Inside the grounds of Glin Castle in Co Limerick
Glin Castle in Limerick has been in the FitzGerald family since the 14th century. It is now the home of landscape gardener Catherine FitzGerald, who is continuing its legacy by leaving her mark on its spectacular grounds.
Photography Britt Willoughby Dyer.
Words Caroline Donald.
When Catherine FitzGerald and her younger sisters Nesta and Honor were young, they would entertain their parents and friends staying for the weekend to “mad plays put on with our neighbours” at Glin Castle, for 600 years the family’s home on the shores of the Shannon in Co Limerick. There were plenteous opportunities for theatricals, as her father, Desmond, the 29th Knight of Glin and mother Olda entertained frequently, with house parties and gatherings including everyone from The Rolling Stones, Marianne Faithfull (who turned out not to be so faithful; she left Mick Jagger for Lord Rossmore after one such weekend) and Robert Hughes the Australian art critic, to stalwarts of the Irish Georgian Society, of which Desmond was president. They mixed with local clergy and leading Irish figures such as former president Mary Robinson and her husband Nick, Molly Keane and her daughter Sally Phipps, and the musician Alec Finn. There would be outings and picnic baskets packed to Scattery Island in Co Clare, where Desmond would read from Emily Lawless’s poem “Fontenoy, 1745” on the banks of the river. “It was all very atmospheric,” remembers Catherine.
As Desmond had no sons and died in 2010, Catherine and her husband, actor Dominic West, most recently seen as Prince Charles in The Crown, have taken on the castle with their four children, along with Olda, who now lives in a wing. The tradition of generous entertaining continues, made all the easier and more comfortable by the fact that her parents ran Glin as a boutique hotel in the 1990s, so the 15 beautifully decorated bedrooms have ensuite bathrooms and there is a catering kitchen. Catherine had her 21st here; Dominic, with whom she had been going out at Trinity College, Dublin was a guest, but her attentions were elsewhere. They finally married at Glin in 2010. Dominic had recently been in the hit American series The Wire, so guests included many of his friends from the cast, who enthusiastically joined in for a weekend of partying, with many a trip to O’Shaugnessy’s pub in the village, a short walk away.
Glin’s high-ceilinged, light-filled reception rooms cry out to be filled with merry people. “It’s always been a hospitable house,” says Catherine, grateful to the 23rd Knight, who married an heiress and updated Glin to its present Gothic style. “Unlike many Irish castles, which have dark corridors and stony, rather uncomfortable rooms with small windows, it was castellated in the 18th century, and it’s got the perfect Palladian classical model of a big central hall with Corinthian columns and a fireplace, two big rooms on either side, and the double staircase at the back. It’s just a brilliant plan.”
Catherine is a landscape designer who has worked on Hillsborough Castle and Glenarm, Co Antrim, which won the Historic Houses Garden of the Year Award in 2023, as well as private gardens in both Ireland and the UK, recently formally joining forces with Mark Lutyens, a landscape architect, to form Lutyens & FitzGerald. Meanwhile, back at Glin, she is carrying on the tradition of horticulturally minded chatelaines who have made their mark on the 10 acres of gardens. Her great grandmother Rachel Wyndham Quin was daughter of the 4th Earl of Dunraven, and it is to her and her father, a keen plantsman, that thanks must be given for the Monterey pines and exotic shrubs from around the world, basking in the warm climate afforded by the Gulf Stream and now impressively mature.
Catherine’s grandmother Veronica, wife of the 28th Knight, laid out the formal areas around the house, such as making a central path to create a long vista towards the Persian ironwood at its end, with the topiarised yews amongst the plants added by her parents, who would commandeer willing weekend guests such as Helen Dillon to help them in the garden.
Catherine herself has been extending and tweaking the main garden, but it is in the huge walled garden that her mark can be seen most, carrying on her mother’s use of it for growing produce for the house and adding many ornamental areas, including two long borders, burgeoning with plants and punctuated by Irish yews. It is a sensuous, scented place in which to wander of an evening, breathing in the scent of lilies and the “Dublin Bay” red roses along the south-facing wall.
In recent years the family has opened up the castle to paying guests, whether they be wealthy Americans, such as the singer Taylor Swift, who took it for Christmas; families gathering from around the world for a wedding, or party (someone held a Great Gatsby ball recently); or Dublin companies arranging a weekend brainstorming retreat. They very much encounter Glin as a family home, although there have been some little adjustments to 21st-century tastes, such as a yoga room, a Garden Bar that opens out on to the south-facing terrace, and cookery demonstrations. As since time immemorial, local musicians are on hand to play at Glin, and there is even a dressing-up box, should the desire descend on guests to put on their own mad play for their friends.
This article originally appeared in the Summer 2025 issue of IMAGE.
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