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	*Welcome* Welcome to the website for Castletown Residents Association. This website hopefully will prove a useful tool, as we develop it, to keep residents informed as to what we are working on and aiming to achieve within the estate and for the residents. Castletown Estate truly must be one of the nicest estates of it's age in all of Kildare and further afield and to this end, we hope to improve on it's look, overall appeal and attractiveness. Ongoing issues which we are always tackling albeit with a Very small committee ( for an estate with @ 700 houses ) are issues such as ; Clean ups, litter, grafitti, planning issues - Castletown House / Gazebo / Rights of access, speeding, Backlotts, Planning issues etc etc. Subscriptions from members are the 'fuel' of the Association which allows us to undertake what we do. We are VERY grateful to all those who pay their subscriptions ( €25 / OAPs €10 ). The huge majority of that money goes towards the regular and ongoing grass cutting of the Open Space areas including the Mound. It allows us to contemplate further initiatives for example ; Planting ( e.g. Daffodills at Gates entrance, shrubs, new Rose beds at Orchard Walkway area ), Re-generation of areas ( e.g.Nov 08 - Woodview / Stables gates area ), Removal of graffiti, website, newsletter printing and delivery, equipment for clean ups etc. There are plenty more items on our 'shopping list' which can be undertaken - finances permitting. We are a small group and would always welcome any members who would like to join any of the newly set up topic specific sub committees. If there are any issues regarding the estate that you are particularly interested in, then why not contact us and arrange to come along to one of the committee meetings where we can take it from there. The committee meets once monthly with each sub committee pursuing their own issues in the intervening time for presentation at monthly meeting. We have lots of plans for 2010 to build on initiatives from 2009. We hope to achieve these - with everyone's help - we will ! Castletown is the largest and most significant Palladian style country house in Ireland. Built c.1722 for the speaker of the Irish House of Commons, William Conolly (1622- 1729) the designs of a number of important architects were used, notably Alessandro Gailiei, Sir Edward Lovett Pearce and later Sir William Chambers. The entire estate was sold by the Conolly-Carew family in 1965 to a property developer and in 1967 the house and some parkland were purchased by the Hon. Desmond Guinness. Both Mr Guinness and subsequently the Castletown Foundation, who acquired the house in 1979, devoted considerable effort and resources to maintaining the house and restoring the principal rooms to a high standard. Castletown was transferred to state care on 1 January 1994.