OUTSIDE the Kelly house, traffic strips past at full throttle on the main Dublin Waterford road. Occasionally some of the 60 miles an hour people catch a quick flash of a two foot high, whitewashed cottage with a golden thatch. How sweet, they think, and turn their eyes back to the road markings streaking by.
But this is no idle garden ornament. This is a replica of the historic Dwyer MacAllister Cottage in Co Wicklow, where the famous rebel Michael Dwyer was holed up in 1799 with his comrades one of whom, the brave Samuel MacAllister, sacrificed his life to save the rebel.
And over there, next to the gate, is a neat granite re creation of Glendalough round tower, St Kevin's Church and miniature carved stone cross. Further into the garden, the castellated round tower at Castledermot throws a small, long shadow on the lawn, while beyond it, the upturned boat shape of Gallarus Oratory on the Dingle peninsula sits solidly, stone laid laboriously upon stone.
What is this place at all? And what kind of person lives here?
Meet Billy Kelly, a man whose brown thatched head is filled to bursting with images of the past, and who single handedly built every one of these pint sized national monuments, from the hand carved pagan heads to the medieval Blackhall castle whose real life counterpart stands, only a mile away.
It all started about 10 years ago, says Billy, who likes nothing better than collecting folklore, visiting ancient sites and "walking up by the rath, snooping around and thinking of the past". An idea took hold of him: "I got to thinking it would be a good thing if I had a castle in my own garden... and then one thing leads to another."
The castle nearly did Billy in.
"I built it up from the ground. It was the hardest thing I ever did, but I wouldn't let it best me. I remember it used to rain, and all those little stones would slither down, and then I'd have to get at it again.
After the castle, Billy "got clever" and made moulds for some of the other buildings. His granite round towers, for instance, are made in two long halves which are then carefully, cemented together. However, the Gallarus Oratory and clochan - a beehive hut - were both painstakingly built in traditional dry stone manner, each stone nestling snugly with its neighbours.
"I'm trying to do a kind of a visual story in the garden about the coming of Christianity," he explains. "First you have the pagan heads and the Ogham stones, then you have the clochans where the monks used to live years ago. Then along came, St Kevin and Glendalough and all that. And, finally you have the Normans.
By the end of the year, Billy hopes to have another couple of clochans, built from the local "green flag" stone, and later on - "I'm going to go further up the garden and do a Norman motte and bailey, I have it planned a long time."
For Billy Kelly the best part of the day is that magical time in the morning, when the sun is not long up and the air is washed clean by the night. "I like to walk out with a rasher sandwich and a cup of tea - and I see my castle and my round towers and my thatched house and clochan, and my Gallarus. You get a completely different feeling here when you walk across the yard."
Indeed you do - in this charming, individual world where time winds slowly backwards, and where the rushing traffic beyond the gate belongs to another era.