Prehen House
Overview
 
Prehen House is a privately owned 18th-century Irish Georgian house at Prehen
Prehen
Prehen is a small townland near the city of Derry, Northern Ireland. The name derives from the Irish word préachán meaning crow or rook.-Early history:Before the Plantation of Ulster in the early seventeenth century, Prehen was in the freehold of...

 in County Londonderry
County Londonderry
The place name Derry is an anglicisation of the old Irish Daire meaning oak-grove or oak-wood. As with the city, its name is subject to the Derry/Londonderry name dispute, with the form Derry preferred by nationalists and Londonderry preferred by unionists...

.

Thought to have been designed by local architect Michael Priestley, it was built in 1740 for Andrew Knox, M.P. for Donegal
Donegal
Donegal or Donegal Town is a town in County Donegal, Ireland. Its name, which was historically written in English as Dunnagall or Dunagall, translates from Irish as "stronghold of the foreigners" ....

, after he married Prehen heiress Honoria Tomkins two years earlier. Andrew Knox's family owned the house for 170 years. After being seized by the government after the 1914–18 war, Prehen House was brought back into another branch of the Knox family.

The Department of the Environment has listed Prehen as a grade A building of national importance.

Prehen House is home to one of Ireland's greatest love stories, the legend of Half Hung MacNaghten
Half Hung MacNaghten
John MacNaghten or "Half-Hung MacNaghten" is a figure of 18th century romantic folklore in the North West of Ireland.MacNaghten was an impoverished member of the Anglo-Irish gentry who claimed to have fallen in love with a young heiress, Mary Ann Knox of Prehen, Derry. However, her father did not...

.

The Northern Ireland Tourist Board
Northern Ireland Tourist Board
The Northern Ireland Tourist Board is a non-departmental public body of the Department of Enterprise Trade and Investment. Its primary objective is to promote Northern Ireland as a tourist destination....

 considers Prehen House one of region's most historic houses.
Quotations

A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, in "Friendship" in Essays, First series (1841)

Faithful are the wounds of a friend, But deceitful are the kisses of an enemy.

The Bible, Proverbs 27:6 (NASB)

A friendship that can be ended didn't ever start.

Mellin de Saint-Gelais, Oeuvres poétiques

A friend in need is a friend indeed.

Scots proverb, as published in Beauties of Allan Ramsay: Being a Selection of the Most Admired Pieces of that Celebrated Author, viz. The Gentle Shepherd; Christ's Kirk on the Green; The Monk, and the Miller's Wife; with his valuable collection of Scots Proverbs (1815), "Scots Proverbs" Ch. 1; also quoted in Pure Morning|Pure Morning, a song by Placebo|Placebo.

A friend loves at all times, and kinsfolk are born to share adversity.

The Bible, Proverbs 17:17 (NRSV)

A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.

Proverbs 18:24, The Bible (New International Version)

It is amazing how you can surround yourself with so many people you can call friends, and yet actually only have one or two real ones.

Jerry Grant Blakeney

Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.

Anaïs Nin, Diary entry, March 1937

A faithful friend is a sturdy shelter;he who finds one finds a treasure.A faithful friend is beyond price,no sum can balance his worth.

Sirach 6:14-15 (The New American Bible)

Friendship is not for merriment but for stern reproach when friends go astray.

Tiruvalluvar, Tirukkural: 784

 
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