Other sights in Ireland
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Dublin Castle
The centre of British power in Ireland for most of 800 years, Dublin Castle sits atop Cork Hill, behind City Hall. It was originally built on the orders of King John in 1204, but it’s more higgledy-piggledy palace than castle. Only the Record Tower, completed in 1258, survives from the original Norman construction. Parts of the castle’s foundations remain and a visit to the excavations is the most interesting part of the castle tour. The moats, now completely covered by more modern developments, were once filled by the River Poddle. The castle is also home to one of Dublin’s best museums, the Chester Beatty Library.
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Trinity College
On a summer’s evening, when the bustling crowds have gone for the day, there’s hardly a more delightful place in Dublin than the grounds of Ireland’s most prestigious university, a masterpiece of architecture and landscaping beautifully preserved in Georgian aspic. Not only is it Dublin’s most attractive bit of historical real estate, but it’s also home to one of the world’s most famous – and most beautiful – books, the gloriously illuminated Book of Kells. There is no charge to wander around the gardens on your own between 8am and 10pm.
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Dunbrody Heritage Ship
Emigrants’ sorrowful yet often-inspiring stories are brought to life by actors during a 30-minute tour of the Dunbrody Heritage Ship, a full-scale replica 1845 Famine ship (also known as a ‘coffin ship’, due to the number of passengers who didn’t survive the journey). Prior to the tour, a 10-minute film gives you background on the original three-masted barque and the construction of the new one. Admission includes access to the onsite database of Irish emigration to America from 1845 to 1875, containing over two million records.
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Fry Model Railway
Ireland’s biggest model railway is 240 sq metres, and authentically displays much of Ireland’s rail and public transport system, including the DART line and Irish Sea ferry services, in O-gauge (32mm track width). A separate room features model trains and other memorabilia. Unfortunately the operators suffer from the overseriousness of some grown men with complicated toys; rather than let you simply look and admire, they herd you into the control room in groups for demonstrations.
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John F Kennedy Arboretum
Containing 4500 species of trees and shrubs in 252 hectares of woodlands and gardens, the John F Kennedy Arboretum is the promised land for families on a sunny day. The park, 2km southeast of the Kennedy Homestead, has a small visitor centre, tearooms and a picnic area; a miniature train tootles around in the summer months. Slieve Coillte (270m), opposite the park entrance, has a viewing point from where you can see the arboretum and six counties on a clear day.
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Hugh Lane Gallery
Whatever reputation Dublin has a repository of world-class art has a lot to do with the simply stunning collection at the Hugh Lane Gallery, which is not only home to works by some of the brightest stars in the modern and contemporary art world both foreign and domestic, but is also where you’ll find one of the most singular exhibitions to be seen anywhere: the actual studio of one of the 20th century’s truly iconic artists, Francis Bacon.
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National Museum – Archaeology & History
The mother of Irish museums and the country’s most important cultural institution was established in 1977 as the primary repository of the nation’s archaeological treasures. The collection is so big, however, that it has expanded beyond the walls of this superb purpose-built building next to the Irish parliament into three other separate museums – the stuffed beasts of the Natural History Museum, the decorative arts section at Collins Barracks and a country life museum in County Mayo, on Ireland’s west coast.
They’re all fascinating, but the star attractions are all here, mixed up in Europe’s finest collection of Bronze- and Iron-Age gold artefacts, the most comple…
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St Patrick’s College
St Patrick’s College & Seminary was founded in 1795 to turn out Catholic priests. In 1910 it joined the newly established National University of Ireland (NUI). A restructuring of the NUI in 1997 made St Patrick’s College independent of the bigger university, which now has more than 6500 students; there are only a few dozen studying for the priesthood.
