Slevoy Castle stands in the south Wexford countryside near Foulksmills, a tower house with roots reaching back to the Norman invasion of 1169, when John Rossiter was granted the Baronies of Forth and Bargy for his services to Strongbow. The Rossiters built a network of castles across their lands, and Slevoy was among them. The estate passed through several hands over the centuries, and in March 1766 John Pigott obtained a perpetual lease of the Slevoy lands. The Pigotts subsequently built a substantial mansion house around the old medieval tower, and the estate became the seat of one of south Wexford’s most prominent families.

The man at the centre of the legend attached to Slevoy is William Pemberton-Pigott, who assumed the Pigott name as a condition of inheriting the estate in 1788. He was High Sheriff of Wexford in 1794, a Justice of the Peace, Colonel of the Wexford Militia – and, most significantly for what followed, the founder and first Master of the Wexford Hunt, a pack he established at the beginning of the nineteenth century and led until 1847 or 1848. Hunting was not merely a pastime for the Pigotts. It was a way of life, and for William Pemberton-Pigott it defined who he was. He died at Slevoy Castle on 9th March 1854.

The story preserved in the oral tradition of the Traceystown area, and recorded in the National Folklore Collection, describes what happened on a night when the Colonel’s family and friends had gathered to drink his health. As the toast was being made, someone cracked a whip. At the sound of it, the room went quiet. From outside came the unmistakable noise of a hunt in full cry – horses, hounds, and horns – and when those inside looked out, the entire lawn of Slevoy was crowded with riders, dogs, and huntsmen in the darkness. Among the figures on the lawn, some were recognised. They were neighbours and members of the Pigott family who had been dead for many years.

The old Colonel, who was still living at the time, never recovered from what he witnessed that night. He died within a few weeks.