Ireland · Still standing
Hope Castle
Hope Castle is a named, visitable two-storey country house in Ireland photographed with a broad hardstanding forecourt and mature trees behind. The building reads as a 19th-century stuccoed villa often referred to locally as a castle and retains its original formal façade elements.
Its prime
1850
Today
Still standing
As it stood in 1850
The shape it held in its prime.
A pale green, two-storey stucco villa with white quoins and tall rectangular sash windows; its centre is a curved three-window bow rising the full height of the façade. The main entrance sits beneath a semicircular fanlight and a shallow projecting porch. A low parapet with small urn-like finials and attic dormer windows crowns the shallow roof. A single-storey glazed conservatory/lean-to is attached to the left; mature trees form a wooded backdrop behind the house.
Its story
The story of Hope Castle.
The land at Castleblayney was granted in 1607 to Sir Edward Blayney, a Welsh soldier from Montgomeryshire, who built a stone defensive castle there — Blayney Castle — and was created first Baron Blayney in 1621. In 1641, in the time of the second baron, the castle was captured by rebels fighting under Hugh Mac Patrick Dubh MacMahon; the baron escaped, but his wife and children were taken.
The present house, originally also named Blayney Castle, went up in the 1780s near the old Elizabethan castle for the 11th Baron Blayney, a soldier who held the land from 1784 to 1834. In 1853 Cadwallader, 12th and last Lord Blayney, sold the entire estate to the wealthy Henry Thomas Hope of the Scottish-Dutch banking family famous for owning the Hope Diamond — and the house took the name it still holds.
Hope substantially renovated the building. Over the course of the 20th century Hope Castle was used as a military barracks, a hospital and a convent, and was most recently run as a hotel before it was damaged by a fire in 2010.
Step inside
5 places to explore in 1850.
The record describes 5 distinct spots at Hope Castle — including the full exterior approach. Create your own photoreal reconstruction and walk through every one — more scenes means more photos, more angles and more rooms of the immersive experience.
Create History
Recreate Hope Castle with AI to explore it.
The artist rebuilds it as it stood in 1850 — a photoreal walk that belongs to you alone. Pay with coins, no subscription needed.
Recreate Castle to Explore →Whose castle
Clans who held Hope Castle.
The families that held Hope Castle for a decade or more across its history — follow a name to its clan.
Blayney
Held by the Barons Blayney from Sir Edward Blayney's 1607 grant until the 12th Baron sold the estate in 1853.
Hope
Held by the Hope banking family, who bought the Blayney estate in 1853 and gave the castle its present name.
