18/08/2026
This year’s National Heritage Week, we look at “Heritage at Risk”, which encourages us to explore the built, natural and cultural aspects of our heritage that are endangered, for us to reimagine and revive these sites, artefacts and practices.
Our conservation teams had the pleasure of providing civil and structural engineering services for the ambitious restoration of Millbrook House in Abbeyleix, County Laois. A late-Victorian house built in 1885 on 1.7 hectares of land, this beautiful space has been redeveloped into a new high-end 16-bedroom guest house and 40-seat restaurant called Ómós.
The original building was designed by William Isaac Chambers, a well-regarded architect of his time who was also responsible for many designs in Monasterevin for the Earl of Drogheda. Following a Structural Condition Survey carried out by our teams, emergency works began on the property in 2023 to stabilise the building. A temporary works steel structure was erected externally to the perimeter walls, including supporting foundations, braced steelwork frames offset from the building, and horizontal steel channels at three levels on both the internal and external sides of the walls. Later, consolidation of the surviving building and its associated outhouses took place. Extensive external, internal and site-related works were carried out, resulting in the full reconstruction of the historic dwelling.
Understanding the importance of heritage assets, we are delighted to see this once vacant space thriving again. Best of luck to Cúán and his team.
