Hillsborough Castle A British Royal Palace

From grand family homes to charming royal residences, Hillsborough Castle has welcomed the world and witnessed pivotal chapters in politics. This beautiful late Georgian mansion was built in the 1770s by Wills Hill, the first Marquis of Downshire, and was later remodelled in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Successive generations of the Hill family enjoyed the house as a family home, renovating and redecorating it in the latest styles and improving the gardens until the early 20th century when Hillsborough Castle began to develop the political and royal associations for which it's famous today. Today it is a working royal palace, functioning as the official residence of the royal family when they are in Northern Ireland, and it has been the home of the Secretary of State since the 1970s. Surrounded by 100 acres of beautiful gardens developed from the 1760s onwards, offering a contrast of ornamental grounds, peaceful woodland, meandering waterways, and trimmed lawns, Hillsborough is a late 18th century Irish big house rather than a castle. It was very common for the rich, predominantly Anglo-Irish upper classes to call their grand country houses castles, as this reinforced the antiquity of their families. Since April 2014, Hillsborough Castle has been managed by Historic Royal Palaces and is open to the public on certain dates.