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Contents of Courtown House & Stud April 22
nd
2015
9
T
he Barony of Ikeathy consisting of the fertile lands of North Kildare is bound to attract the
attention of ambitious people desirous of establishing themselves. The indigenous owners lost out
to families of Norman descent, the Wogans, Husseys and Aylmers.
The latter family, recorded in Co. Kildare since the early 14th Century conformed to the
established church and settled at Courtown in the 18th Century. Colonel Michael Aylmer’s house
here was burnt in the rebellion of 1798. Ironically the United Irish officer responsible for the sack
of Kilcock was Colonel Aylmer’s kinsman, William Aylmer.
Compensation being insufficient, the house was not rebuilt until 1815 by Colonel Aylmer’s son
John, and if elegant it was perforce kept plain and simple. Such elegance was to be distorted by
Major John Algernon Aylmer in the 1890’s when he built a new entrance front, installing a sort of
baronial staircase and giving the overall composition a lop-sided and awkward appearance.
The Aylmers sold Courtown after the 2nd World War to Colonel Drummond of the great Scottish
clan headed by the Earl of Perth. Drummond belongs to that little studied but seemingly numer-
ous influx of well-to-do people, fed up with the restrictions of post-war England who having
‘done their bit’ in the war found in Ireland a surviving agreeable life-style of the hunting, racing,
shooting traditions of the Irish countryside.
Colonel Drummond furnished Courtown in proper county house style, judging by the 1963
catalogue of his sale when he sold on to the O’Brien family, baronets, who had received Queen
Victoria on her first visit to Dublin in 1849. From the O’Briens in 1981 the O’Mahony family
also took on some of the furnishings installed originally by Colonel Drummond. Since then, the
O’Mahony family have restored and furnished the house and tended the estate. The restoration of
the wonderful Victorian green house, certainly by Richard Turner of Dublin, is a triumph.
The view south from the tall drawing room windows, across the rich paddocks to William
Hague’s spire at Maynooth and on to the Wicklow hills is a picture. No wonder anyone who ever
lived here was horse and hunting mad.
Caught up in this sporting enthusiasm in the 1950’s was the renowned film director John Huston
and his family who rented Courtown for a number of years to hunt with the Kildares and other
packs of hounds. A galaxy of friends such as Robert Cappa, the photographer, came to stay for
the hunting.
Angelica Huston remembers Courtown with affection. Taken onto the frontstep on a
frosty night in her mother’s arms, to watch a shower of meteorites she never forgot her parents
saying, “if you make a wish, it will come true.”
N.N