CASTLEWELLAN Castle played host to the official launch of a new book on its history last week.
‘The Big Grey Castle’ by Robert Trotter, which details the ‘life and history of the Annesley family at Castlewellan Castle’, was released on Thursday at a special event attended by the great-grandchildren of Mabel Annesley – Ruaridh Ogilvie, who was accompanied by his wife Jeanette, and Wink Ogilvie.
Generations of the author’s ancestors worked – as stonemasons, gardeners and gatekeepers – and lived on the estate, and his mother, Emily Trotter, was employed in the castle in the 1940s.
Robert said that growing up in such a historic place gave him “an interest in its development and a curiosity about the Annesley family who lived here”, and that it had been “a joy to research this book and preserve its interesting history for others to read in the future”.
The Big Grey Castle takes the reader through the sequence of Annesleys, with a focus on the building of Castlewellan Castle by Richard the 4th Earl, and, following his death, the completion of the planting and development of the internationally important tree collection by his brother Hugh.
It also charts Mabel Annesley’s fight for the estate’s survival after the death of her brother Francis, the 6th Earl, at the start of the First World War, the passing of the demesne to Gerald Sowerby Annesley, the arrival of the Americans during the Second World War, and the sale of the demesne to the state in 1967.
‘The Big Grey Castle’ can be purchased in the Newcastle Visitor Information Centre
