Built in the 1830s for the Gore-Booth family, this imposing grey limestone residence became a gathering place for Ireland’s literary and political elite during the tumultuous years surrounding independence. The house gained particular fame through its connection to W.B. Yeats, who was a frequent visitor and close friend of the Gore-Booth sisters, Eva and Constance.

The most remarkable of the Gore-Booth daughters was Constance, who would later become Countess Markievicz after marrying a Polish count. A passionate suffragette and Irish nationalist, she traded her privileged upbringing for revolutionary politics, becoming the first woman elected to the British Parliament in 1918, though she never took her seat in protest. Her sister Eva, meanwhile, became a noted poet and labour activist in Manchester. Their childhood home bears witness to this extraordinary transformation; the dining room where they once entertained Yeats now displays memorabilia from Constance’s imprisonment following the 1916 Easter Rising, where she served as second-in-command at St Stephen’s Green.

Today, Lissadell House offers visitors a chance to walk through rooms largely unchanged since the Gore-Booth era. The estate’s walled garden, one of the finest in Ireland, continues to supply the house’s tearoom, whilst the surrounding demesne provides stunning views across to Ben Bulben mountain. The house remains in private hands, rescued from near dereliction in 2003, and stands as a testament to a family who shaped modern Ireland; from the famine relief efforts of Sir Robert Gore-Booth in the 1840s to his daughters’ roles in the struggle for independence and women’s rights.