Winston Churchill's baby clothes. A 10-foot-tall toilet. UFO abductions. They're all part of Ireland's most eccentric castle.

Sir John Leslie stops halfway up on the main staircase of his childhood home and points to an item hanging on the wall. The keepsake in question, a tattered red cloth within a frame, boasts a faded handwritten provenance: "Bloody shroud which received the head of James, Earl of Derwentwater, on Tower Hill." It's dated February 24, 1715.

Sir John describes the textile with the air of an offhand understatement, as if every home quite naturally features such decapitation memorabilia. Apparently, the man was executed for treason at the age of 27.