The Conolly Folly or Obelisk
My Sister is now building an obleix to answer a vistow from the bake of Castletown house; it will cost her three or four hundred pounds at least, but I believe more. I really wonder how she can dow so much and live as she duse. Mary Jones March 1740.
Visible from the windows in the Long Gallery, Conollys Folly or the Obelisk closes the two mile vista at the rear of the house. Designed by the German architect Richard Castle, (1695-1751), who was working at nearby Carton for the Earl of Kildare, this singular piece of Irish architecture stands 140 feet tall with a soaring obelisk supported by a series of arches beneath. Built in 1740 by Katherine Conolly to provide employment, during the severe winter and subsequent famine of 1739/40, for the starving Castletown tenantry. Intended to mark the boundary of the Castletown demense it actually stood on part of the Carton estate. Dominating the local landscape it became a focal point for both the Castletown and Carton demesnes. In 1960, then in a ruinous state, it was acquired, thanks to the generosity of Mrs Rose Saul-Zalles, by the recently reconstituted Irish Georgian Society and its restoration was their first major project. In 1989 Mariga Guinness, one of the Societys co-founders was buried beneath one of the side arches. It is now in the care of the Office of Public Works.
