Abstract
Headfort House contains the Republic of Ireland's last remaining suite of interiors designed by Robert Adam. There have been substantial maintenance issues over the last 50 years, and as a result the building was included on the World Monument Fund's 2004 Watch List. Once these issues were resolved, attention moved to investigating and understanding the painted interiors which survived in good condition. This process led to an extensive physical investigation revealing an original decoration which is both striking and unusual and which, due to the significance of the original scheme, as opposed to later over painting, was eventually restored in two principal areas—the Stair Hall and Eating Parlour. The use of colour on the decorative plasterwork at Headfort reinforces the imperative of not making assumptions based upon either Adam's surviving drawings or modern taste when commissioning or undertaking documentary and physical research of eighteenth-century interiors.
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