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www. architect.crimmins.ie Conservation Appraisal of Walled Garden and Historic landscape of Kylemore Abbey 7 CA THAL CRIMMINS AR CHITECT

Fermoy Presentation Convent Garden.jpg

The Significance of Kylemore’s Convent Landscape

Usrsuline Botanic POOLE WP 1811].tif
Irish religious communities’ contribution to Irish architecture, landscape design,
garden design, farm and urban design is substantial, and almost completely
undocumented. The new Catholic ascendancy of the nineteenth century commissioned
the construction of many religious complexes of great urban, architectural and
landscape merit. Different styles followed different orders, and a new spatial language
announced the Catholic institution’s (whether seminary, monastery or convent) pivotal
place in Irish society. The rôle religious communities have played in the development
of Irish social and intellectual life is highly significant. Over time, such communities
became the fulcrum of much wider social and community activity. Their pedagogical
rôle made them an important influence in the development of contemporary style,
fashion and taste. They commissioned and reinterpreted many important buildings
and landscapes, creating sites of architectural and cultural significance, such as
Kylemore Abbey.

The Benedictine nuns of KylemoreAbbey moved to Wexford from Ypres, Belgium and
then Kylemore on 4th December 1920, with the centenary of their time in Kylemore fast
approaching. During their time at Kylemore they have also impacted on its landscape
and significance. Kathleen Villers Tuthill, Deirdre Raftery and Catherine Kilbride have
published histories of this period at Kylemore. The nun’s re-use and connected
re-design of the walled garden should be revisited and their areas of intervention Foxford Convent Garden.jpg
plotted and assessed for significance. Some of this can be reconstructed from the Jupp
and McErlean reports- notably Sr. Benedict’s involvement in the design of the walled unmanicured potential (particularly in this case the cabbages). This also reduced the
garden to provide the nuns with vegetables. gardening labour requirements.
Examples of such landscapes are depicted below. The aesthetic is similar to much of Note the consistent preference for small specimen conifers and shrubs. The gravelled
Kylemore’s own nineteenth-century design. Each example indicates how a Kylemore paths also meet the lawns in sharply incised curves.
Convent Garden could draw on its own Benedictine tradition and legacy. Records of the
convent garden at Ypres and that of the Wexford period might also inform any design:
The Ursuline Convent’s Botanical Garden, Co. Waterford.

The Convent Garden, Presentation Convent, Fermoy, Co. Cork Variety, contrast and educational value informed the design of the Ursuline’s Botanical
Garden.
The long lines of the Portuguese laurel hedges divide the recreational/decorative The interest of religious communities in the classification of plants and their
section of the garden in the foreground (where the nuns are reading) from the more
productive and verdant section of the garden in the background (particularly extraordinary variety is clearly demonstrated in this convent’s botanical garden.
distinguished by enormous cabbages).
Behind the hedges the plants are left to grow with abandon reaching their