Ardress House

About the museum

Ardress House began around 1660 as a modest two-storey brick farmhouse built by Thomas Clarke on a low hill in the drumlin countryside of County Armagh. It may have replaced an earlier building lost in the rebellion of 1641.

The house was transformed after 1760, when Sarah Clarke married the Dublin architect George Ensor. By the 1770s Ensor had turned the farmhouse into a Georgian country house, adding wings, curved screen walls with false windows and a classical portico. The drawing room, made from the former kitchen, has plasterwork by the stuccodore Michael Stapleton and is among the finest late eighteenth-century interiors in Ireland. His son, also George, added a dining room with a library above it.

The Ensor family lived at Ardress until Captain Charles Howard Ensor gave the property to the National Trust in 1960. Much of the original furniture had been sold, but family items have since returned and the Trust has added period pieces and loans. Souvenirs of the family's travels, including Maori weapons and Chinese ceramics, recall a family museum once kept in the upper rooms.

The estate covers about 40 hectares with apple orchards, a terraced rose garden and woodland. The cobbled farmyard, which dates from the eighteenth century, includes a dairy, byre, smithy and threshing barn, and small farm animals have returned to it.

Highlights

• Drawing room with plasterwork by Michael Stapleton
• Seventeenth-century farmhouse with Georgian remodelling
• Cobbled farmyard with dairy, smithy and farm animals
• Apple orchards and terraced rose garden
• Lady's Mile woodland walk

Permanent exhibitions

• Ardress House interiors – Georgian rooms in a seventeenth-century farmhouse, including a drawing room with plasterwork by Michael Stapleton and family furnishings.
• Farmyard – An eighteenth-century cobbled farmyard with a dairy, byre, boiler-house, smithy and threshing barn, and small farm animals.

Operated by

National Trust

Admission & discounts

Prices are without Gift Aid. With Gift Aid the tickets cost £9.90 (adult), £5.00 (child) and £24.80 (family). Entry is free for National Trust members and no pre-booking is needed.

Accessibility

• Partially wheelchair accessible
• Elevator: no information
• Accessible restroom
• Accessible parking
• Service dogs welcome
• Tactile models & exhibits: no information
• Sign language tours: no information
• Easy-to-read materials: no information
• Audio description: no information

Blue Badge parking is next to Visitor Reception. The ground floor of the house is accessible, the farmyard has an accessible path around the edge of the cobbles, and accessible toilets are provided. There are cobbles, stairs and uneven ground across the property, and the woodland walk is uneven in places. A powered mobility vehicle can be borrowed from Reception on open days. Assistance dogs are allowed in the farmyard; other dogs are welcome on leads in the grounds and gardens.

Kids & families

Great for kids & families

• Hands-on stations
• Baby changing facilities

Children can feed the chickens, meet the goats and donkey and try ride-on tractors in the farmyard. Free balance bikes and helmets can be borrowed from Visitor Reception in the summer months. Baby changing is in the accessible toilets at Visitor Reception. Children must be supervised at all times because of old farm machinery and uneven ground.

Getting there & parking

The walk from Tullyroan Corner takes about 35 minutes (1.7 miles).

Amenities & dining

Toilets are available at weekends during the open season. Visitors may bring a picnic.

Events & venue rental

The museum hasn’t published any information on this.

Plan your visit