Middleton Park House

Middleton Park House is a 19th-century Georgian country house in Castletown-Geoghegan, County WestmeathIt stands on a gentle hill on a kilometre-long avenue looking towards Lough Ennell. It is a detached six-bay two-storey building with the central two bays slightly projecting from the façade. It has a slate roof and a projecting single-storey limestone Ionic entrance portico. Other features of the house are its under-floor heating system, stone bifurcated staircase leading to the Gallery Landing and three-story-high atrium lantern located in the Main Hall. At one end of the house is a cast-iron conservatory, one of only a few Richard Turner conservatories to be found in Ireland.After many years of disrepair, the house was restored in mid-2007 and is now open to the public as a commercial entity specialising in corporate events and private weddings and as a restaurant.HistoryMiddleton Park House was built c. 1850 by George Boyd-Rochfort, who commissioned architect George Papworth to design it and oversee its construction. Drawings of part of the interior were exhibited by Papworth during the Royal Hibernian Annual Exhibition of 1850.The racehorse trainer Cecil Boyd-Rochfort was born at Middleton Park in 1887. His brother, the Victoria Cross-winning soldier George Boyd-Rochfort was also born there. The house was host to a number of celebrities in the 1930s and 1940s, such as Rita Hayworth (second wife of Ali Khan, son of Aga Khan III and father of the reigning Aga Khan IV).The House and estate remained in the Boyd-Rochfort family until the early 1960s when it was sold. Since then it has seen many owners, including gambler Barney Curley who raffled the House in 1986.