Clonyn Castle also known as Delvin Castle, is a Victorian country house situated in Delvin, County Westmeath, Ireland some 18 km from Mullingar along the N52. It is a square, symmetrical, two-storey castle-like building of cut limestone with four tall, round corner towers at each corner. The interior has a large two-storey hall with gallery and arcading. It was one of the last Victorian baronial castles to be built in Ireland.

A golf course [1] open to the public lies behind the castle, 500m from the centre of Delvin.

History
An early castle[2] (now a ruin in the centre of the village of Delvin[3]) is believed to have been built in 1181 by Hugh de Lacy, Lord of Meath for his brother-in-law, Sir Gilbert de Nugent. Sir Gilbert de Nugent, originally from the Nogent-le-Rotrou area in France, came to Ireland with Hugh de Lacy in 1171. Sir Gilbert was granted the title Baron of Delvin within the Lordship of Meath.

A second castle was built in 1639 by Richard Nugent, 1st Earl of Westmeath, on elevated ground overlooking the village of Delvin and may be referred to as either Delvin or Clonyn Castle. When Cromwell's army approached Nugent caused the house to be burnt down and fled to Galway. The castle was restored by his grandson and occupied until 1860. [4]

The present house was built a short distance away from the previous castle by Lord Greville and his wife Lady Rosa. Following the death of the 8th Earl and 1st Marquess of Westmeath in 1871, Clonyn had passed to Lady Rosa, his only surviving child. She had married Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Greville, who in 1866 had assumed by Royal Licence the additional surname of Nugent. This latest building remained a Nugent residence until 1922, when Patrick Nugent sold it and moved to Scotland. It was afterwards home to a community of Australian nuns.[4]

In the post-World War II period, at the instigation of Rabbi Solomon Schonfeld, the castle served briefly as a home for Jewish children, most of them orphans of the Holocaust. Manchester businessman and philanthropist Yankel Levy was persuaded to buy the castle and associated land for £30,000 and some 100 children aged between 5 and 17 were temporarily housed before rejoining their families or starting new lives in England, America or Israel. Levy was consequently bankrupted. 

It is currently privately owned by Mrs Dillon.

Clonyn Castle

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Killua Castle, and the nearby Raleigh Obelisk, are situated near Clonmellon, County Westmeath, Ireland. The present house was built in about 1780 by Sir Benjamin Chapman and consisted of a hall, dining room, oval drawing room, breakfast parlour and front and back stairs. There was also a stable yard, barn and haggard. From here, the Chapmans administered the surrounding farm lands of some 9,000 acres (36 km2) in the 18th century. In a ruinous condition, it was renovated in 2006.

Killua Castle and its surrounding lands were granted around 1667 to Benjamin Chapman, a captain in Cromwell's army, having been confiscated from the Knights Hospitallers of St. John. On his death the estate passed to his elder son, William, and on William's death in 1734 to his son Benjamin. Benjamin died in 1779 and was succeeded by his son Benjamin, who was created a baronet.

The present structure was built in 1780 by Sir Benjamin Chapman, 1st Baronet after demolishing the original castle. It passed from him in 1810 by special remainder to his brother Thomas who in the early 1820s commissioned the addition of a large round tower and several other towers, including a library tower, staircase tower and back door tower. He also completed the castellation and erected the Raleigh obelisk nearby. He was succeeded in 1837 by his son Sir Montagu Chapman, 3rd Baronet, who was lost at sea off the coast of Australia in 1852. Montagu's brother Benjamin, the 4th baronet, inherited, from whom it passed to his son Montagu Richard, 5th baronet. Montagu Richard died childless in 1907 and his widow, a cousin, divided the estate between the four legitimate daughters of her brother Sir Thomas Chapman, 7th Baronet. The house and the remaining 1,200 acres (4.9 km2) of land were sold in 1949.

