There really isn’t all that much to detain you in MAYNOOTH – due west of Dublin on the M4 – (pronounced Ma-nooth, with the stress on the second syllable), pretty though it is. A handful of worthwhile attractions lie near to Maynooth including, four miles west, the intriguing Larchill Arcadian Gardens – a monument to the eccentricities of the eighteenth-century landowners who first developed them. Castletown House, outside Celbridge, is perhaps Ireland’s most splendid Palladian mansion and combines a perfect eighteenth-century Classicism with follies to rival the idiosyncracies of Larchill. Around four miles west from Castletown House, the village of Straffan is home to a steam museum and a butterfly farm. Maynooth itself is renowned chiefly for its seminary, St Patrick’s College, which, in addition to training priests, now houses two universities. Fans of Victoriana will be especially interested in the square here, which is by Pugin in Gothic Revival style. The ruins beside the entrance to the college are those of the thirteenth-century Maynooth Castle, one of the two main strongholds of the Anglo-Norman Fitzgerald family who ruled Kildare and, effectively, most of Ireland from the thirteenth century until the coming of the Tudor monarchs (their other castle is at Kilkea, in the south). Maynooth’s formal town planning is made sense of by Carton House, a Georgian gem by Richard Castle which lies at the other end of the main street.