Month: April 2025

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Architecture Country Houses Hotels Restaurants

Richmond House Cappoquin Waterford + Lavender’s Blue

Fair Ground

Our first glimpse of Richmond House was from the hanging gardens of Cappoquin House. Just two of the many fine estates we are popping into along the Blackwater River Valley. When the owners die they must barely notice the difference to their surroundings, such is the paradisal allure of west County Waterford. It’s a late afternoon (or evening as southerners like to say) drive by shoot of this Georgian box standing a mere 480 metres from the west bank of the Blackwater River.

Richmond House earns a paragraph in A Guide to Irish Country Houses by Mark Bence-Jones, 1978, “A three storey late Georgian block, five bay front with Doric porch, three bay side. Eave roof on bracket cornice. In 1814, the residence of Michael Keane; in 1914, of Gerald Villiers-Stuart. Now a guesthouse.” Small world – smaller in this valley – the Keanes still live at Cappoquin House and the Villiers-Stuarts at Dromana House.

All is serene, all is calm, except for the roar of engine and screech of brakes. We’ve an hour to cross county lines for dinner in New Ross. Not so easy comes, easy goes today. Long a restaurant with guest rooms, Richmond House is thankfully free of superfluous signage. The simplicity of the green lawn and pale skin coloured architecture speak for themselves. Doric, that most grounded of the classical orders, is used for the tetrastyle portico, the central portion now glazed to form a porch. And we’re off.

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Architects Architecture Country Houses

Salterbridge Gatelodge Cappoquin Waterford + Irish Landmark Trust

Maquette of a Mansion

Gatelodges are one of the exciting distractions of driving round rural Ireland. Each one poses and poses questions. Is it in the same style as the Big House? Is it more adventurous? Has it outlived the Big House? Due to their diminutive size and often far flung locations, many are unoccupied although there are always ways to extend them sympathetically. Enter the Irish Landmark Trust, saviour of follies and farmhouses, lighthouses and gatelodges, restoring them as human and dog friendly holiday accommodation.

If Tullymurry House (near Newry, County Down) was the perfect getaway to celebrate a wintry milestone birthday with fellow elites, Salterbridge Gatelodge (on the edge of Cappoquin, County Waterford) is the ideal romantic retreat for early spring. Dating from about 1850, this stone gatelodge is in the severe Grecian idiom best exemplified on this island by English architect Francis Goodwin’s Lissadell House (outside Carney, County Sligo). The plainest of pilasters and parapets define its hard edges. An octagonal storey height double chimneystack is more English Tudor than Ancient Greece and hints at the shape of an internal feature. The chamfered entrance bay shape is internally mirrored to form an octagonal dining hall. A sensitively designed rear extension contains the kitchen.

Is Salterbridge Gatelodge the same style as Salterbridge House? Yes and no: the Big House also has plain stone pilasters and parapets but is otherwise rendered with Wyatt windows in the Regency mode. Is it more adventurous? On a par except for that double chimneystack: otherwise there is nothing over the top about the architecture of either the gatelodge or house. Has it outlived the Big House? No: fortunately Salterbridge House is also in great condition. In 2021, the 11 bedroom house and its 55 hectare estate was sold for €3.25 million to the Vernons who are only the third family to own the property. Robert O’Byrne celebrates the revival of the architectural white elephants of last century in his splendid latest book The Irish Country House: A New Vision (2024).

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Architecture Art Hotels People

Patricia Cantlon + Cullintra House The Rower Kilkenny

The Circle Turns

Nobody encapsulates nature better than the late American poet Mary Oliver. And nobody embodies country living more than the Irish châtelaine Patricia Cantlon. “My house is in the most beautiful part of Ireland,” states Patricia with good reason. Her mother opened their 300 year old home to paying guests last century and Patricia has made hospitality her own life’s work. Mary Oliver, Wild Geese (1986), “Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again.”

There are multiple places in Ireland called Ballyduff, Edenderry, Kells, Monkstown and Stradbally but only one named The Rower. Patricia’s home, Cullintra House, is a few country kilometres outside the village at the foot of Mount Brandon. In spring, daffodils line the driveway which gently rises towards the house and rear outbuildings. First impressions of Cullintra conjure up Charles Baudelaire’s The Beacons (1857) as translated by John Tidball (2014), “Shaded by verdant pines in forests evergreen.”