Killua Castle

Knockdrin is an area north of Mullingar, in County Westmeath, Ireland. It is the home of the Westmeath Hunt, and its most notable building is Knockdrin Castle. The R394, the main Mullingar to Castlepollard road, runs through the area.


Castle
Knockdrin Castle is, according to The Buildings of Ireland: North Leinster (published in London in 1993 and better known as the Pevsner Guide to North Leinster), mainly an early 19th-century neo-Gothic structure. The current castle was purportedly designed by Richard Morrison,[1] and was built on the site of High Park, the original 18th-century mansion that formerly stood there.[2] The castle was constructed for Sir Richard Levinge, 6th Bt. (1785-1848), probably in the 1810s.[3] As of late 2017, the castle is the home of the von Prondzynski family.[4] The current owner, Prof. Ferdinand von Prondzynski, was President of Dublin City University from 2000 to 13 July 2010, and is now Principal and Vice-Chancellor of Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, Scotland.

Until the early 18th century, the main residence on the estate was a small Norman castle (often known locally as 'King John's Castle') which was destroyed by fire. The main part of High Park, the previous mansion that stood on the site of the current Knockdrin Castle, may have been built in the early 18th century for Sir Richard Levinge, 1st Bt., M.P. (1656-1724), although there were probably further alterations and additions made to the house that were completed by the late 18th century. The Levinges came to Ireland with the Williamites, in the late 17th century. The first Sir Richard Levinge was Chief Justice of the Common Pleas and a member of the Lords Commissioners, who were appointed by the Crown to settle all the land questions which had arisen in Ireland after the Cromwellian conquest, the Restoration and the Williamite Wars. Sir Richard took advantage of his position to purchase the Knockdrin Estate from the Tuites, who were the Norman-Irish owners up to that time. At the time there were over 12,000 acres (49 km2).

The present estate of about 1,000 acres (4.0 km2) was laid out as a hunting ground. Lord Randolph Churchill and his wife, Lady Randolph, parents of Winston, were frequent visitors. Jennie Churchill declared that the foxes were as wild as the locals. Winston Churchill himself privately visited the castle during the War of Independence.

During World War II, the castle was taken over for troop accommodation and was occupied by a company of the 6th (Dublin) Infantry of the Irish Army. The army left in 1945 and handed the castle back to the Levinges.

The Levinges owned Knockdrin until 1946, although the last Sir Richard Levinge to live there (later a Director of Guinness Ltd.) had by then not been resident there for some time. In that year the estate was sold to Paddy Dunne-Cullinan, who remained there until 1961[4] when he in turn sold the estate to Hans Freiherr von Prondzynski, and his wife Irene Freifrau von Prondzynski, from Germany. The arable land is now leased out but the family continues to live in the castle. Until the very early 19th century, the castle and estate were called High Park. The property was then renamed Knockdrin, after a hill on the estate; the name is also related to Lough Drin, a small lake on the estate. The Irish name for the locality is Muine Liath (pronounced Moe in ah lee ah), which means Grey Shrubbery. Muine Liath is written in English as Monilea.

Knockdrin

Tullynally Castle is a country house (also known as Pakenham Hall Castle) situated some 2 km from Castlepollard on the Coole village road in County Westmeath, Ireland. The gothic style building has over 120 rooms and has been home to the Pakenham family (now the Earls of Longford) for over 350 years, except for 32 years in the early 19th century when it belonged to the Ryder family.

The house is surrounded by twelve acres of park land and gardens, including woodland gardens and walled gardens laid out in the early 19th century with a limestone grotto and ornamental lakes. In the 21st century a Chinese garden with a pagoda and a Tibetan garden of waterfalls and streams have been added.[1]

The site entrance from the public road is situated 1.5 km outside Castlepollard on the Granard road 20 km from Mullingar, 80 km from Dublin via the N4 or N3 roads. The grounds are open to the public.

