Hope Castle

Hope Castle is a historic house and demesne in Castleblayney, County Monaghan, Ireland. Originally a private home, over the course of the 20th century, Hope Castle was used as a military barracks, a hospital, convent, and was most recently used as a hotel before it was damaged by a fire in 2010.

The land on which the house was built was originally owned by Sir Edward Blayney (1570–1629), to whom it was granted in 1607. Blayney was a Welsh soldier from Montgomeryshire who was granted land at Ballynalurgan and Muckno, where he built a stone defensive castle, Blayney Castle. The town of Castleblayney grew up round that original site. Blayney was created the first Baron Blayney in 1621 and the Blayneys would continue to occupy the estate until after the 1830s. In the time of the second baron, in 1641, the castle was captured by rebels fighting under Hugh Mac Patrick Dubh MacMahon. The baron escaped but his wife and children were captured.

The 7th Baron Blayney sold off part of the land in 1723. It was not until the 1780s that the present building, originally named Blayney Castle, was constructed near the old Elizabethan castle for the 11th Baron Blayney (1770–1834), a soldier who owned the land from 1784 to 1834.

In 1853, Cadwallader, 12th Baron Blayney, sold the entire Blayney estate to the wealthy Henry Thomas Hope, who substantially renovated the building. The 12th Baron Blayney was the last Lord Blayney. It was only under the ownership of the Hope family, the Scottish-Dutch banking family that is famous for their ownership of the Hope Diamond, that the building got its new name of Hope Castle, one which it still holds today. Henrietta Adela Hope, daughter of Henry Thomas Hope, who married an English duke, later inherited the estate. Her husband was the 6th Duke of Newcastle, who held the courtesy title of Earl of Lincoln at the time of their marriage (1861) and later succeeded his father as the 6th Duke of Newcastle-under-Lyne.

From 1900 to 1904, Hope Castle served as a home for Prince Arthur, 1st Duke of Connaught and Strathearn, Queen Victoria's son, and his family. The duke was the commander of the British Forces in Ireland at that time.

The Hope family left the estate in 1916, leaving it to serve as a military barracks during the War of Independence between the years 1919 and 1921.

Text adapted from “Hope Castle” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Hope Castle ranks #6,029 of 8,134 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #128 of the 173 mapped in Ireland. 5 more atlas landmarks stand within 25 km. The nearest day-trip guide is Drogheda, 51 km away. See how Ireland compares in the castle statistics.

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Read the full history on Wikipedia ↗