The college buildings are impressive – Gothic architect Augustus Pugin had a hand in designing them – and well worth an hour’s ramble. You enter the college via Georgian Stoyte House, where the accommodation office sells booklets (€4.50) for guiding yourself around. In summer there’s also a visitor centre and a small sci…
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Wonderful Barn
Immediately to the east of the grounds of Castletown House, and on private property that never belonged to the house, you will find the curious, conical Wonderful Barn. Standing at 21m high, this extraordinary five-storey structure, which is wrapped by a 94-step winding staircase, was commissioned by Lady Conolly in 1743 to give employment to local tenants whose crops were ruined by the severe frosts in the winters of 1741 and 1742. The building was ostensibly a granary, but it was also used as a shooting tower – doves were considered a delicacy in Georgian times. Flanking the main building are two smaller towers, which were also used to store grain. Be warned however: th…
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Mount Stewart
The magnificent 18th-century Mount Stewart is one of Northern Ireland’s grandest stately homes. It was built for the Marquess of Londonderry and is decorated with lavish plasterwork, marble nudes and priceless artworks. Much of the landscaping of the beautiful gardens was supervised in the early 20th century by Lady Edith, wife of the seventh marquess, for the benefit of her children – the Dodo Terrace at the front of the house is populated with unusual creatures from history (dinosaurs and dodos) and myth (griffins and mermaids), accompanied by giant frogs and duck-billed platypuses. Mount Stewart is on the A20, 3km north-west of Greyabbey and 8km south-east of Newtown…
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Wicklow’s Historic Gaol
Wicklow’s infamous jail, opened in 1702 to deal with prisoners sentenced under the repressive Penal Laws, was renowned throughout Ireland for the brutality of its keepers and the harsh conditions suffered by its inmates. The smells, vicious beatings, shocking food and disease-ridden air have long since gone, but adults and children alike can experience a sanitised version of what the prison was like – and stimulate the secret sadist buried deep within – in the highly entertaining tour of the prison, now one of Wicklow’s most popular tourist attractions. Actors play the roles of the various jailers and prisoners, adding to the sense of drama already heightened by the vario…
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Dunsany Castle
See how the other 1% lives at Dunsany Castle ,the residence of the lords of Dunsany and one of the oldest continually inhabited buildings in Ireland. Construction started on the castle in the 12th century, with major alterations taking place in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Today the castle houses an impressive private art collection and many other treasures related to important figures in Irish history, such as Oliver Plunkett and Patrick Sarsfield, leader of the Irish Jacobite forces at the siege of Limerick in 1691. A guided tour takes almost two hours and offers a fascinating insight into the family history as well as that of the castle. It remains a family home, and ma…
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Killruddery House & Gardens
About 3km south of Bray on the Greystones road are Killruddery House & Gardens. A stunning mansion in the Elizabethan Revival style, Killruddery has been home to the Brabazon family (earls of Meath) since 1618 and has one of the oldest gardens in Ireland. The house, designed by trendy 19th-century architects Richard Morrisson and his son William in 1820, was reduced to its present-day huge proportions by the 14th earl in 1953; he was obviously looking for something a little more bijou. The house is impressive, but the prizewinner here is the magnificent orangery, built in 1852 and chock-full of statuary and plant life. If you like fancy glasshouses, this is the one for yo…
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Lough Navar Forest Park
This forest park lies at the western end of Lower Lough Erne, where the Cliffs of Magho – a 250m-high and 9km-long limestone escarpment – rise above a fringe of native woodland on the south shore. An 11km scenic drive through the park leads to the Magho Viewpoint. The panorama from the cliff top here is one of the finest in Ireland, especially before sunset: it looks out over the shimmering expanse of Lough and river to the Blue Stack Mountains, the sparkling waters of Donegal Bay and the sea cliffs of Slieve League. The vehicle entrance to Lough Navar Forest Park is on the minor Glennasheevar road between Garrison and Derrygonnelly, 20km south-east of Belleek (take the B…
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Berkeley Library
To one side of the Old Library is Paul Koralek’s 1967 Berkeley Library. This solid, square, brutalist- style building has been hailed as the best example of modern architecture in Ireland, though it has to be admitted the competition isn’t great. It’s fronted by Arnaldo Pomodoro’s 1982 sculpture Sphere Within Sphere. George Berkeley was born in Kilkenny in 1685, studied at Trinity when he was only 15 years old and went on to a distinguished career in many fields, particularly philosophy. His influence spread to the new colonies in North America where, among other things, he helped to found the University of Pennsylvania. Berkeley, California, and its namesake univ…
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Jerpoint Abbey
One of Ireland’s finest Cistercian ruins, Jerpoint Abbey is about 2.5km southwest of Thomastown on the N9. It was established in the 12th century and has been partially restored. The tower and cloister are late 14th or early 15th century. Look for the series of often amusing figures carved on the cloister pillars, including a knight. There are also stone carvings on the church walls and in the tombs of members of the Butler and Walshe families. Faint traces of a 15th- or 16th-century painting remain on the northern wall of the church. This chancel area also contains a tomb thought to belong to hardheaded Felix O’Dulany, Jerpoint’s first abbot and bishop of Ossory, who d…
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Working Farm
One for the kids. Situated a few hundred metres down the hill to the west of Newgrange tomb (or follow the signs on the N51) is a 135-hectare working farm. The truly hands-on, family-run farm allows visitors to feed the ducks and lambs, and tour the exotic bird aviaries. Amiable Farmer Bill keeps things interesting and demonstrations of threshing, sheepdog work and shoeing a horse are absorbing. Sunday at 3pm is a very special time when the ‘sheep derby’ is run. Finding jockeys small enough wasn’t easy, so teddy bears are tied to the animals’ backs. Visiting children are made owners of individual sheep for the race.
