Fine Arts: Howth Castle delivers a jackpot of Irish history

Home to the St Lawrence family since 1177, the splendid north Co Dublin castle is soon to be turned into a luxury hotel and resort – but not before its contents go under Fonsie Mealy’s hammer

Howth Castle: some 900 lots are to go under the hammer at Fonsie Mealy’s

“Riverrun, past Eve and Adams, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.”

The opening sentence of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake gives poetic, if scarcely practical, directions to Howth Castle, home to the St Lawrence family since 1177, when Almeric Tristram routed the Danes and took both possession of Howth and the name of the saint whose feast day it was, ...