A plan to build over 450 houses in the vicinity of one of Ireland's more unusual historical landmarks has been lodged with Kildare County Council.

Developer David Daly's Albany Homes is seeking to build 476 houses on lands at Barnhall in Leixlip in the grounds of the Wonderful Barn, a stone grain store, dating from 1743 and Barnhall House dating from the 17th century.

The wonderful barn is a folly built by Lady Laura Catherine Connolly as a poverty relief project during the Famine. Based on the design of an Indian rice store, the seven-storey structure had a practical use as a grain store.

Visible from the M4 motorway, the grain store is one of only two in the country, according to the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage. It is located on a 90-acre site which was rezoned for housing in March 2002 by Kildare County Council. Under a local area action plan, the council decided that 48 acres of the site would be dedicated as parkland and 42 acres would be developed as low to medium-density housing.

A landscaping plan for the site includes provision of a bank of trees to screen the new housing from the historical buildings. Plans for restoring a walled garden have also been made. The transfer of the Barn complex - including Barnhall House, the Wonderful Barn, two dovecotes and walled garden and the remaining parkland - is being negotiated by the council.

Albany Homes, which purchased the land from a consortium of landowners in 2004, is seeking permission to build 122 four-bed houses, 12 three-bed houses, 136 two-bed houses, a crèche and two shops on the site. All proposed residential units are two-storeys in height.

The council's area action plan for the site was described as "disastrous" by the Hon Desmond Guinness, former president of the Irish Georgian Society. Lands surrounding the barn, he said, "should be kept free of housing development" to protect its setting.