Elegant Victorian hotel  

The Leslies can trace their ancestry back to Attila the Hun of Hungary through a Hungarian nobleman called Bartholomew Leslie. Bartholomew lived in Scotland during the Reign of Queen Margaret of Scotland and a famous story goes that in 1065, whilst the Queen was on a hunting party they were chased in the woods by enemies. Bartholomew shouted to her to grip his buckle which ended up saving her life. After this, Margaret bestowed lands and the motto ‘Grip Fast’ to the Leslie family. His descendant Bishop John Leslie moved to Ireland from Scotland in 1633. He was a royalist who defeated Cromwell’s forces at the Battle of Raphoe and was known as ‘The Fighting Bishop’. He inherited Glaslough Castle through his wife in 1665 which takes its name from the nearby lake. The Victorian castle as you see it today dates largely from the 1870s.  It hit the headlines in 2002 when Sir Paul McCartney married Heather Mills in the family church located on the estate. Other famous faces have included WB Yeats, Michael Collins, Mick Jagger, Sir Patrick Moore, and members of the Churchill family (to whom the Leslies are related).