Castle Forbes, County Longford 

Mark Bence-Jones. A Guide to Irish Country Houses (originally published as Burke’s Guide to Country Houses volume 1 Ireland by Burke’s Peerage Ltd. 1978); Revised edition 1988 Constable and Company Ltd, London.

p. 67. “(Forbes, Granard, E/PB) A 19th century castle of random ashlar, built about 1830 partly to the design of John Hargrave, of Cork; replacing an earlier house destroyed by fire.  

It has two storeys over a high basement, with two adjoining fronts dominated by a lofty, round corner tower. Entrance front with door in a square tower, prolonged by a low service wing and a gateway to the yard in the French style, with a high roof and conical-roofed turret and bartizan added about 1870 to the design of J.J. McCarthy. Adjoining front with four bay block prolonged by lower gabled wing. Heavy battlements and machicolations; lancet windows separated by stone mullions and some Early English tracery windows. Corbelled stone balconies with pierced balustrades.  The interior of the castle was done up in great splendour following the marriage of 8^th Earl of Granard to Beatrice, daughter of Ogden Mills, of Staatsburg, Dutchess County, USA, 1909.” 

Photograph from National Library of Ireland. 

https://www.buildingsofireland.ie/buildings-search/building/13303028/castle-forbes-castleforbes-demesne-newtown-forbes-co-longford

Main entrance gates to Castle Forbes (13303001), erected, c. 1820, comprising a pair of cut limestone gate piers (on square-plan) having cut limestone capstones and replacement gates. Main carriage entrance flanked to either side (north and south) by sections of rubble limestone walling having integral square-headed pedestrian entrances with cut stone surrounds and wrought-iron gates, and terminated by cut stone gate piers with cut stone capstones. Flanking rubble limestone walls on quadrant-plan to either side, terminated by cut stone piers on square-plan with cut stone capstones. Located to the centre of Newtown-Forbes, to the west side of the main street, and to the east of Castle Forbes (13303001). Altered single-storey gate lodge to the south. 

Appraisal 

This imposing and well-crafted gateway serves as the main entrance to Castle Forbes (13303001) and forms part of an extensive collection of related structures/sites associated with this important demesne. Good quality craftsmanship is apparent in the cut limestone gate piers and the surrounds to the pedestrian entrance. The simple but imposing flanking walls add to the setting and help create a suitably impressive main entrance to the castle/house. It creates an appealing feature in the centre of Newtown-Forbes, which is indicative of the central role Castle Forbes has played in the development of Newtown-Forbes. 

https://www.buildingsofireland.ie/buildings-search/building/13303001/castle-forbes-castleforbes-demesne-newtown-forbes-co-longford

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Detached Gothic style six-bay two-storey over raised basement castellated country house/castle on irregular plan, built c. 1830, extensively remodeled/rebuilt c. 1860, and incorporating the fabric of earlier seventeenth century structure(s). Remodeled c. 1925, following fire damage. Comprises central block with advanced single-bay four-storey breakfront on square-plan (having a chapel to the top storey), five-stage tower on circular-plan (with battered base) attached to the south corner and recessed two-bay block attached to the north end. Lower two-storey service wing attached to north (set back from principal block), four-bay elevation to south with lower connecting corridor joining three-bay wing block, and incorporating seventeenth century structure built c. 1660 and remodeled c. 1830. Internal and external remodelling undertaken c. 1925. Hipped natural slate roofs with cut limestone chimneystacks, chamfered crenellations, machicolations (with stepped moulded corbels) and corner turrets. Snecked limestone and granite walls with cut limestone and granite trim, now largely ivy-clad. Cross pommée motifs to top stage of tower. Paired and tripartite cusped, pointed and round-headed window openings with cut stone surrounds, tracery and hood mouldings to main body of building with one-over-one pane timber sliding sash and replacement windows. Quadripartite pointed arch window opening above main entrance (at first floor level) with limestone tracery and mullions under hood moulding. Paired pointed arch window openings to tower with plate limestone tracery under hoodmoulding; paired cusped lancet openings with quatrefoil detail over at first floor level. Round-headed door opening to advanced central block with carved limestone surround and double-leaf glazed doors with wrought and cast-iron detailing. Doorway reached by flight of cut stone steps. Set within its own grounds with adjoining entrance tower to north (13303002) and stable block (13303003) to rear. Located in extensive mature landscaped grounds/demesne to the northwest of Newtown-Forbes. Lough Forbes and River Shannon form western boundary of Demesne. 

