Powerscourt Gardens are one of the most popular attractions in County Wicklow and I am lucky enough to visit them regularly bringing visitors to see these stunning gardens, in their magnificent setting. No one is ever disappointed - the combination of the house, the gardens and trees is such that National Geographic rated these gardens as third best in the world! In 1961 my mother was finishing her training as a Froebel teacher and wrote a study of North Rathdown. The big story in the area was the sale of Powerscourt Estate - truly the end of an era. Powerscourt House and estate had been in the possession of the Wingfield family since the early 1600's and had been the largest estate in Wickl
Today, while doing my "Domestic Goddess" impression, I came across this newspaper and the that was the end of the spring cleaning! This paper is not any old newspaper, lurking in a drawer - this is the evening paper for the evening of my birth and reflects the times I was born into and it is truly fascinating! I was born on the day of the Great Train Robbery - 8th August 1963. This was the robbery of a mail train that was carrying over a million pounds according to this Evening Herald - it actually turned out to be over 2.5 million pounds and it was a meticulously planned operation, receiving huge publicity at the time for obvious reasons. Eleven people served jail sentences as a result of t
Hollywood, County Wicklow - no movie stars, but plenty of sheep! You can hardly move from one townland in Wicklow to another, without coming across a movie set, it seems! And terms like "Spielberg", "Vikings", and "thrillers set in the Scottish Highlands", have been bandied about. This is fabulous - bringing employment, tourism, excitement and much more to the Garden County. Why Wicklow? Well, this county is well placed to be the centre of the film industry in Ireland. It is a large county, beside Dublin, the capital city, but with a lovely spine of mountains in it's centre forming a National Park, with stunning scenery, unsullied by phone masts and the like. There are many large private
