Muckross House stands on the Muckross Peninsula, between Muckross Lake and Lough Leane, two of the Lakes of Killarney. It lies about six kilometers from Killarney town in County Kerry, Ireland. The house has sixty-five rooms and is built in the Tudor style. Major improvements were made in the 1850s before Queen Victoria's visit in 1861, and the costs contributed to financial difficulties for the Herbert family.
In 1899 Arthur Guinness, Baron Ardilaun, bought the estate to preserve its landscape. In 1911 William Bowers Bourn, a Californian mining magnate, bought it and gave it to his daughter Maud and her husband, Arthur Rose Vincent, as a wedding present.
In 1932 the family presented the house and its estate of 11,000 Irish acres to the Irish nation. It became the first national park in the Irish Free State, the basis of Killarney National Park.
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