Killeen Castle

Killeen Castle dates back to 1181 and it was the seat of the Plunkett family from 1403 to 1951, when the 12th Earl of Fingall sold the estate to Sir Victor Sassoon who established a stud farm on the property.

Thirty years later, a fire gutted the castle and it fell into disrepair, lying abandoned and in ruins for over two decades until developers stepped in with plans to convert the castle into a top class hotel, construct a championship golf course and build over a hundred luxury houses on the estate.

In 2005, Snowbury – an associate company of Castlethorn Construction, one of Ireland’s biggest property developers – began work on restoring the 600-acre estate to its former glory and three years later, a fully refurbished Killeen Castle, routed over 350 acres, was ready to welcome its first visitors.

Installed with almost 500 miles of drainage channels and capped by over 40,000 tonnes of sand, the Killeen Castle fairways are defined in many places by mature trees (over seven thousand were transplanted during construction) with small ponds featuring prominently at a number of holes.

Killeen Castle Golf Club hosted the revived Ladies Irish Open in 2010 – when Sophie Gustafson won the event by one stroke – in the lead up to hosting the 12th Solheim Cup series of matches between the professional women of Europe and the United States in 2011. The home team managed to reduce the deficit (to 8-4) in this series of matches when the European ladies overcame their old golfing adversaries by a margin of 15 points to 13.

The female version of the Irish Open remained here in 2011, when Suzann Pettersen overpowered the field in a six-stoke victory march to the title. The popular Norwegian player returned the following year but was beaten into second place by Catriona Matthew, who won the event by one shot from the defending champion. Sadly, that was the 15th and final edition of the LET tournament.