Partying putti in the gardens of Headfort, County Meath: they have evidently heard the news that the building is to reopen its doors as a school next month. Its design attributed to George Semple (a Dublin-based builder and self-taught architect), the house dates from the mid-1760s when constructed for the first Earl of Bective. In the following decade, the latter commissioned Robert Adam to produce decorative schemes for a suite of rooms in the newly completed Headfort. Adam, who never visited this country, duly came up with designs for the entrance and staircase halls, as well for as a series of three adjacent spaces on the garden front culminating in a double-height saloon that was known as the ‘Eating Parlor.’ Even if not all his proposals were fully implemented, the interiors are of immense importance as the only extant examples of Adam’s work in Ireland. In 1949 the property was opened as a school which remained in operation until last March, when the institution’s then-board took the decision to close down. However, since then a group of supporters, many of them past-pupils, have come together to raise funds and re-open the establishment, thereby ensuring the future of this very important house.
