It’s a pleasant spring morning when we pitch up at what’s known as the “grandest house in County Down”. Hillsborough Castle is where the British royal family stay when they’re over in Northern Ireland. It was built in the 18th century by the aristocratic Hills, a landed Anglo-Irish dynasty, before being purchased by His Majesty’s government in 1922 following the partition of Ireland.
Previously based in Dublin, the British governors sought a new base across the border from the new Irish Free State. And Hillsborough, 20km south-west of Belfast, was deemed eminently suitable. Journalism for the curious Australian across politics, business, culture and opinion.
Fashioned in neoclassical Georgian style, the two-storey mansion also acts as the official home of the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, a minister of the British Crown. Perhaps the most significant person to fulfil that role in recent times was Mo Mowlam, one of the key architects for bringing peace to the beleaguered province in the late 1990s. Known for her frankness and personable character, she spent a good deal of time at the castle, meeting politicians from across the sectarian divide and thrashing out the nitty-gritty of the Good Friday Agreement, which would help bring an end to “The Troubles” that dogged Northern Ireland for three decades.
Portraits of her, then-British prime minister Tony Blair and Irish republican leader Martin McGuinness are among the diverse artworks in the castle’s .
