Castle with majestic views

Co Down £1.65m (€1.9m)On a bleak, windswept morning, gulls wheeling above the battlements, Quintin Castle looks like the perfect setting for a Gothic melodrama.

Originally built in 1184 by John de Courcy, it’s right on the coast, at the very tip of the Ards Peninsula in Co Down, where Strangford Lough meets the Irish Sea.

As it stands today, the castle is essentially a 19th century Gothic version of a fortified Norman stronghold, with all the quirks and oddities that implies.

Those Anglo-Normans certainly had a knack for scoping out the best vantage points: the ever-changing views from the castle, over lough, hills and surrounding countryside, are extraordinary.

And it’s remote: driving down a series of increasingly narrow lanes to get there, you get the feeling that you are reaching back into another era. But that sense of rich historical possibility – the suggestive imprint of other times, other places – falters when you walk through the heavy oak double doors and discover something more akin to a holiday rental home with pretensions.

Cheap, ugly fittings, grandiose modern features and a series of lurid paint-jobs (the oxblood-red billiard room is positively sinister) distract and diminish the place.

And whoever decided it was a grand idea to render the seaward side of the castle, slapping a layer of weatherproof cement on the beautiful original stones, will surely have horrified the ancient ghost of John de Courcy.

Of course, it doesn’t help that the castle is looking a bit lonely and unloved; there’s no-one there to call it home. It was last renovated in 2006, when it was bought by the property developer Paul Neill, who had a portfolio of properties in Belfast and Co Down. In 2011, the former Anglo Irish Bank moved against him, taking control of two of his retail parks, over a £37 million debt. Neill was declared bankrupt in 2012 and Quintin Castle was repossessed by Nama: hence the current sale. The price is £1.65 million (€1.9m) through Knight Frank and Templeton Robinson.

Neill was an aviation enthusiast – at one point he owned a private jet and a helicopter – and the remains of a demolished heliport stands in the castle grounds. Apparently it was built without planning permission and had to be knocked down again. Taken together with the ostentatious Versailles-inspired fish-ponds in the garden, or the tattered flag flying limply from one turret of the keep, there’s more than a hint of ruined hubris in the air.

Think castles and you tend to think big. But the rooms of this place, while undoubtedly spacious, are not vast. The wood-panelled banqueting hall – aka the dining room – may have a medieval-looking stone fireplace and soaring vaulted ceiling, yet it’s of reassuringly comfortable proportions. You could imagine having a dinner party in here that didn’t necessarily involve flagons of mead and a whole roast sheep on the table, which is no bad thing. We are in the 21st century after all.