Quintin Castle
Quintin Castle is a castle about 4 km east of Portaferry in County Down, Northern Ireland . It is one of the few Anglo-Norman castles still inhabited in Ireland .
The castle was built by John de Courcy in 1184 and later the Savage family and their relatives, the Smith family, lived there . In the 17th century, Sir James Montgomery , then resident in Rosemount , Gray Abbey , bought the Quintin estate from Dulaltaigh Smith . His son William had a fenced-in courtyard, several smaller towers and a large house next to the central tower, as well as a large kitchen on the lake side, built. Then the whole castle was given a new roof and new ceilings were put in. All of this presumably happened before 1659.
The Montgonerys sold the castle to George Ross , but he never lives in the castle, so it fell into disrepair. Instead, he lived on The Mount Ross estate outside Portaferry. At the beginning of the 19th century, Elizabeth Calvert (née Blacker) , a descendant of the Ross family, inherited the castle and had it renovated in 1850. The central donjon was built, a footpath was created between the battlements, a salon opened onto the inner gardens, and a dining room was built into the bottom floor of the great tower. Most of the property was now fenced in with a massive stone wall.
The Burgess family later bought the property and lived there from the 1930s to the 1950s. Skeets Martin , a Belfast auctioneer , and his wife lived in the castle until the early 1970s. In 1978, Quintin Castle opened as a private retirement home and remained so until it was again privately resold. The castle was extensively renovated by the new owner, McGimpsey and Kane Builders , and sold again in late 2006. The last owner had problems with the preservation and so the castle came into the hands of managers in 2012.
Sources and web links
- Thomas Byers: Quintin Castle . Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure. Archived from the original on September 30, 2007. Retrieved October 22, 2015.
Coordinates: 54 ° 22 ′ 36.5 " N , 5 ° 29 ′ 20.8" W.