Castle Ward: Two Houses in One, and Winterfell

Castle Ward was built in the early 1760s for Bernard Ward, later 1st Viscount Bangor, and his wife Lady Anne Bligh, and it was built to both their tastes, which differed: the entrance front is classical Palladian, with columns and a pediment, and the other side is Georgian Gothic, with pointed windows, battlements and finials — and the two styles carry on inside. The Wards had bought the land in 1570, and the earliest of their houses still standing, Old Castle Ward of about 1590, is down near the shore of Strangford Lough. The estate was the filming location for Winterfell in Game of Thrones, and a tower house of 1610, built by Nicholas Ward, stands in its farmyard. It came to the National Trust in 1952, and its 820 acres of landscaped grounds hold a Victorian laundry, a saw mill and a working corn mill. A mile north-west of Strangford, Audley's Castle, a 15th-century three-storey tower house, stands on a rocky height over the lough.