Ulster and Dublin The
caput, or
family seat, has been in several locations over the centuries, usually in the east of
Ulster. Joymount House was built for
the 1st Baron Chichester in the 1610s in
Carrickfergus in the south-east of
County Antrim, probably being completed in 1618. Joymount, along with
Chichester House on the outskirts of
Dublin and the
Plantation-era
Belfast Castle in the centre of
Belfast, were the three original principal residences of the Chichester family in Ireland.
Lord Chichester maintained
Chichester House, located on the Hoggen Green (now
College Green), as his 'town' residence on what was then the eastern edge of
Dublin. Joymount House was probably demolished in the early eighteenth century, while
Parliament House was built on the site of Chichester House in Dublin in the early 1730s. The Plantation-era Belfast Castle was largely destroyed by fire on 24 April 1708 and was not rebuilt. In the early to mid-nineteenth century, the family seats were: Donegall House, a large
townhouse on the corner of what is now Donegall Place and
Donegall Square North in
central Belfast (Donegall House was later converted, in the 1820s, into a hotel called The Royal Hotel); and Ormeau House (formerly Ormeau Cottage), a mansion largely built in the 1820s in the Ormeau
Demesne (now
Ormeau Park) in
County Down, in what was then the south-eastern outskirts of
Belfast. Both these residences were later demolished, with Ormeau House being demolished in 1869 or 1870.
The 2nd Marquess of Donegall, again during the early to mid-nineteenth century, also maintained Fisherwick Lodge, a hunting 'lodge' near
Doagh in
County Antrim, on the family's country estate there. Later in the nineteenth century,
Belfast Castle, on the lower slopes of
Cave Hill in North Belfast, was purpose-designed and built for
the 3rd Marquess of Donegall as the main residence of the family. This new Belfast Castle, a
Victorian structure built in the 1860s, was inherited by
the 8th Earl of Shaftesbury and his wife in October 1883, thus passing out of the ownership of the Chichester family. Lord Shaftesbury had married the daughter of the third Marquess. (photographed in August 2011), constructed for
the 3rd Marquess of Donegall on the slopes of
Cave Hill in the 1860s.
County Wexford From October 1953 until about 1996,
Dunbrody House, formerly the seat of the
Barons Templemore near
Arthurstown in the south-west of
County Wexford, was the family seat of
the 7th Marquess of Donegall. From October 1953 until May 1975, the seventh Marquess was known as the 5th
Baron Templemore. Arthurstown was named for
the 1st Earl of Donegall. The house was sold by the seventh Marquess to chef
Kevin Dundon, who converted it into a luxury hotel and restaurant in 1997. What remains of the Dunbrody Estate is, however, still in the ownership of the current head of the family, The 8th Marquess of Donegall, whose present family seat is the much smaller Dunbrody Park within the estate grounds. ==Baron Chichester (1613)==