Castle Ward
Castle Ward in County Down is one of the most architecturally curious and entertaining country houses in Ireland, a mid-eighteenth-century mansion of two facing facades built in two completely different architectural styles that reflects an apparently irreconcilable difference of taste between its original owners, Bernard Ward, first Viscount Bangor, and his wife Lady Anne Bligh. The south-facing garden front was built in the classical Palladian style that Bernard preferred, while the north-facing entrance front was designed in the Gothic Revival style that Lady Anne favoured, and the interior is divided similarly, with rooms in both classical and Gothic decorative schemes.
The story behind this architectural schizophrenia, whether apocryphal or not, has always been one of the great anecdotes of Irish architectural history. The couple are said to have disagreed so fundamentally about the style of their house that the only solution was to give each party their preferred design on their respective sides of the building, a compromise that produced one of the most unusual houses in these islands. The marriage did not survive the building of the house, Lady Anne departing for Bath, but the architectural consequences of their disagreement have survived and amused visitors ever since.
The estate surrounding the house is one of the finest in County Down, occupying a beautiful position above Strangford Lough with extensive formal gardens, woodland walks and a working farm with Victorian farmyard buildings. The estate has been managed by the National Trust since 1953 and the combination of the house, gardens and estate walks makes a full day's visit easy to fill. The Strangford Lough Wildlife Centre within the estate provides information about the extraordinary marine and coastal habitats of the lough.
Castle Ward has also achieved contemporary fame as a filming location for Game of Thrones, whose production team used the estate extensively, and guided tours relating to the series are available for fans of the programme.