Kilmacurragh House & Gardens

ne of the better kept secret hideaways around here, we’ve been meaning to add Kilmacurragh to our Take A Hike collection for some time now.

But then, we’d head up there, and just think, nah, let’s keep this to ourselves for a few weeks more.

With that sun finally sneaking its head out from behind the clouds again though, we reckon it’s time to unleash another slice of heaven upon the good people of Greystones and beyond.

Situated just a half-hour down the N11, at the turn-off for Redcross, Kilmacurragh boasts perhaps Ireland’s finest collection of exotic trees. And some of them have been there for hundreds of years. Give or take a century.

In truth, it’s hard to say just how far back Kilmurragh’s history goes, but the earliest recorded buildings were formed there as part of a monastic community – founded by none other than Saint Mochorog, the Welsh missionary of royal British and Saxon descent said to have brought Christianity to Ireland, after establishing a religious cell in Derge Mogorog (later becoming, after 30 name variations, Delgany) in either the late fifth, sixth, seventh or eight century. Historians differ on the date. Greatly.

The abbey founded by Mochorog (who is not to be confused with Saint Mocheanog, the inspiration behind Kilmacanogue) managed to survive up to the early sixteenth century, before falling foul of Henry VIII’s dissolution of Irish and British monasteries, and all that’s left of the original building at Kilmurragh today lies beneath the Chinese garden, east of the Pond Vista.

Thomas Acton II

With his father having been gifted the land for his role in Oliver Cromwell’s invading army, in 1697, Thomas Action II tore down the abbey ruins and, using its stone, built in its place a Queen Anne house designed by noted architect Sir William Robinson, who was also responsible for the Royal Hospital Kilmainham. One of the first unfortified houses at that time in County Wicklow, the panelled house comprised of five reception rooms and eight bedrooms, and was then surrounded by a formal Dutch-style landscape park – much of which remains today. Acton also introduced the forty-acre deer park, whilst it was at this time that the estate’s famous yew walk (or Monk’s Walk) was mapped out on the old pilgrims’ route from the abbey at Kilmacurragh to Glendalough.

More changes arrived in 1736, when Acton’s son, William, married Jane Parsons of Birr Castle, their union marked by the planting of a two-mile long beech avenue (some of which survives today), whilst, after receiving the princely sum of £10 from the Royal Dublin Society for planting foreign trees, the following decades saw tens of thousand of the buggers being added to the estate. Continuing the transformation, in 1762, the old stable yard was turned into a courtyard boasting fine coach houses.

The family passion for planting rare and exotic trees continued unabated when Thomas Action III and his wife Sidney took over the family home, changing the name of the estate from Kilmacurra to West Aston in 1750, a name-change that would last a century.

It was Thomas and Sidney’s eldest son, Lt Col William Acton, who became famous for organising many relief projects during The Great Famine, helping not only local people but also labourers from County Mayo stave off starvation. The establishment of an orangery and the introduction of glasshouse ranges were just part of the relief efforts on the estate.

When William’s son, Thomas Acton IV, inherited Kilmurragh in 1854, the 150-year-old house and gardens had reverted back to its old name. Only, with a misunderstanding seeing Kilmacurra (from Cill mo Churra, meaning the Church of Saint Mochorog) morph into Kilmacurragh (meaning, the church of the plain). Still, the garden remained a point of pride, and adventure, for the Actons, with Thomas and his sister, Janet, sweeping away many of the 18th-century features at this point and bringing in colour, the Broad Walk, and curator of the Royal Botanic Gardens, David Moore, for advice and inspiration. That’s when the weird and wonderful plants really started arriving.

As for the Broad Walk, that boasted alternating rows of Irish yew, Taxus baccata Fastigiata, the crimson-flowered Rhondodendron Altaclerense, and the lower-growing Rhondodendron Cunningham’s White. Which, as anyone who has taken a stroll there will tell you, can be pretty spectacular as spring heads to summer, and you end up on a scarlet brick road.

When David Moore passed away in June 1879, his son, Sir Frederick Moore, took on the role of garden advisor at Kilmacurragh, and together with Thomas Acton, the estate built up the finest private plant collection in the whole of Ireland. The collection included Sir Joseph Hooker’s rare Rhododenrons from the Sikkim Himalaya, with eleven different varieties spread through the grounds.

From there, the passion for introducing new plants from around the world whilst exploring how best to grow and nurture the ever-growing array of trees blossomed at Kilmurragh.

Tragedy would soon almost derail all this fine work though when, after Thomas Acton died on August 25th, 1908, his 31-year-old nephew, Captain Charles Annesley, took over the running of Kilmacurragh, only to die in The Great War on September 25th, 1915. Kilmacurragh then passed to his only surviving brother, Major Reginald Thomas Ball-Action, who would also die in battle, on May 22nd, 1916, just eight months after Charles. Three consecutive owners inflicting death duties amounting to 120% of the estate meant that, after two centuries, the Actons had to leave Kilmacurragh House. And the war had claimed many of the gardeners too – eleven men and two boys worked there before the war; following Reginald’s death, there was just one old Head Gardener, looking after the entire estate single-handedly.

The house was abandoned during the 1920s, and was subsequently run as the Kilmacurragh Park Hotel by Charles Budina from Germany – which may explain why the head of the Nazi party in Ireland, Adolf Mahr, chose to hold his week-long Hitler Youth camps there.

A dispute over the ownership of Kilmacurragh led to the Land Commission acquiring the property in 1974, the grounds being managed by the Forest And Wildlife Service until the Office of Public Works took over in 1996, whilst the house itself had been seriously damaged by fires in 1978 and 1982. The gardens were now being maintained, restored and re-planted by the National Botanic Gardens, but, the classification of the house as a ruin meant, claims the NBG director Matthew Jebb, that there was “no legal onus on us to fix it, but we are duty bound to protect it“. Which doesn’t sit well with chairman of the Irish Tree Society, Thomas Pakenham, who believes that Kilmacurragh House should be restored, arguing, “The Office of Public Works must now realise that it’s their obligation to restore the house. There is currently no space for exhibitions or an interpretative centre. The house is the centrepiece of these botanical gardens…”

For now, there’s a fine café, two competent crappers, a grumpy no-dogs-off-their-leads policy, and – hey! – free admission.

So, go check out this rare botanical beauty that’s right on your doorstep. Or thereabouts. 

You can find out more about the Kilmacurragh Botanic Gardens right here, and follow a few more local paths on Take A Hike section here.