GO NICHE:WHAT A treasure trove of stories the Irish Landmark Trust oversees.
One of the latest additions to its stock of weird and wonderful places to stay is Batty Langley Lodge, on the grounds of Castletown House in Celbridge, Co Kildare. The Gothic two-storey building looks for all the world like an apse shorn off a church and abandoned in parkland.
Built around seven stone pinnacles, it was designed to be viewed from the river walk below. In fact, its fantastic façade was added to an existing common or garden cottage on the estate in 1785, based on a design taken from Batty Langley's book Gothic Architecture, published in 1747.
According to the Trust, its secluded setting at the very edge of the estate, far from the town of Celbridge, meant it was well suited as a spot “for privileged nobility to indulge their fantasies and escape to the lodge to don the mask of simple farmwives or dairymaids”. And why not?
Next month the Trust is opening Helen’s Tower, a much more sombre affair, in Co Down. The three-storey house, nestled deep in the woods of the Clandeboye Estate, was built by Frederick Lord Dufferin in 1848, both in honour of his mother and as a famine relief project.
It proved an inspiration for both Tennyson and Browning, both of whom wrote poems about it. A replica of the tower was subsequently built at Thiepval in 1921, in honour of the men of Ulster who fell at the Battle of the Somme.
You can find out more about Irish Landmark Trust properties tomorrow when a number of them are open for public visits as part of Heritage Week, between 10am and 4pm. After that, you can book them for a romantic tryst of your own, should the mood take you.
- irishlandmark.com