Castletown House, Celbridge, County Kildare, Ireland, is a Palladian country house built in 1722 for William Conolly, the Speaker of the Irish House of Commons. It formed the centrepiece of an estate. The estate was sold in 1965, and later sub-divided. The house and a core demesne of 120 acres were bought by a group of people looking to preserve them, and became the first major project of the Irish Georgian Society; they were later transferred to a dedicated charitable foundation, and ultimately to State ownership. Most of the wider estate remaining was divided between State forestry company, Coillte, and developers, and parts were built on, notably the former orchard and walled garden. In September 2023, the main access road and car parking became the subject of access issues and protests.
Interiors
On the piano nobile there are a series of ever-grander reception rooms, typical of the 1720s. The house was entered by ascending a staircase outside before coming into a large entrance hall which was decorated with stucco gilding and pictures of the family. To the left is the dining room which was made out of two smaller rooms. To the right of the hall was the huge staircase itself. This was made of Portland stone and is cantilevered.
Straight on on the left is the Green Drawing Room, also known as the Saloon because of its position in the house. This was the room that the family used to receive their guests in before leaving and (staying on the left hand side of the house) entering the Red Drawing Room. Beyond this, the Print Room is decorated with cut-outs of favourite images, following the fashion of the 1760s. This room is on the right side and is thought to be the only surviving example of this type of room in Ireland from this period. Further on is the State Bedroom, which was never used by royalty as such, but by the various viceroys based in Dublin. In it are chairs which were from Venice.
Another feature of Castletown is the Long Gallery, an long room decorated in the Pompeian manner by O'Reilly in the 1770s in blue, red and gold.
History
Early history
On William Conolly's death in 1729, his widow Katherine (née Conyngham) continued living in the house and hosting extravagant entertainments there until her own death in 1752. The Castletown estate then passed to Conolly's nephew William James Conolly, MP for Ballyshannon. On William James' death in 1754 it passed to his son Tom Conolly whose wife, Lady Louisa (great-granddaughter of Charles II of England and Louise de Keroualle), finished the interior decoration during the 1760s and 1770s. Lady Louisa had grown up in Carton House, within a demesne to the north-east of Castletown house. Much of the work on the interior was carried out to designs of William Chambers. Lady Louisa also ordered extensive work on the grounds; the drainage scheme through the woodland is ingenious, creating dry paths for walking on land that is below the watertable (the ha-ha fence is part of this intricate network). The paths through the forest she set out are still in walking condition although, due to anti-joyrider measures, several of the culverts have broken and the pathways are again subject to flooding.
When Tom Conolly died in 1803, he left the estate to his wife, who on her own death in 1821 bequeathed it to her great-nephew, Edward Michael Pakenham, later the MP for Donegal, on condition he adopted the surname of Conolly. He was succeeded by his eldest son, another Tom Conolly, the eccentric MP for Donegal from 1849 to 1876. Tom's eldest son Thomas inherited Castletown, but after he was killed in 1900 the estate passed to his brother Major Edward Conolly.
The Conolly family continued to live in their ancestral house, latterly as the Conolly-Carews, until 1965, when it was sold by the 6th Baron Carew, along with its collections and land, to a Major Wilson for £133,000. Some of the land has been built on, although with some of the estate's features retained amongst the new structures.
Desmond Guinness and the Castletown Foundation
The house was bought in 1967 by Mariga and Desmond Guinness for £93,000 to save it from vandalism, became the flagship of the Irish Georgian Society, and was eventually handed over to the newly established Castletown Foundation.