Farmleigh House Conservatory

Farmleigh, at Castleknock near Dublin's Phoenix Park, began as a small Georgian house built in the late eighteenth century. Its walled garden dates from the early nineteenth century, when the estate belonged to Charles Trench, and it already appears on the Ordnance Survey map of 1837.

In 1873 Edward Cecil Guinness (1847-1927), a great-grandson of Arthur Guinness, bought the property on his marriage to his cousin Adelaide Guinness. Created Baron Iveagh in 1891, Viscount in 1905 and Earl in 1919, he reshaped the house in several campaigns. From 1881 to 1884 the Irish architect James Franklin Fuller extended it westwards and added a third storey; in 1896 the Scottish architect William Young (1843-1900) designed the ballroom wing. The conservatory was attached to it in 1901-1902, supplied by Mackenzie & Moncur of Edinburgh on Young's recommendation. According to the estate, Farmleigh had by then everything a household devoted to refined hospitality could require.

In 1999 the Irish Government bought the estate from the 4th Earl of Iveagh for €29.2 million. The Office of Public Works (OPW) then spent some €23 million restoring the house, the gardens and the curvilinear glasshouses, and the estate opened to the public in July 2001. The house has since been used to accommodate visiting dignitaries and guests of the nation. Nineteenth-century dates vary between sources: Archiseek places the purchase and a first extension by Fuller in 1870.

Archiseek singles out the conservatory as the most elaborate feature of Farmleigh's exterior, adjoining both the drawing room and the ballroom of the 1896 wing. Doors lead straight from the ballroom into the glasshouse, which was conceived as an extension of the entertaining rooms rather than a mere shelter for plants.

The structure was supplied in 1901-1902 by Mackenzie & Moncur, the Edinburgh glasshouse builders. Its marble floor is original and follows the traditional eighteenth-century pattern of octagonal tiles. The sources consulted give neither its dimensions nor its plan.

During the OPW restoration the conservatory was completely re-glazed, and new structural supports were fitted for the high-level metalwork. According to the estate, the work kept the building's character while extending its life by at least another hundred years.

In the walled garden, Edward Cecil Guinness had also built several glasshouses, among them a three-quarter-span cast-iron vinery behind a high yew hedge, and a small Victorian fernery under glass with a grotto nearby.

The estate publishes no plant list for the conservatory. It states only that exotic plants and flowers were originally grown there and that the Office of Public Works has reintroduced them. This showpiece glasshouse was part of a wider movement: by the early twentieth century the Farmleigh gardens had gained increased plantings of broadleaved trees and exotics.

The walled garden belongs to a different tradition, that of productive horticulture. Later in the nineteenth century an extensive range of glasshouses along its south wall raised plants, in the Victorian manner, for large-scale bedding schemes. Edward Cecil Guinness added the fernery under glass and the vinery. His daughter-in-law later laid out the enclosure as a series of compartments, a fashion of the early twentieth century that went with a renewed interest in old-fashioned garden plants.

Around them the 32-hectare estate keeps stands of mature cypress, pine and oak, and grazes a herd of rare native Kerry cattle.

Run by the OPW, the estate lies at Castleknock, near the Phoenix Park. The grounds, gardens and gallery are open to visitors, with guided tours of the outdoors; the house, and with it the conservatory, can normally be seen only on a guided tour. It is, however, closed throughout 2026 to accommodate the EU Presidency, while the grounds remain accessible.

A walk can take in the walled garden, the sunken garden with its three brick terraces stepping down to an oval pool, and the Cherry Walk planted by Gwendolen, Lady Iveagh. Seasonal craft and food markets are held on the estate, and the Boathouse restaurant offers a place to stop.