County Kildare - Towns

Nine miles (14km) south-east of Athy is Castledermot, which has a group of remains that include a round tower, two high crosses and the ruins of a Franciscan friary. Three miles (5 km) away is Kilkea Castle, once the residence of the Duke of Leinster, but now a hotel and health farm.

The castle was built by Hugh de Lacy in 1180, and later passed to the Fitzgeralds. Garrett Og Fitzgerald, 11th Earl of Kildare, is said to have practised magic in Kilkea Castle. The castle was restored in 1849, but some of the old work remains.

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Castletown House in Celbridge is considered to be one of the finest Georgian mansions in Ireland. Built for William Connolly, Speaker of the Irish Parliament and designed by Italian architect Alessandro Galilei, it was completed in 1732. The interior contains some magnificent plasterwork, a long gallery hung with venetian chandeliers, and an eighteenth-century print room. It is now the headquarters of the Irish Georgian Society, who have restored the building and furnished it with Irish furniture and paintings of the period.

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Beside this pleasant little town on the river Liffey a motte marks the traditionally believed burial place of Queen Buan who dropped dead when she learnt that her king had been slain in combat on the nearby ford. Nearby, are the ruins of a 13th century Franciscan friary founded by the Fitzgeralds. Within easy reach of Clane are: the Church of St. Michael & All Angels, a fine example of Irish Romanesque Revival, to the design of J.F. Fuller.

Clongowes Wood, now a Jesuit College, but once the hoe of the Wogan Browne family. One of the treasures of the college is the prosperous Crozier, a 10th century shrine. In the college chapel are windows by Evie Hone and Harry Clarke, and other fine decorations. Among its pupils was James Joyce, the celebrated writer of Ulysses. In the gorunds of the college are parts of the ditch of the 15th century Pale. At Mainham, close to an Anglo-Norman motte and a ruined medieval church, is a Wogan Mausoleum. An altar tomb displaying the figures of a man and a woman, dates from the mid-18th century.

Bodestown graveyard, 1.5km west of Clane, beside the ruined church, is the burial place of the United Irishman Wolfe Tone - the attributed father figure of modern Irish Nationalism.

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On the western side of Droichead Nua is the Curragh, a vast plain that has been a horse-racing venue from the earliest times. It is the headquarters of Irish racing today, and here the Irish Derby and other classic races are decided. For nearly a century the Curragh Camp has been an important military station and training centre: it was handed over to the Irish Army in 1922.

East of the Camp is the Curragh Golf Club (18). At Donnelly's Hollow, on the eastern end of the Curragh, a small obelisk commemorated a celebrated boxing match in 1815. Dan Donnelly, a giant Irishman, defeated the English champion George Cooper. Donnelly's footprints on leaving the hollow have been preserved by being retrodden by countless visitors since.

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The attractive village of Johnstown was formerly the estate village of Palmerstown and home of the earl of Mayo. In the ruined medieval church lies a 15th century memorial of the Flatesbury family, and a celtic cross commemorating the 6th earl of Mayo who was assassinated in 1872 when governor-general of India.

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