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Ireland's Oldest Garden - Part I

© Georgene A. Bramlage

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Recently, my husband and I had the opportunity to visit gardens in the south of Ireland. Killruddery House and Gardens was one of our prize discoveries. I hope you enjoy this three-part article.

Visiting Ireland's Killruddery House and Gardens near the seaside town of Bray in County Wicklow is akin to having a garden history book open wide to pages devoted to the 17th through early 19th centuries. To understand these gardens as more than just designs which incorporate an assemblage of plants, we need to do a bit of time travel.

British Rule Most Directly Affecting The Brabazon Family (Earls of Meath) and Killruddery:
Stuart Dynasty (1603 to 1714):

• James I ......1603-1625
• Charles I ....1625-1649
• Commonwealth, led by Oliver Cromwell after the English Civil War....1625-1660
• Restoration of the Monarchy, Charles II.....1660-1685
• James II.......1685-1688
• William III & Mary II....1689-1702
• Anne, the last Stuart monarch....1702-1714

Killruddery House and Gardens symbolize the cultural, social and even political evolution of Ireland's Norman - Anglo - Irish landed gentry by reflecting the endeavors of one such family, the Brabazons. Allegedly, the family name derives from the province of Brabant in Belgium.

Jacque le Brabancon accompanied William the Conqueror as a standard bearer to England in the 11th Century and here the family settled and became part of successive royal courts. In 1534, during the reign of Henry VIII, Sir William Brabazon was appointed Vice-Treasurer and General Receiver of Ireland and as a result moved his family and himself to Ireland.

The Brabazons accumulated property in the Dublin area and elsewhere in Country Wicklow until the main property of Killruddery was granted to the family by James I in 1618. Subsequently Sir William was made Earl of Meath in 1627. The current Earl of Meath is 16th in the line and the Brabazon family still retains Killruddery.

The original house was destroyed in the Irish Uprising of the British Civil War in 1645 and unfortunately there is no known pictorial view of it. Most likely, the present house was rebuilt by the 2nd Earl when he inherited it in 1651, and then was increased in size for the 10th Earl in the Elizabethan-Revival style popular in Ireland during the early 1800's. Though considerably reduced in size and proportion in the 1950's after World War II, the house is considered among the earliest and most successful Elizabethan-Revival mansions in Ireland.

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