Swiss Cottage

The Swiss Cottage was built around 1810 for Richard Butler, Earl of Glengall, and his wife, to a design attributed to John Nash. It is a cottage orne - an ornamental rustic building where a wealthy family played at simple country life, entertaining guests to tea in a structure deliberately made to look artless and in fact meticulously contrived. Nothing in it is regular: the thatch undulates, the verandah is built of unpeeled tree trunks, no two windows are the same shape, and there are no straight lines or right angles anywhere, since symmetry would have suggested design. Inside, the salon is hung with Dufour wallpaper printed in Paris around 1800, among the first pictorial wallpapers made anywhere. The building was derelict by the 1980s and was restored under the direction of Sybil Connolly with support from the Irish Georgian Society. Access is by guided tour only, in small groups, and opening is seasonal.

What you actually see

• The contrived rusticity - no straight lines, no two windows alike.
• The Dufour wallpaper - Parisian pictorial paper from around 1800.
• The tree-trunk verandah - unpeeled timber as ornament.
• The riverside setting - above the Suir, walkable from Cahir.

When to go

April to October; the cottage closes for winter. Guided tours only, in small groups at set times - it fills in summer, so arrive early or book.

Honest expectations

Guided tour only, small groups, seasonal opening. It is a single small building - an hour at most. The walk from Cahir is pleasant but the car park is small.

Nearby

Cahir Castle is in the town at the other end of the riverside walk.