Qualla: Ardgillan Castle

Ardgillan Castle: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dietrich, CC BY-SA 3.0. The labourers who cleared the wooded slopes for Ardgillan Castle in 1738 were paid one penny a day plus meals and a bed for the night. They were former soldiers from Bangor in County Down. They also got a tot of Irish whiskey from Bushmills - which arrived by sea at two shillings and tuppence the gallon - and they earned every drop. The Reverend Robert Taylor, son of the 1st Baronet of Headfort, had purchased a steep, tree-covered ridge above Barnageera Beach with views across the Irish Sea, and he wanted the trees down and a house up. What they built that year still stands today, a castellated country house set in 200 acres of public parkland twelve miles north of Dublin.

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Image: Dietrich | CC BY-SA 3.0

Ardgillan Castle: A Wine Merchant's Hill

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Tournesol assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 3.0. The land before the Taylors belonged to Robert Usher, a wine merchant from Tallaght who had probably never lived on the property himself. The Irish name was Ard Giollain - Giollan's Height - perched on a steep coastal headland where the rising ground gives long views north to Dro...

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. Tournesol assumed (based on copyright claims). | CC BY-SA 3.0

Ardgillan Castle: Castellated, but Not a Castle

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Leslie Noelle Sullivan, CC BY-SA 4.0. Ardgillan is not really a castle. It is a Georgian country house with castellated battlements added for romantic effect - a style fashionable among Irish gentry in the late 18th and 19th centuries who wanted their houses to look medieval without sacrificing comfort. Two storeys r...

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Image: Leslie Noelle Sullivan | CC BY-SA 4.0

Ardgillan Castle: The Lady's Stairs

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit AndrewH, Public domain. Below the castle, the Dublin-to-Belfast railway line runs along the foot of the cliff between the demesne and the sea. To reach the strand, walkers cross a footbridge called the Lady's Stairs that arches over both the railway and the R127 coast road. Local folklore says a young w...

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Image: AndrewH | Public domain

Ardgillan Castle: A Public Park

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Declan Geraghty, CC BY-SA 4.0. Henrich Potts of Westphalia bought the estate from the Taylors in 1962 and held it for two decades. In 1982 the Fingal County Council acquired the property, and over the next ten years - with help from FAS, the Irish state training agency - the council restored the house and grou...

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Image: Declan Geraghty | CC BY-SA 4.0

Ardgillan Castle: What to See Today

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Leslie Noelle Sullivan, CC BY-SA 4.0. Ground-floor rooms and the kitchen are open for guided tours. Upstairs the former bedrooms host changing exhibitions, including a permanent display of the Down Survey - the great 17th-century cartographic project undertaken by William Petty in the 1650s that mapped Irish lands fo...

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Image: Leslie Noelle Sullivan | CC BY-SA 4.0