History
In 1665 Henry Pakenham, a captain in the Parliamentary Dragoons, was granted land in lieu of pay arrears that included Tullynally. His grandson Thomas was made first Baron Longford in 1756. Thomas's grandson, another Thomas and 3rd Baron Longford, also inherited the superior title of 2nd Earl of Longford in 1794 from his grandmother, the Countess of Longford.

The 2nd Earl remodelled the 17th-century house in the gothic revival style in the early 1800s, adding towers and a moat. It was by then larger than any other castellated house in Ireland. Since then, the house has passed down through successive generations of Pakenhams to the present earl, Thomas Pakenham, 8th Earl of Longford, and is the largest house in private hands in Ireland.[2]

The British Army general, Sir Edward Pakenham, GCB, was born and brought up in the house.

Tullynally Castle

Trim Castle (Irish: Caisleán Bhaile Atha Troim) is a Norman castle on the south bank of the River Boyne in Trim, County Meath, Ireland. With an area of 30,000 m², it is the largest Norman castle in Ireland. Over a period of 30 years, it was built by Hugh de Lacy and his son Walter as the caput of the Lordship of Meath.
History
De Lacy
The Castle was used as a centre of Norman administration for the Lordship of Meath, one of the new administrative areas of Ireland created by King Henry II of England.


The site was chosen because it is on raised ground, overlooking a fording point on the River Boyne. The area was an important early medieval ecclesiastical and royal site that was navigable in medieval times by boat up the River Boyne, about 25 miles from the Irish Sea. Trim Castle is referred to in the Norman poem The Song of Dermot and the Earl.

Hugh de Lacy took possession of it in 1172. De Lacy built a huge ringwork castle defended by a stout double palisade and external ditch on top of the hill. There may also have been further defences around the cliffs fringing the high ground. Part of a stone footed timber gatehouse lies beneath the present stone gate at the west side of the castle.

De Lacy left Ireland entrusting the castle to Hugh Tyrrel, baron of Castleknock, one of his chief lieutenants. The ringwork was attacked and burnt by forces of the Gaelic High King of Ireland, Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair; Tyrrel, having appealed in vain for help, was forced to flee. Ua Conchobair soon withdrew and De Lacy immediately rebuilt the castle in 1173. His son Walter continued rebuilding and the castle was completed c. 1224.

Geneville and Mortimer
The next phase of the castle's development took place at the end of the 13th century and the beginning of the 14th century; a new great hall (with undercroft and attached solar in a radically altered curtain tower), a new forebuilding, and stables were added to the keep.

On Walter de Lacy's death in 1241 his granddaughter Mathilda ('Maud') inherited the castle. Her second husband was Geoffrey de Geneville (brother of the historian Jean de Joinville), Lord of Vaucouleurs in Champagne, France, and of many lordships in England and Ireland which were to devolve upon his heirs. His son Piers de Geneville (who married Joan de Lusignan) died in 1292 leaving a daughter Joan, who in 1301 married Roger Mortimer (1st Earl of March).

Mathilda having died in 1304, in 1308 Geoffrey conveyed his Irish lordships to Roger Mortimer, and entered the priory at St. Mary's in Trim. Joan Mortimer inherited the title Baroness Geneville suo jure when Geoffrey died in 1314. The castle thereby passed to the Mortimer family who held it until 1425, when the male line died out with Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of March.[3] After this the estate passed to Richard of York, son of Edmund's sister Anne Mortimer by Richard of Conisburgh, 3rd Earl of Cambridge. Richard of York was killed at the Battle of Wakefield in 1460, and in 1461 his son, King Edward IV, appointed Germyn Lynch of London to be his representative at Trim.

Later ownership

During the 15th century the Irish Parliament met in Trim Castle seven times and a mint operated in the castle. It was at that time the centre of administration for Meath and marked the outer northern boundary of The Pale. In the 16th century it fell into decline and was allowed to deteriorate, but it was refortified during the Irish Confederate Wars in the 1640s. In 1649 after the sacking of Drogheda, the garrison of Trim fled to join other Irish forces and the place was occupied by the army of Oliver Cromwell.

