died in October 1844, was eventually demolished in the late 1860s. Victorian Castle The 3rd Marquess of Donegall (1797-1883), in stark contrast to his father, did not spend much of his adult life living in Belfast or anywhere else in Ireland. The 3rd Marquess joined the British Army as an officer when he was a young man. After his military service was over, he mainly lived in Great Britain, where he was very involved in politics at Westminster. He was known as the Earl of Belfast, a courtesy title, between January 1799 and October 1844, when he succeeded his father in the marquessate. The 3rd Marquess would serve at Westminster as Captain of the Yeomen of the Guard from February 1848 until February 1852 in the first government of Lord John Russell, while the Great Famine was still ravaging Ireland. It was The 3rd Marquess of Donegall who finally sold off almost all of his family's Belfast estate in the 1850s. This left, of the 'Belfast estate', only the Ormeau Demesne and most of Cave Hill in the ownership of Lord Donegall. Curiously, it was only when he no longer owned Belfast that Lord Donegall became interested in actually living there. He decided to build what has been described as a new 'princely mansion' for himself in the 1860s on what was then the northern edge of Belfast, just over a decade after the Great Famine had ended. This new residence was called Belfast Castle, in a nod to family history, even though it was built on a completely different site, and in a completely different area, from the original castle site, which had been located right in the centre of Belfast. By the 1860s, nothing remained above ground of the earlier 'Belfast Castles'. The new, Victorian castle was built in the Scots Baronial architectural style and was designed by the Belfast firm of Lanyon, Lynn and Lanyon. However, there is some debate over who in the firm actually designed the new Belfast Castle. Although popularly attributed to Sir Charles Lanyon, some architectural historians believe that the castle was actually designed by either his business partner, and former apprentice, W.H. Lynn, or by Sir Charles's other business partner, his son John Lanyon. The new Belfast Castle was built on what had been the Donegall family's deerpark on the slopes of Cave Hill, a location which was, at that time, on