castletown house

The building was begun between 1721 and 1722 for William Conolly (1622-1729), the son of a Donegal innkeeper who, through astute dealings in forfeited estates after the Williamite wars, had become the richest man in Ireland.
It was Conolly who instigated building the Parliament House on College Green, the first of its kind in Europe. The design of the house was entrusted to the Florentine Alessandro Galilei (1691-1737), best known for his work on the Lateran Basilica in Rome.
It's not known precisely how much of Castletown is Galilei's work, but he was certainly responsible for devising the overall scheme of the centre block, which was flanked by colonnades to lower service pavilions in the manner of Palladio's villas in the Veneto - a concept that was completely new in Ireland and later became the prototype and inspiration for numerous houses.
Castletown's interior was largely created during the time of Tom Conolly, the Speaker's great nephew, who inherited the property in 1758 when he was twenty-four. That same year he married the fifteen-year-old Lady Louisa Lennox, daughter of the second Duke of Richmond, whose older sister Emily had already married James, the Earl of Kildare, and was living nearby at Carton. Tom Conolly had a weak, indecisive character, but Louisa was extremely dynamic and immediately set about completing the house.
Alterations and improvements to the house during the period of 1760 to 1766 included the creation of the dining-room and work on the red and green drawing rooms. The green drawing-room, formerly the saloon, has been restored with green silk copied from the original fabric (1765) and gilded fillet copied from Chamber's design for the fillet in the gallery at Osterly Park.
Tom Conolly died in 1803 but Lady Louisa lived on for many years. She died in 1821, seated in a tent erected on the lawn in front of Castletown, for it was her wish that she should go looking at the house she had loved so much.

Located 1 mile north east of Celbridge in County Kildare.