Shankill Castle – gardens and painted rooms

Overview

Elizabeth Cope, the artist whose paintings cover the drawing-room walls, still lives at Shankill Castle, and members of her family lead the guided tours themselves. That is the reason to come: not a rope-line stately home with an audio guide, but a lived-in house near Paulstown, on the Carlow–Kilkenny border, where a 15th-century Butler tower house was rebuilt in 1708 as a Queen Anne residence and then enlarged and castellated in the 19th century. Allow two to three hours for the house, the gardens and the café.

A living history

The estate began as a Butler tower house beside the ruins of an old church. Peter Aylward bought the land from his wife’s family, the Butlers, in 1708, rebuilt the house and set it in a formal landscape with a vista to the front and a canal to the rear. The 19th century added the battlements, serpentine bays on the canal and a Gothic porch carrying the Aylward crest. The Aylward and Cope families shaped the rest, and a Cope descendant leads the tours today.

Inside, the register shifts from Georgian formality to Elizabeth Cope’s layered, high-colour canvases in the drawing room. The dining room looks out onto the estate’s oddest feature: a polyhedral sundial, the only one in Ireland, set on a sunken lawn. The tour also takes in the old coal-oven kitchen, a reminder of how the house ran before central heating.

Gardens, woodland and farm

Outside, the grounds open out in layers. The moated garden fronts the house; the Victorian walled garden holds espaliered heritage apple and pear trees that still fruit each autumn. Three of the estate’s trees are listed in the Tree Register of Ireland: a giant sequoia, two Monterey cypresses and a lime. Beyond the formal planting, woodland paths wind through mature natives, with stone ruins in the undergrowth and fairy gardens tucked into clearings for younger visitors.

The organic farm sits just beyond the tree line, its cows and donkeys grazing pasture managed without synthetic inputs. Its produce, and the walled garden’s, feeds the café. If you can time a visit, come on a weekend in February, when the gardens open specially for the snowdrops.

The Coach House Café

Guided tours end at the Coach House Café, in a 300-year-old stable block. The menu changes with the seasons and leans on what the walled garden and organic farm produce: soups, salads, homemade desserts. A farm shop alongside sells local foods and seasonal produce to take home. The castle also runs an artist residency through ResArtis, so there is usually work on the walls beyond Cope’s own.

Practical information

Opening hours and admission

The estate runs seasonally, roughly April to October. Most listings give Friday to Sunday, but Visit Kilkenny shows Thursday to Sunday, so check ahead if a Thursday visit matters to you. The castle tour runs once a day at 15:00 on open days.

Getting there and facilities

Shankill sits about 3 km southwest of Paulstown village, roughly 20 minutes from Kilkenny City and about 90 minutes from Dublin, just off the M9. Bus Éireann serves Paulstown from Kilkenny, but the last stretch needs a car or taxi, so driving is the practical option. There is free parking near the entrance. Most garden paths are level and fine for pushchairs and wheelchairs; the woodland trails are rougher. A side entrance gives limited mobility access to the castle for tour groups.

Nearby in County Kilkenny

• Kilkenny City – the medieval capital, with the Castle, Black Abbey and the Medieval Mile.
• Jerpoint Abbey – a 12th-century Cistercian ruin known for its carved cloister.
• Inistioge – a riverside village on the Nore, with a monastic site and old pubs.
• Kilfane Glen – a wooded estate with a walled garden and gentle walking routes.

Arrive before 14:30 if you want the 3pm castle tour, and give yourself time either side to walk the gardens, find the sundial and settle into the café.