Houses around Celbridge

Houses around Celbridge

Oakley Park (53°20′15″N 6°32′35″W) was built in 1724 to a design by Thomas Burgh for Arthur Price, when he was created Church of Ireland Bishop of Meath. After Price departed for Cashel, Oakley Park became home to George Napier (1751–1804) and Sarah Lennox (1745 – August 1826) whose sons’ army careers were assisted by the Duke of Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, whose father had been a suitor of their aunt, Louisa Lennox in the 1750s. William Napier (1785–1860) fought in (and later wrote the history of) the 1807–1814 Peninsular War in which Spain and Portugal fought against Napoleon with British support. His brother Charles (1782–1853) was a controversial commander-in-chief of British forces in India. Two other brothers George (1784–1855) and Henry (1789–1853) served in contemporary wars.

The house passed to Richard Maunsell, High Sheriff of Kildare and his descendants, and, in 1926, to Justin McCarthy. In 1946 it was sold by Philip Guiney to the St John of God Brothers. It opened as St Raphael’s, a home for intellectually disabled boys, in 1953.

St Wolstan’s (53°20′42″N 6°31′00″W) was home to the ill fated John Alen (1476–1534), Lord Chancellor and Archbishop of Dublin. The house remained with the Alen family for two centuries and was then home to controversialist Church of Ireland bishop of Clogher Robert Clayton (1695–1758). It became a summer residence of the Viceroy in the 1770s, a boy’s school (sold 1809), home to the Cane family for another century during which time writer and Irish-language activist Mariella Borthwick (1862–1934) tutored there, and eventually home to a girls’ school (1957-1999) for the Holy Faith order.

When a new school building was built on the Clane road, the name St. Wolstan’s was retained.

Killadoon (53°19′39″N 6°33′24″W) a three storey block with a single storey wing built c. 1770 (redecorated 1820) for Nathaniel Clements, banker and amateur architect. It was not designed by Clements, whose family retained the house for three hundred years.

Colganstown House (53°18′31″N 6°31′13″W) designed by Nathaniel Clements (1705–77) for the Yeats family (c1760) was the property of Dublin Corporation through the first half of the 19th century.  In more recent times, during the war years, it was the farm for the Holy Ghost Fathers, Blackrock.

Pickering Forest (53°20′23″N 6°35′05″W), a three storey Georgian house, was home to George Brooke (1849–1926) wine importer, evicting landlord and governor of the Bank of Ireland (1904–6).

Donaghcumper (53°20′27″N 6°31′46″W), originally Rockfield, is a Tudor revival house built from William Kirkpatrick c1835. It was home to Ivone Kirkpatrick (1897–1964), British ambassador in Berlin in the 1930s and eventually Under-Secretary of the British Foreign Office.

Springfield (53°20′10″N 6°33′17″W) was associated with the Jones and Warren families and then the Mitchell family until 1906. It was the home of writer Aidan Higgins (b1927) who’s 1966 experimental novel, Langrishe, Go Down won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction and was later adapted as a BBC television film by Harold Pinter. ‘Balcony of Europe’ was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1972.

Elm Hall (53°19′54″N 6°30′59″W) was home to John Wynn Baker (1726–1775), New York born agricultural improver, who set up an agricultural implements factory, the first in Ireland. Art O’Connor (1888–1950) became Minister for Agriculture in the second Dáil Cabinet (1921).

Stacumny or Stacumnie (53°20′04″N 6°30′05″W) was the residence of Samuel Bradstreet (1738–91), Judge and free trade campaigner and later James Lambert (1811-77), merchant from Grafton Street and conservative politician who became Lord Mayor of Dublin in 1859.

Newbridge House (N 53.34800 W 6.51156) was the residence of Gabriel Hayes (1909–78), sculptor and painter and her husband UCD Archaeologist Seán Ó Riordáin (1904-57).

Backweston (N 53.34973 W 6.49335) was the residence of Patrick Browne (d1614) campaigner for religious freedom.

Temple Mills was residence of genealogist Tom Sadleir (1882–1957)

Celbridge Lodge (N 53.33767 W 6.54126) was the residence of poet Samuel Shepherd (1701–1785).