A gated wall in front of the façade creates a garden within a garden. Ivy blurs architecture and nature. The three bay two storey with high attic pitched roof house is grander than a farmhouse yet more modest than a country house. Large rooms; low ceilings. A small one and a half storey wing is attached to the end gable. The site continues to rise beyond the façade so that the back of the house is lower, being wedged into the hill.

A drawing room and dining room flank the central staircase hall. The kitchen is in the wing off the dining room. Upstairs, the Oak Leaf Room is over the drawing room and the Poppy Suite (three interconnecting bedrooms) is over the dining room and kitchen. On the attic floor, the Lilac Room is above the Oak Leaf Room and the Bluebell Room and Hydrangea Room are above the Poppy Suite. There’s capacity for 14 guests. Patricia converted the outbuildings into further accommodation and an artist’s studio. Her paintings of local scenery, many of Cullintra Woods, decorate the interiors. A painting of a relative’s residence, Altamont House in County Cavan, hangs in the Oak Leaf Room.

She designed the outbuildings conversions, inserting Postmodern circular windows in the stone and corrugated iron elevations. A keen eye for design is also apparent in the interior design. In the drawing room, Patricia has hung four of her own large painted panels of forest scenes on two of the walls which together with a window and a French door on the other two walls blurs interior design and nature. Mary Oliver, Evidence 1, 2009, “Beauty without purpose is beauty without virtue. But all beautiful things, inherently, have this function – to excite the viewers toward sublime thought.”

“Cullintra House would have been the agent’s house on Lady Annaly’s estate Gowran Castle,” the great conteuse explains. “That’s the huge big house where she lived. I called the kitten Annaly after Lady Annaly. My three cats come with me for a mile of a walk every day. One day the plumber was out and my phone rang and the person on the end of the line said they were doing a programme on cats for Japanese television. And I said, ‘Well the young lady is not here at the moment!’ That was Isabella my cat – she was out hunting. ‘You can rearrange to talk to us.’ So they came over in 40 minutes. I said to the plumber you better go home now and come back another day to do the work. The Japanese television crew interviewed Isabella and my other cat Charlie too.”

Patricia’s talents also stretch to cooking and baking. Breakfast is scrambled egg (beautifully presented of course), scones and her famous wheaten bread accompanied by butter with a sprig of mint. She relates, “Last night I did mashed potato with peas and venison with ruby port and crème de cassis which was lovely. Another main course I like to cook on my Aga is pork chops with orange sauce and Dauphinoise potatoes.” She makes her own clothes, always wearing a full length evening dress to dinner.

Patricia leaves a handwritten note of instructions beside the 18th century front door on how to access Brandon Cairn for a sunrise climb. Beyond the farmyard with its converted outbuildings, the driveway becomes a laneway turning and twisting up the hill before terminating at a timber viewing bridge. Patricia has land rights over the bracken and gorse carpeted summit which she protects as a nature reserve. She explains, “The cairn is about 3,000 years old and was a burial chamber. You can see six counties from the top of the hill: Carlow, Kilkenny, Tipperary, Waterford, Wexford and Wicklow.” Light streaks across the sky over this ancient vortex. Prehistoric stones are piled heavenward forming a low pyramid. Mary Oliver, Sunrise (1999), “This morning, climbing the familiar hills in the familiar fabric of dawn.”

Patricia reminisces on the now derelict Butlers pub in The Rower: “It was burnt down during the troubled times then newly rebuilt in 1920. Everybody appeared for the pub and the people who didn’t want to spend money would come and sit round the corner. They were all there on the corner on a nice evening. All the fellas would sit there as there was no television. It was just a place where they’d get all the news. It’s not beyond repair. Sure Notre Dame was burnt down and was restored and is reopening this week!” Mary Oliver, Evidence 2 (2009), “Memory: a golden bowl.”

Cullintra is also a few country kilometres from Inistioge, the village made famous as the setting for Maeve Binchy’s 1990 novel Circle of Friends. A late 18th century bridge designed by George Smith – triangular buttresses between 10 arches on one side, Ionic pilasters on the other – spans the River Nore which forms the eastern boundary of the village. “At Inistioge you have to have a timetable because the river is tidal,” says Patricia. “Have you ever heard of the Olympic swimmer Michelle Smith de Bruin? One day I went in at Inistioge and I said Michelle never swam as fast as I did such was the current. I was lucky to get out alive!”

