Lismore Castle

The site was first occupied by Lismore Abbey, an important monastery and seat of learning established in the early seventh century, and it was still an ecclesiastical centre when Henry II of England stayed there in 1171. In 1185 the king assigned his son John, Lord of Ireland, to build a castellum on the ground — a sister castle to Ardfinnan, raised to guard the river crossing. Except for a brief period after that, the place served as the residence of the local bishop, and John's castle was itself replaced twice over in the sixteenth century.

Lismore was a possession of the Earls of Desmond, whose lands were broken up in the plantations that followed the killing of Gerald FitzGerald, 14th Earl of Desmond, in 1583. In 1589 the property was leased, and later acquired, by Sir Walter Raleigh. He sold it during his imprisonment for high treason, in 1602, to Richard Boyle, who was later made 1st Earl of Cork in 1620.

Boyle had come to the Kingdom of Ireland from the Kingdom of England in 1588 with only twenty-seven pounds in capital, and proceeded to amass an extraordinary fortune. He made Lismore his principal seat and transformed it into a magnificent residence, with gabled ranges down each side of the courtyard, a castellated outer wall and a gatehouse known as the Riding Gate. It was here in 1626 that the fourteenth of his fifteen children was born — Robert Boyle, the father of modern chemistry.

The castle's part in the Cromwellian wars came in 1645, when a force of the Catholic confederacy commanded by Lord Castlehaven sacked both the town and the castle. The 1st Earl of Burlington and 2nd Earl of Cork (1612–1698) carried out enough restoration to make the place habitable again, but neither he nor his successors lived at Lismore. It descended to the 3rd Earl of Burlington and 4th Earl of Cork (1694–1753), a noted influence on Georgian architecture.

The Cavendishes acquired Lismore in 1753, when Lady Charlotte Boyle, daughter and heiress of the 3rd Earl of Burlington, married the Marquess of Hartington — from 1755 the 4th Duke of Devonshire, and a future prime minister — bringing the other Boyle properties, Chiswick House and Bolton Abbey among them, into the family with it. Their son the 5th Duke carried out improvements at Lismore, notably the bridge thrown across the Blackwater in 1775 to a design by the Cork-born architect Thomas Ivory.

The castle owes its present appearance to the 6th Duke, commonly known as the Bachelor Duke, who began transforming it into a fashionable 'quasi-feudal ultra-regal fortress' as soon as he succeeded his father in 1811. He engaged the architect William Atkinson from 1812 to 1822 to rebuild the castle in the Gothic style, using cut stone shipped over from Derbyshire, and in 1850 engaged Sir Joseph Paxton, designer of the Crystal Palace, whose additions were on such a scale that the present skyline is largely his work. J. G. Crace of London and his partner Augustus Pugin were commissioned to transform the ruined chapel of the old Bishop's Palace into a medieval-style banqueting hall, with a huge perpendicular stained-glass window, choir-stalls and Gothic stencilling.

After the death of the 6th Duke in 1858 Lismore remained substantially unaltered. It became the home of Lord Charles Cavendish, a younger son of the 9th Duke, who married Adele Astaire, the sister and former dancing partner of Fred Astaire; after her husband's death in 1944 and her remarriage in 1947, she continued to use the castle until shortly before her own death in 1981.

The 11th Duke used it only for brief annual visits, generally over Easter. The 12th Duke, who succeeded to the title in 2004, lives primarily on the family's Chatsworth estate, and management has been given to his son and heir, Lord Burlington, who in 2005 converted the derelict west range into a contemporary art gallery, Lismore Castle Arts.