Maynooth is a town with deep roots – a place of medieval castles, ancient FitzGerald power, and a milling tradition that stretches back to at least the thirteenth century. Manor Mills on Mill Street had been grinding grain in one form or another since the castle itself stood in full use, and by the mid-nineteenth century it had become one of the more established operations in north Kildare. It was beside this mill that an old house stood – and it is here that artist and fashion designer Helen Steele spent the first eleven years of her life.

Helen’s family were grain merchants, a trade they had been in since around 1850, which places them squarely in the world of the mill next door. Speaking to Irish media, Helen has been open about what it was like growing up in that house – and it wasn’t always comfortable.

There was one room that nobody slept in. It became the guest room by default, because staying in it overnight wasn’t something the family was willing to do. Helen’s own bedroom was a different kind of problem. From the age of twelve, she kept a crucifix under her mattress every night for eleven years. The room was persistently, inexplicably cold – cold enough that Helen came to interpret it as something more than a draught, something she described in her own words as suggestive of a demonic presence. Presses would open by themselves in the night, in summer, with no wind – and then close again. It happened often enough that it stopped being surprising.

Years later, she discovered that her grandmother had died in that same bed. The cold, she felt, made more sense after that – though it didn’t make it any less unsettling in retrospect.

Those details, unsettling as they are, apparently weren’t even the worst of it. Helen has indicated that it was elsewhere in the house that the atmosphere was at its most disturbing – though the full details of what happened in those other rooms remain, for now, unshared.

The mill and the old house have been demolished and the Manor Mills Shopping Centre now stands on the site. The old mill wheel remains on site.