Where history family fun and gardens await

ONE morning in early July, 17 members of an Irish family sat down to a hearty breakfast before embarking on a great adventure. That evening, only one of them was still alive.
They were all brothers, uncles and cousins of the Talbot family of Malahide, and the year was 1690. The great adventure was the Battle of the Boyne, fought only a few miles up the road outside Drogheda, and having taken part on the losing side, the Talbots were fortunate not to be deprived of the estate they had held for over 400 years.
But they did hold on for the best part of another 300, and when Dublin City Council finally brought Malahide Castle and Demesne into public ownership in 1976, it was the only Irish estate to have been owned by a single family since within a century of the Norman invasion.
Malahide may seem a long way from Co Galway, but with the new motorway system it is within two and a half hours of here, and it is well worth a visit for its own sake, or as part of a wider excursion to Dublin.