The English aristocracy didn’t just build their country houses in England. Scattered across the whole British Isles are grand houses that remind one of the divide between a land owning aristocracy and the rest of us. Nowadays we still see trappings of wealth in large houses but few on the scale of the English country house. These country houses have become famous as the basis of fine hotels, frequently charging such expensive rates that they become the playground of latter day aristocrats.

When a country house is used as the basis for an hotel it often stands apart from the new build sections. At Dunboyne Castle Hotel & Spa, the aristocratic mansion first became a home for nuns; then for a while it served as farm buildings before a six year planning battle (perhaps more English than Irish for its lengthy disputation) finally saw the house incorporated in a new hotel. Incorporated because it is indeed incorporated, not separate from but embraced by the modern structure that hugs its side and rear walls.

The hotel sits in 100 acres of ground next to newly developed commuter homes for Dubliners. The landscaping is a little bleak and the new estate is kept apart through fencing from a rear ‘garden’, an area with a sunken pond and meandering path that sits in a piece of unattractive grassland and car park. More life and vitality, along with possibly more custom for the hotel, might have been generated if the community had been embraced. Instead very formal front landscaping reinforces the separation achieved to the rear. The overall effect is a rather crass new building sitting in a very institutional piece of imitation country house parkland, with the country house standing uneasily alongside.

The institutional feel carried through into an interior spoiled by a mania for cost cutting (see also Irish Hospitality pts 1 & 2) has led to understaffing and other operational ‘savings’. These lead to a visual destruction of good design and poor guest experience alike.

The country house is not central to the interiors, but sits on the side of the modern interiors. Much of the lighting was turned off, creating an uninviting feel which serves to help keep the country house section feeling closed. Its rooms are beautiful and deserve to be fully utilised, instead of which they are kept for weddings and the smaller business meetings. Most of the new building extends to the rear with a magnificent and very large spa. Function rooms and exhibition areas are centrally placed continuing to one side whilst the bedroom block goes off on the other side. From the front the old mansion house is treated with grace and sensitivity but from the back it is lost, its Georgian proportions hidden by the new buildings.

Internally the junction between old and new is again handled well architecturally but is let down by the lighting. I find it difficult to make up my mind whether the lighting is badly designed in the public area or whether management practices which dictate leaving lights off are to blame for the lack of sparkle in these area. The corridor alongside the bar lounge and the old mansion is top lit by daylight, but the lighting in the adjacent spaces is left off it seems in daylight, making the whole area uninviting. I have heard some Irish operators blame the green hotel policies of the Irish government, but this is hotly disputed by the agency concerned and seems more to do with management using any excuse in a difficult market to keep lights off to cut costs. It makes the spaces very unattractive to guests, robbing them of life as the comparative images of the reception area show.

In the old house, with its glorious public rooms, the lack of lighting is a deterrent to guests using the spaces. However the impact of this approach is shown in the bar operations. With so much of the income generated for the hotel now coming from functions, I noted one evening when there was a large wedding reception on the lower bar/bistro closed as staff were seemingly diverted to service the wedding and its bar upstairs.

The physical separation of the bedrooms from the function area does not insulate them from noise either. The outside terraces into the function rooms allow noise transmission and a number of guests commented on this happening in the early hours of the morning when presumably the terrace doors are thrown open to encourage function guests to leave quickly. The artwork is all reproduction Vettriano prints – love’em or loath’em this is the 21st century equivalent of Trechikov, supposedly the most reproduced artist of the 20th century. Like the artwork, the colour scheme is bland and inoffensive but rooms are well lit, all the switches in the right place, and many with balconies and opening windows.

There is a good sized work desk and large mirrors, together with a dining table and chairs meeting criteria for five star rating (unlike some hotels in the UK I have seen recently which fail to meet Visit Britain five star standards yet are given a five star rating – I wonder how?).

Here where inspection is tight and a hotel has to meet certain criteria before it can even be called an hotel, the generous room size would embarrass many London hotels who are second rate by comparison. The UK is increasingly out of step with European rating practise and moves now adopted by nine countries to harmonise standards. The suggestion by UK ministers that TripAdvisor should be used is risible. These rooms are well sized and fitted out and offer free WiFi too.

I say the bedrooms are almost the best part of this hotel, because they are second to a beautifully designed sumptuous Seoid (meaning Jewel) spa area over three floors. It claims to be one of the most luxurious spas in Ireland, and this I can believe. It has all the usual therapies, but also includes a full razul experience. The whole area is well lit and doesn’t suffer from the cheap ‘energy saving’ approach characterising the rest of the hotel. Instead it creates the ambience and luxury to be expected in a top quality spa. The lighting sparkles where it needs to and is subtle where warmth and relaxation are the key. The location of the hotel, close to Dublin but out in the country, makes the spa a good draw and there are also several leading golf courses within a few minutes drive.

