Historical Society explores the Brooke family’s links to Donegal

The County Donegal Historical Society visited Colebrooke Park country house to recall the Brooke family's connection to Donegal.

Colebrooke Park country house, near Fivemiletown, was visited by the society on Sunday.

More than thirty Society members made the trip and were given a tour of the house and gardens by Alan Brooke, 3rd Viscount Brookeborough, with his wife Janet. The group also visited the nearby Colebrooke parish church, associated with the Brooke family.

Alan Brooke said the Brooke family were proud of their Donegal connection, going back to the early 1600s when an English captain, Basil Brooke, took over the O’Donnell castle in Donegal Town as part of the Plantation of Ulster.

Basil Brooke added a manor house onto the castle and established the modern town with its Diamond and streets radiating from it.

There have been suggestions that a nephew of Red Hugh O’Donnell, Conn, was left behind as a baby at the time of the Flight of the Earls in 1607, and was brought up by the Brooke family in Donegal Castle.

Alan Brooke said that in the late 1600s there was a dispute in the Brooke family which resulted in his own branch of the family moving onto lands in Fermanagh.

“We still visit the castle in Donegal Town and are always made to feel very welcome,” he said.

The Historical Society last visited Colebrooke Park around 25 years ago. At that time Alan Brooke’s mother, Viscountess Rosemary Brookeborough, had been a member of the County Donegal Historical Society for a number of years. Alan Brooke himself is a long-standing member.

The Viscount showed his fellow Society members several of the principal rooms in 50-room Colebrooke Park, a B+ listed neo-classical country house built in 1820. He said its restoration has been a major project for Janet and himself since their marriage in 1980.

The house now functions as a family home while also hosting guests for country sports and for corporate events.

It featured on Channel 4’s popular series ‘Country House Rescue’ back in 2012.

Colebrooke Park is filled with paintings and memorabilia associated with the Brooke family, which has a long record of service in the British Army. Two of Alan Brooke’s uncles died in WW2. The head of the British Army during the war was another relative, Alan Francis Brooke.

The paintings in the house include one by Raymond Piper of Alan Brooke’s grandfather Basil (1888–1973), commonly referred to as Lord Brookeborough, prime minister of Northern Ireland from 1943–63.

There are also photographs showing Alan Brooke with world leaders in his role as Lord-in-Waiting to Queen Elizabeth and now King Charles.

The President of County Donegal Historical Society, Joe Gatins, thanked Viscount Brookeborough and the Viscountess for the kind invitation to visit, and for their hospitality.

It has been suggested that the branch of the Brooke family which remained in Donegal in the late 1600s has associations with Lough Eske Castle, Castle Grove Country House outside Letterkenny and also with the house known as Brookehill in Killybegs.

The original Basil Brooke was briefly in charge of Doe Castle near Creeslough in the early 1600s before his grant of property in Donegal Town.