The Square and the Clock Tower
About
Enniskerry is a planned estate village, laid out from the 1840s for the tenants and workers of the Powerscourt demesne, and the Square is the piece of design that holds it together: a triangular open space on a slope, ringed by low painted terraces and mock-Tudor shopfronts, with the whole thing pivoting on a free-standing granite clock tower of 1843. The tower is a three-stage Renaissance affair, oddly formal against the picturesque cottages around it, with cast-iron fountain spouts and water troughs at its base and a copper-domed cupola added in 1860. It sits on a raised granite platform with steps and flower beds, and on any given day it is surrounded by a car park, because the Square doubles as the village's parking. That tension, a deliberately composed 19th-century set piece doing daily duty as a turning circle for delivery vans, is the honest character of the place. Film crews have noticed: Laurence Olivier shot the Agincourt sequences of Henry V here in 1943 with hundreds of local extras, and Disney redressed the whole village as a fairytale town for Disenchanted in summer 2021.
Photos
Highlights
- ✓The 1843 granite clock tower, with its cast-iron fountain spouts, water troughs and 1860 copper-domed cupola
- ✓The mock-Tudor and neo-Tudor shopfronts laid out from the 1840s for Powerscourt's tenants
- ✓St Patrick's Church on Church Hill, completed in 1861 by the 7th Viscount
- ✓The village that stood in for a fairytale town in Disenchanted and for 15th-century France in Henry V
Tips
- →The Square is also the car park, and on a fine Sunday it is full by mid-morning. Come early or come on a weekday.
- →It is a working village of around 2,000 people, not an open-air museum. Most of what you see is somebody's home or livelihood.
- →The tower is a monument, not a visitor attraction: no interior access, no interpretation panel, no ticket.
- →Walk down Church Hill and keep going for Knocksink Wood, which is ten minutes below the village.
Best Season
Accessibility
The Square itself is level around the tower platform, but Enniskerry is built on a hill and the approaches from Church Hill and the Dublin road are steep. Footpaths are narrow in places and the Square shares its surface with parked cars.
Last verified 2026-08-06
More Attraction Activities
Powerscourt House & Gardens
The Palladian house and its 47 acres of Italian terraces, Japanese gardens and walled garden, twenty minutes uphill from the Square. Separate site and ticket from the waterfall.
Powerscourt Waterfall
Ireland's highest waterfall at 121 metres, in a parkland meadow with picnic tables, a playground and barbecue stands. A separate site and a separate ticket from the gardens.
Glencree German War Cemetery
A quiet terraced cemetery built into a granite quarry in 1961, holding 134 German war dead, ten kilometres up the Glencree valley from the village.