Mary Ann Knox and the Half-Hanged man
Prehen House is thought to have been built around 1740 for Andrew Knox, a Member of Parliament, said to have been designed by the local architect Michael Priestley. The Knox family lived here for generations, and the house is now regarded as one of the finest Georgian houses in the north west. But the reason its name still carries a hush is a story from the 1760s — told here gently, because real people lived and died in it.
The story goes that a young man named John MacNaghten, a gambler who had run through much of his fortune, grew close to the Knoxes' teenage daughter, Mary Ann, a considerable heiress. When her father refused him her hand, MacNaghten is said to have laid in wait to stop the family carriage as it set off for Dublin, meaning to carry her away. In the confusion shots were fired, and Mary Ann was hit by mistake. She is said to have died of her wounds within hours, back at Prehen.
MacNaghten was caught, tried and sentenced to hang. As the story is told, the rope broke — not once but twice — and the crowd urged him to flee, since by custom a man could not be hanged a third time. He is said to have refused, unwilling to live his life pointed at as "the half-hanged man," and went back to the gallows himself. That is where the name "Half-Hanged MacNaghten" comes from. Down the years, it's said, Mary Ann's mother would shut herself away each year on the anniversary of her daughter's death — a small, human ending to a story that has haunted Prehen ever since.