Carton House, the seat of the earls of Kildare, is on the opposite side
of Maynooth from the college. It is the present home of Maurice
Fitzgerald, Duke of Leinster, a young man who came of age in March,
1908. He carries more rank and titles than any other person in Ireland,
and has more money than any Irishman except Dublin's titled brewer. He
spends much of his time at Carton House, which looks like a Florentine
palace, but is completely modernized and fitted up with electric light,
telephones, and elevators, and stands upon an eminence in the center of
a park inclosed within eight miles of stone wall ten feet high. It is a
drive of three miles from his front gate to the threshold of his front
door, and there are more than thirty miles of macadamized roadway within
the demesne. There are hills and dales, twelve lakes, and four
waterfalls, one of them thirty-nine feet high. There is a garden of
sixty acres laid out in the French style, with fourteen or fifteen
fountains and many arbors, kiosks, and pergolas. There are meadows,
pastures, vegetable gardens, and fields of oats and other grain, but
three-fourths of the park is primeval forest, that has never heard the
sound of an axe, and most of the trees are as old as history. I am told
that no private park in the world surpasses the grounds of Carton House.
Among other curiosities is a cottage built entirely of shells, to
commemorate a visit of Queen Victoria, who describes her experiences in
"Leaves from Our Life," and tells of jaunting cars, Irish jigs, and
bagpipes. The shell cottage is now used as a museum to contain the
family relics.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account