Category: Hotels

Lavender’s Blue + 1,000 Articles

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date May 7, 2025
27 Comments on Lavender’s Blue + 1,000 Articles

Upward We Fly

The Tuamgraney born London based novelist Edna O’Brien once remarked, “There’s a very interesting thing about memory and exile. It is only when you leave someone or something that the full power if you like, the performance of it is in you, it’s inside you. So separation brings the emotions and ultimately a book. I think a book is the accumulation of emotions written in a particular, hopefully musical, way. It’s a beautiful feeling actually; it’s like the whole influx of something that is stronger than memory. Of course, it’s memory but you’re back in it, not writing it secondhand. Again, that counts for a certain derangement.”

It all started with Cliveden. In September 2012, we received an invitation to stay in the Berkshire hotel but as hard copy publications back then were disappearing faster than Veuve Cliquot at one of our soirées, we came up with the idea of publishing an article online. And so Lavender’s Blue was born. The name has triple derivation after our home (“Your house is so cinematic!” declares film director Stephan Pierre Mitchell), our location and the song by Marillion. Before long, every PR in London and further afield learned we always turn up, give good party, and even better copy. Although five parties in one day starting with an 11am Champagne reception for New York thinker John Mack in the Rosewood Hotel was pushing it even by our standards. Actually, it all really began in April 1995 with a column House of the Month in Ulster Architect magazine, edited and published by the bold and brave and brilliant Anne Davey Orr. But that’s a whole other story.

While most events are one-offs, from a vanishing crystal coach at Ascot to a vanishing guest on the Orient Express, others would become annual events. If the preview of Masterpiece (in Royal Hospital Chelsea grounds) was an early summer hit each year, the Boutique Hotel Awards (in Merchant Taylor’s Hall) would quickly become a midwinter highlight. Fortunately Masterpiece has been replaced by The Treasure House Fair and WOW!house and we’ve landed ourselves on their preview lists. We’re also proving a hit at the annual International Media Marketplace.

Behind the curtain. That’s our forte. And we don’t just mean peeping round the iron variety (think Gdańsk). We’re not only through the gates: we’re over the threshold. We gain access where others dare not tread. If it’s an Irish country house, we’ll stay with the owners and explore the cellars and attics – preferably when they’re tucked up in their fourposter (Temple House). We’ll pop into the kitchen to see what’s really going on whether in Le Bristol or Comme Chez Soi. We’ll talk to the lady of the manor and a millworker (Sion Mills). Sometimes it takes a village to raise an article: in Castletownshend the fun began over breakfast at The Castle continuing through public houses and private houses up Main Street before ending back in The Castle by dawn.

If “design” is the mauve thread that sews Lavender’s Blue together, “celebration of life” is our way of banishing anything mentally blue. Illuminated by art and architecture, fashion and the Divine, we’re mad for life, channelling that literary derangement. But if it ain’t good, it don’t appear. Simple. At the opposite end of the spectrum, some events are far too private to be published such as an impresario salon recital in one of London’s grandest houses surrounded by more Zoffanys than The National Gallery owns while sampling the owners’ South African wine cellar. Or a party in Corke Lodge, County Wicklow, with more diplomats per square metre than Kensington Palace Gardens being serenaded by the Whiffenpoofs on the folly gladed lawn.

Lavender’s Blue is all about places and people so we rarely do personal. You won’t read how we were catastrophically frogmarched out of The Lanesborough (too much catwalking) or categorically told to pipe down in Launceston Place (too much caterwauling). Or the full story of hijinks with the model Parees which one friend described as sounding like an escapade from an Armistead Maupin short story. Original writing and original photography – and occasionally original drawing (from a two minute sketch of Mountainstown House to a 10 hour floor plan of Derrymore House) – are our creative cornerstones. We never plagiarise except from ourselves: to quote from one of our most read articles, Beaulieu House, “Lavender’s Blue is the brilliant coated edition of universal facts, riveting mankind, bringing nice and pretty events.” We’ll coin the odd phrase too from “Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder” to “You can’t be this fabulous and not make a few enemies!”

