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"View Slideshow\n\nThere is a sense of very great age to this place,\" says the Duke of Devonshire. \"Everybody who comes here feels it. For nearly 1,400 years stones have gone up, tumbled down, been reused. A Celtic arch is built into a tower; a new art gallery in the west wing was completed last July\u2014these stones play out the long history of Lismore Castle. In times of war they were defensive; in times of peace they became what we see today, a castle as a 19th-century style, not a necessity.\"\n\nThe magnitude of that timeline is both humbling and inspiring. The duke's son, Lord Burlington, also known as the photographer William Burlington, feels both. \"My heart soars every morning when I look out the window,\" he says. \"The mist hangs over the River Blackwater; the mountains change from the blues of dawn to a million shades of green. There is constancy as well as change. The river flows on, regardless. The rest is detail.\"\n\nThe earliest building was a 7th-century monastery built high above the river. Vikings and Normans knocked walls down, King John built a castle, and the bishops of Lismore built a medieval palace, which they leased four centuries later to Sir Walter Raleigh; he sold it to Richard Boyle, who became the first Earl of Cork and gleefully spent his new fortune rebuilding and enlarging it. Family titles have become grander over the years, but it is his descendants who to this day own the castle at Lismore.\n\nForces in the Cromwellian War left some cannonballs (one is now used as a door-stop) and were said to have \"ruinated\" the castle. Successive generations made a few repairs, but it was the 19th-century sixth Duke of Devonshire, the \"Bachelor Duke,\" who saved Lismore. He had intended to sell it to pay off his mother's gambling debts, but once there, he loved it so much he built a new one, a pretend castle over the ruins of the genuine. Medieval towers supposedly stand unseen under his square battlements.\n\nIn 1811 William Atkinson began the first stage; in 1840 work continued under the magnificent Sir Joseph Paxton, designer of the Crystal Palace.\n\nA. W. N. Pugin and John Gregory Crace, a pair also known for their work on the Houses of Parliament, designed furniture as well as decorative woodwork and painting; Minton made fireplace tiles. It was a roll call of the great Victorian talents.\n\nIn 1932 Adele Astaire married into the family; she lived there for 12 years, added some Art D\u00E9co furniture and invited brother Fred. He came often and was photographed, presumably in the Irish mists, dancing with rubber boots on his talented feet.\n\nNow it is her grandnephew, Peregrine Cavendish, the 12th Duke of Devonshire, and his wife, Amanda, who come several times a year, filling the rooms with family and grandchildren and friends. It's a lively place.\n\nThe duke has fond memories of coming as a child for the fishing that is so good at Easter time. Upon his later return with his own children, he realized, with three generations visiting, it was time to smarten up a few bedrooms.\n\nThe idea took hold but really gained momentum when Jonathan Bourne, a furniture expert, came to stay. \"He was overwhelmed by what was here,\" says the duke. \"It has been said that Lismore has a good collection of fake Titians and a great collection of genuine Pugins. Both are true.\"\n\nWork has been gradual, with plumbing for new baths, wiring for new but unobtrusive lighting and repairs to wobbly parapets making a very solid building even more so. The exterior looks like serious business, but much of the interior is only one room deep and windows are large, and rooms are smaller and cheerier than expected.\n\nThe design team was a happy little gang of four\u2014the duke and duchess, Jonathan Bourne and interior designer Melissa Wyndham. They would come for three or four days and leave notes for household staff, who would hang pictures after they had left. The butler was also the clerk of works\u2014his skill at designing a vaulted ceiling is as good as his skill at serving dinner.\n\nEverything was on the move as they did what they call \"rejiggering\" or \"fiddling about,\" giving good pieces a new life in a new place. When they found a great carpet, they eagerly stayed up late to rearrange the furniture after dinner. It would seem daunting to do so many rooms, to give each an identity, but, the duchess says, \"that was easy. Each room already had something wonderful, and that was the clue for what direction to take it. We weren't working with a blank canvas; we were preserving the sixth duke's intentions and making the castle livable in the 21st century.\"\n\nThey found Adele Astaire's glamorous round Art D\u00E9co stool in a storeroom and a Pugin writing desk in the dowager duchess's bedroom. They ordered more Pugin doorknobs, wallcoverings and fabrics and referred to a Pugin design for a dining room carpet, using his original colors, so strong they look like stained glass on the floor.\n\n\"It was a treat for me,\" says Wyndham. \"I'm a great fan of Pugin, but I have to hold back if I don't feel the style is right for a particular house. This furniture was designed for these rooms. You can't get more right than that.\"\n\nThe castle sleeps 23, so they had to arrange comfortable seating for 23 in the drawing room and sitting room. \"Fortunately, comfort is a Devonshire family talent,\" says Bourne. \"They can make everyone feel at ease, even among the splendors of Chatsworth, the family house in Derbyshire.\"\n\nCollecting and commissioning are other Devonshire family talents, and the current generation does both. They collect contemporary paintings and sculpture and buy more Pugin pieces whenever they see them. \"Much was probably commissioned by the Bachelor Duke,\" says the duke, \"but we always hope the family motto or crest was never painted on. They're cheaper that way. We can add that ourselves, and they look as though they have been here forever.\n\n\"Collecting is exciting, but commissioning is the best fun of all because you must take a risk. It would be safer to buy something you see and like, but a designer could think of something you had never considered, and it could turn out to be the most exciting thing you own. We asked a Japanese artist, Hiroshi Suzuki, to make silver candlesticks. He had never seen any, so that was a risk, but worth it. The Goldsmiths' Company in London showed us the work of appropriate silversmiths and guided us with enthusiasm and patience. This was essential for people like us, who had never commissioned silver.\"\n\nSculpture for the garden is placed with care, usually against a hedge so it is seen clearly, always so only one is seen at any time, often at the end of a vista but never at the opposite end. \"Symmetry can be very static,\" the duke says.\n\nRecently he added a black-and-white garden, hoping that visitors would be startled. \"So far everyone rather likes it,\" he says. \"I'm sorry about that. I was hoping it would make them notice and question.\"\n\nThe gardens are open to the public, as is a superb new art gallery that Lord Burlington has overseen. The stones of the ancient west wing are now a setting for changing exhibitions of world-class contemporary art.\n\n\"It's important to me that people can come here, be affected by the magic of Lismore and take that away with them,\" says the duke. \"Our intention has not been to interfere with the past nor to leave it rigid in time but to bring the castle forward in the same spirit.\"\n\n *\n\nThe entire castle can be rented when the family is not in residence, and the banquet hall can be used for special events. The gardens and the gallery, Lismore Castle Arts, are open daily from 1:45 to 4:45 p.m., April 15 to October 1, opening at 11:00 a.m. in the summer.\n\nFor more information, telephone 353-585-4424 or visit www.lismorecastle.com.\n\n*"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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