10/07/2026
A glorious last day in Ireland at Castletown House ~Ireland’s first and largest Palladian-style house, begun in 1722 for William Conolly, Speaker of the Irish House of Commons.
The house is magnificent: extraordinary rooms, exquisite plasterwork, beautiful proportions, and those endless green Irish gardens and parklands beyond the windows. But the room that stole my heart was Lady Louisa Conolly’s Print Room, completed in 1769 and the only fully intact 18th-century print room surviving in Ireland. Louisa collected, cut out and arranged the prints herself, creating the most extraordinary personal scrapbook across the walls — Rembrandt, Guido Reni, Teniers and others, surrounded by hand-cut decorative borders. Heaven.
Dublin and Ireland have been so wonderful to me, and everyone I’ve encountered has been unbelievably warm, kind and generous. And a million million thanks to everyone here who sent me so many wonderful suggestions of things to see and places to go. I only wish I’d had more time to explore them all.
Ireland, I loved you. I’ll be back, and will be dreaming in green. 🇮🇪 xxJH
