Ashford Castle

Where it sits. Ashford stands on the northern shore of Lough Corrib at the edge of Cong, its towers rising directly out of the water on one side and out of formal terraces on the other. The estate covers about 350 acres of woodland, parkland and shoreline, with a walled garden, a golf course and several kilometres of lake frontage; the boundary wall runs into the village, so the grounds and Cong's medieval abbey are effectively a single landscape. Lough Corrib beyond it is the largest lake in the Republic of Ireland, dotted with wooded islands, and the estate's pier is the departure point for boats out to Inchagoill.

The story behind it. The oldest fabric belongs to a de Burgo castle of 1228, built after the Anglo-Norman defeat of the O'Connors of Connacht, and the stump of that tower is embedded in the present building. In 1715 the Browne family added a French-styled hunting lodge; the transformation into what stands today began in 1852, when Benjamin Lee Guinness bought the estate and extended it, and continued under his son Arthur Edward Guinness, Lord Ardilaun, who added the two great neo-Gothic wings, the battlements and the entrance front to designs largely by James Franklin Fuller in the 1870s. Ardilaun ran the estate on an enormous scale, planting hundreds of thousands of trees and building roads for his guests to drive on; the Prince and Princess of Wales, later George V and Queen Mary, stayed here in 1905 and a road was laid specifically for their visit. The estate passed out of the family in 1939 and became a hotel under Noel Huggard. In 2013 it was bought by the Tollman family's Red Carnation collection, closed, and reopened in 2015 after a restoration reported to have cost around 75 million euro. It now has eighty-three rooms and has run more or less continuously as one of Ireland's best-known country house hotels.

On screen. Ashford's principal film credit is The Quiet Man (1952). John Ford based his production here during the Irish shoot in the summer of 1951 — John Wayne, Maureen O'Hara, Barry Fitzgerald and Victor McLaglen were all housed in the castle — and the estate's woods, driveways, river and shoreline appear repeatedly in the film's exteriors around the fictional village of Innisfree, with the neighbouring streets of Cong supplying the village itself. The building's own silhouette is used sparingly; Ford was more interested in the parkland and the water than in the towers. The estate has since become a familiar backdrop for period television, fashion photography and documentary, and it has hosted enough film-world visitors to fill a wall of photographs in the bar, among them the wedding of Pierce Brosnan in 2001 and a visit by Ronald Reagan in 1984 during his Irish tour.

What you actually see today. Non-residents can buy access to the grounds, and the walk is worth it on its own: the terraces along the lake, the walled garden, the woodland paths towards Cong Abbey, and the view back at the castle from the far side of the river. Ireland's School of Falconry, established on the estate in 1999, runs hawk walks in which a Harris hawk is flown to and from the visitor's glove through the woods — the best-known activity here and one that books out well ahead in summer. There is also clay shooting, lake fishing for brown trout, and boat trips to the islands. Inside, the public rooms keep the Guinness-era plasterwork, panelling and a substantial collection of Irish art; afternoon tea and dinner are open to non-residents by reservation, with a dress code that is enforced.

Getting there and timing. The gates are in Cong village, about forty-five minutes from Galway city and thirty-five from Knock airport; Dublin is roughly three hours by road. Room rates are firmly in the luxury bracket and peak from June to August and around Christmas, when the castle decorates on a heroic scale. The main house, the terraces and the principal garden paths are wheelchair accessible with lifts and level entrances; the woodland trails and the lake shore are gravel and uneven in places. Anyone not staying can still get most of the setting for the price of a grounds ticket, a coffee in the village and an hour's walk along the river between the castle and the abbey.