Bowling green, Dukesmeadows, Co. Kilkenny
Co. Kilkenny |
Estate Features
In the landscape around Dukesmeadows in County Kilkenny, there survives a bowling green, a feature that speaks quietly to the leisure habits of a particular class at a particular moment in Irish history.
Formal bowling greens of this kind were not public amenities but private pleasures, laid out within demesne grounds for the enjoyment of the household and their guests, and their survival, even in a degraded or overgrown state, is relatively uncommon.
Without more detailed records to draw upon, the full story of this particular green, its precise origins, the family who commissioned it, and the estate it once served, remains to be told. What can be said is that Dukesmeadows itself carries a name with evident associations to landed proprietorship, and bowling greens of this type were typically features of eighteenth or early nineteenth century demesne landscapes, laid out alongside walled gardens, ornamental walks, and other markers of cultivated gentility.
