Gormanston Castle
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Gormanston Baile Mhic Gormáin
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| Town | |
 Gormanston
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| Coordinates: 53°38′13″N 6°14′03″W / 53.63694°N 6.23417°WCoordinates: 53°38′13″N 6°14′03″W / 53.63694°N 6.23417°W | |
| Country | Ireland |
| Province | Leinster |
| County | County Meath |
| Population (2006) | |
| • Urban | 340 |
| • Rural | 15 |
| Time zone | WET (UTC+0) |
| • Summer (DST) | IST (WEST) (UTC-1) |
Gormanston (Irish: Baile Mhic Gormáin) is a village in County Meath, Ireland. It is near the mouth of the River Delvin and the northern border of County Dublin.
Gormanston is near the M1 Dublin-Belfast road. There is also Gormanston railway station, opened in May 1845, on the Dublin-Belfast line.
Drogheda port company are considering a move to Bremore near Gormanston, to create a state-of-the-art port which will also handle passengers.
Gormanston Camp is currently home to B Company, 27 Infantry Battalion of the Irish Army and is a former aerodrome of the Irish Air Corps.
Gormanston Castle was, from the 14th century to the 1950s, the seat of the Preston family, who managed to hold on to their estate lands through the centuries despite being staunch Catholics. The head of the family is known as Viscount Gormanston, premier Viscount of Ireland. The current holder of the title is Jenico Preston, 17th Viscount Gormanston who resides in London. Elizabeth Gorman, painter, lived here.
The family sold the castle in the 1950s, when it was acquired by the Franciscan Order of Friars who then established a boarding school for boys in the grounds, known as Gormanston College. Since 2015 the school has been managed by Meath VEC under Franciscan trusteeship and is now largely a day school although there are still 70 boarders. The sports facilities and vacation accommodation for groups is separately managed by a new company Gormanston Park, who will reopen a refurbished swimming pool available to the general community in September 2016 [2]
According to the New Ireland Review, April 1908 legend holds that when the head of the family is in his final hours, the foxes of County Meath, except for nursing vixens, emerge from their earths and make their way to the door of Gormanston Castle to keep vigil until he has died, in thanksgiving for the deliverance and protection from maurauding predators of a vixen and her young by a previous Lord Gormanston.
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