Leixlip Castle

Leixlip Castle was built c. 1172 by Adam de Hereford, a Norman knight who accompanied Strongbow to Ireland. On a rock above the River Liffey at the edge of the English Pale, the castle passed to the Whyte family and then to William Conolly, nephew and heir to Speaker Conolly of Castletown. Leixlip remained in Conolly ownership until the twentieth century but was let to a series of influential tenants, including a primate and a viceroy. Renovated in the mid-eighteenth century and again in 1837 it incorporates all the different building layers in a remarkably complete 'Georgian Gothick' fusion with a regular four bay front above the river.