Glenveagh Castle
Glenveagh Castle is one of Ireland's most romantic and dramatic historic houses, sitting at the edge of Lough Veagh in the heart of County Donegal's wild northwestern highlands. Built in the Scottish Baronial style between 1867 and 1873, the castle is the centrepiece of Glenveagh National Park, Ireland's second largest national park at around 16,000 hectares. Its striking silhouette of turrets, battlements and towers rising directly from the lakeshore makes it one of the most photographed buildings in the country, and its combination of grand architecture, extraordinary gardens and sublime wilderness setting makes it genuinely unlike anywhere else on the island.
The castle was built by John George Adair, a wealthy and deeply controversial landlord from Queen's County. Adair had purchased the Glenveagh estate in the 1850s and assembled it by clearing large portions of tenanted land. In April 1861, he carried out one of the most notorious evictions in Irish history, forcibly removing 244 tenants from the estate during winter and demolishing their cottages. The evictions, which left families destitute and led many to emigrate to Australia, made Adair reviled across Donegal and beyond. He died in 1885 without ever truly settling at the castle he built, and ownership passed to his American wife Cornelia, who introduced the red deer herd that still roams the park today and developed the beginnings of the famous gardens.
The estate passed through several remarkable hands in the twentieth century. It was purchased in 1929 by Professor Arthur Kingsley Porter of Harvard University, a distinguished art historian who vanished mysteriously from Arranmore Island in 1933 — his body was never found and the circumstances remain unexplained to this day. The castle was then acquired by Henry Plumer McIlhenny, a Philadelphia millionaire and socialite of Irish descent whose grandfather had emigrated from Donegal. McIlhenny transformed Glenveagh into one of Ireland's most glamorous private houses during the mid-twentieth century, hosting luminaries including Greta Garbo, Rock Hudson, and various artists and intellectuals. He lavished attention and resources on the gardens, working with talented designers to create a series of garden rooms of exceptional beauty. McIlhenny donated the entire estate to the Irish state in 1981, and it is now managed by the National Parks and Wildlife Service.
The physical experience of Glenveagh is one of contrasts. The castle interior is intimate and richly decorated in a way quite different from the austere grandeur its exterior might suggest — McIlhenny's influence is evident in the warm, eclectic mix of artworks, furnishings and textiles gathered from across Europe and America. Outside, the gardens are a horticultural tour de force, encompassing a walled kitchen garden, a Belgian Walk lined with rhododendrons, an Italian garden with terrace and fountain, a pleasure ground, and a kitchen garden whose productivity is still maintained. The sound of the gardens in spring, when the rhododendrons and azaleas are in full bloom, is a riot of birdsong, with the lough below catching the wind and the mountains visible in every direction.
The landscape surrounding the castle is among the most spectacular in Ireland. Lough Veagh itself stretches for some seven kilometres, a narrow glacially carved ribbon of dark water hemmed in by the steep quartzite slopes of the Derryveagh Mountains. The Poisoned Glen, with its slightly ominous name and otherworldly rockscape, lies just beyond the park's eastern edge. The Derryveagh and Glendowan ranges, largely stripped of tree cover by centuries of grazing and peat cutting, give the surroundings a gaunt, elemental quality — heather, blanket bog, exposed rock and the ever-changing Atlantic sky. Golden eagles have been successfully reintroduced to the park following a long absence, and red squirrels, red deer, peregrine falcons and otters all live within its boundaries.
Getting to Glenveagh requires some planning, as the park is located in one of the most remote corners of Ireland. The nearest significant town is Letterkenny, roughly 25 kilometres to the southeast, and the park's main visitor centre is accessed from the R251 road. Importantly, private vehicles are not permitted to drive to the castle itself — visitors park at the visitor centre and take a shuttle bus along the lakeshore road to the castle, a journey of about four kilometres. The visitor centre provides good exhibitions on the park's natural and human history. Opening hours are seasonal, with the castle itself typically accessible for guided tours from late spring through autumn. The gardens can sometimes be visited independently of the castle tours.
The best time to visit is arguably late spring, when the rhododendrons create extraordinary cascades of pink and purple against the grey stone and the mountain backdrop, and the long evenings of an Irish May or June give the landscape a particularly luminous quality. Autumn is also beautiful, with the bogland taking on rich ochres and russets. Winter visits are possible on dry days and give the castle and lough a moody, austere character that has its own appeal, though facilities are reduced. The park and castle together represent one of those rare places where the human story — complicated, sometimes dark, often glamorous — is entirely in keeping with its wild and beautiful setting.