"The Irish Country House". Ireland "encore"

Author(s): The Knight of Glin & James Peill
Photographs By: James Fennell
Illustrations: 220 full-color illustrations
Pages: 192 pages
The Irish Country House chronicles a remarkable group of houses and castles that have survived the vicissitudes of Ireland's history and are still in the hands of their original families. From breakfront cabinets filled with generations of monogrammed heirloom china to canopy beds keeping the chill of an Irish winter at bay to cabbage-rose slip-covered sofas nestled under tall Gothic windows, this book takes the reader on a tour of these residences, many of which have never been published before, providing an intimate look at “a marvelous hotchpotch of rooms and decoration."
Visually evocative, the specially commissioned photographs by James Fennell show inviting living rooms and tousled bedrooms, print-lined hallways and well-trampled mudrooms. Telling details capture the distinctive personalities of the owners: a red silk bell-pull against green floral wallpaper, a drawer full of two-hundred-year-old love letters, the curve of a wonderfully carved antique chair.
In their delightful text, the Knight of Glin and James Peill tell the tale of some of the more colorful inhabitants of these homes, both past and present. The houses are not the instant creation of trendy decorators - they have evolved over generations, furnished with heirlooms and cherished hand-me-downs, and exuding the mossy scent of peat fires and Irish setters just in from the rain. This is a book for lovers of Ireland, history, or decoration.
The complete list of houses included:
Birr Castle, County Offaly
Huntington Castle, County Carlow
Killruddery, County Wicklow
Burtown House, County Kildare
Tarbert House, County Kerry
Killadoon, County Kildare
Glin Castle, County Limerick
Clandeboye, County Down
Tullynally, County Westmeath
Lisnavagh, County Carlow