Inside Castletown House | Lady Louisa Conolly's Georgian Letters

Inside Castletown House, Celbridge, Co. Kildare — one of Ireland's finest Palladian houses — archivist Nicola Kelly opens over a thousand private Georgian letters, and Lady Louisa Conolly turns out to be magnificent company.

Married at 15 in 1759, Louisa wrote to her younger sister Lady Sarah Lennox for over sixty years. She documented the renovation of Castletown's dining room and long gallery, complained at length when the unique Murano glass chandeliers arrived the wrong colour, and expressed considerable alarm at the Franchini Brothers' stucco quote ("there will be a fine scold in his honour"). She also had a great deal to say about her sister nearly becoming Queen of England — and even more to say about Princess Charlotte, who got the job instead.

The letters cover the 1798 Rebellion in extraordinary first-hand detail, Louisa's close relationship with her executed nephew Lord Edward Fitzgerald, her grief after her husband Tom's death in 1803, and her quietly remarkable philanthropy in Celbridge in her final years.

Nicola Kelly, Archivist at OMARC — the OPW-Maynooth University Archive and Research Centre — joins Vices & Volumes live from the Castletown archives to bring these letters to life.

🏛️ OMARC Website: maynoothuniversity.ie/omarc📸 OMARC on Instagram: @OMARC_archive🏰 Castletown House: castletown.ie📸 Castletown on Instagram: @castletownhouseopw🌿 Heritage Ireland — Castletown: heritageireland.ie/places-to-visit/castletown-house-and-parklands/

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Features interview recorded on-site at Castletown House, Celbridge, Co. Kildare.