Joan and Gerard Howard-Williams/Carton Estate. Maynooth Everybody had their place in the pecking order; everything was designed around the social order
Name: Joan and Gerard Howard-Williams
Address: Carton Estate, Maynooth, Co Kildare
Dwellings: Nine-Mile Lodge
Here: Since Late 1960s
"We have lived in Carton for more years than we care to remember - coming up on 40. We came to the estate when our friend David Nall-Cain, son of the second Lord Brocket, invited us out here. At first we were living in the wing of Carton House, but after a while we took over what used to be the head gamekeeper's house.
Because he was quite high on the social order of the demesne, he had an amazing walled garden and coach house. The door to the head gamekeeper's house was down two steps; the head gardener's door was on ground level; the steward's house you went up two steps. Everybody had their place in the pecking order, and everything was designed around the social order.
"When we moved there, at the end of the 1960s, it was a very interesting time for Carton. It was the start of a lot of change, for Carton and Maynooth. When we moved there first, the old kitchen garden had still been going, because at that time Lord Brocket was still the owner. Then Lord Brocket died, and David Nall-Cain
came to live here and opened the house to the public. Until then it had been leased to people such as Peter Sellers and Julie Andrews.
"Carton and the people who worked on the estate were seen to be very much a step above the locals, but it must have been difficult for the people of Maynooth, because the seminary was at one end of the street and Carton at the other. They would step out of their front door and have to tip their cap to the left and say 'Yes,
my Lord' and tip their cap to the right and say 'Yes, Father'. It was very much a subservient sort of thing.
"Everything remained the same for us until David Nall-Cain sold the Carton estate, in the 1970s. Things remained more or less the same, but eventually the owners got planning permission for two golf courses, houses, a hotel, a spa and an equestrian centre.
That's all coming to pass now. Very large houses are being built on the demesne. The hotel has just opened. "About six or seven years ago we had to move out of the head gamekeeper's house because of what was going on with the demesne. We were offered Nine-Mile Lodge - named because it's nine miles from Dublin - and we're now totally away from everybody, in the wildlife area with the deer and foxes.
At the beginning, of course, it was very difficult to adjust. It was great upset and turmoil for us. But all our children had grown up except for our youngest. Our children grew up on this estate; they had 1,200 acres to run around in. We were very lucky in that way. But this little place is ideal for us now."
In conversation with Davin O'Dwyer