Appraisal 

This imposing country house is important not only for its imposing architectural style but also for the personalities associated with it. It largely dates to the nineteenth century (c. 1830 and c. 1860), but it contains fabric dating from the seventeenth, and probably the eighteenth century, creating a complex and confusing chronology. The style of this building is typical of a number of large castellated Gothic houses built and/or extended in Ireland during the first half of the nineteenth century, including the Knockdrin Castle, Tullynally Castle and Killua Castle, all in neighbouring County Westmeath. Castle Forbes has been the home of a branch of the Forbes family (later Earls of Granard from 1684), originally from Scotland, since the early-seventeenth century. The design of Castle Forbes is similar to that of its namesake in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, built in 1815 (by a branch of the Forbes family), in that it has a central breakfront containing the main entrance and a massive tower on circular plan attached to one end of the principal elevation. Arthur Forbes (later baronet of Nova Scotia) was originally granted extensive lands in County Longford c. 1620 and built a residence (on L-shaped plan and possibly incorporating the fabric of an existing castle) soon after. This house/castle was later heavily damaged by a siege during the rebellion of 1641. This house was described by Dowdall (1682) as a ‘fair aid spacious house with lovely gardens of pleasure’. Eighteenth century fabric survives to the interior of Castle Forbes, suggesting that it was altered during this century. A devastating fire in 1825 destroyed much of the original seventeenth century house, and the 6th Earl of Granard’s family was accommodated in the surviving wings, which were remodeled by John Hargrave (c. 1788 – 1833) of Cork in the late 1820s. It would appear that the rebuilding of the main house/castle was undertaken by the 7th Earl, George Forbes and his Roman Catholic wife, Jane Colclough, c. 1860. They chose the rising architect J. J. McCarthy (1817 – 1882) to execute the building in the Gothic Revival style, a style with which he was familiar due to his church commissions from the Roman Catholic Church. A number of the window openings, particularly the paired lancets to the main body of the building and the paired cusped lancets with quatrefoil detailing to the tower, are distinctly ecclesiastical in character and were probably inspired by McCarthy’s numerous church commissions. Further remodelling was undertaken following a fire in 1923 by F.W. Foster of London, under the directions of the then Countess, Beatrice Mills. The execution of the interior and exterior features is testament to the skill of the craftsmen involved and to the architect’s design. Set within private grounds Castle Forbes forms the centrepiece of a complex group of buildings, which still serve a working demesne. Castle Forbes has the largest demesne in County Longford and is one of the most important elements of the architectural heritage of the county. The Forbes family is important in the history of Longford and indeed the wider history of Ireland. In 1661, the Manor of Mullingar was granted to Sir Arthur Forbes, whose family would own/control the town for 200 years. The 1st Earl of Granard (title created 1684), Sir Arthur Forbes (1623 – 1695), served as a lieutenant general in the British Army and was later Lord Justice of Ireland (in office 1671 and 1673). The 3rd Earl of Granard, George Forbes (1685 – 1765), was an admiral in the Royal Navy. The sixth Earl, George Forbes (1760 – 1837), was made Baron Granard in 1806, a title that gave the Earls an automatic seat in the House of Lords. The 8th Earl, Bernard Arthur William Patrick Hastings Forbes, held junior office in the Liberal administrations of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman and H. H. Asquith and was later a member of the Irish Senate from 1922 to 1934. 

Featured in Mark Bence Jones, Life in an Irish Country House. Constable, London. 1996. 

https://archiseek.com/2015/1830-castle-forbes-newtownforbes-co-longford

1830 – Castle Forbes, Newtownforbes, Co. Longford 

Architect: J.J. McCarthy 

A 19th century castle of random ashlar, built about 1830, replacing an earlier house destroyed by fire. It has two storeys over a high basement, with two adjoining fronts dominated by a lofty, round corner tower. The house has heavy battlements and machiolations; lancet windows separated by stone mullions; and a few Early English tracery windows. There is a service wing and a gateway to the yard in the French style, with a high roof and conical-roofed turret and bartizan added about 1870 to designs by J.J. McCarthy. Illustrati0n published in The Irish Builder, November 15 1880. 

https://www.geni.com/projects/Historic-Buildings-of-County-Longford/29631

Castleforbes or Castle Forbes, Restored Castle. Seat of the Earls of Granard, Castleforbes is situated about three miles from Longford town, standing between the river Shannon and Newtownforbes; a 19th century cut limestone structure. Designed by John Hargrave from Cork. Castleforbes was built in 1624 by Lady Jane Lauder, wife of Sir Arthur Forbes, 1st Baronet of Longford. In 1825, the castle was partly burned but restored soon afterwards. The complete decoration of the castle was completed in 1909, following the marriage of Beatrice, daughter of Ogden Mills of Strasburg to the Bernard Forbes, Earl of Granard 

