Newbridge House & Farm

Fingal County Council were continuing to implement a strategy of surrounding the growing city of Dublin with parks and providing for its own growing population. It was seeking well located lands with mature landscapes for recreational purposes and the best prospects were 18th Century Country Houses. The partnership with Tourism was to create, open and operate an important heritage project. The opportunity at Newbridge was for an important 18th C house set in its classic demesne, with its walled garden, courtyard and historic farm all intact.

The approach was to carefully preserve the completeness of what was there but to reimagine it, populate it and expand it to create visitor experiences that would support its upkeep financially and contribute to the tourism economy of Fingal as well as to education, community and societal development.

The challenges were to conserve and protect the historic buildings, to provide a new access and parking for cars and buses.

The internal challenges were to restore important interiors, to refresh the furnishing and content after the auction and to repopulate interesting components like the downstairs servants area and historic kitchen as well as the farm and walled garden.

A very successful, authentic and active Recreational. Heritage and Tourism project was opened quickly and continues to develop. It has a particularly strong domestic, family, educational and community engagement..

In heritage terms it provided the public and visitors with an important conserved and preserved estate with a collection of 18th C Irish Furniture

and art, a collection of domestic and farm artifacts and important authentic interiors like the Great Red Drawing Room