Charleville Castle

Charleville Castle in Tullamore, Ireland, stands on a demesne first developed when a mansion was built for Thomas Moore around 1641. The standing building visible today belongs to the Gothic revival movement of the early nineteenth century, and the estate is noted as one of the finest examples of that style in Ireland. Over the centuries the place served as a family seat and a setting for notable social and cultural activity, including gatherings by important figures of the period.

During the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries ownership passed within the Moore family and then through marriage to the Bury family. Charles William Bury, who received the earldom of Charleville in 1806 under a second creation of the title, moved to replace the older house and commissioned a new country house in 1798. Construction of the new neogothic house took place between 1800 and 1812. Because successive owners lacked steady resources, the house was not occupied continuously; each reopening of the building brought fresh work, either adding rooms or refurbishing interiors.

The house became a centre for society in its day. During one of the periods of redecoration the dining room ceiling was designed by William Morris. The castle also hosted Lord Byron, who entertained there on a number of occasions. A large painting by Matthew William Peters, depicting a scene from Henry VIII, was removed from the house in 1970 and now forms part of a Canadian collection. The estate ceased to be lived in after 1912, when Colonel Howard‑Bury moved to Belvedere House in County Westmeath.

The twentieth century saw prolonged decline followed by repair efforts. By 1968 the building’s roof had been taken down. Work to stabilise and restore the house began in the early 1970s under Michael McMullen and was continued by Constance Heavey Seaquist and Bonnie Vance, alongside a charitable trust established to support conservation. In the years that followed the site has been managed by a heritage trust with day‑to‑day operations carried out by volunteers, and space within the castle was adapted to accommodate The Explorers’ Museum, dedicated to Charles Howard‑Bury. The demesne and the house have also attracted attention for alleged supernatural occurrences, with a well‑known local story about a little girl named Harriet who is said to have died after a fall on a staircase. The castle and its grounds have appeared on several television programmes, have been visited by paranormal investigators and photographers, and have been used as a location in a number of films and television productions.