The spa reaches over three floors and includes a slightly bleak outdoor whirlpool. The indoor pool is nicely designed (apart from the intrusion of the columns). Interior designers really should whip the architects and structural engineers into line as so many interiors are spoiled by columns being unnescessarily visually intrusive. The outdoor areas really don’t work here. It is almost as if they are awaiting further development. More planting would help keep down noise and add colour to the rear, sorely missed in the views from the bedrooms. For such a luxury spa the outdoor whirlpool is functional rather than indulgent.

Treatment rooms are well designed and offer a range of treatments, whilst relaxation areas are warm and womb like, supporting the therapies offered. There are stylish touches throughout the hotel that combat the slightly institutional feel created by the architecture and landscaping. For example, the staircase down to the sports bar/bistro has been turned into a seating area by simple addition of a sylish throne chair and a small banquette seat. The lighting is the key to all these areas and with it turned off there is a gloom pervading that robs the hotel of the theatre and sparkle it deserves.

Couple this with understaffing (and the staff here are very, very good) and the whole guest experience is downgraded. The sports bar/bistro staff appeared to be transferred to service a wedding bar on my second night so it was closed. The second bar, a snug Irish pub, was deserted – like the Marie Celeste abandoned to voyage alone.

This is a well designed hotel, seemingly caught up in the recessionary pressures that characterise so many Irish hotels and which management is fighting with desperate measures. The ‘coming out balls’ are a great saviour of hotels all over Ireland at the end of the school year it seems, but the view of many in the industry is that there are 30% too many hotel rooms in Ireland.

With over 100 of 900 hotels basically in the hands of the receivers, tourism here will need to recover a long way to turn the hotel economy around. Dunboyne has the location and the Spa, plus nearby golf courses which will makes this one of the flourishing survivors if the short term management solutions being applied don’t deter the well-heeled punters it needs to attract.

© Words & Pictures Patrick Goff. From a visit in August 2011

The owner lives on the other side of the bay, looking on to his hotel, or at least the Victorian seaside hotel that was there. When he saw the proposed plans for its replacement, he didn’t like it. Refusing to spend his evenings looking at something unsightly, he bought the site and had Cliff House Hotel built. Wouldn’t we all do the same?

The result is a beautifully located stylish new five star hotel with architecture that spills down the hillside and cliffs, belying its seven floors with a roof line the same as the surrounding villas. Its location places the hotel in close contact with the sea. I was there in calm weather and I would imagine during a storm with high seas it must provide a wonderful experience. In calm weather it is possible to follow the path through the gardens to stand on the rocks and if the weather is warm enough, to even go swimming off them.

The link with the sea is followed through by the layout of the building which gives all the rooms sea views, some with seating areas in windows or on balconies overlooking the water. From across the bay, where the owner lives, the hotel is discrete. Interestingly, just a little further around the bay in which Ardmore is situated is a group of mobile homes, apparently places where rich Dubliners bring their families for the summer, giving the hotel large groups of ‘ladies that lunch’ to fill its bistro and Michelin starred restaurant.

During my trip to Ireland I saw many hotels that were in trouble – indeed NAMA, the Irish national ‘bad bank’ has nearly 100 of Irelands 900 odd hotels on its books (see articles). In the rotten economic climate Irelands bankers contributed to, it is all the more remarkable that the Cliff House became profitable in its third year and now in its fourth year it is becoming even more successful.

Part of the hotel’s success is its emphasis on service and the food offering, something enabled by the architecture which includes a greenhouse for the cook as well as a small garden area. Ireland is predominantly an agricultural nation and this hotel, unlike many, makes maximum use of local sourcing of both the produce from the land and the sea. It has a Michelin star for its restaurant but judging by difficulty in securing a table there, its bistro offering is enormously popular too.

The bar bistro shares a large terrace with the restaurant running along the sea front of the hotel, which more than doubles the available seating in summer and looks across the bay. Below the restaurant terrace are the gardens which provide intimate little ‘secret’ seating areas, but also hold part of the Spa which is on the floor below, with both the whirlpool bath and the seaweed treatment baths sitting out on their own terraces. Internally the bistro mixes formality and informality well. There is a comfortable seating area in front of an open fire and bar stools to the bar as well as more formal dining. Dining tables look out through the windows that fill one wall floor to ceiling maximising the view again.

