Ballyhoura (Limerick) County Limerick
Magnificent Irish castle built with Red Sandstone in the Scottish Baronial style, with breathtaking views of the Ballyhoura mountains.
Thomas Oliver, whose family had owned this area for upwards of two centuries, took the additional surname of Gascoigne when he inherited the Gascoigne estates at Parlington, Yorkshire, in 1812. His daughters Mary and Elizabeth Oliver-Gascoigne (later Mrs FC Trench and Lady Ashtown) rebuilt their ancestral home in 1850 and renamed it Castleoliver.
The young Oliver-Gascoigne ladies employed a Yorkshire architect G. Fowler Jones to design it for them. Scottish Baronial style, it has a massive tower like a keep, and many stepped gables and corbelled oriels. The entrance has a gabled porch-tower over segmental pointed arches to form a porte-cochere. Castleoliver can be seen in the distance from Ardpatrick and Glenosheen. Visible also is Oliver's Folly, an H-shaped structure on the top of a nearby hill.
(Castleoliver is a private residence and not open to the public)
