Huntington Castle

Huntington Castle stands in the valley of the River Derry, a tributary of the more famous River Slaney, on the borders of Counties Carlow and Wexford near the village of Clonegal. The site was previously occupied by an abbey and a fourteenth century castle, built to guard a pass through the Blackstairs Mountains on the route from Dublin to Wexford. The castle is actually a large, late tower-house of rough-hewn granite, altered in about 1680 and again in 1720, when it was given a regular fenestration and a long wing was added on the northern side.

Built by Lord Esmonde, Huntington passed by marriage to the Durdin family, long established in County Cork where they had acquired the estates of William Penn. In 1880, Helen, the Durdin heiress, married Herbert Robertson, Baron Strathloch (a Scots feudal barony) and MP for a London borough. Together they made a number of late Victorian additions at the rear of the castle while their professional architect son, Manning Durdin-Robertson, an early devotee of concrete, carried out yet further alterations in the 1920s.

In the 1970s two of his four children, the writer and mystic Olivia Durdin-Robertson and her brother Laurence, converted the undercroft  into a temple to the Egyptian Goddess Isis. More recently, Huntington was the home of Laurence’s son David and his wife Moira, who completed a thorough restoration of the castle, its garden and outbuildings.

The house contains a number of early panelled rooms and an eclectic family collection, all carefully arranged to great effect.

Outside are Victorian terraces, an ancient yew walk and the 17th century formal gardens which date from the Esmonde’s tenure. These are laid out in the Italian manner and have recently been restored. The woods contain fine specimen trees and the castle is approached from the gates in Clonegal village along a magnificent avenue of tall lime-trees.

Huntington is now home to Alexander Durdin Robertson, his wife Clare and their sons. The family is unusually talented and numbers artists, architects, writers and intellectuals amongst its ranks. Perhaps best known is Alexander’s great-grandmother, the former Nora Parsons, author of Crowned Harp, an important memorial of the last years of English rule in Ireland.