Site of the original hops used for Guinness

The Cashel Palace Hotel was built in 1732 by Archbishop Theophilus Bolton and was designed by the famous architect Sir Edward Lovett Pearce. The hotel has magnificent original wood paneling, staircases, and superb examples of ‘barley sugar’ Banisters. Over the years it has been used as a palatial home for deans, canons, and bishops but was eventually sold by the church in 1959 to Lord Brockett who opened it as a Luxury Hotel in 1962. The gardens contain the descendants of the original hop plants that were used by Richard Guinness to brew his famous beer and they have a private walkway called ‘The Bishops Walk’ which ran to the nearby Rock of Cashel, the c.13th Cathedral, and the ancient seat of the Kings of Munster.