Casey, Christine and Alistair Rowan. The Buildings of Ireland: North Leinster. Penguin Books, London, 1993.  

p. 189. “Both its scale and its well-built character were contributed by its architect, for theh ouse, unusualy, is a grand domestic design by the leading Catholic church architect of the day, James Joseph McCarthy. The window openings are McCarthy’s familiar paired lancets. Above the front door is a four-light mullioned window, typical of many a church clerestory, while pointed windows on the principal tower are paired cusped lancets with a quatrefoil above, identical to those that appear in the side aisles of the architect’s churches throughout Ireland. Even the label mouldings above the windows rest on square blocks of stone that have been left uncarved, as happened with many of McCarthy’s churches. So the details of Castle Forbes come out of the office ecclesiasticl drawer and are made to serve the purposes of domestic architecture. 

The Victorian house is set at the corner of a complex series of offices and yards, running as a range of low, two-storey buildings, north to a turreted gateway and a separate round turret, and west, past a battlemented tower with flanking walls, to a small battlemented block and then a long garden wall, also with crenellations, which extends for over 90 m. The house is thus part of a larger setting and was intended to compose picturesquely as the culmination of two long views. At their apex McCarthy set an ample round tower, rather too dominant in the composition, with a battered base, five storeys and, at the top, a machicolated parapet, fully corbelled out, so that a visitor can look up at the curving surface of the tower to squares of sky appearing between the corbels and the battlements. A second, square tower in the middle of the entrance front is four storeys high (with a chapel on the top floor), and the rest of the building is of two storeys set on a high basement. 

Round towers at the corners of a Gothic mansion were very much part of the standard repertoire of motifs in English and Irish picturesque buildings in the early C19. McCarthy uses the motif late in its history and to off effect, as the tower has no answering element at hte other end of either the east or the south front. It makes the principal elevations lop-sided, and the soft, circular form is at variance with the somewhat institutional square style of the rest of the house. Indeed it looks like something stuck on; but it is just possible that there was an influence from the client in the choice of this feature. Castle Forbes is the seat of the Irish branch of the Forbes family, which originally came from Scotland. There is a second Castle Forbes at Whitehouse in Aberdeenshire, and that house, which was designed by Archibald Simpson in 1815, at the hieght of the picturesque movement, has a similar though slightly larger round tower set at one corner. In Ireland the family may have wanted to include an allusion to its Scottish origins and could [p. 190] have asked McCarthy to incorporate a single corner tower in the new house. 

Arthur Forbes, the sixth son of William Forbes of Corss, settled in Ireland in 1620. In 1628 he became a baronet of Nova Scotia when he obtained a grant of lands in Co Longford, including a large late medieval Irish castle, whose barrel vaulted basement and first-floor wall – clearly identified by the use of rubble and boulder stone – still forms part of the entrance fron tof the present Castle Forbes. On the south side of this castle and a little in front of it Sir Arthur built a new L-shaped house: two storeys on a basement, with high hipped roofs, and a big stepped-chimney lum, on the south side, supporting a range of tall diagonal shaped chimneystacks, typical of early C17 houses in Ireland. All the windows were paired mullioned lights. Sir ARthur’s house must have been finished by 1632, the year in which he was killed in a duel in Hamburg. It was defended successfully by his widow, Jane Lauder, in 1641 and remained the family home until 1825, when most of the building was destroyed by a fire. Its appearance in the late C18 is accurately recorded by two views: a sketch of the south side by Thomas Auchtermuchty and an anonymous view of the main front dated July 1799. All that survives today is a coat of arms coupling three muzzled bear heads for Sir Arthur Forbes and a rampant griffon for Jane Lauder, with the initials AF and IL. These are above the battlemented gateway west of the house, and McCarthy’s new mansion has replaced everything else. 

