County Wicklow Guide (Cill Mhantáin)
“The Garden of Ireland” - in the province of Leinster. County town: Wicklow.
Mountains and glens, with Glendalough and Powerscourt Gardens.
Known as the “Garden of Ireland”, Wicklow rises just south of Dublin into a glorious upland of mountains, glens and lakes. Its jewels are the monastic valley of Glendalough and the great gardens of Powerscourt and Mount Usher. Wild, accessible and endlessly scenic, it’s the capital’s green escape.
They call Wicklow the Garden of Ireland, but its beauty has a wild streak: the Wicklow Mountains form the largest continuous upland area in the country, a granite spine of heathery domes, glacial valleys and dark corrie lakes beginning barely an hour from Dublin city centre. In the valley of Glendalough, St Kevin founded a monastic settlement in the sixth century that grew into one of Ireland's most important religious sites, its round tower still standing between the two lakes. Those same mountains sheltered rebels for years after the 1798 Rising, prompting the British to cut the Military Road through the hills, today one of Ireland's most scenic drives.
Wicklow was the last of the traditional counties to be shired, in 1606, precisely because its terrain was so hard to subdue. Its later story is gentler: grand estates like Powerscourt and Parnell's Avondale, Victorian holidaymakers flocking to Bray on Brunel's railway, and a modern screen industry built around Ardmore Studios that has hosted everything from Braveheart to Vikings. Between the mountains and the sea runs a string of harbour and resort towns, while inland villages like Avoca and Enniskerry seem designed for postcards. For the diaspora, Wicklow offers Ireland in concentrate: monastic ruins, rebel history and mountain solitude within sight of the capital.
Cities, towns and villages in Wicklow
- Wicklow - The county town, a harbour settlement of Viking origin whose historic gaol tells the story of transportation to Australia.
- Bray - A Victorian seaside resort with a famous seafront promenade, cliff walk to Greystones and the Ardmore film studios.
- Greystones - A fast-growing harbour town regularly ranked among the most desirable places to live in Ireland.
- Arklow - A proud maritime town at the mouth of the Avoca River, where Tyrrell's boatyard built Sir Francis Chichester's Gipsy Moth III.
- Blessington - A west Wicklow town on the shores of the vast Poulaphouca reservoir, which supplies Dublin's water.
- Baltinglass - A Slaney-side town beneath one of Europe's most remarkable clusters of hillforts, with a ruined Cistercian abbey.
- Rathdrum - A hillside town beside Avondale House, the birthplace and home of Charles Stewart Parnell.
- Avoca - The village of the Meeting of the Waters, home to Ireland's oldest working woollen mill and the setting for Ballykissangel.
- Enniskerry - A picture-perfect estate village at the gates of Powerscourt House, its gardens among the finest in the world.
- Roundwood - A mountain village near Lough Dan that claims to be among the highest villages in Ireland.
Famous people from Wicklow
- Charles Stewart Parnell - The 'uncrowned king of Ireland' and Home Rule leader, born and raised at Avondale House near Rathdrum.
- Katie Taylor - Bray's Olympic gold medallist and undisputed world champion, one of the greatest boxers Ireland has produced.
- Hozier - The 'Take Me to Church' singer-songwriter, born in Bray and raised in County Wicklow.
- Dara O Briain - Bray-born comedian and broadcaster, a household name on British and Irish television.
- Captain Robert Halpin - Wicklow town mariner who commanded the Great Eastern as it laid transatlantic telegraph cables.
- Erskine Childers - Author of The Riddle of the Sands and republican leader, reared at Glendalough House, Annamoe.
- St Kevin - Sixth-century hermit and saint who founded the monastic city of Glendalough.
- Daniel Day-Lewis - Triple Oscar-winning actor who has made his home at Annamoe in the Wicklow hills for decades.
- Sinead O'Connor - The iconic singer lived much of her life in Bray, where thousands lined the seafront for her funeral in 2023.
Did you know?
- Wicklow was the last of Ireland's traditional counties to be created, formally shired in 1606 because its mountains had resisted control for so long.
- Lugnaquilla, at 925 metres, is the highest mountain in Ireland outside County Kerry.
- Ireland's only gold rush took place in 1795 along the Goldmines River near Croghan Kinsella, where thousands panned for alluvial gold.
- At 121 metres, Powerscourt Waterfall is generally cited as Ireland's highest year-round waterfall.
- The railway around Bray Head, opened in the 1850s, was engineered by Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
- The Military Road through the Wicklow Mountains was built by the British after 1798 to root out rebels such as Michael Dwyer hiding in the hills.
- Lough Tay, the dark 'Guinness Lake' on the Luggala estate, doubled as Kattegat in the television series Vikings.
- Wicklow has its own village called Hollywood, which displays a hillside sign echoing its Californian namesake.
Places to visit in Wicklow
- Glendalough - A serene monastic site nestled in two glacial lakes.
- Powerscourt Estate - Grand 18th-century house with world-renowned gardens.
Surnames from Wicklow: Byrne · Doyle · Cullen · O'Toole · Keegan · Nevin