Welcome to our Blog

We have 5 Self Catering cottages at Croan in Ireland’s “Sunny Southeast”. The cottages are set around a central courtyard on the grounds of historic Croan House. Croan House also supports a thriving smallholding and Walled Garden.

We have been lucky over the last few years to be able to turn our dreams of operating a smallholding into a reality.

Our love of food, gardening and animals has inspired us to expand from a very small veg patch to now stocking Cattle, Large Black Pigs, Goats, Sheep, Geese, Ducks and Chickens, as well as producing most of the vegetables and fruit we need.

As well as working on the restoration of the old Walled Kitchen garden at Croan, we have now planted Plum, Pear, Cherry and Apple trees. Many of the Trees have been sourced from Irish Seed Savers who propogate rare native Irish varieties. We have tried to find as many varieties local to the Kilkenny area as we could.

Our walled garden is approx. 1 acre in size and is protected by a limestone wall up to 8 feet high. Remedial construction work began in March 2005 and has included the restoration of the old walls, the construction of a greenhouse and the laying out of raised beds.

Guests at our cottages share with us the produce from the gardens and orchard.

It’s not all hard work, there’s plenty of time to enjoy a few laughs with the more friendly animals when we take a break from looking after our self catering cottages, the other animals and the gardens of Croan House.