Castletown House

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 a 550-acre (2.2 km2) estate. Sold to developers in 1965, the estate is now divided between State and private ownership.

The house was inherited by Tom Conolly in 1758 and the interior decoration was finished by his wife Lady Louisa (great-granddaughter of Charles II of England and Louise de Keroualle) during the 1760s and 1770s. Lady Louisa had grown up in Carton House, a demesne to the north east of Castletown house. Much of the work on the interior was carried out to designs of William Chambers. She also did extensive work on the grounds, the paths through the forest are still in walking condition. Although due to prevention methods from joyriders, several of the culverts have broken and the pathways are again flooding. The drainage scheme through the woodland is ingenuous, creating dry paths for walking on land that is below the watertable. The Ha-ha Fence is part of this intricate network.

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, some of which was built on, although with some of the estate's features retained amongst the new structures.