28/09/2025
The 2025 RIYC Vintage Car Rally to National Botanic Gardens, Kilmacurragh, will be held on Sunday 28th September.
10 am - Arrive at Club for Refreshments & Registration
11 am - Depart Club
12 Noon - Arrive at National Botanic Gardens, Kilmacurragh
2 pm - Return to Club
3 pm - Lunch will be served in the Dining Room
Price €40 per person, to include morning refreshments and lunch in the Club on return.
BOOK HERE
Find Kilmacurragh
If driving south from Dublin on the N11, leave the motorway at junction 18 (well signposted) south of Wicklow. Cross the motorway and take the L1113. Keep to the main route, and you will find the entrance to the gardens on your left after 5km.
The House and Early Garden
Thomas Acton II (1655-1750) had the old abbey buildings torn down in 1697 and, from the stone salvaged, he built a fine, perfectly proportioned Queen Anne house to the design of the noted architect, Sir William Robinson (1643-1712), whose best-known work is the Royal Hospital Kilmainham. The five-bay mansion was one of the first unfortified houses of the time in County Wicklow, and is one of the few remaining (albeit in a ruinous state) early panelled houses in Ireland. Comprising five reception rooms and eight bedrooms, the house was perched on a hill facing east, making it a chilly place to be in winter.
Kilmacurragh House was then surrounded by a formal Dutch-style landscape park, following the fashions of the period, and elements of this, such as the remains of canals, great avenues, and sweeping vistas, survive in the present garden. Thomas Acton II was also responsible for the Deer Park, an area of forty acres, carved into primeval oak and alder forest, completely surrounded by a six-foot deep ha-ha, and the old paddock walls that now surround the visitor carpark.
It was during this period that Kilmacurragh’s famous yew walk (known locally as the Monk’s Walk) was planted along an old road that served as a pilgrims’ route from the abbey at Kilmacurragh to nearby Glendalough.
Free guided tours take place at 12 noon and 3 pm every day from mid March to mid October.