Restored 17th & 19th Century Historical Irish Garden ...
... History, Beauty, Fantasy & Atmosphere

For lovers of gardens, nature and history, for families of all ages - this spectacular garden holds more questions than answers.

A landscape of inspiring beauty and intriguing history

Take an extended walk to Charles Cockerel's vast portico, restored as a ruined "Temple of the Rains," and through a rockery and woodland pleasure walks to Lough Creeve with its legendary cranóg.

In 1821 Charles Cockerel, a neo-classical architect, designed a new Loughcrew House as part of a fundamental relandscaping of the demesne. While Cockerel's design contributed many of the current garden's features, his original mansion was ruined by a series of fires, reputedly the result of a family curse.

The garden's most recent revival dates from 1997, when Charles and Emily Naper began respectfully restoring Loughcrew's beautiful features and bringing its dynamic past back to life. Their work has sought to emphasise Loughcrew as a site of unfolding history - a masterpiece developed by generations of designers using resources of great wealth and a landscape of extraordinary beauty to create gardens and grounds that to this day remain exceptional.

Take a walk through centuries of garden and landscape fantasy.

Generations of the Naper family have been creating Loughcrew Gardens since 1660. The result is a stunning garden comprising water, trees, vistas and archaeology rather than flowerbeds. A host of enchanting features are displayed in a setting steeped in atmosphere and history: the prehistoric Loughcrew Cairns crown nearby hills; and within the gardens stand a mediæval moote and St. Oliver Plunkett's family church and Tower House.

The surviving 17th century features include a magnificent yew walk, foundations of a longhouse and a walled garden from which a canal and a parterre have been relocated in replica. The yew walk trees are exceptional, of remarkable form and girth. Other trees are mound-planted, leaving the root system exposed as an extension of the impressive contorted trunks.

In the 19th century these earlier elements were enveloped in a comprehensive development of parkland, watergardens, specimen trees, follies, rockeries, woodwalks and magnificent vistas. The central area of approximately six acres now includes a lime avenue, extensive lawns and terraces, magnificent herbaceous border and physic border. Don't miss the grotesque rockery and grotto, the Rootery, Hellfire garden, watermill, fountain, and symbolic statues and sculptures. And more.