The ancestral home of (Grace Kelly, Oscar-winning American actress and princess of Monaco) where her grandfather, John Kelly, was born in 1857 is in Drimurla just outside Newport, Co. Mayo. He left Ireland for Philadelphia in 1887, where he founded one of that city’s leading construction companies.
In 1961, accompanied by her husband, Prince Rainier Grimaldi III of Monaco, Grace Kelly was reconnected with her ancestral home.
The couple stayed at the elegant Newport House and went to Drimurla to have tea with Ellen Mulchrone, who owned the charming two-room thatch cottage that was the Kelly ancestral home. Back then, it was a viable dwelling that got a special whitewash for the occasion that was in it. Today, it's no more than a crumbling ruin.
Grace later purchased the house and surrounding land for £7,500 (Irish punt) from Mulchrone in April 1976. Panning to build a holiday home there, she returned later that year, and again in 1979 with Prince Rainier to see architectural plans for the holiday home. She told the local press that she would return in a few years to see the home finished.
However, on Sept. 14, 1982, Grace had a fatal accident when her car left a winding road in the cliffs of Monaco. A wreath of wild flowers, picked around her ancestral home in Drimurla, were sent by local residents to Monaco for the funeral.
