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Castles open for visitors in Ireland

️Thu Nov 29 2007

Everywhere you go in Ireland there are castles. Many are small, now ruined, tower houses which you will see acting as bird's nests in the fields as you drive through the country. Others are huge and magnificent, once great centres of power, wealth and influence, whose fortunes mirror those of the people who lived in them.

Many are now being restored to their former glory and are open to visitors.

There are also a good many castles which have been redeveloped and opened as hotels, generally at the top end of luxury. so as well as seeing and exploring castles by day, it is a wonderful experience to stay in an Irish castle at night!

Barryscourt Castle

Castles & Great Houses Near Youghal, Co Cork

Fun for kids! Barryscourt is a typical 15th century tower house, a small 'domestic' scale castle which was for centuries home to the Norman De Barry family. There is evidence that this site has been occupied for as long as 1000 years, and Phillip De Barry built...
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Belfast Castle

Castles & Great Houses Belfast City

Fun for kids! Cave Hill, towering over the city of Belfast, has been the location of a castle since the late 12th century, with the current castle dating mainly from the mid 1800s. The present castle was built for the Marquis of Donegal vaguely in the style of a...
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Birr Castle & Demesne

Castles & Great Houses Co Offaly, Birr

Fun for kids! Home to the Earls of Rosse, the most famous of whom was the 3rd Earl who in 1845 built what was then the largest telescope in the world. The telescope has been carefully restored to its original condition and is on display in the Science Centre in the...
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Cahir Castle, Co Tipperary

Castles & Great Houses Tipperary, Cahir Castle

Fun for kids! On the site of a fortress built on an Island on the River Suir by Conor O'Brien, Prince of Thomand in 1142, Cahir castle had 200 years later become the centre of a thriving medieval town. By this time it had become the property of the Butlers of Ormonde,...
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Casino Marino

Castles & Great Houses Marino, Dublin

Widely acknowledged as the best neo-classical Georgian building in Ireland, this was built in the second part of the 18th century as a 'folly'. a garden pavilion for James Caulfield, the 1st Earl of Charlemont. It was designed by by Sir William Chambers,...
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Castle Coole

Castles & Great Houses Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh

In the 1790s Armar Lowry-Corry, the first Earl of Belmore, commenced work on a house which he was determined would outdo in both style and grandeur that of his brother in law, the Earl of Enniskillen, at nearby Florence Court. Castle Coole is the...
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Castletown House

Castles & Great Houses Celbridge, Co Kildare

Building of Castletown House commenced in 1722 when William Connolly, Speaker of the Irish House of Parliament, decided he needed a house of suitable style and grandeur located close to Dublin. To create this great house he hired Florentine architect...
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Dublin Castle

Castles & Great Houses Dublin City

Fun for kids! Dublin Castle was built in the early 1200's by the Anglo-Normans on the site of a 9th century Viking fortress. From being in the hands first of Viking invaders and acting later as the centre of English rule in Ireland for over 700 years, it is not without...
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Emo Court

Castles & Great Houses Co Laois, nr Portlaoise

Fun for kids! Emo Court was built by the Earl of Portarlington in 1790 and is the only private house designed by James Gandon, the architect who designed the Custom House in Dublin. It is a huge neo-classical mansion, formal and symetrical in its design and with beautifully...
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Gosford Castle & Forset Park

Castles & Great Houses Markethill, Co Armagh

Fun for kids! One of the largest castles ever built in Ireland. At first glance it looks like a Norman castle but actually dates to the first half of the 19th century, when it was built a the then fashionable Norman revival style by the 2nd Earl of Gosford. It must...
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Kilkenny Castle

Castles & Great Houses Kilkenny City

Fun for kids! Perched on high ground overlooking the River Nore, Kilkenny Castle dominates the city that grew up around it over the last 800 years and is still very much an integral part of its daily life. Recent renovation has made more of the castle accessible to...
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Thoor Ballylee

Castles & Great Houses Ballylee, Nr Gort, Co Galway

Fun for kids! "And out of doors, with the hawthorn in blossom all along the river banks, everything is so beautiful that to go elsewhere is to leave beauty behind." So wrote the poet William Butler Yeats from his home in Thoor Ballylee, which is just as...
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Trim Castle

Castles & Great Houses Trim, Co Meath

Fun for kids! If this imposing castle, set in water meadows beside the Boyne river, looks oddly familiar, it is probably because of its appearance in the movie Braveheart, where it was used for the scene of the Scottish assault on York. Aerial Photo by valentiatrim...
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Tullynally Castle

Castles & Great Houses Castlepollard, Co Westmeath

Fun for kids! It's impossible not to be impressed by the elaborate Gothic revival exterior of Tullynally castle, with its castellations, turrets and battlements. It is in fact a facade, added in 1803, converting what had been a late 17th century house into the...
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Westport House and Gardens

Castles & Great Houses Westport. Co Mayo

Fun for kids! Westport House is the family home of Lord Altamont, whose family have lived here since the house was built for his ancestor John Browne in 1731. It was built on the site of a castle which was home to 16th century Pirate Queen Grace OMalley, a relative...
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