Malahide Castle in Dublin, County Dublin, Ireland | Castle

Malahide Castle, set on 250 acres of park land in the pretty seaside town of Malahide, Dublin Co, Ireland,  was both a fortress and a private home for nearly eight hundred years. The Talbot family lived here from 1185 to 1973, when the last Lord Talbot died.
Malahide Castle is furnished with beautiful period furniture together with an extensive collection of Irish portrait paintings, mainly from the National Gallery. The history of the Talbot family is recorded in the Great Hall, with portraits of generations of the family telling their own story of Ireland's stormy history. One of the more poignant legends concerns the morning of the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, when fourteen members of the family breakfasted together in this room, never to return, as all were dead by nightfall.
Private banquets are held at Malahide Castle in our medieval great Hall for 30-76 persons.
Malahide Castle is very unique in Ireland because the Talbot family managed to keep control of the Castle for 791 years. The Talbot family began their reign in 1185 and ended in 1976 despite a short interlude, 1649 to 1660, while Cromwell marched through Ireland . The lands and harbor of Malahide were granted to Richard Talbot in 1185, one of the knights who arrived in Ireland with Henry II in 1174. According to Burke's Peerage, Richard Talbot or de Talbot was the common ancestor of the Lords of Malahide and of the Earls of Shrewsbury.
The Great Hall of Malahide Castle has been the formal Banqueting Room of the Castle since 1475, and continues to play host to private, exclusive banquets. Guests dine in what is considered to be one of the most important mediaeval rooms in Ireland and are entertained by our String Quartet from the Minstrel’s Gallery.
As befits the oldest inhabited Castle in Ireland, Malahide Castle has many ghostly traditions. Many historic Castles and houses have one ghost, some have two or three, but Malahide Castle has five.