Millstreet Horse Show is a family run show organised by the Duggan Family, headed up by Noel C. The show is now under the capable directorship of his son Thomas Duggan.
The Green Glens Arena is a magnificent venue, which is set in the heart of Cork in Ireland. The show is the largest of its kind in Europe and is equipped with the finest of modern facilities.

Visit the Millstreet Horse Show Website

The Groom’s Cottage is a rustic cottage with stables and offers self catering accommodation for the Millstreet Horse Show for you and your horse.

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Visit the website to find out about hunts and hunting schedules in Kanturk and Duhallow in North Cork, Ireland

The Grooms Cottage offers accommodation and livery for you and your horse for the Duhallow Hunt.

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Stocking a wide range of plants, trees, shrubs, perennials and gardening sundries, it’s the perfect place to find something different for your garden. It may be a little off the beaten track, but they are worth the journey!

The flock of free-range chickens and ducks, including Indian Runners, Khaki Campbells and Aylesbury, wander through the garden centre during the day and they are fantastic for searching out the slugs. For most of the year, the eggs are for sale in the shop.

They have a range of honey, jams and preserves, and home grown fruit and vegetables which are all produced locally. They will have our own honey this year as they have introduced a hive and bee garden. Honey bees are under serious threat and  they hope to use the bee garden to educate people on the crisis affecting these crucial pollinators.

They offer courses in the  new classroom, in gardening, chicken keeping and other ecological subjects. As a way of supporting local artists and crafts people they also have items for sale such as hand made jewellery, cards and many other item. They have a range of freshly made yummy cakes and biscuits.

They also have a wonderful giftshop with unusual and beautiful gifts that is well worth a visit.

Visit the Secret Garden website

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Enjoy the spectacle of the parade ring and the weigh room. Feel the tension build in the betting ring as the bookmakers call out the ‘odds’ and compete for your attention before the races begin. Then pick your spot to watch the horses race to the finish as the ground rumbles and cheers of the winning punters fill the stands. Enjoy all this in the surroundings of this wonderful facility at Cork Racecourse Mallow.

Visit  the Cork Racecourse Mallow website

The Grooms Cottage offers self catering accommodation and DIY livery for you and your horse whilst enjoying the races.

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William has brought that twist to Ireland’s south-western corner, where ingredients such as pork, lamb, woodcock, snipe, salmon, honey and oriental greens come straight from the estate. Even our water comes from our own wells.

Homemade artisan food products, such as liqueurs, apple brandy, patés, chutneys, vacuum-packed smoked salmon, spices, jams and preserves are all made on site and available for you to take away to enjoy.The President’s Restaurant is at the heart of Longueville, and the menu comes straight from the estate. There’s fresh salmon from the Blackwater river; meat and game from the farm. Vegetables and herbs come from the walled kitchen garden. Only the extensive New and Old World wine list is drawn from farther afield.

Alternatively, in warmer weather  dine in the Turner Conservatory with its architecture by Richard Turner, the finest ironmaster and glasshouse designer of the Victorian era. Light, bright and intimate, the conservatory will lift your spirits.

Visit the Longueville House website

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Take a walk on the wild side

Charlie Wilkins, Great Outdoors gardening correspondent, The Irish Examiner

“Irelands heritage is renowned, and houses, castles and gardens are inseparable in Irish culture. Their horticultural contents are varied, rich and well documented, but there’s a newcomer among the established, and I blush to admit that up to very recently I had never visited the ‘Glenveigh of the South’, Millstreet Country Park. The experience will stay with me for life such is the beauty, the lonliness and the vastness of this refuge within the Boggeragh Mountains of north Cork

A visit here is a must if you love wild landscapes, sheltered gardens, flora and fauna, herb-rich meadows, developing arboretums, blanket bog, even deer pasture. And if you don’t feel like doing some of the longer trails, avail of the courtesy coaches which ply the mountainside tracks.

Walking trails range from the leisurely Gardners Stroll among the well-kept ornamental gardens, to the slightly longer Wetlands Trail and the spectacular Tuarin na mBlath Trail (wildflowers trail). Longer trails, especially the Carrig Leabra Trail, are the most ardous, but also the most rewarding in terms of scenery and the sense of adventure and achievement. The same could be said for the Mushera Moor Trail. It takes one to true wilderness and to the highest ground in the park at 365 metres above sea level.

The unforgettable Sensory Garden with its many aromatic species, created specifically for physically and mentally challenged visitors is an experience not to be missed. The character of generously planted shrubs and trees is quiet unlike those in other gardens throughout Ireland, for they consist in the main of evergreen varieties interspersed with the ‘bare-knuckled’ forms whose flowers are borne directly on naked branches. The blooms on these may be small and un-flamboyant but they can be exceptional vessels of scent, and perfume the air for yards.

The park experience (and all its walks) show the changing face of the landscape and the flora and fauna within it. You won’t see it all in a single visit, but you’ll go back again and again if you love the wild outdoors.”

Click here to visit the Millstreet County Park website

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The Bridgestone Irish Food Guide 2010 says,

“McCarthy’s look like a normal butcher’s shop in a normal Irish town.  It’s no such thing. Cherrywood smoked beef. Duhallow lamb sausage. A member of the Brotherhood of the Black Pudding. Whiskey dry-cured rashers.  See what we mean about not being a conventional butcher’s shop? Where else would you see meat treated with such fiendish imagination? Tim is the 5th generation of the family to have taken up the butcher’s apron so McCarthy’s allies contemporary nous and know how with more than a century of family tradition. And they are always striving to make something new, to take modern ideas and marry them to the best meat they can source. And now, with an online shop, you don’t have to make the pilgrimage to  Kanturk to get your hands on these exhilarating exciting foods.  Unique.”

Visit the McCarthy’s of Kanturk website

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MacAuliffe, seer and step-brother of MacDonogh predicted that the castle would never be completed, that it was “…too fine a home for crows”. The castle was never fully finished but it is reputed that the family were in residence until 1641. On the construction of the battlements the English Privy Council ordered that the work be stopped.

At one time the castle was known as Carrig-na-Shane-Saor, the Rock of John the Mason, and it is reputed that it was built by seven stonemasons all called John.

Tradition holds that there is blood in the mortar. This has been taken to mean that many died in the building of the castle. Some say that passers by were recruited to work on the castle and once the slave labourers had dropped dead of exhaustion their bodies were disposed of within the castle walls.

Much as these tales conjure dramatic and terrifying history, it is possible that “blood in the mortar” can be taken quite literally as a reference to the tradition of strengthening lime by the addition of animal blood.

In 1632 the McCarthy’s were in financial difficulty due to their involvement in various rebellions and the expenditures on the castle and so a mortgage was granted by the Percivals, the Earls of Edgmont. In 1666 the castle and several thousand acres of land passed into the hands of the Earls of Edgmont, the final figure owing on the mortgage was £2500. The castle was given to the National Trust of England by the Edgmonts in 1900 and its ownership returned to Ireland in 1998.

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