§om 1684 Sir Arthur’s eldest son, who had succeeded to the estates, was raised to the peerage as Earl of Granard. When the C17 house caught fire in 1825 it belonged to George Forbes, the sixth Earl; the hero on that occasion was a springer spaniel called Pilot which according to the inscription on his portrait “pulled the Viscount Forbes out of his bed when the Castle Forbes was on fire.” By this date the C17 house had gained extensive additions in two long, two-storey wings running back from the main house; and it seems that these, which still exist, were extended and adapted for family use following the fire. The west end of the long extension to the house dates from this period, with pretty Gothic castle details, such as dummy arrow slits, stepped battlements and a mullioned window copied from Pugin’s Specimens of Gothic Architecture with carved label stops of a male and female head. This work was apparently carried out to designs of John Hargrave, who possibly made part of the ruins of the C17 house habitable at the same period. 

The first notice of McCarthy being employed at Castle Forbes comes from The Dublin Builder for Sept 1859, which reported that ‘a new range of stabling of a very superior character’ was to be built to his designs. The builder was to be a Mr R. Farrell. Exactly one year before, the seventh Earl, who had succeeded his grandfather in 1837 as a child of not quite four, was married, now aged twenty-five, to a wealthy Catholic heiress, Jane Colclough from Johnstown Castle, Co Wicklow. 

p. 191. The new Countess of Granard had both the funds and the taste to commission a new castle from a rising Catholic architect; as Johnstown Castle, a design by Daniel Robertson, was a Gothic house with many towers, bay windows and a romantic silhouette, the style she would expect to build in must have been something similar, only bolder and more modern. No doubt when Castle Forbes was completed its hard firm details and bold pitch-pine interiors must have seemed radically different from the more delicate plaster Gothic of the late Georgian period or the tame manorial style popular for early Victorian houses. 

p. 191. In 1923, not long after the eight Earl had been elected a member of the Senate of the Irish Free State, Castle Forbes was set on fire. The south half of McCarthy’s main block was burnt nd, htough the extent of the damage is not clear, perhaps it was not very great – the fire provided an opportunity for another remodelling of the house, now of McCarthy’s interior, to suit the taste of the eight Lord Granard and his American wife, Beatrice Mills. This work was largely the cocern of the Countess, who, with the assistance of the London architect F.W. Foster, extended sections of the castle to change the proportions of McCarthy’s rooms, making space for a series of historicist interiors to replace the Victorian rooms. In these alterations the dining room wall was brought forward almost to the level of the entrance tower and lost, in the process, a large bay window which McCarthy had provided to light the ‘high-table’ end of the room. On the south front two balconies, with Ruskinian pierced stone fronts, were removed as inappropriate, and two windows were blanked out when the rooms inside were combined to create one long drawing room. Behind the main house, the west extension, a gabled manorial range which probably predated McCarthy’s work, was rebuilt as a heavy, rectangular two-storey block to contain a large library. 

All that remains of the Victorian interior is the Gallery connecting the hall to the library – a long, high corridor with assertive, single-chamfer ribbed vaulting, springing from sharp prismatic corbels, as in authentic late Gothic work in Ireland, and surrounding three hexagonal roof-lights, authentically C19, and filled with orange and brown staired glass and Forbes bears. The windows in the gallery are long Y-traceried lights. Niches opposite flank a large and plain neo-Norman fireplace, whose arch is decorated with studs. The Main Tower Room is also unaltered since McCarthy’s day. It has exposed pine shutters and a doorway framed by timber colonnettes with leaf-carved lintel and a crenellated cornice. [p. 192] Old photographs show that this was the standard door for the main rooms of the house. The dining room had the same and also a Caen stone chimneypiece with paired marble colonnettes supporting an armorial achievement. The Crypt, or lower hall, is much as McCarthy left it, with shoulder arches to the windows and Romanesque brass door furniture inspired by the designs of Pugin or Burges. The main staircase was of white stone with coloured marble bosses. 

In her refurbishment of the house Lady Granard was assisted by two teams of decorators: Fernand Allard from Paris and Lenygon and Morant of 31 Old Burlington St, London. Allard designed the Hall and Staircase, lining the walls with elegant pale grey ashlar blocks with broad white pointing, round-headed arches and divided mirrored doors. The ceiling cornice is a reticent pattern of shallow modillions and the stair rails are light wrought-iron scrolls in the manner of Francois Blondel. The English decorators, who also fitted out the Cunard liners of this period, provided three contrasting rooms. The Dining Room is a formal square, lined in oak, with bolection-moulded panelling, adn given a trompe l-oeil ceiling of a late baroque open dome. Fluted Corinthian columns supporting large segmental pediments frame the principal doors, giving the impression of a Wren-school room of C. 1700. The Drawing Room is an English Palladian interior in the manner of William Kent, with paired chimneypieces with pedimented overmantels, fish-scaled console brackets and continuously carved mouldings. The ceiling has an C18 allegorical canvas showing the Genius of Architecture. The Library, a large rectangular room, is lined with bookcases of exposed timber boiserie with an ambitious ceiling canvas, possibly late C17 and Dutch, depicting Faith, HOpe and Charity, in a moulded central oval, with figures of the four seasons set in each corner. The Chapel contains a gilt and timber late baroque retable, c. 1730 and probably French. 

