The austerity of the limestone building and the drama of its setting make a masterful contrast: the severe house facing

The austerity of the limestone building and the drama of its setting make a masterful contrast: the severe house facing, to the south, Sligo Bay and behind it Knocknarea; to the east, Ben Bulben. You walk around Lissadell and Ben Bulben's bare, friendly head is always peeping at you over the Greek-revival parapets like a pet dinosaur.Lissadell is renowned for two principle reasons First, it is inextricably linked with W B Yeats. The poet, who lies buried in nearby Drumcliff, identified more strongly with this part of Ireland - "Yeats Country" - than with any other place. In his lofty lament for the passing of youth and innocence he wrote:"The light of evening, Lissadell,Great windows open to the south,Two girls in silk kimonos, both"Beautiful, one a gazelle."Yet Yeats only came here twice. He stayed in Lissadell on both occasions during the winter of 1894, but did not write these lines until 1927 following the death of the beautiful gazelle he tenderly remembered from more than 30 years before. Her name was Constance Gore-Booth, later to become Countess Markievicz, and she is the second reason why Lissadell is so celebrated.

Constance joined the Easter Rising of 1916 and occupied St Stephen's Green in Dublin, an action for which she was sentenced to the firing squad. Reprieved, she later became the first woman MP (for Sinn Fein) elected to Westminster. Lissadell now markets itself as "The Childhood Home of Countess Markievicz". Yet, at the time, the countess was anything but welcome in Lissadell following her republican activities in Dublin, where she died a pauper in 1927.Immediately full of such contradictions, Lissadell forces you to focus clearly On the term "Anglo-Irish", for example. A distinct breed, they are remembered for having "Obsolete bravado, insidious bonhomie, and a way with horses" in a phrase attributed to the Irish poet, Louis MacNeice.Unlike the merely Protestant Irish - to whom one would never dream of applying the description "Anglo" - the Anglo-Irish represent a rapidly shrinking colonial ascendancy whose singularity has been maintained because of their refusal to integrate. Thus whilst the Irish Protestant middle class has adapted, integrated politically and lost the tag "Anglo", ascendancy families such as the Gore-Booths have remained immutable in both their allegiances and their way of life.We don't quite know what to expect as we climb a set of moveable iron steps and enter the house by the first floor window of what now serves as the kitchen Sligo Bay is changing light with every heartbeat. It's impossible not to think of the past generations who woke here every morning and saw what we are seeing - for whom Ben Bulben, the most personal of mountains, was an old friend.In the first years of the 17th century, Sir Paul Gore began poorly in so far as bonhomie with the natives was concerned.

He is primarily remembered for two events: he delivered the last great Irish chieftains, Rory O'Donnell and Donough O'Connor into the fatal custody of Elizabeth I and he massacred the surviving Irish population on Tory Island, off Donegal.We tiptoe down a corridor and enter the bow-fronted south-facing library windows made famous by Yeats It's a warm room in this morning's sun But there's no one here. The wallpaper's peeling and the pelmets of the curtains look as if they will almost certainly disintegrate if they are touched. Turning from the famous windows our breaths catch in our throats. The facing doors are open and the central gallery of Lissadell House is revealed.This house was built between 1831 and 1833 by Sir Robert Gore-Booth, great-great-grandfather to Sir Josslyn, the present incumbent. Although a century and a half has passed since Sir Robert's heyday, his name is still reviled locally for the ruthlessness with which he cleared his estates of its tenants.

Sir Robert's notoriety is said to have been the main force in the lifelong rebellion by his granddaughter Constance, who was against everything that he stood for.The gallery of Lissadell is like nothing less than the great stateroom of a long sunken ocean liner. Vaulted to nearly 35ft and narrow, it runs two-thirds of the length of the entire house. Faint light is admitted through distant portholes in the roof Today it is cold beyond exaggeration. Plaster peels in abundance from high walls and remote cornices. The sense of being landed into Hades is compounded by the facing lines of Ionic columns, the thoroughly subterranean dankness and the presence of a churchly organ incorporated into one wall.The traditional wealth of the ascendancy in Europe depended on rents from the land.