The planning ensures that the kitchen and wine cellar service both the main restaurant and the bistro. The placing of all the service areas, delivery points and other non-guest areas on the rear, inland, side of the hotel ensures that guests enjoy continuous uninterrupted views of the sea from virtually everywhere they go in the hotel. It also preserves the striking architectural area that follows the cliff face down to the sea entirely for guests. The site planning has been meticulous and has served both hotelier and guest well.

Entering the hotel the guest is presented with a view to the sea immediately, looking right through the reception area. The reception area is part of a large atrium space which reaches from the top of the hotel to the restaurant floor, over three floors. On the top floor it forms a guest library lounge giving access to bedroom corridor. Here the lounges of suites are on the rear of the hotel but the suites all are over two floors with balconies off the bedrooms providing space for loungers and private dining as well as spectacular views.

The hotel interiors were done largely by the owners and they have amassed the largest collection of colonial campaign furniture in Ireland which are used as feature pieces throughout the hotel. However, it is the architecture and layout that are the strengths of the interiors. Colour is used cleverly throughout and reinforces the sense of movement through space, such as in the changing hues on the stair carpets, but always it is the views, changing light and sense of contact with the ocean that dominates. The duplex suites are a clever use of the space at the rear of the reception floor, making the guestroom lounges quiet to the rear and keeping the bedrooms with the views, adding deep terraces where dining and sun lounging in privacy are enabled.

The beds are positioned so that the view is seen easily through the large balcony access windows and the bathroom puts the shower in the window too, whilst bathrooms throughout deliver both shower and soaking tubs. The resulting glass walls flood the bathroom with light. This is the case with the glass wall in the bedroom too, but the blackout is effective at night. Rooms in the duplex are large and have their own dining and lounge areas. The campaign furniture works well in these, and specially commissioned artwork graces their internal staircases.

Interestingly the hotel has gone back to brass keys on large key fobs as they found the €8 cost of replacing the smart cards used in the electronic proximity locking system prohibitive as many guests still erroneously believe the cards encode personal details and take them away with them. The weight and presence of the brass keys leads to them being returned rather than remaining secreted in purses or wallets.

In the standard bedrooms there is variety of room layout and colour and all deliver a good sized desk (with free Wi-Fi of course), bay window with window seat or a fireplace, where on rainy days (and there are many in Ireland) guests can enjoy the views or relax without the temptations of the superb gourmet food experience the hotel offers. With all the bedrooms on the seaward side of the hotel, all guests are guaranteed a sea view. I was there in the summer, but a part of me wanted to stay during an Atlantic winter storm as the position of the hotel on the cliff edge must make this a spectacular experience for a guest – with the reassurance and comfort of Michelin food and wines and open fires in the public areas! The appeal of this hotel must, in part, be down to the ability to be on the large terraces in the sunshine and fresh air, but to retreat into comfortable internal spaces with all the cosseting by staff and service within seconds. This warm, encompassing, physical comfort is also a hallmark of the spa and leisure areas.

The entrance to the Spa and its reception are at the bottom of the spiral staircase that runs throughout the atrium. Here the space is internal, creating the initial calm controlled environment that every spa wants to exude on entry. From there it leads to the leisure and spa treatment areas.
The design of these areas then maximises the views of the ocean. Treadmills look out through picture windows to the sea. Similarly the pool has one end of glass to give clear views of the ocean. Treatment rooms, which need no daylight, are positioned to leave corridors with the views and the relaxation zone gives the couches different heights to view the ocean. Only here are there problems, with changing floor levels creating trip points marked out by hi-vis tape, a jarring note in an otherwise harmonious set of interiors.

As with the restaurants and bedrooms, the spa and leisure areas spill out onto the terraces with the spa pool and some treatment areas being places on sun-trap terraces. Despite their locations below most of the hotel it is surprising how private many of these areas are. Running below them all is the path through the gardens, again with secretive little areas for taking in the sun and views.

The hotel makes magnificent use of its location. The architectural layout has maximised the relationship with the sea. Location is more than just a seaside hotel in this instance, as Ardmore is a place of pilgrimage, being closely linked with the history of Christianity in Ireland. Within a few hundred metres are some of the earliest Christian sites, making the hotel visibility in the village a critical factor in how the architecture has been treated. Whilst visible from the water, the a fact that most of the site tumbles down the cliff means it has a low profile visually and a low roof line that all relate to the village cottages.

Communities are sensitive to large scale hotel developments which can sometime despoil a community. Here the 39 bedroom hotel has brought employment to the village and enhanced it as a destination, without being destructive visually. Maybe more hotels would benefit from the owner living with it in the vista from their houses…

Words and Pictures ©Patrick Goff. From a visit in August 2011