The final owners of the Malahide Castle, Rose and Baaron Talbot, sold the castle to the state of Ireland for safekeeping’s due to the inability to afford the up keeping in 1975.
Jessica Heneweer
Barcelona, Spain
In my recent trip to Dublin, Ireland, I went to many places such as Trinity College, the Guinness factory and the temple bar block, but the one place that stood out to me the most was the Malahide Castle. Malahide Castle began back in the 12th century, year 1185, by Knight Richard Talbot. Knight Talbot went with Henry II to Ireland on the promise of ample land and harbor. The first part of the castle built was the main room and the lookout tower so it was possible to see if anyone was trying to attack the castle. As we went through the tour of this castle we explored all of the oldest and newest parts of the castle with all of there significance. When we got to the “main room” (the oldest part of the castle) there were many things that we had you stop and notice, one being an original chair from the 12th century that has never left the estate, along with a hiding room for religious figures to hide in while the country was against it. As we kept looking at the artifacts in the room, our guide explained how the Talbots lost reign of the castle for about 10 years and during those years, the new castle owners took it upon themselves to burn and destroy many things throughout the castle. Though the Talbot’s got their castle back, the importance of this was that what is still remaining survived a lot of trauma and despair. Moving through more of the castle, you enter into two different drawing rooms, one for close friends to visit and a larger one for the family to hold extravagant balls and parties. Upstairs in the castle are all of the bedrooms and bathrooms of the family. Though the castle is on 260 acres of land, the castle is not as big as you may expect. The only other room to visit after the bedrooms was the dinning room that sat 20 people and had a library of the far corner of the room. This is also the place where “the money corner” is which is where people would have to come to pay taxes on their land to the Talbots. The family owned this castle for 791 years, down to the last Talbots living in it in 1973, Baaron and Rose Talbot. Baaron dies in 1973 which leaves Rose to fend for herself to maintain, uphold and pay the mortgages on the castle which proved to be too much in 1975 causing Rose to sell the castle to the state of Ireland. There are many places to visit and learn about on the Malahide property and these are just some of them, but if you get the chance to visit Ireland, this is a must see place.
The Global Journal 