Castletown House

The Conolly Monument and the Death House

The Conolly monument erected by Katherine Conolly, in memory of her husband William ‘Speaker’ Conolly, in 1736 was the first of a series of monuments built in his memory. It stood in a mausoleum attached to the old ruined Protestant church in Celbridge village. It features splendidly carved life-sized marble figures of both the speaker and his widow carved by the London based sculptor Thomas Carter the elder (d.1757), now removed for safekeeping to Castletown. The architectural setting has been attributed to the leading Irish based funerary sculptor William Kidwell (1662-1736). It features a marble plaque describing William Conolly’s virtues and achievements including the assertion that he had made ‘a modest though splendid use of his great riches.’ In total the monument and the erection of the Death House or mausoleum to accommodate it (the existing church was too small) cost his widow the not so modest sum of £2,000.