Holiday like a hobbit at Mount Congreve in Waterford: ‘It’ll be like heaven’

Deep in the woods – within Mount Congreve’s 70 acres of glorious gardens, a jewel in the crown of Waterford, and of Ireland – several hobbit houses nestle among the trees. The Mount Congreve team isn’t calling them hobbit houses, but it’s what springs to mind when you see these dinky, curved and compact, dark ebony shingle “eco-cabins”.
They’ve a rustic aesthetic but are pretty swish inside. Roundy door and windows face the front. Inside, a full shower room in one end, and a built-in, side-on double-bed tucked into the other end, dressed with Foxford’s cosseting bed-linen. The kitchenette has a small fridge, microwave, sink for basic prep; a table-height ledge slides out for dining. The family version has additional built-in bunk beds. This luxury doll’s house cocoon in a woodland glade is immensely appealing, whether you’re hobbit or human.
In the way of it, everything happens at once. The very day Mount Congreve Gardens unveiled its range of characterful accommodations and new Foxford shop, was when cranes finally arrived to hoist the hobbit houses into position. Engineer and crane operator were on-site to position five eco-cabins within the gardens without intruding, estate director Ray Sinnott tells me. “Perfect aspect. Sun will come in the window. It’ll be like heaven.”
The cabins, made in Estonia, arrived fitted out and ready to plug (into plumbing and electrics) and play, with an individual deck with hot-tub being added for each cabin. (Stays from February bookable: €175-€325/night couple-cabin, €229-€379 family-cabin).
The neoclassical Mount Congreve House itself is now open to visitors for the first time in its history, after five downstairs rooms were restored, marking a new era for “one of the great gardens of the world” (they were was tipped by Condé Nast Traveller and New York Times this year as a place to go).
Now you can stay within the gardens too, in idiosyncratic options dotted around the estate, which they’re calling a “Forest Hotel”: bell tents, eco-cabins, gate lodges and a suite in the house’s west wing. The courtyard suite, entered though a shared courtyard, is a grand, luxurious bedroom with original vaulted ceiling and marble floor, fireplace, cocktail bar, plus generous period bathroom (€215-€405 per night, including breakfast). Mount Congreve’s chief executive, Sara Dolan, sourced antiques for the suite, and for the restored gate lodge at the main gate. This is a plush, compact, self-contained cottage, a comfortable place to stay, with a deep green interior, two double bedrooms, sittingroom, well-kitted kitchen and a small diningroom with walnut table (€269-€429 per night). They’re renovating three other estate gate lodges, and also manage 18th-century Whitfield Court’s gate lodge, a five-minute drive away.
Probably the coolest thing about staying in any of these is you get keys to the gardens: 24-hour access, so you can soak in the dark, solitary, green splendour in the middle of the night, if you wish.
Those gardens are magnificent: vast woodlands with flowering plants, including one of the world’s largest rhododendron collections (3,000 varieties), magnolias, camellias, azaleas, hostas, Japanese cherries, clematis and maples. Plus glasshouses, four-acre walled garden, 16km of walkways, wetlands, fruits and vegetables, a folly, a pagoda, and the temple where Ambrose Congreve and his wife, Marjorie, are buried (inscribed “Light and shade by turn but love always”), in his favourite spot, looking down the river and surrounded by a wall of red azaleas, when blossoming.
This is a world apart, on the banks of the Suir and abutting the Greenway, but a skip from Waterford city, Tramore beach or the Comeraghs.
Meandering around the house and gardens (in a golf cart) with Ray Sinnott, he talks about Ambrose, the last of seven generations of Congreves, who was interested in plants from his teens. Inspired and encouraged by landscaper Lionel de Rothschild, Congreve’s mission was to create a great garden. On inheriting in 1955, he got going, joined afterwards by garden director Herman Dool, for whom a magnolia tree canopy is named.
