Ormonde Castle is the best example of an Elizabethan Manor House in Ireland. Thomas, the 10th Earl of Ormond in the 1560’s, built it.

Closely integrated into the manor house are two 15th century towers. The ‘state rooms’ contain some of the finest decorative plasterwork in the country, including plasterwork portraits. Restricted access for visitors with disabilities.

This castle of the Butlers - Earls and later Dukes of Ormonde - stands above the Suir on the east side of Carrick. It was acquired in 1315, though the oldest part of the castle is a mid-fifteenth-century walled bawn with a tower house in each of its northern corners. Sometime after 1565 the tenth, or "Black", Earl of Ormonde, who spent many years in the court of his cousin Queen Elizabeth I, added a Tudor manor house of a type common in England but like no other in Ireland. The low U-shaped range of this house forms three sides of a small court attached to the north of the old bawn, whose towers rise behind it. It has two storeys with a gabled attic, rows of mullioned windows with curved-headed lights, and steep brick gables with slender finials. There are few defensive features save for small firing-holes either side of the front door.

The house was a favourite haunt of the Great Duke of Ormonde, but afterwards it was deserted by the family, although they continued to own it until the present century. Fortunately, it was never allowed to fall into complete ruin and in 1947 was taken over by the State, who subsequently conserved the building. Their most notable achievement was the restoration of the long gallery on the first floor of the front elevation, whose ceiling had largely collapsed.

This delightful room, once hung with tapestries, has a magnificent l