Dromoland Castle
Posted by: 
rnrgrl
N 52° 47.019 W 008° 54.342
29U E 506360 N 5848207
Dromoland Castle was the ancestral home of the O’Briens who were the Kings of Thomond and whose lineage goes back 1,000 years to Brian Boru, the only High King of Ireland.
Waymark Code: WMQN1C
Location: Munster, Ireland
Date Posted: 03/05/2016
Views: 3
Live like a King or Queen...be a prince or princess for a day...
Sleep in a castle! We did while on our visit to Ireland.
Dromoland Castle dates back to 1543.
The present main building was rebuilt in the early 19th century. It was the birthplace and boyhood home of William Smith O’Brien, M.P., who fought for the rights of oppressed Irish Catholic peasant farmers and led the Young Irelanders rebellion against the British authorities in 1848. After the forced sale of the estate’s tenanted farmlands in 1921, the leaders of the Irish Republican Army in Dublin marked Dromoland Castle for destruction. Local IRA leaders succeeded in reversing that decision, arguing that the Inchiquin lords had been fair and benevolent landlords to their tenant farmers. For more than 10 years, Dromoland was supported mainly by the personal wealth of the fifteenth baron’s widow, whose portrait hangs near the staircase in the Castle’s hall.
The sixteenth Baron of Inchiquin finally sold the Castle and surrounding land to an American industrialist, Mr. Bernard McDonough, in 1962. (Conor O’Brien, the eighteenth Baron, continues to live in adjacent Thomond House, a Georgian-style structure built in 1962, and still farms and operates part of the demesne as a sporting and leisure estate.) The Castle and The Queen Anne Court underwent major renovations in 1962 and 1963 and emerged as a luxury hotel, one that remarkably retains its stately, warm, and cheerful baronial country house atmosphere.
Accessibility: Full access
Condition: Intact
Admission Charge?: no
Website: Not listed
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