Step House Hotel

Borris House, the ancestral home of the Mcmorrough Kavanaghs, High Kings of Leinster, is one of the few Irish estates that can trace its history back to the royal families of ancient Ireland. Set in over six hundred and fifty acres of walled private park and woodlands, Borris House retains its place as the centrepiece of the village and locality.

Originally an important castle guarding the River Barrow, Borris House was rebuilt in 1731 and later altered by the architectural dynastic family, The Morrisons, in the early 1800s. The Morrisons, chiefly Richard and William, are also responsible for the alterations and additions to Kilruddery in Co Wicklow, Carton House in Co Kildare, Fota House in Co Cork and Shelton Abbey, Co Wicklow to name but a few. Externally, they clothed the 18th c house in a thin Tudor Gothic disguise, adding a crenellated arcaded porch on the entrance and decorating the windows with rectangular and ogival hood-moulds.

Inside the house the Morrisons created an exuberant series of rooms beginning with the most florid room of the house, the entrance hall, where a circle is created within a square space with the clever use of pairs of scagliola columns and richly modelled plasterwork. The ceiling is like a great wheel with its shallowly coved circular centre from which eight beams radiate outwards. The plasterwork is profuse with festoons in the frieze, eagles with outspread wings in the spandrels and swirling acanthus in the cove of the ceiling. The drawing room is double apsed with a trellis pattern similar to the one used in the library at Cangort Park while the dining room boasts a screen of Roman Ionic scagliola columns and pilasters and a frieze of swagged bucrania such as was used again in the dining rooms at Fota. The chapel, which is in the same Tudor Gothic mode as the stair hall in the main house, has a plaster rib-vaulted ceiling, a gallery at one end and an alter apse at the other, flanked by two canopied balconies containing the preaching desk and the organ pipes.

Tours of the house can be arranged by appointment for groups only by
ringing Tina Kavanagh on + (0)59 9773105.
www.borrishouse.ie

Gardens
The Carlow Garden Trail currently features 16 different gardening attractions including great old gardens that have been lovingly restored and maintained throughout the years, and smaller gardens which are maturing beautifully with time. Award winning garden centres and forest parks complement the joy of a visit here. The Carlow Garden Trail ranges from small to very large gardens, garden centres and forest parks and from old to new, so there is something to stimulate both the novice and experienced gardener.

Please see http://www.carlowgardentrail.com/ for more information