Ireland Guide
Around Dublin: Wicklow, Kildare and Meath
Castletown
Address: Accessed by gates and then an avenue of lime trees at the northern end of Celbridges high street, around 6km southeast of Maynooth and 18km west of Dublin
Price: Easter– Sept Mon– Fri 10am–6pm, Sat & Sun 1–6pm; Oct Mon– Fri 10am–5pm, Sun 1–5pm; last admission 1hr before closing
Website: www.heritageireland.ie
Price: €3.70; Heritage Card
The oldest and largest Palladian country house in Ireland, Castletown is also one of the very finest. Its plain, grey but elegant facade, built in the style of a sixteenth-century Italian town palace, conceals a wealth of beautiful and fascinating interior detail.
The engaging hour-long guided tour begins in the Entrance Hall, decorated with gorgeous, three-dimensional baskets of flowers and fruit, which look like plasterwork but were actually carved in wood and painted white. To one side rises the Grand Staircase, its cantilevered Portland-stone steps and solid brass banisters weighing at least ten tonnes.
The highlight upstairs is the Long Gallery, which was decorated by with busts of Greek and Roman philosophers and murals of classical scenes of love and tragedy, in the style of the recently rediscovered Pompeii. From the gallery's windows you can make out the Conolly Folly, some 3km north, an arcane, fifty-metre-high edifice consisting of an obelisk perched shakily on top of a cascade of arches. Attributed to Richard Castle, it was built in 1740 as a monument to Speaker Conolly by his widow, and as a Famine relief scheme.
A recently opened café at the house serves up contemporary versions of Georgian fare, such as savoury pies, syllabubs and trifles, as well as soups, salads and pasta. Back in Celbridge, a hundred metres from the Castletown gates on Main Street, a handy watering-hole is the Castletown Inn, which serves exceptionally good, often gargantuan, bar meals.