Sinnott, who started working in the nursery aged 18, is a direct link to Ambrose. “It was interest in plants and gardens that got me access to Mr Congreve,” as he still calls him. “Lots of people here, if they had an interest, he’d be all about ‘em, and it became a common denominator. Didn’t matter where you’re from, who your people were. You’re about plants, I’m about plants. It was a leveller.” Sinnott and his family live in a house on the estate, as does Sara Dolan.
The Anglo-Irish Congreve was tall, wealthy, shrewd and dashing; an intelligence officer in the second World War, he’s rumoured to have inspired James Bond. He married a wealthy American, Marjorie Glasgow, and ran her family’s business. “He married well, and used to boast about marrying so well. It was a happy, long-lived marriage of over 60 years. She was the brains of the outfit, quite honestly, and the money of the outfit at the start.”
He died while in London for Chelsea Flower Show in 2011, age 104. He left Mount Congreve in care of a trust for 21 years following his death, after which it goes to the State; Sinnott describes OPW as the owners-in-waiting. Meantime, a new trust structure has enabled income-generating initiatives to help pay its way. About 25 people work in Mount Congreve Gardens, or 40-plus including cafe and shop.
Restoration included the Blue Room (which housed Marjorie’s TV/audio) and the large drawingroom with delicate hand-painted 17th-century Chinese wallpaper. We’re chatting in the library, with faux “bookshelves” door, large polished table and old typewriter. Sinnott would meet Congreve here. “I’d be summoned, and that was the word. Mr Congreve will see you. Not a question, a statement. Or you could meet him anywhere in the gardens. He’d be driven around by a chauffeur”, or earlier, “on the horse. He liked to intimidate people from his horse, shouting, barking orders. To live that long, or to have this kind of wealth, to come from generations of privilege, will make you a certain way. He was very good in that everyone was treated equally”, but “it was very clear you were an employee. We were on friendly terms. We were never friends. He was a really interesting man.”
“Mr Congreve’s whole thing was to create these great swathes of colour, a visual impact. Total show-off. You got two azaleas, I got 200. You got 10 rhododendrons, I’ve got 1,000. But in doing so, he created these incredible gardens.” March to June is the time to visit for the colour, but there’s appeal year-round. These gardens are Sinnott’s passion too. “It’s the sheer scale of the collection. It’s nuts, bonkers. There’s about 16,000 different plants here.” That’s 16,000 types of plants, not individual plants. “The plant collection and the gardens that contain it, is the most important thing we have.” He eschewed chemicals years ago and has noted a surge in insects and birds.
There are tantalising hints of juicy stories behind the scenes. Why did Ambrose leave the gardens in trust, rather than directly to the State? Why was the house stripped of its collections of furniture, art and books, auctioned off in 2012, under Congreve’s instructions?
“He had a tendency to fall out with people and organisations,” including the OPW, says Sinnott. Because it was emptied, Dolan and the team had to source furnishings, attempting to dress rooms as they once were. The books lining the library are not the Congreve collection, but a hodgepodge.
Congreve “set up the trust so the gardens could be enjoyed by the public. He loved his gardens more than anything, he really did. He was a plants guy.”
Discreetly tucked away in the eastern wing, in what was stables and workshops, is a new glass-roofed shop and the Stables Cafe, where the Pantry at CLIFF serves breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea, plus dinner that residents can order for collection. Alongside, Mount Congreve has teamed with Foxford, which has just opened here, its first shop in the southeast, including a gorgeous range of its traditional weaves and more recent luxurious bed linen (already dressing Forest Hotel beds), designed by Helen McAlinden.
[ ‘We call Mount Congreve Ireland’s global garden because there are 10,000 different plants here’Opens in new window ]
There’s something satisfying and full-circle-ish about this marriage of peasant and Anglo-Irish heritages, both steeped in their localities, between Foxford, founded by Mother Agnes Morrogh-Bernard in a small town in the west of Ireland in 1892, at the time that the Congreve family in the southeast were in their fifth generation at Mount Congreve.