Ashford Castle

Ashford Castle stands on the shore of Lough Corrib in County Mayo, Ireland, begun in 1228 by the Anglo-Norman de Burgo family as a fortified structure built into the edge of an earlier monastic site. The brewing magnate Sir Benjamin Guinness purchased the estate in 1852 and added two large Victorian extensions, and his son Arthur Guinness, later Lord Ardilaun, further enlarged the castle with a new west wing designed by the architects James Franklin Fuller and George Ashlin between 1875 and 1881, adding battlements across the building to unify its medieval and Victorian sections into a single Gothic Revival composition. The estate was first converted into a hotel in 1939, and after a series of later owners it was extensively restored by Red Carnation Hotels and reopened in 2015. It now operates as a five-star hotel while retaining the layered medieval and Victorian fabric of its earlier centuries.