McCarthy’s stableyard is approached by a detached gatehouse, a small two-storey building with hipped roof and angle bartizans with conical slate roofs at each corner. It carried an achievement of arms of the seventh Earl, carved in high relief, over the entrance arch. The wall to the north of this may be part of the bawn wall of the original castle. Within the courtyard McCarthy built a long west range of stable offices; two storeys of coursed snecked rubble with a central carriage arch surmounted by a clocktower and flanked by battlemented gables. The facade is rather flat. At its north end a small square turret carries a royal coat of arms, C16 and apparently of Queen Elizabeth. 

A small tower and dovecote, SE, may have been a flanker for the C17 house.  

South of the house are several mature Lebanon cedars, Spanish chestnut trees and an enclosed Italian garden, laid out on one long axis with a central fountain, urns, and yew hedges focusing on the statue of Perseus after Canova. AT the entrance to the rose garden the large Armorial eagles, carved in stone and flanking the gateway, were once the supporters of the arms of the Early of Tylney (Viscount Castlemaine and Baron Newtown in the Irish Peerage) which were brought to Castle Forbes when Lord Tylney’s home, Wanstead House in Essex, the earliest Palladian country house, designed by Colen Campbell, was demolished ca. 1812. The gates also carry an inscribed stone of 1567 recording the capture by Sir Henry Sidney of “the great rebel Shane O’Nele” brought “in Subjectino to the Crown of Engladn to the Great Joyie of the REalm” In the park the ruin of a rectangular later medieval church, rubble built with gables, has been adapted at the chancel end to serve as the family mausoleum.” 

http://lordbelmontinnorthernireland.blogspot.com/2013/05/castle-forbes.html

THE EARLS OF GRANARD WERE THE SECOND LARGEST LANDOWNERS IN COUNTY LONGFORD, WITH 14,978 ACRES  

The surname of Forbes is said to be a corruption of Forebeast, which was originally assumed by the founder of the family in Scotland, to commemorate the achievement of having destroyed a ferocious bear which had infested the country. 

SIR ARTHUR FORBES (c1590-1632), Knight, directly descended from the Hon Patrick Forbes, of Corse, third son of James, 2nd Lord Forbes, by Egidia, his wife, daughter of William Keith, Earl Marischal of Scotland, settled in Ireland, 1620, and was made, by patent dated at Dublin, 1622, a free denizen of that kingdom. 

In 1628, Sir Arthur was created a baronet; and having, by petition to the King, made discovery that several royal fishings in the province of Ulster belonged to the Crown, an inquiry was thereupon instituted, and Sir Arthur was eventually rewarded by a grant of such proportion of the said fisheries as he thought proper to demand, besides the sum of £300 from the first profits of the remainder. 

He had previously obtained extensive territorial possessions from the Crown, particularly a grant of sundry lands in County Longford, in all 1,266 acres, which were erected into the manor of Castle Forbes, with the usual manorial privileges. 

Sir Arthur wedded Jane Lowther, and falling in a duel at Hamburg, 1632, where he had accompanied his regiment (he was lieutenant-colonel in the army) to assist Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, was succeeded by his eldest son, 

THE RT HON SIR ARTHUR FORBES, 2nd Baronet (1623-95), who zealously espoused the royal cause in Scotland, and was rewarded, after the Restoration, by being sworn of the Privy Council in Ireland, and appointed marshal of the army in that kingdom. 

In 1671, Sir Arthur was constituted one of the Lords Justices of Ireland, and again in 1675, when he was elevated to the peerage, in the dignities of Baron Clanehugh and Viscount Granard. 

In 1684, his lordship was appointed Colonel of the Royal Regiment of Foot in Ireland, and Lieutenant-General in the army; and in the same year was advanced to the dignity of an earldom, as EARL OF GRANARD. 

He married Catherine, daughter of Sir Robert Newcomen Bt, by whom he had five sons and a daughter, Catherine, wedded to Arthur, 3rd Earl of Donegall. 

His lordship died in 1695, he was succeeded by his eldest son, 

ARTHUR, 2nd Earl (c1656-1734), who wedded, in 1678, Mary, eldest daughter of Sir George Rawdon Bt, of Moira, County Down, and had three sons and two daughters. 

