Qualla: Castle Oliver

Castle Oliver: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mygodfrey at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. Fifty-five thousand bottles. That, supposedly, is the capacity of the wine cellar at Castle Oliver - the largest in Ireland, dug out in pink sandstone beneath a Victorian country house at the southern edge of County Limerick. The number is repeated everywhere it is mentioned, which is to say in nearly every account of the building, and it is one of those happily improbable Irish facts that may or may not be exactly right but is too good to leave out. The castle above the cellar is more verifiable. It was commissioned in 1845 by two sisters - Mary Isabella and Elizabeth Oliver Gascoigne - and designed by a York architect named George Fowler Jones in the Scottish Baronial style. Pink sandstone was quarried on the estate. The terraces are massive. The views still command twenty thousand acres that no longer belong to the house.

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Image: Mygodfrey at English Wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0

Castle Oliver: Cromwell's Captain, and Lola Montez's Grandmother

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mike Searle, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Olivers came to this corner of Limerick in 1658 with the Cromwellian land settlements. Captain Robert Oliver, one of Cromwell's soldiers, took possession of the lands the Otway family had held before him - the original Irish name Cloch an Otbhaidhigh, 'the stone structure of ...

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Image: Mike Searle | CC BY-SA 2.0

Castle Oliver: Two Sisters, One Architect

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mygodfrey at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. Captain Oliver's descendant Richard Oliver married a Yorkshire heiress and inherited Parlington Hall near Leeds. He moved away, taking the Gascoigne name, and left Castle Oliver to deteriorate in the hands of a bailiff. His two daughters, Mary Isabella and Elizabeth, inherited ev...

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Image: Mygodfrey at English Wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0

Castle Oliver: Pink Sandstone and Hand-Painted Ceilings

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:Mygodfrey, CC BY-SA 3.0. Castle Oliver was built for entertaining, not for defence. The ballroom, drawing room, library, morning room, dining room, and great hall all carry hand-painted ceilings, ornamental corbels, decorative stencil work, and the sisters' own stained glass. Gothic arched doors connect ...

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Image: User:Mygodfrey | CC BY-SA 3.0

Castle Oliver: Restored, Reoccupied, Repeating

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sean an Scuab, CC BY-SA 3.0. Restoration began in 1988 when Damian Haughton bought the castle and, according to a later owner, sealed most of the worst leaks in the roof. Nicholas Browne, who acquired it in 1998, made it habitable again and later wrote a history called Castle Oliver and the Oliver Gascoignes...

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Image: Sean an Scuab | CC BY-SA 3.0