- Spacious and well-tended formal gardens.
- Art displays around the gardens and picturesque ruins create a slightly surrealistic feeling.
- Gardens partly geared towards children with a fairy-tale atmosphere.
- Family church of the Plunkett family on the grounds.
- Obviously best enjoyed in good weather.
- Limited opening times - afternoons only in Summer, Sundays and Bank Holidays from October to March.
- Gardens were originally laid out to form part of the large Loughcrew Estate.
- Three great houses were built and destroyed by accidental fires within a hundred years - than the grand plan was abandoned.
- Ancestral church of St. Oliver Plunkett and nearby Loughcrew Megalithic Cemetery will delight history buffs.
When you enter the car park you might be looking for a stately home - don’t. It is not there. Loughcrew Gardens were indeed once planned to be in front of a great house. But after the owners had the exceedingly bad luck to lose three great houses, successively built here, to disastrous fires they decided to call it a day. Some ruins are now picturesque features of the gardens. You rarely see a skyline with a complete portico on an otherwise nearly empty hillside outside fantasy films.
But you might occasionally think you stepped straight into the set of such a film when exploring the gardens. In part due to several artworks scattered about. Like a wood sculpture resembling an Irish harp, the finely carved hands on it gilded for maximum effect. While admiring this obvious piece of art you might get a fright when you discover an insect the size of a vulture watching you from a nearby tree - again a sculpture, so tell your pulse to slow down.
Children and those young at heart will simply love hunting for these small (or sometimes not so small) details, from fairies to lizards. More stayed and sedate visitors will concentrate on the more formal gardens, complete with a medicinal corner for unspeakable diseases (as the prospectus notes).
Lovers of historical places will, however, delight in the church ruins on site. This is actually the ancestral church of St. Oliver Plunkett, one of Ireland's more important saints - part of his relics are on display in Oldcastle Church, around five minutes away by car.
Loughcrew Gardens also hosts yearly opera performances and the Rockcrew festival - and the very fine café is worth a special mention too.
