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Mamree Lodge near Inistioge, Co Kilkenny, has paddocks for ponies and terraced gardens running down to the River Nore – and it’s been completely restored, writes MICHAEL PARSONS

KILKENNY “with its sensuous hills, its trees, its river-valleys and the blue mist that rises from them . . . is the loveliest of Irish counties. It is still thirteenth-century country which you can imagine as the setting for the Canterbury Tales”. Not much has changed in the 60 years since short story writer Frank O’Connor wrote that description. And there’s no lovelier place in the county than Inistioge on the River Nore.