, he engaged the services of Sir Ninian Niven, former director of the Botanic Gardens in Dublin. Niven laid out two Victorian formal gardens of gravel walks, terraces and exotic trees decorated with statues of Greek and Roman gods. Adjacent to the house was a terraced rose garden with a statue of Neptune. A second walled garden in a vale in the woods below the house contained more fountains and a range of glasshouses designed by Richard Turner. William Robinson, writing in "The Gardener's Chronicle and Agricultural Gazette" on 10 December 1864, said of the gardens, "I know of no better example of the