Opposite the former Butlers pub, a sign on the boundary wall of the Board of First Fruits Church of Ireland church in The Rower lists birdlife spotted among the gravestones of the bygone elites. Barn Swallow, Blackbird, Blue Tit, Buzzard, Coal Tit, Dunnock Chick, Flycatcher, Greater Spotted Woodpecker, Goldfinch, Greenfinch, Jay, Lacewing, Pied Wagtail, Red Poll, Redwing, Robin, Sparrow, Sparrow Hawk and Wren. Mary Oliver, Evidence 2 (2009), “And consider, always, every day, the determination of the grass to grow despite the unending obstacles.”

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Architects Architecture Country Houses People

Cappoquin House + Gardens Cappoquin Waterford

The Best Days  

In The Super Seven Towns and Villages of West Waterford (2024), James Hyde describes the “glittering necklace” of Aglish, Ballyduff, Cappoquin, Lismore, Mount Mellerey, Tallow and Villierstown. “Cappoquin is a friendly business town located where the River Blackwater turns south. For decades it saw boats and paddle steamers plying their trade to the Irish Sea at Youghal, and bringing people upriver for days out and sports matches.” The crown jewel in this pretty village is Cappoquin House.  

The Big House in Ireland is usually hidden away behind high stone walls, locked gates and a wooded demesne. Notable exceptions are Castletown Cox (Piltown, County Kilkenny), Lismore Castle (Lismore, County Waterford, visible despite being set in a 3,240 hectare estate), and Rosemount House (New Ross, County Wexford) which are all distractingly visible from public roads. Cappoquin House firmly fits into the latter category: not many country houses have an address on Main Street. It rises high above the whole town, closer to heaven physically and visually that any of the nearby buildings.  

An Introduction to the Architectural Heritage of County Waterford by the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage (2010) states, “The late 18th century Cappoquin House (1779), home of the Keane family, was burnt in 1923 but was reconstructed with great care to designs by Richard Orpen (1863 to 1938), brother of the more famous society painter William (1878 to 1931). The by then conservative aesthetic in which Cappoquin was rebuilt underlined the cautious approach to architecture that more or less dominated the century.” 

There are a lot of plants to see for an honesty box €6 entrance fee. Current owner Sir Charles Keane’s mother Lady Olivia Keane revamped the 19th century gardens in the 1950s and then expanded them two decades later. Due to the steep gradient, the town is invisible from the house and garden, and instead the uninterrupted view is across the tidal valley of the River Blackwater as it gains momentum en route to the sea at Youghal. Rambling Rector climbing rose drapes over the verandah; Golden Showers climbing rose wraps round the courtyard.  

“My mother began to develop the grounds more vigorously and she had a great concept of design,” says Sir Charles who lives in the house with his wife Lady Corinne. “She planted well with an instinct for what looks right – and that’s key. The aim, really, is beauty. If you are on a slope you must keep open to the view which means we’re always cutting back.” His ancestor, solicitor John Keane, bought the property 290 years ago. The Keanes are descendants of the O’Cahans of County Londonderry who lost their lands in the Plantation of Ulster. Ah, the nuances of Anglo Irish and British and Irish and West British lineage.  

“The country houses of politicians became a regular target during the Civil War that followed Irish Independence,” Sir Charles relates, “so when my grandfather Sir John Keane was elected to the Senate in the new Irish Free State, he anticipated an attack. With considerable foresight he removed the contents and many of the fixtures, and placed them in storage. It transpired that his premonition was well founded and the house was duly burnt. But by the 1930s he felt sufficiently confident to rebuild with the advice of Richard Orpen. In the ensuing remodelling the façade became the garden front while the north front facing the courtyard became the entrance front.” Before the era of Éamon de Valera as Taoiseach, the Irish Free State Government provided compensation to country house owners who had their properties destroyed in the Civil War. Most chose not to rebuild. The shadowy veil of picnickers in a foreign land would sadly prevail down the generations.  

