Ashford Castle

Ashford Castle is a mainly Victorian and medieval castle near Cong on the County Mayo–Galway border in Ireland. The castle has been expanded over the centuries and turned into a five star hotel. It is located on the County Galway side of Lough Corrib and was previously owned by the Guinness family.

A castle was built on the perimeter of a monastic site in 1228 by the Anglo-Norman House of Burke.

After more than three-and-a-half centuries under the de Burgos, whose surname became Burke or Bourke, Ashford passed into the hands of a new master, following a fierce battle between the forces of the de Burgos and those of the English official Sir Richard Bingham, Lord President of Connaught, when a truce was agreed. In 1589, the castle fell to Bingham, who added a fortified enclave within its precincts.

Dominick Browne, of the Browne family (Baron Oranmore and Browne), received the estate in a Royal Grant in either 1670 or 1678. In 1715, the estate of Ashford was established by the Browne family and a hunting lodge in the style of a 17th-century French chateau was constructed. The double-headed eagles still visible on the roof represent the coat of arms of the Brownes.

In the late 18th-century a branch of the family inhabited the castle. In the early 19th-century, one Thomas Elwood was agent for the Brownes at Ashford and was recorded as living there in 1814.

The estate was purchased in 1852 by Sir Benjamin Guinness from Dominick Browne, 1st Baron Oranmore and Browne via the Encumbered Estates' Court. He added two large Victorian style extensions. He also extended the estate to 26,000 acres (110 km²), built new roads and planted thousands of trees. The castle was drawn for Sir William Wilde's book about County Galway. On Sir Benjamin's death in 1868, the estate passed to his son Arthur Guinness, 1st Baron Ardilaun, who expanded the building further in the Neogothic style.

Lord Ardilaun was an avid gardener who oversaw the development of massive woodlands and rebuilt the entire west wing of the castle, designed by architects James Franklin Fuller and George Ashlin. The new construction connected the early 18th-century part in the east with two de-Burgo-era towers in the west. Battlements were added to the whole castle.

He also subsidised the operation of several steamboats, the most notable of which was the Lady Eglinton, which plied between the villages of the Upper Lough Corrib region and Galway City, thus opening the area to increased commerce. In a time of agitation by tenant farmers in the Land Wars of the late 19th century, epitomised by the action of tenants at nearby Lough Mask House (home of Captain Charles Boycott), he was considered by many to be an 'improving' landlord. Some of his efforts were unsuccessful, particularly the Cong Canal, also known as 'the Dry Canal', which was built to link Lough Mask and Lough Corrib but was a failure, due to its inability to hold water. Despite such setbacks, the love borne by him and his wife Olivia, for the castle and the estate was deep and best epitomised by the fact that, when he was ennobled in 1880, he derived his title from the island of Ardilaun, which formed part of the estate on Lough Corrib.^{[citation needed]}