In 1185,  Richard Talbot, a knight was granted the “lands and harbour of Malahide”. It was home to the Talbot family for 791 years, from 1185 until 1976, the only exception being the period from 1649 to 1660, when Oliver Cromwell granted it to Miles Corbet after the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland; Corbet was hanged following the demise of Cromwell, and the castle was restored to the Talbots. Towers added in 1765 in the reign of Edward IV .

The estate survived such losses as the Battle of the Boyne, when fourteen members of the owner’s family were killed, and the penal laws, even though the family remained Roman Catholic until 1774.

In 1918, during the First World War, a mooring-out base for airships was established to conducted anti-submarine operations in the Irish Sea. There were plans to base airships in the castle grounds from 1919, but they were abandoned at the end of the war.

In the 1920s, the private papers of James Boswell were discovered in the castle and sold to American collector Ralph H. Isham by Boswell’s great-great-grandson Lord Talbot de Malahide. The papers have since passed to Yale University, which has published popular and scholarly editions of his journals and correspondence. Soon after, a second cache was discovered and also purchased by Isham.

Malahide Castle and its demesne was eventually inherited by the 7th Baron Talbot who had wanted to donate it to the state. On his death in 1973, the castle passed to his sister, Rose, who had lived there as a caretaker in the 1950s. She had death duties to pay, and the government would not accept valuables, so they had to be sold. In 1975, Rose ceded the castle to the Irish State, with regret, to fund the outstanding inheritance taxes. Many of the contents, notably furnishings, which had been sold, had caused some controversy. Private and government parties were able to retrieve some from the purchasers.

See the website for further details: https://malahidecastleandgardens.ie/