Cappoquin House and gardens are in fact a 20th century creation or recreation. The real Phoenix Park. There’s a tantalising approach to the house: it appears in long distance views only to vanish above the town; a steep avenue off Main Street leads to the stable block which offers the first glimpse of the house framed by an archway. Names mentioned in connection with the original 1779 house are John Roberts of Waterford or the better known Sardinia born Davis Ducart. John Roberts designed the simply elegant Gaultier Lodge in Woodstown, 73 kilometres east of Cappoquin. But there is more of Cappoquin House to be found in the refined Italianate neoclassicism of Castletown Cox, a Davis Ducart designed country house 226 kilometres north of Cappoquin. Both share a seven bay elevation with three bay breakfront and s scattering of arch headed windows.  

The Keane residence is a two storey building constructed of smooth grey limestone. A flat roof behind a parapet dotted with finials is centred on a circular lantern over the staircase hall. A seven bay south elevation with a three bay breakfront overlooks the Sunken Garden and far below, the Blackwater River. The breakfront of the corresponding north elevation has two first floor bays above a three bay entrance arrangement treated as a two dimensional portico: Doric columns flank the partially glazed front door and pilasters end said arrangement. The north elevation is slightly shorter than the south elevation due to the projections on the east and west elevations. It faces the courtyard and the Upper Pleasure Garden. A verandah is attached to the three bay projection to one side of the six bay west elevation facing the Croquet Lawn. This ivy clad front resembles Mount Stewart in Greyabbey, County Down. A neoclassical conservatory projects from the six bay east front: a lower earlier wing extends from the three bay projection. The east front is plainer than the rest of the exterior with no window surrounds and overlooks the Wing Garden.

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Architects Architecture Country Houses People

Dromana House + Gateway Cappoquin Waterford

Two Hours in Aragon

Quite the holiday destination, Blackwater River Valley is a dreamscape of country houses and their demesnes. A celebrated 20th century novelist was a frequent guest at one of these heritage delights, Dromana House, where she became well known for her penchant for gossip and awareness of social standing. The editor of the novelist’s later books, Diana Athill of André Deutsch, heaped praise on her in a 2017 recording: “Molly Keane was so remarkable because she was so lovely and charming and so nice. It was very odd she became a writer because she came from a completely Irish gentry background. She always insisted that she started writing purely because she had to make some sort of money to buy dance dresses and go to parties.”

“She had to write under a pseudonym because if young men had known she wrote books they would have thought she was brainy and that was thought to be the most awful thing. Her first nine books were written under that name so that no one would know. You think she can’t just have written them coldly to make money. She must have been enjoying writing because they are so good. Of course her darling first husband died young and quite unexpectedly. She was absolutely broken by that and she had to somehow cope with bringing up her two children along and managing as best she could.”

“The thing about Molly was she was so completely not conceited about her writing and she did in a way know she wrote well but she didn’t think that important. She was very charming – many people who are charming become corrupted by their own charm. You can’t help knowing it if you are a great charmer and so you exploit your charm. I’ve met charming people who are quite chilling to know because in a way it’s automatic with them to turn it on. Molly could turn it on if she wanted to. I’ve seen her to do it if she was wanting to get through an interview or something. But on the whole she was the most charming person I know who didn’t ever exploit it.”

Barbara Grubb née Villier-Stuart’s parents left Dromana House after most of the estate was acquired by the Irish Land Commission in 1957. In their absence, the residing cousin demolished the “new house” as Barbara’s husband Nicholas calls the later wing. “It’s a good view isn’t it?” asks Barbara with some understatement standing on the balcony accessed through French doors in the drawing room of the remaining house. “That’s Lismore over there – you can see the Catholic cathedral and to the right of it the Protestant cathedral. It’s such a good vantage point here.”

“And then you’re looking further to the right at the Knockmealdown Mountains and two of the main Blackwater Valley houses: Tourin House owned by the Jameson family of whiskey fame and then up the hill you’ve got Cappoquin House where the Keane family lives. Sir Charles Keane gave a presentation here last night on his three times great grandfather Lieutenant General John Keane, Lord Keane of Kandahar.”

“So here we are on the Blackwater, probably one of the widest stretches of the river. As you all know it sources in Kerry and goes 12 miles south of here into the bay in Youghal. There’s a four metre tide so it’s quite a serious one. We have salmon rights here which go back to 1215 to King John. Needless to say there are hardly any salmon left so very little fishing is done. In around 1905 there was just short of a quarter of a million salmon caught in the river which is a massive amount of fish! Now the annual quota is about 2,000. Just shows you what us humans have done.”

