Dear members we have organised a tour of Castletown House, Celbridge, County Kildare on September 10th at 11.00am.
The house tour consists of basement, ground floor and first floor. The landscape tour is a walk through the historic 18th c parkland, which takes in the Temple, Bathing house, ice house and Batty Langley gate lodge.
Castletown House, Celbridge, County Kildare, Ireland, is a Palladian house built in 1722 for William Conolly, the Speaker of the Irish House of Commons. It formed the centrepiece of an 800-acre (320 ha) estate. The estate was sold in 1965 by William Conolly-Carew, 6th Baron Carew, and later sub-divided.
The house and a core demesne of 120 acres were bought by a group of preservationists, 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 in 1994. In November 2025 the Office of Public Works acquired 235-acre (95 ha) of the remaining part of the estate in private ownership.
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. For further information from Wikipedia click here.