More than 600 lots of furniture, paintings and other objects are expected to sell for high prices at Lissadell House, Co Sligo, during an auction of its contents today.
Around 4,000 people viewed the home over the weekend and telephone bids have already been flooding in for some of the more historically valuable items on offer.
Lissadell featured in a poem by WB Yeats, and until earlier this year was home to a family centrally caught up in the Irish fight for independence in the early years of the last century.
The Gore-Booths had lived in the house since it was built about 170 years ago until it was sold to barristers Eddie Walsh SC and his wife Constance Cassidy SC who intend to keep it open to the public.
It was the childhood home of Constance Gore-Booth, who in later years, as Countess Markiewicz, was closely connected with the leaders of the struggle for independence and became the first woman to be elected to the House of Commons.
The handcuffs used to restrain Countess Markievicz when she spent some time in prison after 1916 and again in the early 1920s are expected to fetch up to €500 today, while a Yeats first edition book of poetry signed and dedicated to Eva Gore-Booth is likely to sell above the estimated price of
€15,000.
Jill Potterson, from Christie's auctioneers, said there was huge interest in the sale and around 2,000 people were expected to attend.
It is thought that the Gore-Booths have kept the majority of the valuable furniture and paintings - some of which has already been shipped over to their UK home. But there is plenty of scope for collectors looking for everyday household items.
Constance Gore-Booth lived at Lissadell with her sister Eva and it was their beauty, as well as the elegance of the building itself, which is believed to have inspired Yeats to write the line: "The light of evening, Lissadell, great windows open to the south."
The countess fought alongside the Irish insurgents during the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin and was condemned to death by the British authorities. Her sentence was later quashed and she was imprisoned instead. After refusing to take her seat as the first woman MP at Westminster, she later sat as a member of the first Dáil.