history-timeline

The IRA leaders in Dublin marked Dromoland Castle for destruction. However, sabotage orders were reversed at the last minute at the urgent request of local IRA leaders in County Clare, who argued that the Inchiquin Lords had been fair and benevolent in dealing with their tenant farmers. Sir Lucius O’Brien, the 13th Baron of Inchiquin…

Although the family’s good reputation saved the castle during the revolution, the later loss of income after the forced sale of the tenant farms made the castle and the 2,000+ acre estate increasingly difficult for the Inchiquins to keep. After the death of the 15th Baron of Inchiquin in 1929, Dromoland was supported mainly by…

Dromoland Castle, Lord Inchiquin’s historic seat at Newmarket-on-Fergus, Co.Clare, was one of the few big houses to escape destruction what they facetiously call “The Trouble” in Ireland. This was lucky, because it is one of the show places in the South. Lord Inchiquin is a Senator of the Irish Free State and was elected in…

After Lady Ethel’s death, her oldest son, Sir Donough O’Brien, the 16th Baron of Inchiquin, and his wife, Lady Anne, daughter of Viscount Chelmsford, a Viceroy of India, managed to maintain Dromoland Castle as a traditional ancestral home for more than twenty years. Lord Inchiquin tried to make the estate self-supporting as a dairy farm,…

Lord Inchiquin sold the castle, along with some 330 acres of surrounding land, and the hunting and fishing rights to Mr. Bernard McDonough, an American industrialist, whose grandparents were born in Ireland. Conor O’Brien, the 18th baron, and his family live in Thomond House and continue to farm and run part of the estate as…

The castle underwent major renovations to transform the ancestral home into a luxury hotel. When the castle was officially reopened as a Resort Hotel, visitors who remembered it from the days of the Inchiquins marvelled at the preservation of its stately, warm and cheerful baronial country house atmosphere. The public rooms on the main floor…

A consortium of mainly Irish American investors purchased the castle and estate. Through their continued investment and management, the castle has enjoyed a worldwide reputation for excellence and is regarded as one of the great resorts in Europe.