The great gentry families of Kildare are all but gone. Their magnificant houses and estates are in ruins, or reborn as hotels and golf courses. This book tells their stories, full of colour, controversy and contradictions. County Kildare is, and indeed always has been, home to wealth and horses, soldiers and strong farmers. The priviledged class- both native Irish and settler- hunted, duelled and went to war. Their glory era was, however, also a time of famine, rebellion and wide scale poverty. Inevitably the end of landlordism and national independence brought swift decline in the fortunes of those who came to be known as 'the quality.' -- Publisher description