Kilkenny City & Environs
Lyrath
Lyrath House, a magnificent mansion begun in the C17th and remodelled over the next 150 years, famed for its beautiful walled garden and grounds, was long the residence of the Wheeler-Cuffe family. (Photo by Jim Hoare)
Lady Charlotte Wheeler Cuffe (1867-1967), a noted botanical watercolourist, was granddaughter of the Rev. Sir Hercules Langrish, 3rd Baronet of Knocktopher, and daughter of William Williams, President of the Law Society of England and Wales.
Her husband Sir Otway Wheeler Cuffe, a civil engineer, was an Imperial official in Burma and she travelled with him to the remote regions. Near Mount Victoria in 1911 she found two new rhododendrons, one yellow rhododendron burmacium hardy, the other white indoor rhododendron cuffeanum. She was the earliest known botanical explorer to reach this remote area. She also designed a 150-acre (0.61 km2) Botanic Garden at Maymo while in Burma.
She returned to Ireland after 24 years in Burma in 1921, and lived at Lyrath for her remaining 43 years.
Many of her expeditions are detailed in correspondence with her cousin the Baroness Pauline Prochazka (1842-1930) of Lyrath, and Sir Frederick Moore, the Director of the Irish National Botanic Gardens at Glasnevin, where she deposited the bulk of her collection in 1926.
The main building has recently been restored, modernised and considerably extended to become the luxurious Lyrath Estate Hotel, Spa & Leisure Centre, specialising in corporate conferences and weddings.
Talbotsinch (Co. Kilkenny / Central)
Talbotsinch, a model “Arts & Crafts” style village, is located about 2Km outside Kilkenny on the Freshford Road. The 26 houses, nearly all different, were designed and built 1896 – 1906 by William Alphonsus Scott to house workers at the Kilkenny Woodworkers Company and Greenvale Woollen Mills. (Photo – www.buildingsofireland.ie)
The village was commisioned by the philanthropist Countess of Desart, Ellen Cuffe (née Bischoffsheim), later one of the first female Senators of the Irish Free State (the first Jewish woman so honoured anywhere in the world). She was elected President of the Gaelic League to succeed her brother-in-law, Capt. Otway Cuffe, a leading Irish language champion who was twice elected Mayor of Kilkenny.
(Her niece, Lady Sybil, was a leading figure in the Anglo-American-Italian cultural milieu of Florence before WWII, and is credited with the beautiful gardens of the Villa Medici and at La Foce, south of Siena).
