Ireland · Ruin
Temple House
Templehouse Castle is the medieval stone castle whose lakeside ruins lie beside the later Temple House estate in County Sligo. Built in the late 12th century for the Knights Templar, its rectangular plan survives only as low curtain walls and two tall rectangular tower blocks today.
Its prime
1627
Today
Ruin
As it stood in 1627
What Temple House looked like in its prime.
A low-lying rectangular stone castle sited beside a lake, with two tall, roughly rectangular tower-blocks set in the curtain wall and a large arched entrance through the wall. The masonry is pale to mid-grey rubble stone; the surviving wall line is broken by gaps and a central opening that frames the water beyond. At its prime the walls and towers would have stood to full height around an open central courtyard, forming a compact, rectangular enclosure.
Its story
The story of Temple House.
Templehouse Castle was built in 1181 near Ballinacarrow in south County Sligo — a rectangular, keepless castle of the Knights Templar. The Temple House lands were granted to the Templars in 1216 and passed to the Knights Hospitaller when the order was disbanded in 1311. The castle was converted to a domestic residence in 1627, then besieged and badly damaged in 1641.
The Perceval family has lived on the lands since 1665, George Perceval having acquired the property by marriage to an heiress of the Crofton family of Longford House. It descended through generations of Percevals — several of them High Sheriffs of Sligo — to Colonel Alexander Perceval, MP for County Sligo and Sergeant-at-Arms in the House of Lords, whose extravagance forced the sale of the house at his death in 1858; his third son Alexander bought it back with a fortune made in China.
The lakeside castle ruins — low curtain walls and two tall rectangular tower blocks — now stand below the Georgian mansion of about 1825, substantially extended around 1864, which remains a Perceval family home filled with heirlooms and providing tourist accommodation.
Step inside
5 places to explore in 1627.
The record describes 5 distinct spots at Temple House — including 1 interior: ground-level chamber in the east tower. Create your own photoreal reconstruction and walk through every one — more scenes means more rooms, more angles, and more of the place to stand in.
Create History
Recreate Temple House with AI to explore it.
The artist rebuilds it as it stood in 1627 — a photoreal walk that belongs to you alone. Pay with coins, no subscription needed.
Recreate this castle →Whose castle
Clans who held Temple House.
The families that held Temple House for a decade or more across its history — follow a name to its clan.
Perceval
The Perceval family has held Temple House since 1665.
