On the Kildare landscape, there stands an obelisk built not to commemorate a battle or mark a grave, but simply to be looked at. The Eagle Obelisk at Belan is a folly, a structure whose entire purpose was visual, designed to draw the eye from the windows and grounds of Belan House to the south-west. That kind of deliberate theatrical arrangement, where a landowner commissions a monument purely to ornament a view, says a great deal about the ambitions and aesthetics of the Anglo-Irish gentry at their most confident.

The obelisk is attributed to Richard Castle, the German-born architect who became one of the most consequential figures in eighteenth-century Irish country house design. Castle, who worked under Sir Edward Lovett Pearce before establishing his own practice, was responsible for a number of major Irish houses and their associated landscapes. An eye-catcher, in the vocabulary of designed landscapes, is precisely what the name suggests: a structure placed at a calculated distance and angle to provide a focal point, framing the view and lending the estate a sense of depth and grandeur. That the Eagle Obelisk remains well-maintained suggests it has been looked after with some care across the centuries since Castle's time.