The original castle in Belfast is believed to have stood in what is now the centre of the city and may have been constructed by the Normans in the late 12th/early 13th century. A small urban settlement grew up around its walls but the castle was subject to frequent attack and may have been rebuilt on a number of occasions; in the later-medieval period it was held by a branch of the O’Neill family. During the 16th century it was seized and lost on a number of occasions by both the FitzGeralds, Earls of Kildare and by English forces. The Elizabethan adventurer Sir John Chichester, Governor of Carrickfergus Castle, managed to take Belfast Castle in July 1597 but was then killed the following November in a battle against the MacDonnells. It was his brother Sir Arthur Chichester who in 1611, having been gifted Belfast and its surrounding lands by James I, built a new castle, likely on the site of the old one. Dying without an heir, his estates were inherited by a younger brother, Edward, created first Baron and then Viscount Chichester. In turn his son was created Earl of Donegall but again since he had no heir, both estates and titles went sideways to a nephew, Arthur Chichester. The family continued to occupy Belfast Castle until 1708 when it was destroyed by fire, killing three of the fourth earl’s sisters and a servant. It was left a ruin, and the Chichesters left Belfast, not returning for almost a century.

In 1802 Arthur Chichester, the hopelessly indebted second Marquess of Donegall, chose to escape his creditors in England by coming to Belfast, where for a time he rented a house on the corner of what are now Donegall Place and Donegall Square before moving to Ormeau Park. Here he occupied the existing ‘cottage’ but by 1823 had raised sufficient funds to commission a new Tudor-Gothic residence Ormeau House, designed by William Vitruvius Morrison. Following his death in 1844, the property was abandoned by the third marquess, its contents auctioned in 1857 and the house demolished in 1869, the grounds since becoming a public park. By that date, work was well underway on a new Belfast Castle, although this latest iteration was constructed nowhere near its predecessors, instead standing a few miles outside and above the city on the slopes of Cave Hill in the grounds of what had formerly been the family’s deer park. It appears that the project cost considerably more than the sum of £11,000 anticipated by Lord Donegall and that therefore he turned for financial assistance to his son-in-law, Anthony Ashley-Cooper, future eighth Earl of Shaftesbury and husband of the marquess’s only surviving child, Harriet. She therefore inherited what remained of the Chichester estates on her father’s death and these in turn passed to her son, the ninth Earl of Shaftesbury who spent a considerable amount of time in Belfast Castle until 1934 when he gifted the building and demesne to the city of Belfast. A great deal of the latter was subsequently developed as housing but the area around the castle was preserved as a public park. As for the castle, it was used for a variety of activities such as wedding receptions, dances and afternoon teas. The building closed in 1978 for a £2 million refurbishment programme, reopening a decade later, since when it has continued to provide much the same services and facilities as before. 

Largely completed in 1870, Belfast Castle might be considered the ultimate example of Ulster Scots Baronial architecture, aided by its superlative location on sloping ground with views down to the harbour and thence out to sea. The building was designed by the local firm of Lanyon, Lynn and Lanyon with John Lanyon, son of the founder Sir Charles Lanyon, now widely accepted as being primarily responsible. Faced in local pink Scrabo sandstone with Grifnock sandstone dressings from Scotland, the castle is a riot of towers and turrets, stepped gables and bracketed oriel windows. The main garden front is distinguished by a serpentine French Renaissance-style stone staircase: designed by an unknown architect, this was added to the building in 1894 by the ninth Earl of Shaftesbury. After the elaborate exterior, the castle’s interiors prove a disappointment, with much of the decoration being mundane in character and looking as though copied by Lanyon from the most uninteresting of pattern books. This may be due to the fact that the enterprise had by then gone over-budget and therefore economies needed to be made. Without question, the best feature is the inner hall, which contains a Jacobean-style carved oak staircase climbing up three sides of the space to a top-lit bedroom gallery on the floor above. Unfortunately a bar has been inserted into the base of the staircase and this epitomises the castle’s current furnishing, which displays all the flair of a provincial hotel: decor by Basil Fawlty. Ugly light fittings, ill-placed pictures and tired seating don’t help. While the gardens of Belfast Castle appear to receive ample attention, its rooms are badly in need of another, and more considered, makeover. 

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