Eleventh Annual Historic Houses of Ireland Conference ‘Castletown, the Conollys and Country House Collections’ Castletown House 9 – 10 May 2013
(RIAI CPD approved)
Day 1
Castletown and the Conollys: fresh perspectives
10.00-10.45 Registration; Tea/Coffee
11.15 Conference Opening: Terence Dooley, NUI Maynooth and Mary Heffernan, Office of Public Works
Session 1
Chair: Marian Lyons, Head of Department of History, NUI Maynooth
11.30 Marie-Louise Legg, Katherine Conolly at Castletown, 1729-47
12.00 Patrick Walsh, Between the Speaker and the Squire: the untold story of William Conolly junior
12.30 Lunch
Session 2
Chair: Alison FitzGerald, Department of History, NUI Maynooth
13.30 Karol Mullaney-Dignam, Princes, poets and polo: Castletown in the Edwardian era
14.00 Emer Crooke, ‘The public … has only the vaguest notion of what it is desirable to preserve’: the OPW and the Irish country house, 1930-60
14.30 Jeanne Meldon, The story of a trust and its collection: the history of the Castletown Foundation
15.00 Tea/Coffee
Session 3
Chair: Kevin Baird, Irish Heritage Trust
15.30 Kerry Bristol, ‘Our gallery was in great vogue’: Lady Louisa Conolly’s Pompeiian redecoration of the Long Gallery at Castletown
16.00 Christine Casey, Carton, Castletown and the Ticinese phenomenon
16.30 Address by Ms Clare McGrath, Chairman of the Office of Public Works
17.00 End of proceedings
Day 2
Country House Collections
Session 1
Chair: Mary Heffernan, OPW
09.30 Jo Mangan and Tom Swift, ‘Big House Festival’: reigniting a 300-year tradition of arts and entertainment at Castletown
10.00 Dawn Williams, Prelude Speaker: contemporary Castletown
10.30 Tea/Coffee
Session 2
Chair: Edward McParland, TCD
11.00 Christopher Ridgway, Widening the canon: defining country house collections in the twenty-first century
11.30 Gareth Fitzpatrick, Four houses, three dukes, two countries, one collection
12.00 Helen Clifford, The East India Company at home 1757-1857: eastern goods in the British country house
12.30 Jane Fenlon, Magnificence on display – seventeenth-century tapestries in the Ormonde collections
13.00 Lunch
Session 3
Chair: Patrick Guinness, President IGS
14.00 Brian Crowley, ‘Such is O’Connell at Derrynane’: understanding O’Connell through his ancestral home
14.30 Ana Dolan, The Conolly Folly restoration by the National Monuments Service
15.00 Gretta Doyle and John Olley, Louisa’s riverside walks at Castletown: their creation and their restoration
15.30 Christopher Ridgway, closing remarks
16.00 Optional tour of house