What’s our literary style? Well we’re not paid up members of Plain English for starters. Lord Wolfe would blanche at such opening gambits as, “There’s nothing standard in The Standard” or “Mary Martin London fashion is more than an antinomic macédoine: it is a semiotic embrace of science and conviction made manifest in materiality, tactility and sartorial disruption”. There are a quarter of a million English words to choose from (compared to a mere 100,000 in French and a meagre 85,000 in Chinese) so why reach for simplicity when you can stretch the lexicon? We don’t like to namedrop but as Daphne Guinness shared with us about her lyrics at a party in Notting Hill, “There are some words I just really like the sound of!” A picture tells 1,000 words and sometimes we’ll deliver 1,000 words and 1,000 pictures. But how can you keep the shutter open when you’re cherishing Chatsworth or roaming round Rochester? We’re not just about obvious glitz and glamour. So we frequent Hôtel Meurice in Paris and Hôtel Meurice in Calais. We’ve explored Georgian Bath and Georgian Dover. Doubling down on clichés is avoided except in derision while downing Chapel Down south of the Kent Downs.

How long does an article take to prepare? Some flow with automatic writing on a commute or in bed or in the bath in almost unconscious reverie. Others take decades. Mourne Park House started with a memorable visit in 1992 (the boathouse collapsed and gracefully slid into the lake mid morning coffee) and continued with return visits up to 2021 (by then the house was badly burnt). Crevenagh House was photographed over two decades in every season from heavy snow to scorching sunshine. We visited Gunnersbury Park four times over a London heatwave to capture it morning, noon, evening, and after supper. We also vacationed at Murlough four times, Irish Sea hopping in search of elusive sunlight. Montevetro and Marlfield both first appeared in Ulster Architect before being resurrected on Lavender’s Blue. Marlfield is the work of genius architect Alfred Cochrane with later lodges by the talented Albert Noonan. And on that note, John O’Connell’s work (Montalto) and tours (Ranger’s House) have added an abundance of sparkle to Lavender’s Blue.

We’re always up for top drawer collaborations: polo in Buenos Aires; the Government in Montenegro; Audi in Istanbul; Boutique Hotels Club in Bruges; Guggenheim in Bilbao; Rare Champagne in Paris. Did we mention Paris? The friendliest city in the world! As long as you’re in the right set, of course. We know our French, spring, red and rings. Oh, and we’re easily dragooned to fashion shows stretching the bailiwick especially when it comes to fashion artist Mary Martin London. Vintage models (Goodwood, Carmen dell’Orefice and Pattie Boyd), modern models (Esther Blakley, Janice Blakley and Katie Ice – all beautiful, all gazelles), royalty (Queen Ronke and Catherine Princess of Wales) and pop star royalty (Heather Small) have all enjoyed Lavender’s Blue exposure. There are even occasional segues into filming (Newzroom Afrika and English Heritage) and the dreaded bashing of ivories (Rabbit).

The current culmination of Lavender’s Blue is an exquisitely printed hardback coffee table book of substance on the Holy Land. The first edition of SABBATH PLUS ONE was an instant sellout at Daunt Books Marylebone. It’s now on the coffee tables of all the best homes – including a certain Clarence House. Oh yes, King Charles III is really enjoying his copy. “Your most thoughtful gesture is greatly appreciated …” So it’s time for the second edition. Same high quality print with a reddish burgundy rather than navy blue hard back hand stitched fabric cover. We’re still gonna vaunt about Daunt. Only the finest. In all the best libraries now, not least earning its stripes at Abbey Leix House and Pitchford Hall. And lobbies: The American Colony Hotel and The Jaffa.