“There was supposedly a castle here burnt in 1200. We know nothing of it really. We then know about this towerhouse that was fought over in the 1640 rebellion that left it in a ruinous state. And then after that the family built a Jacobean low house lying east to west. In the 1700s they built on the Georgian block. The garden balustrade is the bow of what was the ballroom. That one room was 22 yards side to side which wasn’t small.”

The “new house” was erected in front of the older building in the 1780s by George Mason-Villiers, 2nd Earl Grandison, and remodelled by Henry Villiers-Stuart, 1st and last Lord Stuart de Decies, to a design by the architect Martin Day in the 1820s. It had a substantial nine bay two storey façade. All 17 windows on this elevation had raised stone surrounds; the eight ground floor window surrounds are surmounted by triangular pediments. The central entrance door (flanked by paired Doric columns and topped by a semicircular fanlight) was set in a larger triangular pedimented surround. Martin Day is mainly known for his severe neoclassical buildings in Counties Waterford and Wexford.

Demolition of the Georgian exposed the 1960s L shaped rear range of the inner courtyard. It was tidied up to achieve a pleasant harled manor house appearance with a cut limestone Gibbsian doorcase. Looks deceive: this is the Jacobean house incorporating the base of the medieval tower. Barbara and Nicholas returned in 1995 and ever since have worked on restoring the house and grounds. “The Georgian building was so vast if it hadn’t been demolished Dromana House would have been sold and would now be a hotel,” warns Barbara. Picturesque ruins of a 1751 banqueting house provide a shoreside folly. Azaleas, camelias, hydrangeas, magnolias and rhododendrons add colour and shape to 12 hectares of woodland gardens.

Barbara is the incredibly dashing 26th generation of the family to occupy the estate over the last eight centuries. Females feature prominently in her genealogy. A painting of her equally glamorous predecessor Lady Barbara Villiers, Duchess of Cleveland, favoured mistress of Charles II, hangs in the drawing room. Another ancestral portrait is of John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute. “He had one of the shortest terms as a Prime Minister of Great Britain,” she ruefully remarks, “although that was until Liz Truss came along.” In 1826, the Irish Nationalist leader Daniel O’Connell visited the enlarged Dromana House as a guest of then owner Lord Henry Mount Stuart.

“Dromana House was the inspiration for the house in Molly Keane’s Two Nights in Aragon,” Barbara shares. Published in 1941, this was her ninth novel and the fate that befalls one of its protagonists, Nan O’Neill, is quite simply the most tragicomic in Anglo Irish literature. “Aragon stood high above a tidal river. So high and so near that there was only a narrow kind of garden between house and water … Directly underneath the house and this grove, the river swelled and shrank with the tides.” Sounds familiar? Barbara confirms that Dromana, like Aragon, is haunted. There’s holiday accommodation in one part of the house: a private reciprocal. Molly Keane lived for a while in Belleville, a country house upstream from Dromana closer to Cappoquin.

“Villierstown is named after the major landowning family of Villiers who founded a linen industry here about 1750,” writes James Hyde in The Super Seven Towns and Villages of West Waterford (2024). “Built to exploit flax growing, Villierstown was a perfect spot: broad fields, easy access to river transport and a large population to work as weavers.” This enterprise was established in response to a weather induced famine of 1739: homes were built for linen workers from Belfast and around 60,000 trees were planted. The village is 2.6 kilometres south of Dromana.

Now disconnected from the grounds of Dromana House stands arguably Ireland’s most extraordinary and certainly most charming gateway. “An Irish Georgian Society (US) Grant,” records Stuart Blakley in the Irish Georgian Society Bulletin (2023), “was awarded to the Indian Gateway of Dromana Estate for a conservation report. This archway flanked by lodges was designed by local architect Martin Day in whimsical mood in the early 19th century. Its Hindu Gothic idiom brings a little bit of Brighton Pavilion to County Waterford.” A public road runs through the arch and over the Finisk River bridge behind it adding to its precarious condition. All minarets and ogee arches, this silvery sandstone structure replaced a timber version built to welcome home newlyweds Henry Villiers Stuart and Theresia Pauline Ott. Their honeymoon location? Brighton, of course. Quite the holiday souvenir.

