Niche travel

FOR A TEENY PIECE of Stratford-on-Avon in Ireland, check out Rothe House in Kilkenny. Built in 1594, it’s of a style The Bard himself would have been familiar with.

The house is in fact made up of three houses, one built behind the other by one of the town’s merchant princes, silk merchant John Rothe.

In the first iteration, he and his wife lived over the shop. But given that they went on to have 12 children, it’s little surprise to find they had to call in the builders again in 1604, to provide additional living space.

The third house was completed in 1610 and included a ground-floor kitchen with large hearth and a bake oven.

Behind the house are gardens which contained an orchard, herb and vegetable patches, a pigeon house, a well and a summer house at the far end of the garden – all mod cons for the 17th century.

Unfortunately, Rothe ultimately fell foul of Cromwell, was dispossessed and banished to Connaught.

The original burgage plot, which in the 13th century was home to Cistercian monks, leads from the main street to the city wall and is the last such plot to survive in Kilkenny.

Restoration work has been ongoing by Kilkenny Archaeological Society since 1962.

As well as a museum of 17th-century Kilkenny life and a genealogy centre, the garden is the only one of its kind open to the public in the country, looking exactly as it would have when the Rothes wandered it in doublet and hose, more than 400 years ago.

On a sunny day when Shakespeare's "hot lavender" is wafting through the courtyard, it is a veritable idyll. See rothehouse.com