We do love our triple Michelin starred places (L’Ambroisie, Lasarte, Core). Champagne! Foam! Truffle! While most of the restaurants we have visited are still thriving, unknowingly at the time, Lavender’s Blue would become an archive for quite a few. Aquavit, Bank Westminster and Zander Bar, Duddell’s, Farmacy, Galvin at Windows in The Hilton Park Lane, The Gas Station (one of our regular rendezvous with fellow gourmand Becks), Hello Darling, Marcus Wareing’s Tredwell’s, 8 Mount Street, Nuala, Plateau, Rex Whistler at Tate Britain, San Lorenzo, Senkai, Tom Kemble at Bonham’s, and Typing Room all in London have disappeared. So have Scheltema in Brussels, Le Détroit in Calais, The Black Douglas in Deal, The Table in Broadstairs, l’Écrivain in Dublin, Cristal Room Baccarat in Paris, and Forage and Folk in Omagh.

Still, nothing tastes as good as skinny fries. It’s survival of the fattest! Impressive as it was, Embassy Gardens Marketing Suite was never built to last. Erarta Art Gallery, Fu Manchu nightclub (the real Annabel’s!) and The Green and Found gift shop are lost in the mists of time. We’d barely photographed Quinlan Terry’s 35 year old junior common room bungalow at Downing College before the wrecker’s ball entered the site. We’re already missing our perfumer neighbour Sniff.

Even sadder, we have become the repository for final curtain interviews. Min Hogg, Founding Editor of The World of Interiors magazine and Anna Wintour’s first boss, the 9th Marquess of Waterford and the musician Diana Rogers entertained us – and hopefully you – with their end of life witticisms. David George, a reader of our Diana in Savannah article wrote, “I was married to her for 10 years and we were together for more than two decades. When you look in the sky she is the brightest star that you will ever see! I love you sweet middle class princess! Rest in peace, all my love, David.” We featured artist Trevor Newton’s final solo show and fashion designer Thierry Mugler taking his au revoir bow at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs Paris. Now historic photographs of model Misty Bailey appeared on Lavender’s Blue. Lindy Guinness, the last Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava, shared thoughts at one of her last townhouse parties full of people one should know like the international tastemaker Charles Plante. Beresford Neill reminisced on early 20th century Tyrella. And of course, two memorial pieces to the much missed Dorinda, Lady Dunleath. The last book launch of Dame Rosalind Savill, the inspirational scholar of European decorative arts and visionary museum director of the Wallace Collection, is another moving memory now frozen in time.

Readers’ comments are always of interest. Standout messages include a painting request to Ballyfin; advice on the best photographic viewing point at Dungiven Castle; revealing a shared love of Mary Delany or the Mitfords; a discussion of the meaning of Rue Monsieur; Samarès Manor relatives trying to contact each other during a Jersey storm; and an unreported baby drowning in a mansion swimming pool in Sandwich Bay. Mount Congreve attracted interesting comments including from James Sweeney who wrote, “I worked in Mount Congreve Estate for many years as a Private Chef to the Congreves. It was a joy and a pleasure and has given me cherished memories. Mr Congreve was an amazing man and I owe him a great deal for his wisdom that he kindly let me benefit from.”

Ewelina from Beauty on the Cliff poetically scribed, “Waterford is my home since 17 years and Mount Congreve was always my soft point. The moment when you enter the place is simply magical. I’ve been inside the house recently, just before yesterday. I was inside of the Blue Wedgwood Room … well … only the pale blue walls and the beautiful but sadly empty china cabinets reminded me about past grandeur of this place. It’s really really heartbreaking to see the empty rooms, stripped from everything … even the curtains … the books all over the floor in the library … totally without the respect for Mr Congreve. I hope that Waterford City Council didn’t forget that was someone else’s home. As Mr Yeats said, ‘Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.’ Thank you so much for your review. Kindest regards from Waterford.” Sara Stainsby messaged, “Really interesting essay on Stapleford Park. My great grandparents worked there, my grandmother was born there and was married in the church. In the 70s I visited my great grandparents when they lived in a flat above the stables …” Birthday wishes (Portrait) and restoration concerns (Barden Towers) are always welcome. Even more welcome was a Champers accompanied poem hand delivered to the state dining room (Hartwell House).

