Things to do in County Monaghan

Castle Leslie near Glaslough in County Monaghan is one of the most atmospheric and most celebrated castle hotels in Ireland, a Victorian Gothic castle set in a 1,000-acre estate of lakes, woodland and parkland whose combination of the extraordinary house contents, the family history and the character of an eccentric Anglo-Irish household make it one of the most distinctive and most talked-about places to stay in Ireland. The Leslie family have inhabited the castle and its predecessor on this site since the seventeenth century and the current building, completed in 1870, reflects the collected eccentricity of several generations of remarkable individuals. The castle is celebrated for its extraordinary contents, accumulated over centuries by the Leslies whose wide travels, artistic interests and colourful lives brought an extraordinary variety of objects into the house. The private rooms open to hotel guests contain furniture from various European royal households, paintings of historical importance and personal memorabilia of the family and their many famous friends that create an interior of quite overwhelming personal character. Paul McCartney married Heather Mills at Castle Leslie in 2002 in a ceremony that brought the castle to international attention, and the family's tradition of close friendship with celebrated figures from music, literature and the arts gives the house a cultural association of considerable interest. The equestrian facilities on the estate are among the finest in Ireland and the combination of riding, the house character and the Monaghan countryside makes Castle Leslie one of the most distinctive leisure destinations in the province.

Hope Castle near Castleblayney in County Monaghan is an early nineteenth-century castellated Gothic house built for the Hope banking family on an estate surrounding the beautiful Lough Muckno. The castle reflects the picturesque Gothic Revival taste fashionable among the British and Irish aristocracy. Lough Muckno, one of the larger and more beautiful lakes in Ulster, with wooded islands and a complex irregular shoreline, was developed as formal and informal pleasure grounds. Now managed as Hope Estate by Monaghan County Council, the park provides walking trails, fishing, watersports and camping. The surrounding drumlin landscape of County Monaghan has a quietly distinctive character.