2 July 1903
The Gordon Bennett Cup
Racing on public roads was illegal in Britain. Ireland said yes. So the first international motor race in these islands started at Ballyshannon crossroads, a mile from Calverstown, on a 328-mile figure-eight through Kildare and Queen's County. Camille Jenatzy won for Belgium in a 60-horsepower Mercedes. Seven thousand police and soldiers held the spectators back. The British team had painted their cars shamrock green out of courtesy to the host nation, and the colour stuck. That is why Aston Martins and Jaguars are green. Because of a Thursday in July, in a Kildare field, in 1903.
Tower wrapped in a manor
Calverstown Castle
South of the village, in the grounds of Calverstown House, stands a 17th-century manor house built around an earlier medieval tower. The 1656 Civil Survey recorded "one castle and a stone quarry" on 760 Irish acres held by Sir Robert Dixon. The Dixons kept it until 1730; it passed by inheritance to the Borrowes Baronets. Private now. You can see it from the road if you know where to look.
Hitler’s commando in a Kildare field
Otto Skorzeny next door
From 1959 to 1971, Martinstown House — a couple of fields from Calverstown — was owned by Otto Skorzeny, the SS officer who rescued Mussolini in 1943 and was acquitted at Nuremberg. He bought the place under Charles Haughey's land scheme for foreign investors. Locals remember him drinking in Naas. The house has changed hands many times since; the story sits in the soil, not on a sign.
Quiet has costs
The bypass and the village
Until 2010, the N9 funnelled Dublin–Waterford traffic straight through Calverstown. Then the M9 opened a few fields east, and the village went silent. Houses got their evenings back. The shop and the pubs lost the passing trade that had paid bills for fifty years. Every Irish village on a former main road tells some version of this story. Calverstown's version is recent enough that people remember both.