Guinness sells last link with Castletown

Co Kildare: €1m-plusDesmond Guinness is selling an 18th century gate lodge and a modern house on 12 acres of riverside land at the Castletown estate. Rose Doyle reports

The Hon Desmond Guinness is selling his last remaining interest in the Castletown estate in Co Kildare - an original gate lodge along with 12 acres of riverside land and a modern chalet-style house.

Coonan Real Estate Alliance is guiding €1 million plus for the property at Rinawade, Celbridge, which Guinness acquired some time after buying Castletown House in 1967 with the intention of giving the house a second entrance.

He is now selling up with some regret, because, at 74, he wants to "set up my grandchildren with some money".

At one stage he had hoped that the Government would buy the property to create a separate entrance. With Castletown House itself in state ownership since l994, the sale of the land and dwellings will sever the Hon Guinness's ownership links with the estate.

The one-bedroom gate lodge, which guards a side entrance to the estate and is a listed building dating from 1774, is named after the architect Batty Langley.

The chalet-style three-bedroom timber house is on the banks of the Liffey and is appropriately called Pluribella.

The lands are bordered by the river, relatively flat and rich with beech and lime trees. An ice house close to the river makes for added interest.

The land, a mere 10 miles from Dublin's city centre, does not have residential zoning and Guinness is hopeful that new owners might like to farm.

"It would make a very small farm for someone who likes riding," he says.

"Permission could easily be got to build stables on the site of an earlier bungalow on the land which was burnt down.

"A Gothic-style stables with a couple of rooms for a groom would suit since the building would be visible from Castletown House."

The gate lodge with its original turret windows and fireplaces is a lovely example of ornate 18th century architecture and, would, he thinks, "suit a couple, such as caretaker and wife.

"It's not suitable for a big family, with only one room upstairs - though it's had big families living in it in the past."

The nearby cut limestone gates are, he says, "spectacular. The land itself is along a beautiful stretch of river with about a quarter mile of fishing rights".

Castletown House was built in 1722 for William Connolly, speaker for the Irish Houses of Parliament and is the only house in Ireland designed by the Italian architect Alessandro Galilei.