Lyons Estate is located near Celbridge in Co Kildare, Ireland. The novelist and poet Emily Lawless was born there in 1845. The property consisted of a country house and estate of almost 500 hectares. It was the home of the Lawless family for generations. Today half the estate is owned by University College Dublin. The remainder of the estate and the country house was purchased by Tony Ryan of Ryanair. He restored the house and built a Georgian village nearby. It is now a popular wedding venue.
Emily Lawless grew up at Lyons Estate but spent the summers with her mother’s family in Co Galway. She moved to England in 1897. She lived in Surrey but grew Irish plants in her garden and maintained what she called a ‘corner of bog’. Her writings included works of fiction, history and nature studies. She also wrote poetry the most famous of which was ‘Wild Geese’ (1902), which was popular among nationalists.
Emily Lawless was born in the year 1845 On This Day.
Image taken from page 15 of ‘With Essex in Ireland, being extracts from a diary kept in Ireland during the year 1599 by Mr. Henry Harvey … edited by Hon. E. Lawless’