There are direct messages too: “I came across your Lavender’s Blue series starting from Auchinleck then Crevenagh House and Tullan Strand. I can see from your McClelland connection that you have an interest in Northern Ireland including Donegal … I found that your articles on architecture address the most erudite, meticulous and expansive aspects of the subject so perhaps the work of James Taylor in late Georgian times will fall beneath the range of your interest in the style and proportions of symmetrical Palladian buildings.” We jumped straight in a car to Islington. Likewise when tipped off about Stockwell Park. A reader enjoyed our “wonderful commentary on various aspects of Ballyshannon … tis wonderful to share your thoughts about my hometown”. We’ll accept high praise from Ireland’s greatest host: “I just love your articles striking notes of deepest erudizione to soprano and coloratura gossip! I’m so glad you were the catalyst to my party and I can’t believe it went so well.”

Amazing Grace Point inspired a declaration of faith: “Lough Swilly and Fort Dunree is one of the most wonderful places in Ireland to visit, and especially to look out across the waters where so many great ships have sailed. But most of all – to ponder the words of Amazing Grace written there by John Newton. His miraculous conversion credited to his mother’s prayers. She never gave up, like my mother, who never gave up but prayed me into the Kingdom.” Messages come from above and down under: “I hope you don’t mind me emailing you but I happened to walk into a beautiful graveyard today in Picton, Australia, and happened to come across this one particular headstone. I was instantly intrigued as my grandparents were from Donegal in Ireland and I wanted to see if this was close? Anyway I just read about Mountjoy Square and when the area become established. I’m not sure but working out the dates I think this couple might have been some of the original inhabitants? I saw an article that you wrote and just wanted to share this with you – you may or may not appreciate it but I wanted to bring this couple home!” They’ve come home.

Artist and art restorer Denise Cook crosses the rare divide from comment provider to content provider sharing her expanse of knowledge from Pink Magnolias to the Rector of Stiffkey. So does Dr Roderick O’Donnell, world authority on all matters Pugin. Another reader turned writer, the ever erudite historian and patron of the arts Nicholas Sheaff, brought Gosford Castle completely (back) to life. “There is really too much to say,” to parrot Henry James in The Portrait of a Lady, 1881. Haud muto factum.

As Reverend Prebendary Andy Rider once quipped, “You do get around.” Amsterdam to Zürich, Brussels to Verona, Channel Island hopping, nowhere is safe from the Lavender’s Blue sagacity filled patrician treatment. As for our favourite place, that’s simple: Bunbeg Beach, especially at 10.30pm on a sun drenched midsummer night. Chronicling our times, we produce the material – and sometimes we are the material. But only when shot by the likes of top cinematographer Mina Hanbury-Tennyson-Choi and shoot the shoot supremo Simon Dutson. Striking a striking pose. Fading grandeur (the interior not the model).

“The whole earth is filled with awe at Your wonders; where morning dawns, where evening fades, You call forth songs of joy,” Psalm 65. Lavender’s Blue is between the bookends of everything that was and is to come. It’s about dealing with things as they are, not as they should be. We’re all about orchestrating a fresh approach, synthesising Baroque stridency with Palladian refinement. Our oeuvre is a sumptuous sequence of artistic compositions. On the frontline, turning to face the light. Mary Oliver always gets it right: Instructions for Living a Life, 2010, “Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.” Thank you to all our readers. Thank you Council Bluffs. In the short now, to pluralise the words of the French Resistance fighter Simone Segouin, “We’d do it all again.”

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Richmond House Cappoquin Waterford + Lavender’s Blue

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date April 30, 2025

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.

Tags cappoquin house, dromana house, gerald villiers stuart, lavenders blue, mark bence jones, michael keane, richmond house cappoquin waterford, stuart blakley

Architecture Art Hotels People

Patricia Cantlon + Cullintra House The Rower Kilkenny

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date April 20, 2025
9 Comments on 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.”

Tags altamont house, brandon cairn, charles baudelaire, circle of friends, cullintra house the rower kilkenny, gowran castle, lady annaly, lavenders blue, maeve binchy, mary oliver, mount brandon, patricia cantlon, stuart blakley

Architects Architecture Art Design Developers Hotels Luxury People Restaurants Town Houses

Blackpool Pleasure Beach + Boulevard Hotel Blackpool Lancashire

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date April 10, 2025

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.”

