Kilkenny Castle
Norman castle remodelled as a Victorian country house, with period rooms, a picture gallery and parkland.
A castle has stood above the River Nore at Kilkenny since the Normans arrived: William Marshal raised a stone fortress here in the early thirteenth century, of which three of the four corner towers survive. From 1391 until 1967 the castle was the seat of the Butler family, earls and later dukes of Ormonde, who rebuilt and extended it repeatedly. The Butlers sold it to a local restoration committee for a nominal sum in 1967, and it is now managed by the Office of Public Works and open all year.
The interiors shown to visitors are largely the work of the nineteenth century, when the castle was recast as a country house. The Picture Gallery wing, remodelled by Benjamin Woodward between 1859 and 1862, has a painted hammer-beam roof and hangs Butler family portraits. A self-guided route and guided tours both cover the restored period rooms, and free exhibitions occupy other parts of the building. Around the castle lie some fifty acres of parkland with a rose garden, woodland walks, an artificial lake and a tea room in the former servants' quarters.
Highlights
- Picture Gallery with painted roof and Butler family portraits
- Three surviving towers of the thirteenth-century Norman castle
- Restored Victorian period rooms on guided and self-guided routes
- Fifty acres of parkland with rose garden, lake and woodland walks
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