Southern Kilkenny

The major tourist sight in the south of the county of Kilkenny is Jerpoint Abbey, which lies on the N9, 20km south of Kilkenny city. Originally founded as a Benedictine house in 1158, the abbey was colonized by Cistercians some twenty years later. The oldest remain is the twelfth-century Romanesque church, but the rest, set around a beautifully colonnaded fifteenth-century cloister, follows the characteristic Cistercian design. The abbey features a number of thirteenth- to sixteenth-century tomb sculptures in the transept chapels and some intriguing carvings on the cloister arcade, including the “little man of Jerpoint” whose stomach-crossed hands and open-mouthed expression suggest either mirth or dyspepsia.

The jumping-off point for the abbey, THOMASTOWN, 2km to the northeast, is a pleasant riverside crossroads town on the Dublin–Waterford train line, which has a decent choice of places to eat and drink, and hosts a traditional music festival over the bank holiday weekend in early August. A walled town of some note in medieval times, Thomastown now maintains scant sense of its own antiquity, other than its old bridge across the Nore and the ruined thirteenth-century church of St Mary’s at the top of the main street, Market Street.

Eight kilometres down the Nore from Thomastown is the quaint village of INISTIOGE (pronounced “Inisteeg”), set around a tree-lined green, an old church and a narrow-arched stone bridge over the river. Unsurprisingly, the attractive location, with its verdant hills rising above the village, has drawn film-makers and both Circle of Friends and Widows’ Peak were shot here in the 1990s. The steep lane rising from the village green leads after a couple of kilometres to the Woodstock Demesne. When its owners left Ireland during the War of Independence, the estate’s Georgian mansion was taken over by the Black and Tans and, like many similarly tarnished dwellings, was burnt down after independence in 1922. However, since 1999 the county council have been restoring the Victorian gardens and you can enjoy walks lined by firs and monkey puzzles, an arboretum, rose gardens, rockeries and breathtaking views of the Nore valley, as well as a summertime tea room in a cast-iron conservatory.

On the east bank of the Barrow in County Carlow, 8km downstream from Graiguenamanagh, lies the gorgeous village of ST MULLINS, its dwellings appealingly arranged at the bottom of a valley around the village green. Opposite the green is a perfectly dome-shaped castle earthwork and just behind are the remains of a monastery founded by St Moling in 696, consisting of the remnants of a medieval church and a round tower’s stump.