The building was originally constructed as a workhouse in the 1840s, during the Great Famine, as part of Ireland’s Poor Law system. Like many workhouses, it was designed to hold large numbers of destitute people and was laid out with strict separation by age and gender.

In the 1920s, following the decline of the workhouse system, the complex was repurposed as a hospital, continuing its association with illness, hardship, and death well into the twentieth century.

One of the most persistent local claims is that underground tunnels or passageways run beneath parts of the site. In local memory these are sometimes described as routes used to move supplies, staff, patients, or the deceased between different areas without being seen, though others suggest they may have been service corridors, storage routes, or older drainage systems later reinterpreted as “secret tunnels.” Whether extensive tunnels truly exist or not, the story has become a central part of the site’s lore.

The building is also widely rumoured to be haunted, with reports most often centred on older wings and disused sections. Commonly repeated accounts include sightings of shadowy figures in corridors, unexplained footsteps, doors opening or closing on their own, and sudden cold spots in particular rooms. Some stories also mention the sound of children crying or running, often linked—rightly or wrongly—to memories of the workhouse era. The tunnel stories frequently overlap with these claims, with some people alleging that they have heard movement, voices, or knocks coming from sealed or below-ground areas.

There is no contemporary documentation proving hauntings from the time the building was operating, and the paranormal accounts belong to later oral tradition and personal testimony. Even so, its history as both a famine-era workhouse and a hospital has given it a lasting reputation as a place of suffering and secrecy — and, in local tradition, a rumoured haunted site.