Russborough

Russborough is one of Irelands great country houses, a Palladian house of major European significance, built between 1741 and 1751 for Joseph Leeson, 1st Earl of Milltown. The house and designed landscape represents one of the most complete and intact works by the architect Richard Castle, the most accomplished country house architect in Ireland of the early eighteenth century. The house contains some of the most important mid-eighteenth century interiors, displaying the finest craftsmanship of the period including decorative plaster attributed to the celebrated migrant stuccodores, brothers Paolo and Filippo Lafranchini. Its historic contents are of exceptional interest, associated with the internationally important Milltown and Beit collections. Russborough, one of very few houses in Ireland privately owned for public benefit, is managed by the Alfred Beit Foundation. A charitable trust set up by Sir Alfred and Lady Clementine Beit in 1976 to secure the future of Russborough and ...