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DUNDRUM

CO. TIPPERARY · IE

Dundrum
Dún Droma, Co. Tipperary

The Ireland's Ancient East
STOP 07 / 07

Dún Droma · Co. Tipperary

A big house with a complicated past, and the rest of the village getting on with things.

Dundrum sits on the R505 between Cashel and Tipperary town, a two-minute drive in either direction and an easy village to pass through without stopping. That would be a mistake, though not because of anything open on the main street. The interest is in the layers - what was built here, what happened to it, who was blamed, and who was right.

Dundrum House was raised in 1730 on land the Maude family received after Cromwell's men cleared out the O'Dwyers. The house ran as a country hotel from 1981 until August 2025, when the operators went into liquidation following a failed government contract arrangement that left them carrying costs and receiving nothing. Forty-eight jobs went with it. The building still stands at the end of the lime-tree avenue on the Cashel Road - you can see it from the road - but the bar is closed, the golf course has gone quiet, and what happens next is an open question.

What Dundrum has that no one can close is the Marl Bog, just outside the village toward Tipperary town. Two Coillte loops - a lakeside circuit and a forest walk - through mixed woodland around a duck pond, level enough for a buggy, broad enough to lose an hour in without trying. The Dundrum Athletic Club has been training laps here since 1960. On the right morning it is the best thing in a ten-kilometre radius.

Population

221

Founded

Medieval - O'Dwyer tower house, castle era

Coords

52.5615° N, 8.0386° W

01 / 07

At a glance.

Three things every local will eventually mention. Read these and you've already understood more than most day-trippers do.

01 The house

Georgian country house, complicated ending.

Built 1730 by the Maude family on confiscated O'Dwyer land. Hotel since 1981, closed August 2025. The lime-tree avenue is still there. The bar is not.

Stories & lore → 02 The bog

Marl Bog - two loops, one duck pond.

Coillte forest park just outside the village. Lakeside circuit (2 km) and forest walk (3 km), both level, both good. Local athletics club has been here since 1960.

Walks & outings → 03 The photographer

775 photographs now at the V&A. Started here.

Clementina Maude, Viscountess Hawarden, took her first photographs on the Dundrum estate in 1857. She moved to London in 1859 and became one of the most significant portrait photographers of the Victorian era. The V&A collection started in a field outside this village.

Stories & lore →

02 / 07

The pubs.

None of these are themed Irish pubs, because they don't need to be. A few that earn the trip:

Bertie's Bar

One pub, new hands, same name

Village pub

Bertie Callinan ran this place for close to forty-three years before retiring in June 2025. William Crowe took it on and kept the name. One pub in the village - this is it.

03 / 07

Stories & lore.

The reason to come back. The things every local will eventually tell you about, usually after the second pint.

March 1766

The curse of Father Sheehy

Father Nicholas Sheehy, parish priest of Clogheen, was hanged in Clonmel on 15 March 1766 on what most historians regard as fabricated evidence - a charge of being accessory to murder, driven by local Anglo-Irish landowners. Thomas Maude of Dundrum House had impanelled the jury. The legend attached to Sheehy's execution says he cursed the Maude family before he died: that no bird would fly over Dundrum until Maude himself was dead. Thomas Maude died, according to local tradition, raving and screaming that the priest was dragging him down to hell. The horses refused to pull the hearse. Estate workers pulled it to the graveyard by hand. Four months after the execution, Maude had been raised to the peerage as Baron de Montalt - he didn't live long enough to enjoy it.

Clementina Maude, 1857

The photographer at Dundrum

Clementina Maude, Viscountess Hawarden - née Elphinstone Fleeming, a Scottish aristocrat who married into the Maude family - took up photography in late 1856 or early 1857, while living at Dundrum House. She started with stereoscopic landscape photographs of the estate. When the family moved to London in 1859, she set up a studio in South Kensington and produced the portrait work that made her reputation. Lewis Carroll admired her work. Over eight hundred photographs survive; 775 are now held at the Victoria and Albert Museum, donated in 1939 by her granddaughter. The V&A collection began in a country house outside a Tipperary village of two hundred people.

August 2025

The house that closed

Austin and Mary Crowe bought Dundrum House in 1978 and opened it as a hotel in 1981. It ran as a country-house hotel and golf resort for more than forty years. In 2025, the operators - Brogan Capital Ventures - leased its accommodation blocks to a Spanish company, Utmasta, under a government IPAS contract for up to 280 asylum seekers. Utmasta did not make the lease payments. Brogan Capital Ventures went into liquidation in August 2025. Forty-eight staff were made redundant. The golf course, bar, restaurant, and leisure centre closed with immediate effect. The IPAS centre, operated by Utmasta independently on the same campus, was unaffected. The lime-tree avenue on the Cashel Road still leads to the front door. Whether it leads anywhere else is unresolved.

Lords of Kilnamanagh

The O'Dwyers

Before the Maudes and before the hotel, the land at Dundrum belonged to the O'Dwyer clan, lords of Kilnamanagh, who built a tower house here in the late medieval period. Philip O'Dwyer, the last clan chief, died at Dundrum in 1648 during the Confederate Wars. The estate was confiscated under Cromwellian settlement and passed to the Maudes. The tower house is gone. The family is not - the O'Dwyer name runs through Tipperary still.

04 / 07

Things to do outside.

Wear waterproofs. Bring a sandwich. Tell someone where you're going if it's the mountain.

Marl Bog Lakeside Walk Coillte-managed forest park just outside the village on the Tipperary town road. Level circuit around the duck pond through mixed deciduous woodland. Wide enough for a buggy. Good for early mornings when the wildlife is moving.

2 km loopdistance

35 mintime

Marl Bog Forest Walk The longer of the two Coillte loops. Through mixed coniferous and deciduous woodland, past sluice-gate pond, several wildlife viewing points. Dundrum Athletic Club - founded 1960 - trains here. On a weekday morning you'll share the trail with runners who know every root.

3 km loopdistance

50 mintime

05 / 07

When to go.

There is no bad time. There are different times.

Spring

Mar-May

The Marl Bog in May with the woodland coming out is the best version of the walk. Quiet roads, Cashel twenty minutes east.

◉ Go

Summer

Jun-Aug

Fine for passing through. The bog walk is shaded. Cashel takes the tourist volume; Dundrum absorbs none of it.

◉ Go

Autumn

Sep-Oct

Woodland colour in October, low light, the duck pond at its best. Unhurried.

◉ Go

Winter

Nov-Feb

The bog trails can be soft underfoot after heavy rain. Dress for it. Everything else in the village is open year-round.

◐ Mind yourself

06 / 07

What to skip.

Honestly? Don't bother.

If a local was sitting beside you, this is the bit where they'd lean in.

Driving out to Dundrum House expecting a hotel

It closed in August 2025 and is not currently trading. The lime-tree avenue is real. The bar is closed. Check before you go.

Expecting Dundrum Dublin

Different county, different country culturally. No shopping centre. No LUAS. One pub, a duck pond, and a ghost story about a Tipperary priest.

Getting there.

By car

Cashel to Dundrum is 14 km on the R505, about 15 minutes. Tipperary town is 14 km the other direction. The village is not on any main road - you turn off and come in.

By bus

Bus Éireann services between Tipperary town and Cashel pass through or near the village. Frequency is limited - check timetables before relying on it.