Architects Architecture Art Design Developers Hotels Luxury People Restaurants Town Houses

Townhouse on the Green Hotel Dublin + Albert Noonan

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date April 2, 2025

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.

Tags albert noonan architect, cellar 22, david weir, fitzwilliam hotel, floritz restaurant, kildare street club, lavenders blue, leonard cohen, mccurdy mitchell, merrion square, nomo architecture, project orange, st stephens green, stephens green club, stuart blakley, thomas lighton, townhouse on the green hotel dublin

Architects Architecture Design Developers Hotels Luxury Restaurants Town Houses

Radio Bar + ME Hotel Aldwych London

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date March 15, 2025

Norman Architecture

Chilli squid tempura, king prawn tempura and white miso pavlova on the sun kissed roof terrace are the only way to mark the 12th anniversary of Radio Bar. It’s the last Monday before Passiontide but the working week has to start somewhere. In reverse Philip Larkin, the roof terrace is shaped to the comfort of the first to arrive. A joyous shot at how things really are, wide fallen long. At the eastern end of the terrace, the ornate gable of neighbouring Marconi House rises like a curling swirling treble clef carved of stone. Norman Shaw at his most expressive. The western end reaches a crescendo with Suite ME, a legibly lined bass clef in glass. ME Hotel is an architectural duet of contextuality and originality. Giving the musical metaphors a rest, it’s over to Norman Foster to discuss his composition:

“The triangular site of ME Hotel was once the home of the Gaiety Theatre which was damaged in World War II and then demolished to make way for a 1950s office development. Our scheme completes the grand sweep of early 20th century buildings, repairing the urban grain of this crescent. Everything from the shell of the building to bathroom fittings was designed by Foster and Partners. The restoration of Marconi House to accommodate 87 apartments seamlessly integrates with the construction of this 157 bedroom hotel. The hotel building corresponds in height, scale and material to its neighbour. Triangular oriel windows projecting from a Portland stone exterior capture a vista of The Strand while maintaining similar proportions to Marconi House’s fenestration. An elliptical corner tower defines the end point of Aldwych.”

Outdoors and indoors, everything is as monochromatic as a keyboard. The triangle is a complex instrument in the hands of Foster and Partners. Lesser talent would find a wedge shaped plan restrictive. Instead, one of London’s most exhilarating angular interiors forms the heart of the hotel. A tetrahedron ascends in ever decreasing triangles soaring 30 metres from the first floor reception lobby to a glazed apex. Architecture as captured light is taken to a new level. White marble lines the inside of the pyramid; corridors lean against the black marbled outer skin.

The glazed apex pops up as a petite pyramid in the middle of Radio Bar: a transparent splayed metronome. Distant views are of trophy towers, all with sobriquets in honour of their outlines, reaching for the sky in contrapuntal consonance. The Gherkin, Cheesegrater, Shard, Walkie Talkie … A joyous shot at how things really are, wide fallen high. Intermediate views are of the quad of Somerset House. Close views are of the glasshouses and skylights and chimneypots in the valleys between double pitched roofs, hidden from street level by parapets. There’s nothing new under the sun, but there’s plenty to wax lyrical about Radio Bar.

Tags lavenders blue, marconi house, me hotel aldwych london, norman foster, norman shaw, philip larkin, radio bar, somerset house, stuart blakley

Hotels Luxury People Restaurants

International Media Marketplace 2025 Lunch + Queen Elizabeth II Centre Westminster London

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date February 23, 2025

Exquisite Requisite

The QEII represents travel at its best. Life is all about luxury not plain sailing. Turning everything on its head, we’re now in an upside down ziggurat. We’re at a second floor summit. The TravMedia one. All aboard for the finest portmanteau in the city. At the Queen Elizabeth II Centre in Westminster “The world is represented here today” as Louise Napier so eloquently points out. Betwixt the roofscapes of the peerless spireless Westminster Abbey and a very freshly gilded Big Ben it’s all happening. Lunch is a prerequisite of our position.

