Mount Congreve Gardens, Waterford

Mount Congreve House was built in about 1760 by the local architect John Roberts, who subsequently designed and built most of the 18th-century public buildings in Waterford, including both cathedrals. His client was John Congreve of Waterford, whose father the first Ambrose Congreve had played a prominent part in the development of the city until his early death in 1741.



Ambrose Congreve had been a successful merchant, banker, politician and land developer, and his son was following the trend for a successful businessman to acquire a country estate when he bought a tract of land a few miles outside the city from the Christmas family of Whitfield. Here he built, on a spectacular site overlooking the River Suir, what became Mount Congreve (the original Irish name, Bruachaille, means “the edge of a cliff”).

The Congreves were in constant residence and the estate passed in direct descent from father to son until the recent death of the late Mr Ambrose Congreve. On inheriting the house in 1963 Mr Congreve remodelled and embellished the house.

However Mount Congreve is ultimately famous for being the home of one of “the great gardens of the Worl

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