History of Loughton House
Loughton House was built in 1777 for a Major Thomas Pepper, on the site of an earlier 17th-century house. Its former owners include the 1st Baron Bloomfield, who helped to defeat the Irish rebels at Vinegar Hill; his son, the second Lord Bloomfield who served as a British ambassador to Russia in the 19th century; and Theodora Trench, who left behind cartes de visite listing her “town” residence as Onslow Square, South Kensington.
Architect James Pain made additions to the house in 1835, changing the original north-facing orientation, and turning it around to face south. The work on the house has been noted as one of James Pain’s finest works.
Lord Bloomfield held several positions of note in his career. He was an Aide-de-Camp, then Chief Equerry and Clerk Marshal to the Prince of Wales and finally was Private Secretary to the King, Keeper of the Privy Purse, and Receiver of the Duchy of Cornwall from 1817 to 1822. One of issues that Bloomfield had to contend with as Private Secretary was King’s extravagant spending. In 1821 King George IV was to pay a visit to Loughton
To satisfy the expectations of a King, a large bedroom was remodelled for the visit but due to unforeseen circumstances, the King never made it to the house. Nevertheless, the regal bedroom is still one of the great attractions of the house and its name the ‘King’s Room” remains today.
Theodora Trench
Dora Trench died in 1899, after a brief illness. She had spent several years leaving her mark on the shutters and doors of the Billiards Room.
Moneygall – Ancestral Home of Barack Obama
Falmouth Kearney, the great-great-great grandfather of United States President Barack Obama, emigrated from Moneygall to New York City at the age of 19 in 1850 and eventually resettled in Tipton County, Indiana. Kearney’s father, Joseph, had been the village shoemaker, then a wealthy skilled trade. Indeed the whole Kearney family emigrated to Ross County, Ohio in the first half of the 19th century. Falmouth Kearney’s youngest daughter, Mary Ann, moved from Indiana to Kansas after her father’s death in 1878. Mary Ann Kearney is the paternal grandmother of Stanley Dunham, President Obama’s maternal grandfather
Until it was discovered Barack Obama could, in a ritual regarded as compulsory for all American Presidential candidates, trace his Irish ancestral roots to the small village of Moneygall in Co Offaly.
Obama’s maternal great-great- great-grandfather, Falmouth Kearney, left Moneygall, where his father had been the village shoemaker, for the US in 1850. When Obama and his wife, Michelle, visited four years ago, they stopped for a pint in Hayes’ bar and put Moneygall on the tourist map once and for all. Since then, a motorway service station, Barack Obama Plaza, has opened at Junction 23 on the nearby M7, cementing the connection for posterity.