Swift and Vanessa Festival 2026

In the town where Swift and Vanessa’s story happened.

16–19 July 2026 • Celbridge, Co. Kildare

Marking 300 years of Gulliver’s Travels.

Celebration of a love story

Three centuries on, in the town where it all happened

The Swift and Vanessa Festival celebrates the story of Jonathan Swift and Esther Vanhomrigh — the “Vanessa” of his writing — whose relationship played out in Celbridge in the 1720s. Esther lived at Celbridge Abbey; Swift visited from Dublin; their letters and his poem “Cadenus and Vanessa” survive as the record of one of the most famous and most turbulent literary relationships in Irish history.

The festival takes place each July in the town where their story happened, with Castletown House, Christ Church, and Celbridge’s streets as its working venues. In 2026 we mark 300 years since the publication of Gulliver’s Travels, with a programme that argues Swift remains one of the sharpest political voices in English literature — and that Gulliver’s Travels at 300 reads as a guide to the present.

At the heart of celbridge

Courting grounds

Esther Vanhomrigh — Vanessa — lived at Celbridge Abbey, from where she wrote constantly to Swift, inviting him to visit. On those days they walked in the Abbey’s gardens and sat together in Vanessa’s Bower, a romantic stone structure on the riverbank. The Rockbridge over the Liffey is another icon of their romance.

Celbridge Abbey is now in private ownership and not open to the public. The festival’s working venues — Castletown House, Christ Church, the Slip, and the village itself — are all within walking distance of each other and trace the same ground that Swift, Vanessa, and the writing of the eighteenth century moved through.

Festival Events 2025

Funding & Sponsorship

With thanks to Kildare County Council for community grant funding, and to the Councillors of the Celbridge–Leixlip Municipal District for LPT funding allocation. With warm thanks to our sponsors, Celbridge Tidy Towns and Intel. If you would like to sponsor the festival, please contact us — we would love to hear from you.

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