The entrance hall of the mansion of Curraghmore is the ancient keep, which was built by the De la Poers in the late twelfth or early thirteenth century, foursquare, the walls ten feet thick. The rest of the house is eighteenth century. The original edifice is briefly described in _The Antient and Present State of the County and City of Waterford_, by Charles Smith, published in Dublin in 1740, and in _The History, Topography and Antiquities of the County and City of Waterford_, by the Rev. R. H. Ryland, published by Murray in 1824. Sir Marcus, first Earl of Tyrone, and his son, afterwards first Marquess of Waterford, made considerable additions, which, according to the date inscribed upon the lead work, were completed in 1771. From the old keep, transformed into an eighteenth-century entrance hall, a flight of steps leads to the inner hall, whence a wide staircase rises, following the walls, and out of which open the reception rooms. These face upon lawn and fountain and terrace. Over the entrance door are carved the family coat; {xxii} and the crest of the De la Poers, a stag couchant bearing a cross upon his forehead, crowns the parapet. Upon the garden front are sculptured the Beresford shield and their crest, "a dragon's head erased, the neck pierced with a tilting spear, and holding the point broken off in the mouth." Motto, _Nil nisi cruce_. Such was the home of the five brothers, when their father, Lord John dc la Poer Beresford, in holy orders, succeeded his brother in 1859. Lord Charles Beresford, who had been for some years at school in England, joined the Navy in that year. He came to Curraghmore in his brief and widely spaced intervals of leave, while his brothers came home more frequently during their vacations. In those days, the stables were filled with horses, the house was populous with guests; and the great courtyard in front of the house, now silent, resounded with the cheery bustle of a jovial company coming and going. All winter the house was thronged; there was hunting six days in the week; and more than a hundred horses were stabled at Curraghmore. Lord Charles Beresford has told how that many a time, when, as a midshipman, he was humping beef into the blood-boats for the Fleet, did he think not without envy upon his brothers, each with his two or three hunters, riding to hounds at Curraghmore. The house of Beresford derives from the "very old and eminent English family of Beresford of Beresford, in the county of Stafford," and from the De la Poers, an ancient Breton family, and their quarterings include the noble houses of Hamilton, Monck, Carpenter, Plantagenet, Lastile and Leon, Mortimer, De Burgh, Holland, Wake, Wevill, Beauchamp, Delaval, Blake. The Beresfords represented the English plantation in the North of Ireland, until the marriage was made which united them with De la Poers, who were of the first English plantation in the South.