In the early 1980s, debs' balls were held in the entrance hall and basement of Castletown House, the stately home built for the Speaker of the Irish House of Commons, William Conolly, in Celbridge, Co Kildare.
No doubt the cash raised was useful towards the upkeep of the Palladian mansion, but there was a double bonus, as was subsequently discovered: the heat generated by the revellers would have at least somewhat retarded the water which was, by the end of the decade, running down the walls.
For all the damp, the crumbling balustrades on the roof, the rotting roof itself, Castletown has been lucky. In 1965, the Conolly family, who had lived there since the early 1700s, sold it and the surrounding estate. It was bought by a developer and there were fears that it would be pulled down, or, at best, be converted into apartments.
Instead, in 1967 the house and 120 of the original 600 acres were bought by Mr Desmond Guinness, of Irish Georgian Society fame. At that time, according to Mr Guinness, Castletown was completely empty, the doors not even locked - light fittings were smashed and lead stolen from the roof.
He immediately went about preserving it, first through his own resources and then through charitable donations. The house was opened to the public three months after its purchase in March and the summer season of 1967 saw 9,000 people visit. The Castle town Foundation was set up to manage the house and receive charitable donations of furniture - some of it the original furniture of the house - and Desmond Guinness handed over the house to the foundation in 1979.
By the early 1990s, however, crumbling masonry at roof level gave the Castletown Foundation an inkling that its worst fears were about to be realised: the stonework and the roof were in such a bad condition that repair or restoration was beyond anything that it could possibly hope to achieve.
In addition, the moisture pouring in meant that, on a dull day in February, a hand pressed to one of the interior walls would come away wet. Silk wallpapers and much of the ornate plasterwork interiors were being damaged and were in danger of being lost. Such was the scale of the problem that only the resources of several millionaires - or the State - would be sufficient to stop the decay.
The State was willing and on January 1st, 1994, Castletown, together with Conolly's Folly - an obelisk dating from 1740 to the north of the house - was placed in the care of the State. It came under the management of Duchas, the Heritage Service, and the job of rescuing the house was passed to the Office of Public Works (OPW).
The Castletown Foundation is still very much involved and owns much of the original contents of the house. It also provides advice on restoration.
Of the lands that separated from the house when the Conolly family sold Castletown, housing development did take place in the old walled garden, adjacent to the main entrance from Celbridge village. The housing is, however, screened from the drive and Castletown's main entrance still enjoys a magnificent southerly view.
Most of the reception rooms, however, face north and while they, especially the long gallery, enjoy a good view of Conolly's Folly, only the land as far as an old ha-ha wall at the foot of the garden is still part of the property. The remaining lands between the house and the folly are in private ownership and, while they are not zoned for building, the fact that they do not belong to the house is a worry to those concerned with its integrity.
However, undoubtedly the greatest threat to the continued existence of the house was the horrific state of the balustrade and roof. The stones in the balustrade were backed with brick, which was allowing in water, causing the stones to shift and move to a point where it would not be safe to stand near the outside walls of the house. "It was definitely a low point," says Office of Public Works conservation architect Mr John Cahill. "It was really in a bad way."
Still the bad news kept coming. The impressive two-storied entrance hall - where the debs' balls were held - was designed by Sir Edward Lovett Pearce and was unchanged since the house was built, but its cantilevered Portland stone staircase, the OPW discovered to its chagrin, was found to be largely separated from its supports and earlier repair work carried out in cement was not holding.
Various forms of heating throughout the house were not having the desired effect on the damp.
Having examined the house throughly over a two-year period from 1994, the OPW decided that it would have to be closed to the public in 1996. The first move was to erect a massive plastic over-roof to protect the house from the weather while 35 tonnes of stone from the original quarry were mined to enable repairs to be carried out.
Next, and almost as vital, was the installation of an air-based humidity-sensitive heating system which automatically selects the optimum temperature for the house and maintains it.
The work was a success and this summer the house reopened its doors to the public. The work is far from finished, however. "So far we have spent £5 million with the aid of European funding, but the job is only beginning," says Mr Cahill.
There was also the problem of installing fire-safety devices and some of the high wooden doors had to be replaced with fire-proof doors in a similar style. In addition to the staircase, a gallery on the second floor across which groups of 40 or more often paraded is now being examined.
"It looks as if it is just a bridge. We would like to be assured that it is secure," explains Mr Cahill.
"It is important that visitors realise that what they come to see is not a complete restoration, but very much a work in progress," says Mr Cahill.
"When we go back to the entrance hall to do the work on the stairs, for example, we will be erecting a perspex screen so that visitors will be able to see the work in progress."
Ultimately, according to Duchas, the house is to be used for State functions. It has not ruled out the possibility of renting at least part of it out for private functions - perhaps even for debs' balls once again.