Glendalough and Wicklow History in Song Coach Tour

About This Tour

Your guide, Oisín, is a Wicklow native with a background that sets this tour apart from anything else on offer. He has staged history events at Kilruddery House and Wicklow Gaol, trained as a sincere historian and musician, and was a former member of Dublin’s renowned Palestrina Choir. He knows this county the way only someone who grew up here can.

What you get is a genuine blend of critical historical insight and live music. Oisín guides you through the monastic serenity of Glendalough, explaining how early Irish monasticism shaped European culture after the Dark Ages. He traces the Norman and Tudor invasions across the landscape - the Brabazon land grants at Kilruddery, Powerscourt’s Cromwellian history - and weaves in evocative songs inspired by the places you’re standing in.

This is a tour for people who want to actually understand what they’re looking at. If you love history, music, or both, you’ll find this a very different kind of day out.

What’s Included

• Private transportation

Itinerary

1. Kilruddery House - An ancient Irish monastic site, the Church of Ruadhri was later taken by the Normans and given to St Thomas Abbey. Henry VIII then handed it to William Brabazon, who had won multiple battle victories in the establishment of Protestantism and is seen as a catalyst for the systematic dismantling of the ancient Gaelic order. (5 min)
2. Famine-era cottage / stone structure - Built by the Powerscourts shortly before the Great Hunger. (pass by)
3. Powerscourt - Originally held by native Irish families, the Kavanaghs and MacMurroughs, it was taken by force by the Normans (de Poer, from whom the Powerscourt name derives), then seized by Cromwell and granted to Richard Wingfield, ancestor of the current owners. (15 min)
4. Lough Tay (the Guinness Lake) - One of Wicklow’s most photographed spots. (10 min)
5. Glendalough - One of the earliest monastic settlements in Ireland, set in the valley of two lakes. (30 min)

Good to Know

• This is a private tour, conducted in English
• Infants and small children can ride in a pram or stroller; infants must sit on an adult’s lap
• Service animals are welcome
• Public transport options are available nearby
• Suitable for all fitness levels

Local Tips

Oisín’s 30 minutes at Glendalough is a focused historian’s visit rather than a walking tour - you’ll get the monastic city interpreted rather than tramped through. If you want to explore the valley more fully on the same day, the Green Road walk between the Lower Lake and Upper Lake (3km return, flat, about an hour) runs from the visitor centre and takes you past nine of the major ruins. Worth asking Oisín whether there’s time after the guided stop.

The 6th-century monastic city at Glendalough was, at its peak, a functioning town: scriptorium, schools, workshops, several thousand people. What survives - the 30-metre round tower with its doorway three and a half metres up the wall, the cathedral, St Kevin’s Church with its chimney-shaped belfry - represents only fragments of that settlement. Oisín’s historical framing brings it to life in a way a self-guided visit often doesn’t.

Lough Tay, the Guinness Lake, sits in a natural bowl in the Wicklow hills with the white sand beach at its southern end - the sand imported by the Guinness family to mimic a private beach. It’s one of those Wicklow views that looks improbable from the road and extraordinary once you’re standing at the viewpoint. The 10 minutes here goes fast; there’s a small pull-in above the lake where the view opens up suddenly.

Powerscourt’s history of contested ownership - native Irish, Norman, Cromwellian - is exactly the kind of layered story that takes a guide to make sense of. The estate gardens are extensive and open to visitors; if the itinerary allows time in the gardens, the Italian Garden and the formal terraces looking south to the Sugar Loaf mountain are the highlights. Powerscourt is in Enniskerry - a small estate village about 40 minutes from Dublin where Poppies on the square has been doing soup and home baking since 1982. If there’s free time before or after the estate, it’s a better stop than the café inside the house.

Nearby on IrelandMe

• Glendalough - the valley where St Kevin founded his monastery in the 6th century, with two lakes, a round tower built to withstand Viking raids, and forest walks through one of Wicklow’s most atmospheric landscapes
• Enniskerry - the estate village beside Powerscourt, with 47 acres of formal terraces and gardens that National Geographic ranked third in the world, the highest continuous-flow waterfall in the Republic 6km further up the road, and a village square that has earned a reputation as a film set