After the wars of the 1680s, the castle was granted to the Wellesley family who held it until Arthur Wellesley (the Duke of Wellington), sold it to the Leslies. In following years it passed via the Encumbered Estates Court into the hands of the Dunsany Plunketts. They left the lands open and from time to time allowed various uses, with part of the Castle Field rented for some years by the Town Council as a municipal dump, and a small meeting hall for the Royal British Legion erected. The Dunsanys held the Castle and surrounds until 1993, when after years of discussion, Lord Dunsany sold the land and buildings to the State, retaining only river access and fishing rights.

Restoration
The Office of Public Works began a major programme of exploratory works and conservation, costing over six million euro, including partial restoration of the moat and the installation of a protective roof on the keep. The castle was re-opened to the public in 2000.

Structure

With an area of 30,000 m², Trim Castle is the largest Cambro-Norman castle in Ireland. The design of the central three-storey keep (also known as a donjon or great tower) is unique for a Norman keep being of cruciform shape, with twenty corners. It was built on the site of the previous large ring work fortification in at least three stages, initially by Hugh de Lacy (c. 1174) and then in 1196 and 1201–5 by Walter de Lacy. The castle interior was partially the subject of archaeological digs, by David Sweetman of the OPW in the 1970s, and more extensively by Alan Hayden in the 1990s.

The surviving curtain walls are predominantly of three phases. The west and north sides of the enceinte are defended by rectangular towers (including the Trim Gate) dating to the 1170s; the Dublin gate was erected in the 1190s or early part of the 13th century; and the remaining wall to the south with its round towers dates to the first two decades of the 13th century. The castle has two main gates. The one in the west side dates to the 1170s and sits on top of a demolished wooden gateway. The upper stories of the stone tower were altered to a semi-octagonal shape, c. 1200. The Dublin Gate in the south wall is a single round towered gate with an external barbican tower. It dates from the 1190s or early 13th century and was the first example of its type to be constructed in Ireland.[citation needed]

Apart from the keep, the main extant structures consist of the following: an early 14th-century three-towered fore work defending the keep entrance and including stables within it (accessed by a stone causeway crossing the partly filled-in ditch of the earlier ringwork); a huge late 13th-century three-aisled great hall (with an under croft beneath its east end opening via a water gate to the river); a stout defensive tower (turned into a solar in the late 13th century at the northern angle of the castle); a smaller aisled hall (added to the east end of the great hall in the 14th or 15th century); a building (possibly the mint) added to the east end of the latter hall; two 15th- or 16th-century stone buildings added inside the town gatehouse, 17th-century buildings (added to the end of the hall range and to the north side of the keep) and a series of lime kilns (one dating from the late 12th century, the remainder from the 18th and 19th centuries).

Access
Trim Castle grounds are open to the public, on payment of an entry fee, every day from Easter Saturday to Halloween (31 October) from 10 a.m. Access to the Castle keep is via a 45-minute guided tour. In winter, the complex is open only on weekends and bank holidays.

Popular culture

The castle is noted for the part it played in the filming of the Mel Gibson-directed film Braveheart.

Points of note
In 2003 there was a controversy surrounding the decision by the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government Martin Cullen not to oppose the construction of a five-storey hotel across the road from the castle. The development had been condemned by a local councillor, a senior inspector in An Bord Pleanala (acting in a private capacity, and later choosing to withdraw his appeal lest it be considered a conflict of interest) and heritage bodies, many of whom had been critical of the government's treatment of other heritage sites such as Carrickmines Castle (the ruins of which were excavated partly to allow the completion of a roadway). The hotel was opened in August 2006.

The recent addition of buildings (including offices for the OPW) outside the west side of the town has further intruded on the castle remains.