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Architects Architecture Art Design Developers Hotels Luxury People Restaurants Town Houses

Blackpool Pleasure Beach + Boulevard Hotel Blackpool Lancashire

From Swerve of Bay to Bend of Shore

CEO of Boulevard Hotel, Amanda Thompson OBE, states, “Blackpool may not be the first place that springs to mind for the luxury traveller and that’s a perception we feel strongly about challenging. We believe Boulevard has addressed a gap in the market to attract luxury and business travellers to the Fylde Coast area where there is a plethora of things to do and see.”

This holiday resort in the northwest of England dates back to the 18th century when visitors started coming to bathe in the sea for medicinal purposes. Its boomtime really began in the Victorian era with the arrival of the railway – there are three stations in the town – and the opening of the Pleasure Beach in 1896 (with its Witching Waves and River Caves). Blackpool continues to evolve and Boulevard Hotel now brings elevated hospitality to the promenade.

The hotel is Amanda’s brainchild. She is also CEO of the adjacent Pleasure Beach which was founded by William Bean, her great grandfather. Allison Pike Architects designed the multi gabled five and two storey building which faces the shoreline to the west and the Pleasure Beach to the east. Use of natural stone on the exterior reflects the built heritage of the historic town. Blackpool is not short of adventurous skylines: further north is the 158 metre high Blackpool Tower (designed by Lancashire architects James Maxwell and Charles Tuke) which opened two years before the Pleasure Beach. Its first guidebook was naturally effusive: “The successful erection of the tower is in itself one of the greatest engineering feats of modern times.”

An 1897 guidebook Blackpool: The Unrivalled Seaside Resort for Health and Leisure claimed the town had 10,000 rooms when the static population was 43,000. The guidebook classified accommodation into three categories. “Hotels, hydros and boarding houses” offering inclusive rates for a room and meals. “Private apartments” for a room with meals cooked by a landlord or landlady using ingredients provided by the guests. “Company houses” for a room or bed in a room with the option to dine in at extra cost or out.

Two of Blackpool’s finest stone buildings are Sacred Heart Catholic Church near North Pier and Holy Trinity Anglican Church next to South Pier. Sacred Heart was built of dark stone in 1854 to the distinguished Decorated Gothic design of Edward Welby Pugin. Just 46 years later a large octagonal lantern with a pyramidal roof over the nave as well as a sanctuary (top lit by a pitched roof of stained glass) were added by architect Peter Paul Pugin, younger brother of Edward. Holy Trinity was built in the last quarter of the 19th century to the design of Richard Knill Freeman. It is constructed of yellow stone with red stone dressings. The church is an accomplished example of the Free Style of Decorated Gothic with a square tower forming a South Shore wayfinder. Both churches still have active congregations.

The names of bed and breakfasts lining the promenade between North and South Piers are a nostalgic throwback to British summers, conjuring up images of ice cream and sandcastles: Blue Waves; The Chimes on the Sea; Crystals on the Prom; Craig-y-Don; The Golden Cheval; Oakwell; On the Beach; 359 Roomz; Royal Ocean; Royal Windsor; Sea Princess; Skye Oceans; St Albans; Sunny Days; and Talk of the Coast.

Amanda’s vision for the interior of Boulevard Hotel is a contemporary take on Art Deco inspired by the 1930s architecture of Blackpool. There are 120 bedrooms including 18 suites. Mid 20th century art by Tom Purvis originally created for the Pleasure Beach is displayed throughout the hotel. Fabrics by Designers Guild, wallcoverings by Andrew Martin and lamps by Chelsom deliver quintessential Britishness. Details are carefully considered: the wavy hotel logo appears everywhere from waiting staff’s ties to tins of mints and stationery. It is the only hotel in the UK to have bath products by Balmain.

“We are the best hotel in the region,” confirms General Manager Klaus Spiekermann. He has worked in high end hotels all his career and recently won Best General Manager at the Luxury Hotel Awards. “Our function suite can accommodate a 240 person gala dinner. There are also three syndicate rooms. We cater for board meetings, conferences and weddings. Ballroom dancing competitions attract visitors from many countries including the US and China.”

Klaus continues, “The first and second floors have family accommodation including some rooms with bunkbeds. The third and fourth floors are adults only. Breakfast for the top storey suites guests is served in the first floor Ocean Club to give that exclusive vibe. Our Head Chef Andrew Derbyshire uses the highest quality produce such as Lanigan’s Seafood and Lancashire Cheese. There’s a 24 hour studio gym and guests have a VIP entrance to the Pleasure Beach. We are a one stop shop for the luxury lifestyle!”

