Qualla: Clontarf Castle

Clontarf Castle: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Phillip Perry, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1172, three years after Strongbow's invasion of Ireland had broken the old Gaelic order, Hugh de Lacy - or his tenant Adam de Phepoe - built a stone castle on a rise above the strand at Clontarf, two miles north of the centre of Dublin. The site was already heavy with memory: a few hundred metres away, in 1014, the High King Brian Boru had defeated a Norse-Leinster alliance at the Battle of Clontarf, dying in his tent in the moment of victory at the age of around 73. The de Lacy castle is long gone; not a stone of it survives. What stands today, called Clontarf Castle, is an 1837 Gothic Revival mansion built by William Vitruvius Morrison for the Vernon family, who held the estate for three centuries until 1933. It is now a four-star hotel. In nine centuries on this site, the castle has belonged to Norman lords, Knights Templar, Tudor courtiers, a Cromwellian quartermaster, an Anglo-Irish landed gentry, and finally - as of 1997 - to a hotel group called Tifco.

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Image: Phillip Perry | CC BY-SA 2.0

Clontarf Castle: The Templars and the Tudors

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cailín Sásta at English Wikipedia, CC BY 3.0. After the de Lacys, the lands passed to the Knights Templar, the warrior monks of the Crusades who maintained estates across Western Europe to fund their wars in the Holy Land. The Templars held Clontarf until their order was suppressed by Pope Clement V in 1312. The estate then ...

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Image: Cailín Sásta at English Wikipedia | CC BY 3.0

Clontarf Castle: The Cromwellian Quartermaster

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cailín Sásta at English Wikipedia, CC BY 3.0. On 14 August 1649, two days after Oliver Cromwell landed at Ringsend with his New Model Army, the Clontarf estate was given to Captain John Blackwell. Blackwell soon sold his interest to John Vernon, Quartermaster General of Cromwell's army. Vernon held the estate when the restor...

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Image: Cailín Sásta at English Wikipedia | CC BY 3.0

Clontarf Castle: Handel and Turner

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. George Frideric Handel stayed in Dublin for nine months in 1741 and 1742, during which time he composed Messiah and gave its world premiere at the Music Hall on Fishamble Street on 13 April 1742. He was a frequent visitor to Clontarf Castle during this period. The lady of the hou...

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Image: Public domain

Clontarf Castle: The Cabaret Years

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Warren Buckley, CC BY-SA 2.0. After the death of J. G. Oulton in 1952, his son Desmond sold the castle to pay death duties. It stood empty until 1957 and changed hands twice in the 1960s before Gerry and Carmel Houlihan bought it in 1972 and reopened it as a cabaret venue - one of the most popular in the coun...

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Image: Warren Buckley | CC BY-SA 2.0

Clontarf Castle: What Survives

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cailín Sásta at English Wikipedia, CC BY 3.0. The 1837 building by William Vitruvius Morrison is what visitors see today: the older castle was found unsafe and was demolished by the Vernons when Morrison's new one was complete. The current structure is in the Gothic Revival idiom that nineteenth-century Anglo-Irish landlords...

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Image: Cailín Sásta at English Wikipedia | CC BY 3.0