Luttrellstown Castle

The demesne and adjoining lands were granted to Sir Geoffrey de Luterel about 1210 by King John, whom he served as minister on missions of state to Ireland between 1204 and 1216; he was also the ancestor of the Luttrells of Dunster Castle in Somerset. Robert Luttrell was treasurer of St Patrick's Cathedral and Lord Chancellor of Ireland from 1235 to 1245, and married into the Plunkett family.

The castle itself was begun around 1420 by Sir Geoffrey Luttrell, 5th Lord Luttrell, born about 1385. Sir Thomas Luttrell, Chief Justice of the Irish Common Pleas from 1534 to 1554, took an active part in the dissolution of the monasteries and acquired the lands of St Mary's Abbey at Coolmine; by the seventeenth century the family were the biggest landowners in the district.

Colonel Henry Luttrell, second son of Thomas Luttrell of Luttrellstown, was suspected of betraying the Irish leader Patrick Sarsfield — whose estate at Lucan Manor bordered Luttrellstown — either by the precipitate withdrawal of his Jacobite troops or by passing King William III's army strategic information about a river ford, leading to the Jacobite defeat at the Battle of Aughrim in 1691. After the Siege of Limerick he brought his regiment over to the Williamite cause, and was rewarded with the forfeited estates of his elder brother Simon, Luttrellstown among them, and a major-generalship in the Dutch army. He was assassinated in his sedan chair outside his townhouse in Stafford Street, Dublin, in October 1717.

Colonel Simon Luttrell, 1st Earl of Carhampton (1713–1787), became Lord Lieutenant of County Dublin, and in 1771 his daughter Anne married Prince Henry, Duke of Cumberland and Strathearn, brother of King George III. His son Henry Lawes Luttrell, 2nd Earl of Carhampton, sat as Member of Parliament for Bossiney and later served as Adjutant General of Ireland, where he became notorious for his role in suppressing the Irish Rebellion of 1798.

He was so hated that he sold Luttrellstown in 1800 — and in a revenge attack, the grave of his grandfather Colonel Henry Luttrell was opened and the skull smashed. When the Dublin Post wrongly reported his death on 2 May 1811, Luttrell demanded a retraction; the newspaper printed one, under the headline Public Disappointment.

The buyer was Luke White, who in 1778 had started out as an impecunious book dealer, buying in Dublin and reselling around the country, and who during the 1798 rebellion helped the Irish government with a loan of one million pounds. He renamed the estate Woodlands to eradicate the name of Luttrell, became MP for Leitrim, and died in 1824 leaving properties worth £175,000 a year. The estate devolved on his fourth son, created Lord Annaly, and it was White's great-grandson, the 3rd Lord Annaly, who reverted the name to Luttrell Castle.

Queen Victoria first visited in 1844, en route to the Duke of Leinster at Carton House. In 1900, travelling to the Viceregal Lodge, she drank a cup of tea near the waterfall — an event Lord Annaly commemorated with an obelisk of six granite blocks from the Dublin mountains. In 1915 Lord Annaly sold the house to a Major Hamilton, who died in 1918, leaving it to his widow.

In 1927 Ernest Guinness bought the estate as a wedding present for his daughter Aileen, who married a cousin, Brinsley Sheridan Plunket. Aileen Plunket entertained on a grand scale, and the castle became the setting for hunt balls and lavish social events; her niece, Lady Caroline Blackwood, wrote of growing up in that atmosphere in Great Granny Webster.

When the property was sold in 1983 to the Swiss consortium Primwest, controlled by the French businessman Didier Primat, the contents were auctioned by Christie's of London — a dispersal Desmond FitzGerald, 29th Knight of Glin, called the Irish sale of the century. Victoria Adams married David Beckham at the castle on 4 July 1999, and in 2006 it was bought outright by JP McManus and John Magnier, who spent more than €20 million on upgrade work the following year.