Overview
A garden centre near Galway city does not usually come with a convent, a workhouse and an animal-welfare pioneer in its past, but Dangan House does. The estate outside Upper Newcastle, near the River Corrib, has been many things over three centuries and is now a family-run garden centre and café. Come for a coffee, a wander through the old walled garden, and the sort of place a family has slowly built by hand – not for a half-day out, but for an easy hour or two.
A layered history
The first Dangan House was built in 1684 as the seat of the Martin family, and was the childhood home of the man known as ‘Humanity Dick’ Martin, remembered for his campaigning against cruelty to animals. By the 1830s the demesne had passed to John Redington, who used the old house briefly as an Ursuline convent (1839–1844) and then handed it over as an auxiliary workhouse until 1854. Around 1841 Redington built the present three-storey Dangan House, which changed hands several times over the following century.
Between the wars it was leased by Professor Tom Dillon and his wife Geraldine, and their daughter, the writer Eilís Dillon, later remembered it as a beautiful place where kingfishers flew past the gravel sweep and a twelve-foot stone wall enclosed peaches, pears, apples and plums, the garden divided into squares by box hedges.
The nursery came later, and by a coin. When Mrs Cunningham found a sixpence in the overgrown walled garden in 1962, she took it as a sign one of her children would earn a living there. Two of her sons, Paddy and Peter, were already selling daffodils at the Saturday market; they won scholarships to study horticulture at Piltown College in County Kilkenny, cycled 140 miles to get there, and came back with a borrowed £100 to buy seeds and a polythene tunnel. That was the start of the nursery in 1977. In 1987 they bought a large glasshouse secondhand from Barna Gardens, dismantled it and rebuilt it here; by 1997 the old coach house had become the garden shop.
What to see and do
- The walled garden: the original twelve-foot stone wall still frames box hedges, fruit trees and vegetable beds, a layout from a time when garden labour cost fourpence a day.
- The glasshouse and tunnels: the rebuilt Barna glasshouse and the polytunnels around it hold the bedding plants, shrubs and the family’s daffodils and bulbs.
- For children: a goldfish and turtle pond, a rabbit hutch and a chicken coop.
- The garden shop: in the old coach house, selling plants, seeds, tools and the odd bit of local craft, with staff who actually garden and will happily talk soil and pruning.
The tea rooms
The café is the real reason most people linger. It is styled with soft candlelight, low tatami-style tables and individually set corners, and the food is kept simple and done well: fresh egg-mayo sandwiches, homemade soup, toasties, cakes and matcha lattes. There is often live piano or flute in the afternoons, a jazz night once a month and a film night weekly, and dogs are welcome throughout, café and garden both. A covered deck keeps you outside on a soft Galway day.
Note the hours, because the café and the garden centre keep different ones: the tea rooms open Tuesday to Saturday, 10.00am–4.00pm, while the garden centre itself is open Monday to Saturday, 9.00am–6.00pm, with some Sunday afternoons in the busier months.
Practical information
- Cost: browsing the garden centre, glasshouse and animal pens costs nothing, as at any nursery; you pay for what you buy in the shop or café.
- Location and parking: Dangan House, Upper Newcastle, Lower Dangan, Galway, H91 VN53. Free parking on-site.
- Finding it: the entrance is easy to miss from the road, as the buildings sit back into the greenery. If you overshoot, the nearby Dangan Sports Complex is a useful landmark.
- Accessibility: the main paths are level; some older stone walkways near the walled garden are uneven. Toilets are by the tea rooms.
Nearby
- Menlo Castle: the ivy-clad ruins across the river, reached on a short riverside walk.
- Dangan River Walk: a scenic riverside route that starts near the Dangan Sports Complex, with the tea rooms an obvious stop.
- Galway city: a short drive south for the museums, craft shops and the Corrib quays.
The website has been down of late, so for opening changes, plant sales and the jazz and film nights, the café’s Instagram (@danganhousecafe) is the reliable place to check before you set out.