Main Street
The houses in Celbridge Main Street and town centre were built in the decades after the takeover of the town by the Conolly family from the Thomas Dongan in 1709. Three prominent houses on Mount Street were built by successive agents of William Conolly.
Robert Baillie, a Dublin upholsterer and neighbour of Conolly in Capel Street became the first agent to take up residence in the town. He had Kildrought House designed by Joseph Rotheny in 1720. John Begnall’s Academy (1782) was based in the house. Jeremiah Haughton, owner of the Mill lived there after 1818; it housed a cholera hospital in 1830 and served as the local police barracks from 1831 to 1841 when the barrack moved to the site of the current Michelangelo’s restaurant. Next door is the courthouse where the local petty sessions took place every fourth week.
Conolly’s second agent George Finey(d1752) built No 22 Main Street directly opposite the Catholic Church. Richard Guinness father of the founder of the Brewing dynasty, lived here and married Elizabeth Clere, proprietor of the White Hart Inn, a public house at the site of the current Spar supermarket.
Conolly’s third agent Charles Davis, a Dublin cabinetmaker who was Conolly’s agent, built Jassamine House, an impressive five bay house with a weather vane on the junction of Main Street and the Maynooth Road in 1750. It was home to seven generations of Mulligans until 1992. One of the Mulligans had the decorative iron arch to the entrance gate constructed from material salvaged from the GPO Dublin after the 1916 Rebellion.
On the corner of the Main Street and Liffey Bridge, Broe’s house and shop (1773) is now the Bank of Ireland. Matthew Gogarty came from Clondalkin c1871 and established a shop in 1883.
A beautiful Georgian style house on the main street was built in 1840 by Richard Nelson and let to Chief Constable Marley; it replaced an old dwelling house with stables and offices where William Wadsworth, the original Irish Straw manufacturer and exporter lived.
The Castletown Inn stands where Isaac Annesley, the early 18th century master stonemason lived. No 59 next door, one of the oldest houses in the town, was renovated in the latter half of the 18th century for Thomas Conolly’s huntsman.
James Carberry’s Brewery (1709) later became Breen’s Hotel, King’s, Norris’s and the Village Inn.
Castletown gates at the end of the street were built in 1820 after a design inspired by Batty Langley. Behan was the blacksmith who manufactured the gates, which bear his initials.