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Belvelly
Two kilometres out of Midleton on the N25 towards Fota, the effervescent Frank Hederman runs Belvelly, the oldest natural smoke house in Ireland – and indeed the only one. Seafood and cheese are smoked here, but the speciality is fish – in particular, salmon. In a traditional process that takes 24 hours from start to finish, the fish is filleted and cured before being hung in the tiny smoke house to smoke over beech woodchips. No trip to Cork is complete without a visit to an artisan food producer, and Frank is more than happy to show you around; phone or email to arrange. Or stop by his booth at the Midleton farmers market.
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Bunratty Castle
Square and hulking Bunratty Castle is only the latest of several constructions to occupy its location beside the River Ratty. Vikings founded a settlement here in the 10th century, and other occupants included the Norman Thomas de Clare in the 1270s. The present structure was put up in the early 1400s by the energetic MacNamara family, falling shortly thereafter to the O’Briens, kings of Thomond, in whose possession it remained until the 17th century. Admiral Penn, father of William Penn, who was the Quaker founder of the US state of Pennsylvania and the city of Philadelphia, lived here for a short time.
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Boyle Abbey
Gracing the River Boyle is the finely preserved (and reputedly haunted) Boyle Abbey. Founded in 1161 by monks from Mellifont in County Louth, the abbey captures the transition from Romanesque to Gothic style, best seen in the nave, where a set of arches in each style face each other. Unusually for a Cistercian building, figures and carved animals decorate the capitals to the west. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the abbey was occupied by the military and became Boyle Castle; the stone chimney on the southern side of the abbey, which was once the refectory, dates from that period.
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Mitchels Town Caves
While the Galtee Mountains are mainly sandstone, a narrow band of limestone along their southern side has given rise to the Mitchels town Caves . Superior to Kilkenny's Dunmore Cave and yet less developed for tourists, these caves are among the most extensive in the country with nearly 3km of passages and spectacular chambers full of textbook formations with names such as the Pipe Organ, Tower of Babel, House of Commons and Eagle's Wing. Tours take about 30 minutes. Year-round, the cave temperature remains a constant 12 ˚C, making it feel warm in winter and chilly in summer.
The caves are near Burncourt, 16km southwest of Cahir and signposted on the N8 to Mitchelstown (Ba…
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Ego Patricius
The Saint Patrick Centre houses a multimedia exhibition called Ego Patricius, charting the life and legacy of Ireland’s patron saint. Occasionally filled with parties of school kids, the exhibition uses audio and video presentations to tell St Patrick’s story, often in his own words (taken from his Confession, written in Latin around the year AD 450, which begins with the words ‘Ego Patricius’, meaning ‘I am Patrick’). At the end is a spectacular widescreen film that takes the audience on a swooping, low-level helicopter ride over the landscapes of Ireland.
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Glebe House
The English painter Derrick Hill bought historic Glebe House in 1953, providing him with a mainland base close to his beloved Tory Island. Before Hill arrived, the house served as a rectory and then a hotel. The 1828-built mansion is sumptuously decorated with an evident love of all things exotic, but its real appeal is his astonishing art collection. In addition to paintings by Hill and Tory Island’s ‘naive’ artists are works by Picasso, Landseer, Hokusai, Jack B Yeats and Kokoschka. The woodland gardens are also wonderful. A guided tour of the house takes about 45 minutes.
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Huntington Castle
Accessed by a long driveway off the main street, Huntington Castle is a spooky, dusty old keep built in 1625 by the Durdin-Robertson family, who still own it and live here today. The family conduct hour-long tours of the property, which, they claim, is haunted by two ghosts: Bishop Leslie (a former bishop of Limerick) and Ailish O’Flaherty (the granddaughter of Grace O’Malley, the Pirate Queen). Descending to the castle’s basement brings you to the Temple of Isis, where the Fellowship of Isis, worshipping the ancient Egyptian goddess, was founded by the family in 1963.
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Famine Warhouse
A relic of one of Ireland’s darkest chapters, the Famine Warhouse sits seemingly benignly today amid typical farmland near Ballingarry. During the 1848 rebellion, rebels led by William Smith O’Brien besieged police who had barricaded themselves inside and taken children hostage. Things did not go well and this incident marked the effective end of the rebellion. Besides exhibits about the incident, there are also displays detailing the famine and the mass exodus of Irish emigrants to America. The warhouse is 30km northeast of Cashel on the R691 about midway to Kilkenny.
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