Louise is Managing Director of TravMedia UK. She observes, “As we step into 2025, the travel industry continues to thrive with many travellers seeking richer, more meaningful experiences. Sustainability, authenticity and technology are shaping the future of travel and media coverage. Conversations around these themes will be at the heart of this year’s event. I like to stand back and watch the handshakes, hugs and connections!” Lunch is sponsored by Destination British Columbia. Bordered by Alberta to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west, British Columbia is Canada’s westernmost province.

It’s a truly international event with representatives from Austin to Zürich, Denver to Düsseldorf, Pas-de-Calais to Pleasure Beach Resort. The cuisine is convincingly Canadian. Maple infused endive, cucumber and apple salad. Canadian potato salad. Mushroom bao. Ginger and soy prawn bao bun. Crab mac and cheese. Blueberry cobbler. Apple tart. Rosie Oliver of Destination British Columbia tells us, “Vancouver has a fresh mild summer unlike other north American cities which can be hot and humid. And of course, Vancouver is surrounded by oceans, mountains and rainforests.” Our Louis Vuitton luggage is packed.

Et puis? Confiserie fine à la réglisse et au miel: délicieuse spécialité de Montpellier. Merci beaucoup, Montpellier Méditerranée.

Tags blackpool pleasure beach resort, destination british columbia, international media marketplace 2025, lavenders blue, louise napier travmedia uk, montpellier mediterranee imm25, queen elizabeth ii centre westminster london, rosie oliver, stuart blakley

Architecture Art Design Developers Hotels Luxury People Restaurants Town Houses

Clarance Hôtel Lille + Aurélie Vermesse

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date February 3, 2025

Fire in the Sunshine

It’s been a while since our last visit to France’s fourth largest city – Paris is ever so distracting – so we’ve dusted down our previous article and spruced it up. Of course we’re back to Aurélie Vermesse’s urban oasis and a return visit to Méert Chocolaterie. Nothing tastes as good as skinny truffles. We’re pleased to see Lille is still a little frayed round the edges. A touch crumbly. Shabby chic. What’s not to love again?

Sitting on the Nominations Committee of the 2018 World Boutique Hotel Awards was our excuse to stay in five star intimate luxury in Lille first time round. No excuse needed this time. Three blind arches on either side of a gated pedimented Corinthian pilastered archway line the pavement of Rue de la Barre in Quartier du Vieux. Beyond this most enigmatic of screen walls is a courtyard aproning the façade of a gorgeous nine bay three storey stuccoed mansion. It’s Relais and Châteaux; it’s really a château.

Clarance Hôtel started life in 1736 as the home of the Count and Countess of Hespel. Hotelier Aurélie relates, “It took me more than two years to set up La Clarance as a hotel, opening in April 2015. Today, I have 30 employees, a Michelin starred restaurant and a thriving bar! The Clarance is the result of a dream that was born during a weekend at Domaine Les Crayères in Reims, a Relais and Châteaux hotel. I quit my job to go back to school and then create the Clarance from scratch!”

Beauty and simplicity form the cornerstones of her hospitality. “Baudelaire’s poetry is at the heart of our contemporary artwork and room decoration,” Aurélie explains. “Art, gastronomy and kindness are essential to my life and, I hope, to yours too. I want to share the warmth and diversity of our cuisine and the products of our region. And the light of the north that bathes our house.”

Our coterie in this corner of the ancient capital of Flanders, we’re an outré beau monde, is at home among the soignée haute monde, overlapping social carousels in slow motion, floating through the airily graceful reception rooms. A row of French windows lighting the rear enfilade opens onto a gloriously private walled garden with the tower of St Catherine’s Church as a backdrop. Fruit trees and beehives surround a waterlilies pond that would give Claude Monet a run for his money. Clarance Hôtel is so chic.