The ground floor Beachside Restaurant lives up to its name with views over the Irish Sea – perfect for watching the candyfloss pink and honeycomb yellow sunsets. A square pillared covered entrance – the traditional porte cochère reinvented – overlooks the Pleasure Beach, revelling in the symbiosis of luxury and amusement. It’s not every top hotel has a rollercoaster roaring past its roofline.

Blackpool Pleasure Beach, just like its host town, is ever growing. A £8.72 million Gyro Swing will be the next addition, opening in 2026. This ride is a giant spinning pendulum swinging 120 degrees and reaching up to 42 metres in the sky. Amanda declares, “We’re thrilled to confirm the addition of the Gyro with work already underway. We’re known for doing things on a large scale so becoming home to the biggest of this type of ride in the UK makes complete sense. It’s dynamic, fast and incredibly high! We’re very excited for the future at Pleasure Beach Resort.”

In the meantime there are plenty of thrills. The Pleasure Beach has 13 shops (buy gifts or confectionary), 26 food and drink outlets (eat burgers and drink Champagne), 27 family rides (jump on a ghost train or enter a mechanical steeple chase), eight attractions (experience over 18s pure fear in Pasaje del Terror) and 11 thrill rides (buckle up for The Big One in all its 1.6 kilometre long 72 metre high 119 kilometres per hour rollercoasting glory). Designed by Ron Toomer of Arrow Dynamics, The Big One was the tallest rollercoaster in the world when it opened in 1994. The 96 year old Sir Hiram Maxim Captive Flying Machine is still the oldest continuous working amusement park ride in Europe. There’s even a Noah’s Ark dating back to the 1930s.

And thrilling architecture. “The Casino, finished in 1939, is the purest example in Blackpool of International Style Modernism,” Allan Brodie and Matthew Whitfield record in Blackpool’s Seaside Heritage (2014). “No corner of the park was untouched as Leonard Thompson gave Joseph Emberton total control of the redesign of the park with new buildings and rides constructed and older features remodelled.”

Joseph Emberton was the only British architect to have a building included in Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson’s groundbreaking 1932 New York exhibition The International Style. Opening one year before the exhibition, his Royal Corinthian Yacht Club in Burnham-on-Crouch, Essex, made the cut. Joseph’s Casino at the Pleasure Beach is a gigantic three storey white painted concrete drum with a 28 metre high external spiral staircase. This £300,000 building incorporated company offices and a penthouse for the Thompson family. The Casino is coastal Art Deco architecture at its finest. Move over Miami.

“Four generations of the Thompson family,” writes Vanessa Toulmin in Blackpool Pleasure Beach: More Than Just an Amusement Park (2011), “have willingly shared their ideas and experiences with other park owners, including Walt Disney in the 1950s, and have reaped the rewards by this being reciprocated. The Pleasure Beach has always strived to offer its visitors the biggest, the best, the scariest and the most innovative attractions and has brought pleasure to millions.” Early inspiration for the Pleasure Beach came from the 1887 Earls Court London Anglo American Exhibition and the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.

Amanda Thompson OBE concludes, “We opened Boulevard Hotel with the hope of introducing something rather unique to Blackpool: a truly luxurious hotel. Since then, we’ve won numerous awards including being named the current Best Luxury Hotel in Northern Europe for two years running. At Boulevard, luxury is defined by exceptional service and attention to detail. We pride ourselves on meticulously curating our guest experience which is complemented by exquisite accommodation, unexpectedly beautiful coastal vistas and delicious locally sourced gourmet cuisine.”

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Architects Architecture Art Design Developers Hotels Luxury People Restaurants Town Houses

Townhouse on the Green Hotel Dublin + Albert Noonan

Bird on the Wire

A note from the Front Office Team is in our nursery floor bedroom, “We would like to welcome you into our humble residence situated in the centre of Dublin. We hope you are going to enjoy your stay with us!” We quibble with the first sentence: it isn’t that humble. We comply with the second sentence: enjoying our stay to the max. Everybody knows St Stephen’s Green is Dublin’s joint best address (sharing that honour with Merrion Square). The south facing side is home to the prestigious Shelbourne Hotel, Kildare Street Club and Stephen’s Green Club. And now Townhouse on the Green, an intimate nine bedroom hotel with two restaurants. It’s an offshoot of The Fitzwilliam Hotel on the east facing side of St Stephen’s Green. There’s also The Fitzwilliam Hotel in Belfast next to the Grand Opera House. That’s not the only northern connection.