His lordship was succeeded by his only surviving son, 

GEORGE, 3rd Earl (1685-1765), who had been called to the House of Lords in the lifetime of his father, as Lord Forbes. 

His lordship was a naval officer of great eminence and rank, and at the time of his decease, was senior admiral of the Royal Navy. 

In 1733, he was appointed envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to the court of Muscovy; and upon his recall, in 1734, was highly complimented by the Empress. 

He espoused, in 1709, Mary, eldest daughter of Sir William Stewart, 1st Viscount Mountjoy, of that family (now extinct), and widow of Phineas Preston, of Ardsallagh, County Meath, and had issue, 

GEORGE, his successor; 

John, Admiral of the Fleet; 

His lordship was succeeded by his elder son,  

GEORGE, 4th Earl (1710-69), Lieutenant-General in the Army, Colonel, 29th Regiment of Foot, who wedded, in 1736, Letitia, daughter of Arthur Davys, and was succeeded at his decease, in 1769, by his only son, 

GEORGE, 5th Earl (1740-80), who married firstly, in 1759, Dorothea, second daughter of Sir Nicholas Bayley Bt, and sister of Henry, 1st Earl of Uxbridge, by whom he had one surviving son, GEORGE, his successor. 

His lordship espoused secondly, in 1766, Georgiana Augusta, eldest daughter of Augustus, 4th Earl of Berkeley, and had issue, 

Henry; 
Frederick; 
Georgiana Anne; Augusta; Louisa Georgiana; Elizabeth. 

His lordship was succeeded by his eldest son, 

GEORGE, 6th Earl (1760-1837), who was created a peer of the United Kingdom, as Baron Granard, of Castle Donington, Leicestershire. 

He wedded, in 1779, Selina Frances, fourth daughter of John, 1st Earl of Moira, and had issue, 

GEORGE JOHN, father of GEORGE ARTHUR HASTINGS; 
Francis Reginald; 
Hastings Brudenell; 
Elizabeth Maria Theresa; Adelaide Dorothea; Caroline Selina. 

His lordship was a general in the army, and Clerk of the Crown and Hanaper in Ireland. 

• George, 6th Earl (1760–1837); 

• George John Forbes, Viscount Forbes (1785-1836); 

• George Arthur Hastings, 7th Earl (1833-89); 

• Bernard Arthur William Patrick Hastings, 8th Earl (1874–1948); 

• Arthur Patrick Hastings, 9th Earl (1915-92); 

• Peter Arthur Edward Hastings, 10th Earl (b 1957). 

The heir apparent is the present holder’s son, Jonathan Peter Hastings Forbes, styled Viscount Forbes (b 1981). 

The ancestral family seat of the Earls of Granard is Castle Forbes, near Newtown Forbes, County Longford. 

It remains in the ownership of the family (as of 2008). 

The 8th Earl was the last Lord-Lieutenant of County Longford, from 1916 until 1922. 

CASTLE FORBES, near Newtownforbes, County Longford, is a 19th century castle of random ashlar, built about 1830. 

It replaced an earlier house destroyed by fire.  

It has two storeys over a high basement, with two adjoining fronts dominated by a lofty, round corner tower. 

The house is prolonged by a low service wing and a gateway to the yard in the French style, with a high roof and conical-roofed turret and bartizan added about 1870. 

Castle Forbes has heavy battlements and machiolations; lancet windows separated by stone mullions; and a few Early English tracery windows. 

There are also corbelled stone balconies with pierced balustrades.  

The Castle remains the private home of the Forbes family, Earls of Granard. 

The village of Newtownforbes takes its name from the Forbes family, having resided in the region since 1691. 

The village church, built in the late 17th century, is one of the few Regency buildings of its type in the county. 

Castle Forbes has its entrance in the centre of the village. 

The Forbes family changed the name of the village from Lisbrack to Newtownforbes  ca 1750. 

There is no public access to the Castle or grounds, which are strictly private. 

Although Newtownforbes geographically has always been in the shadow of Castle Forbes, it cannot be regarded as an estate village. 

There are only a few houses in the centre of the village, near the main entrance to the estate, which were built by the estate owners for the workers on the estate. 

They were some of the first houses in the county to have flush toilets. 

The present occupant is the Lady Georgina Forbes, although she lives in France (as of 1990) and uses the castle occasionally during the year. 

Lady Georgina is an accomplished horse breeder and owner.