Tullynally Castle

Tullynally Castle is a sprawling Gothic Revival castle surrounded by romantic gardens and parkland in the north-west of County Westmeath. The estate was granted to the Pakenham family, later Earls of Longford, in the 17th century and is still lived in by the family. Originally a plain semi-fortified Plantation house, Tullynally become a regular Georgian house before its transformation by Francis Johnston in 1803. The third Earl made further enlargements in the 1840s with two enormous wings and a central tower by another fashionable Irish architect, Sir Richard Morrison.

The principal rooms are in an elegant gothick style and largely date from the earliest 19th century remodelling. There is a spectacularly vast vaulted hall, with clerestory windows, plain oak paneling, and family crests and arms in elaborate gothic niches. The dining room is an elongated octagon, lit by the windows in a three-sided bow at the outer end, and there is a superb and well-filled library. Many rooms retain the furniture and pictures bought by the 2nd Earl at the beginning of the nineteenth century, while the model Victorian kitchens and laundries are still preserved intact.

The gardens originally consisted of a series of cascades and formal avenues to the south of the house. These were later romanticised in the Loudonesque style, with lakes, grottoes and winding paths, by the second Earl and his wife. They have been extensively restored and adapted by the present owners, Thomas and Valerie Pakenham, with flower borders in the old walled gardens and new plantings of magnolias, rhododendron and giant lilies in the woodland gardens, many collected as seed by Thomas while travelling in China and Tibet. He has recently added a Chinese garden, complete with pagoda, while the surrounding park contains a huge collection of fine specimen trees.

Over the centuries the Pakenham family has produced a series of distinguished soldiers, sailors and diplomats (including two Peninsular War generals and their sister Kitty, wife of the great Duke of Wellington). In more recent years members of the family have been renowned as politicians, historians, writers, biographers and jurists, as gardeners, dendrologists and plantsmen, and as patrons of the theatre, music and the arts.