Gothic: building castles in post-Union Ireland

Castles speak, especially in an age when they are no longer necessary. The Act of Union of 1800 challenged the status of Irish landed proprietors, and not a few responded by building castles.

In her latest publication
Judith Hill explores the projects of two Irish proprietors: the Burys, later Lord and Lady Charleville, who commissioned Francis Johnston to design Charleville Castle, Tullamore; and Lawrence Parsons, later 3rd Earl of Rosse, who re-imagined seventeenth-century Parsonstown House as Birr Castle.

(image: Charleville Castle )