Number 22 St Stephen’s Green was built in 1790 by the son of a farmer from Strabane, County Tyrone. Thomas Lighton made his fortune in the East India Company and invested it in (garnet red) bricks and (moonstone grey) granite. He was High Sheriff of County Dublin in 1790 and for the following seven years sat in the Irish House of Commons as MP for Tuam. Thomas represented Carlingford in the Commons from 1798 to 1800. The three bay four storey over basement under attic home he built reflects his wealth and status. It is one of a pair likely designed by the architect David Weir. In 1885, a first floor trellis ironwork balcony was added to the design of McCurdy Mitchell. Rationalised windowpanes with external blind boxes are other rare survivals from this period. The postcard worthy doorcase is full bloom Georgian Dublin: an umbrella spoked fanlight radiates over a crinoline-wide door flanked by leaded margin lights. Number 23, now offices, fully retains its 18th century fenestration.

Elizabeth Bowen wrote the ultimate hotel guide, The Shelbourne, in 1951: “Gulls, in from the river, drift and plane on the air.” They still do in this coastal capital. “Given that Number 22 was constructed as the home for the very wealthy Thomas Lighton, it incorporates many decorative features including an ornately decorated barrel vaulted ceiling over a Portland stone cantilevered staircase,” highlights Albert Noonan, Partner at NoMo Architecture. This prestigious Baggot Street based practice was responsible for the interiors of the upper floors. “Many of the rooms have upscale elegant proportions with high ceilings and neoclassical plasterwork. Luckily a lot of these features have survived.”

He explains, “Quiet luxury is how we describe our approach. We’ve used the best of materials and fabrics layered in subtle tones to create rooms that are havens of tranquillity. Nothing in any bedroom shouts at you craving its 15 seconds of Instagram fame. These rooms are easy on the eye. They are serene and calm: transitional modern furniture seamlessly harmonises with the period building interiors. Each room has a deep pile green wool carpet, oyster coloured linen textured wallpaper and long curtains with golden ochre lining and moss coloured trimmings. The Monarch Chartreuse linen mix curtain fabric with its embroidered bees and butterflies draws inspiration from St Stephen’s Green and adds a touch of femininity to the building.” O’Gorman Joinery made bespoke dark stained bedheads with green granite bedside tabletops.

Each of the nine bedrooms has an ensuite bathroom wrapped in Calcutta Miele marble. A two man shower has curved corners decorated with emerald and bronze glass Sicis mosaics. A large classic white ceramic basin stands on nickel legs. “Given the building’s origins as a residence,” relates Albert, “we wanted to provide a distinctive homely feel of a well off friend’s house rather than a corporate hotel. To reinforce this impression, paintings, prints and objets d’art are curated for every room.” Bedside books on Morocco as well as Ireland in our bedroom are a reminder that no country is just an island.

Thursday night dinner is served in Floritz, the restaurant on the piano nobile. An Asian fusion menu takes its inspiration from Thomas Lighton’s adventures in India and the Far East. Suffolk based architecture and design practice Project Orange came up with the flamboyant interior. “I am going to make a Great Golden Grog for each of you,” announces our sommelier. “It is the most complicated cocktail in Dublin! Add full bodied daiquiri to carrot infused Bacardi, fresh lime juice, cardamom and pimento muscovado syrup, and then some magic!” No cars are required after dinner: Cellar 22 is below Floritz. This cosy wine and food bar was also designed by Project Orange and uses lots of natural earthy materials to reflect its original use as a kitchen. Tonight will be fine.

“Gay days at once ephemeral and immortal. They have a pulse of their own, and a golden mist round them which it is hard to capture in cold words – they should be lived, not written about,” scribes Elizabeth. Her words resonate so strongly with us on this sun saturated Friday after Sexagesima Sunday. We asked for signs, the signs were sent. A robin and her companions follow us on our morning walk passing through Merrion Square. Bird singing at the break of day. Hallelujah. A thousand kisses deep.