By nightfall, turndown of our light and spacious bedroom includes a handwritten card: “There, all is order and beauty, luxury, peace and pleasure. I wish you a pleasant stay at Clarance. Aurélie.” And the all important skinny chocolate truffles on our pillow. Our room is called Le Voyage, complete with map of the world headboard. It’s one of just nine top floor rooms. The other second floor rooms are Allegorié; L’Albatros, Crépuscule du Soir, Hymne, Le Flacon, Le Jeu, La Musique and Clarance. They’re all numbered. What should be room 13 is luckily unnumbered: it’s the broom cupboard. First floor rooms include Le Cygne, La Géante, L’Horloge, L’Idéal and Le Rebelle. But no À Celle Qui Est Trop Gaie or Les Métamorphoses du Vampire. There are 27 guest bedrooms in total. An illustrated book of Charles Baudelaire’s poems placed in all the rooms is a clue to their nomenclature.

A segmental arched window set in the wide dormer of Le Voyage looks over the courtyard to a pleasing jumble of rooftops and chimneys. Directly below are seats perfect for enjoying a nightcap of Muscadet Côtes de Grandlieu 2015 from Loire Valley under the moon rapt in idle reverie. Seven years will dissolve into the thin evening air before we get to repeat the experience once again.

There were a lucky 13 categories in the 2018 World Boutique Hotel Awards: Beach or Coastal; City Explorer; Classic Elegance; Culinary Excellence; Family; Honeymoon Hideaway; Inspired Design; Newcomer; Relaxation Retreat; Romantic Retreat; Wellness Spa; Sustainability; Stunning Views. We considered nominating Clarance Hôtel for all of them. Ok, Beach or Coastal was pushing it. The pride of Lille deserves its own category: Unique Boutique.

Lille in those days was for us still a city of newness, a fount of unexpected treasures. But it’s alright to renew an acquaintance, to once more exhale the soft air of youth. We now know that Lille stands for all the things that are important in life – love, beauty, food and shopping. We have not come to tan or trade. Living is our art form. We’re captivated by it all. Encore une fois.

We’re back under the eaves and this time sleeping in Le Flacon. A similar window to Le Voyage frames a view of St Catherine’s Church. Intoxicating memories in kisses of fine linen await. But first there are visits to Méert and its neighbours Comtesse du Barry (for essential terrines) and El Market (for concept clothing). That’s shopping sorted. Love and beauty are all around and will increase in abundance as the day fades. Just food to go then.

“Fast or slow service?” asks our waitress. We’re lunching in the boiserie bedecked Michelin starred dining room. “Fast!” The Countess Hospice Museum is still to be done. There are three midday menus – L’Horloge, L’Idéal and L’Invitation au Voyage – each with varying numbers of course. L’Idéal lives up to its name. Canapés are followed by a foamy pumpkin amuse bouche. The starter is three fat and juicy St Jacques of Boulogne-sur-Mer pan fried scallops. Roasted small boat sole main course precedes steamed orange and saffron pudding. No French lunch is complete without petit fours. Isabel Ferrando’s Stella Ducit 2023 delivers a floral nose of acacia, a hearty citrus palate and a pleasant fennel finish. As our sommelier confirms. La vin des avants.

Aurélie has penned uplifting messages on the back of the menu: “Préserver les cuisines du monde”; “Partager la passion du beau et du bon”; and “Être acteurs d’un monde plus human”. This is final level food. Plus haut n’existe pas. Breakfast will be an ecstacy of eggs to see. Oeufs à la coque, au plat, brouillés, omelette nature or omelette garnie. We head back to nature. Toujours la haute monde. Polo necked fellow guests look so sophisticated. Le paradis, c’est les autres.

The Countess Hospice Museum was built as a hospital founded in 1237 in the grounds of Countess Jeanne de Flandre’s palace. Galleries and the chapel encircle a cobbled courtyard. It’s all rather wonderful. Hits of its hallowed halls include a tiled image of a man in need of a chamber pot as well as Old Master paintings of butch nuns, dying gentlemen, raucous markets and flying balloons by the likes of François Watteau and Wallerant Vaillant. It’s the chauffeur’s night off but that doesn’t matter. La Barre is Hôtel Clarance’s new bar on Rue de la Barre and is Lille’s coolest nightspot bar none. La fin de la journée.

