The house sits on a low rise on the western edge of town, looking down a long lawn to the bay and the Caha mountains beyond. It has been the seat of the White family — earls of Bantry from the 1810s — for more than three hundred years, and remains in the hands of their descendants, who open the principal rooms and the gardens from spring to autumn. The interior is an eccentric, atmospheric jumble of furniture, paintings and tapestries collected on grand tours through nineteenth-century Europe; the labelling is sparse but a guide is usually on hand to talk you through the highlights.
The gardens are formally Italianate, terraced down to the sea, with one celebrated stairway of one hundred steps climbing the hill behind the house. The view from the top is one of the best on this coast. In the stable-yard a small exhibition recalls the French invasion of 1796, when Wolfe Tone's fleet of forty-three ships was scattered by storms in the bay below; the house owner of the day, Richard White, was made an earl for raising local volunteers against the attempted landing.