John O’Brien was standing behind a glass display cabinet in his Enniskerry Antiques Gallery when a familiar face popped in: Kate Capshaw, the actress whose husband is the film director Steven Spielberg. She took her time wandering around the treasure trove that is the gallery, where extraordinary objects are piled in precarious heaps. Eventually, she settled on some silver and went away happy.
“To me, Enniskerry is a version of the Cotswolds — although obviously much nicer — rolling countryside, sylvan landscape, horses, and celebrities brushing shoulders with the locals without remark,” says O’Brien, who has run the gallery in the hilly Wicklow village for the past nine years.
Enniskerry, which is one of the first Wicklow villages off the N11 at the foothills of