Ireland Travel Search: Leinster; County Kildare Tourism Information Directory for Visitors to Ireland


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Ireland > Leinster > County Kildare

Kildare, to the southwest of Dublin, is a county of bogs and plains, divided by the Liffey in the northeast and the basin of the Barrow in the south. The bog of Allen, a huge raised bog formed over five thousand years ago spreads to the northwest. Being so near to Dublin Kildare is one of the most populated counties in Ireland, however it is still possible to explore its many canal villages, stately castles, houses and gardens.

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County Kildare is best known because of the nearby Curragh, a plain of over 5000 acres, which has a unique rich limestone, soil base, famed for making the bones of horses that graze upon it very strong. As a result Kildare is world famous as a major centre for racehorse breeding, training, and racing. It's home to the Irish Derby, held at the Curragh racecourse, also used as a setting for a couple of scenes in Braveheart (not that you would recognise the racecourse in the movie).

The Irish National Stud: The farm at Tully, Kildare, which is today the home of the Irish National Stud, was the brainchild in 1900 of a Scotsman, Colonel William Hall-Walker, (later Lord Wavetree). He decided, much against the wishes of his father, to breed thoroughbred horses at Tully. Hall-Walker's views on breeding were initially described as either inspired, preposterous, eccentric - or a combination of all! The ten stallion boxes with their distinctive lantern roofs stand as proof of his highly successful theories on horse breeding and management. He believed that the stars dictated the destiny of all living creatures, (including horses!) and therefore he thought it very important that the moon and stars should be allowed to exercise their maximum ability to influence all living creatures, and thus skylights were incorporated into the roofs of all the stables he built - and guess what - it worked - as his horses were the strongest and best performing in the land. Bequeathed to the Irish state in 1943, its importance in the bloodstock and racing world is without parallel.

But he (Lord Wavetree) did not stop with astrology for horses. A devout disciple of everything Japanese, he brought two of Japan's most renowned landscape architects to Ireland in 1906 to set out a spectacular Japanese Garden - also including a stunning Zen mediation garden. Today, these Japanese gardens are one of the most visited attractions in Ireland. The symbolism of life in the Japanese gardens traces the journey of a soul from Oblivion to Eternity. The human experiences of the soul's embodiment as it journeys through the paths of life are displayed in the symbolic surrounds of each of the twenty stages throughout the garden. Each stage absorbs the mood and atmosphere of its representation.

Ardscull Motte is 4 miles north of Athy. Sitting on top of a hill, this massive earthwork consists of a tall round motte about 35 feet high, surrounded by a ditch and a bank. Traces of a bailey can be seen on the north side, where it was probably erected at the end of the 12th century, but it is first mentioned in the historical sources when it was burned in 1286. It was used by Edward Bruce in 1315 to defeat a strong English army. Stone buildings at the top may have been added just prior to 1654, but these have vanished.

Moone High Cross - One of the most famous and beautiful of all the high crosses, it is 8 miles from Athy in the demesne of Moone Abbey House, besides the picturesque little village of Timolin. The cross is over 17 feet high and has 51 sculptured panels depicting scenes from the Bible.

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it." - Old Irish saying.

Kildare Cathedral stands on the site of a church, which was razed sometime in the 9th century. Succeeding churches were also destroyed, with a new cathedral built by Ralph of Bristol around 1223. In the rebellion of 1641 this was burned and destroyed, but towards the end of the century, part of it was rebuilt. The remainder was rebuilt in 1875. One of its distinguishing features is the three light window, which depicts scenes from the three Saints of Ireland - Patrick, Brigid and Columcille. Anecdotal folklore suggests that Kildare is where St. Brigid is supposed to have founded her first convent and that the cathedral was built on the site of her convent.

Castletown House was begun between 1721 and 1722 for William Conolly (1622-1729), the son of a Donegal innkeeper whom through his extremely "cunning" dealings in forfeited estates after the Williamite wars had made himself into the richest man in Ireland. It was Conolly who instigated the building of 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 is not known precisely how much of Castletown House 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 inspiration for 18th century Georgian architecture.

Castletown's interior was largely created during the time of Tom Conollys, the Speaker's great nephew, who inherited the property in 1758 when he was twenty-four. That same year he married 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. (Note: "Days of Our Lives" Circa 1700s - keep it in the family we say - the bewitching Lennox sisters were also great-granddaughters of King Charles II and his French mistress!) However he (Tom Conolly) was reputed to have a weak, indecisive character, but his 15 year old teenage bride Louisa was a real dynamo 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 Osterley Park. Tom Conolly died in 1803 but Louisa (now Lady Louisa) lived on for many years. She eventually died in 1821, in a tent on the lawn in front of Castletown, as it was her wish that she should go out looking at the house she had loved so much.

Footnote: Lady Louisa Lennox, who (along with her sisters Caroline, Emily and Sarah) featured in Aristocrats, the author Stella Tillyard's acclaimed family chronicle of 18th Century England and Ireland, which the BBC made into a blockbuster television serial.





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