Ireland day 1301. Monday 21 April 2025- Heywood Gardens

Today’s summary	Drove down to visit the OPW Heywood Gardens designed by Edwin Lutyens) in Co. Laois. Very nice, and plenty of vivid greens and electric blue skies inbetween the April showers. Walked through the grounds to Ballinakill which was interesting with two churches. Everywhere very quiet this Bank Holiday Monday. Smoked salmon salad, G&T and “Mad Men” in the evening
Today’s weather	April showers. Plenty of sunshine but some hail-ey downpours too. Light westerly wind. Appx 12c

Today’s overview location (The blue mark shows the location of our route)		Close-up location (The blue line shows where we walked) (Click button below to download GPX of today’s walk as recorded, or see interactive map at bottom with elevations corrected): Heywood Gardens

Commentary

Easter Bank Holiday. Malahide was surprisingly quiet this morning – but maybe that was because the Pope had just died, and because the trains weren’t running. Whatever the reasons, everywhere was tranquil when we got up today. And even though it had been raining, there were breaks in the cloud and some hopeful glimmers of sun, too. So the day held all the promise of being much better than the past few.

We determined to make the most of things, and at one point thought we would revert to familiarity and take the bus down to Sutton and do a walk round Howth. But after reflection we thought we would be a bit more adventurous and look for something new. Accordingly, Val had a quick look through the OPW website for near-ish sites that we hadn’t visited before. She quickly came across a new one – Heywood Gardens – about an hour and a half away down the M7, in County Laois.

Heywood gardens were, unsurprisingly, attached to Heywood House, which was built by Frederick Trench in 1773. The landscaped gardens which we were visiting today were a later addition – designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens in 1906. Sadly, the house burned down (as so many seemed to) in 1950 but the gardens survived and are maintained by the OPW. The original site of the house nowadays is occupied by a secondary school.

We weren’t quick to get away this morning but eventually made it to the car park at the entrance to the gardens by 1:30pm. Sadly there are no facilities (e.g. café!) there, other than some loos by the way in, but we had taken some snacks and the trusty Thermos with us, so that wasn’t a disaster.

Once parked up, we set off to walk down the valley to the gardens. On the way, we took a detour to look at the “Claude’s Seat” folly, overlooking the dammed lake just before the village of Ballinakill. We were also struck by a vigorous (and actually quite painful) hailstorm midway, making us glad we had our waterproofs but slightly wishing we had also brought an umbrella.

As soon as we got to the village, the sun came out and we briefly enjoyed vivid blue skies again. Ballinakill itself was interesting – especially because it had two churches right next to each other. There must be some history to that, but I don’t know what it is. Like everywhere, it was very quiet today.

We returned to the estate via a traffic-free back road, and eventually found the gardens. They were well maintained like most things OPW, and we enjoyed looking around. We also found a secluded corner surrounded by tall well maintained yew hedges to enjoy our lunch (despite the annoying drone buzzing around overhead). After lunch and a thorough inspection of Lutyens’ work, we returned to the car via the now-ruined orangery and castle folly, and set off back to Malahide.

At was an easy drive back – the traffic was much lighter than I had feared for the end of a Bank Holiday weekend. Just before regaining the M7 motorway, we drove through Abbeyleix, which struck us as being a particularly nice spot. Once in the flat after our day’s travels, we enjoyed smoked salmon salad for dinner, then, of course, watched another couple of “Mad Men” episodes while we relaxed with Arbutus gins and tonic.

Overall it was a really good day out, and I think we were both glad we had decided to push the boundaries a bit, rather than taking for the “safe” option of a walk round Howth.

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Setting off into the estate	One of the artificially created lakes in the stream running through the estate to Ballinakill

Twin peaks. the two churches of Ballinakill (Anglican on the left, Catholic on the right)	A window on a different world – looking through the shelter wall surrounding the sunken round garden

And here it is – Lutyens’ sunken round garden and pond. The pond is surrounded by six bronze frogs which are supposed to spout like fountains, but they weren’t working today (if indeed they work at all)	Copper beech tree just coming into leaf. Along with Redwoods and Sequoias, I think they are some of my favourite trees here in Ireland

Looking down the Pleached Walk towards the round sunken garden. “Pleached” refers to avenues of trees (limes in this case) with branches woven together to create a living wall