Tags charles baudelaire, clarance hotel lille, jean paul sartre, kate moss, la barre lille, lavenders blue, stuart blakley

Architects Architecture Country Houses Hotels People Restaurants

Tyrella House + Tyrella Beach Down

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date January 21, 2025
10 Comments on Tyrella House + Tyrella Beach Down

All the Demands of the Temple of The Sun at Baalbec

It’s late 2015 and first glimpse (through a verdurous vista) from the sweeping avenue past the hilltop sham fort (every entrance should have one) is of a squarish main block five bays side on, four bays full frontal. Surprisingly Tyrella House isn’t covered by Mark Bence-Jones in his 1978 Guide to Irish Country Houses. The house’s character changes when viewed from the garden: the main block is elongated by a long lower wing (moonlit later). This arrangement has adapted well to 21st century use: guest accommodation fills the main block while the owner David Corbett lives at the end of the wing. Five years later, his son John and daughter-in-law Hannah would take over the house. The large glasshouse attached to the wing would become a wedding reception venue.

Princess Diana famously quipped “three’s a crowd” but not when it comes to the architectural taste of 18th century Ulster squires. Tripartite windows were all the rage. Their legacy is a series of glazed triptychs framing views of the countryside. And draughts – ménage à froid. The entrance front of Tyrella has a pearly twinset of tripartite windows. Clady House in Dunadry, County Antrim, has five. Glenganagh House in Ballyholme, County Down, six. Drumnabreeze House and Grace Hall both in Magheralin, County Armagh, eight. Craigmore House in Aghagallon, County Antrim, 10. Crevenagh House in Omagh, County Tyrone, innumerable.

Tyrella’s fenestration is really special, stretching head to toe, and like Montalto outside Ballynahinch in County Down, skirts the driveway. Its regal dining room resembles “Hardwick Hall more windows than wall”. Soon, majestic silverware will sparkle in the candlelight. The princely drawing room is like being immersed in Elizabeth Bowen’s 1942 description of her home: “The few large living rooms at Bowen’s Court are, this, a curious paradox – a great part of their walls being window glass, they are charged with the light, smell and colour of the prevailing weather; at the same time they are very indoors, urbane, hypnotic, not easily left.”

Later, at the close of the day, lying in the queen size bed as the pale transitory colours of the hour fade, dreams past and future are present. Outside, through the curved glass of the oriel window, across silent lawns, the tamed headland lies submerged in shadow while the ridge of the Mourne Mountains melts into silver drifts of cloud backlit by gold, lilac, mauve and pink lining.

The designer of the house isn’t known but whoever he was, the outcome is a meeting of mind and métier, the result mellowed and augmented through the ages. Conservation architect John O’Connell remarks, “This is a very accomplished Georgian box as they used to say.” Architectural historian Nicholas Sheaff reckons “it is an incredibly elegant county house and in some ways reminds me of James Gandon’s Abbeville outside Dublin”. Art collector and tastemaker Charles Plante compliments, “I love the front dripping with ivy and the chic Regency bow window.”

Three arched openings – a window on either side of the entranceway plus the door itself – are set behind a slim Doric hexastyle portico which celebrates the triglyph’s verticality, the architrave’s horizontality and the order’s proportional totality. “It’s Tuscan Doric,” explains architectural historian and Country Life contributor Dr Roderick O’Donnell. “Tuscan is rural, countrified, perfectly correct for this type of house. The window proportions are dictated by the portico. That’s particularly attractive.”

A stained glass window of the Craig family crest in the study is a leftover from previous owners. Notable family members included the first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, Sir James “Not an Inch” Craig (1st Viscount Craigavon), and his architect and yacht designer brother Vincent who combined both his skills when designing the Royal Ulster Yacht Club in Ballyholme. Janric Craig, 3rd and last Viscount Craigavon, lives in London and sits as a crossbencher in the House of Lords.

Vincent inserted his signature window type into Tyrella. No fewer than four oeils de boeuf grace the garden front. Charles observes, “The garden elevation is charming; the bull’s eye window in the gable is really special.” Most extraordinary of all is the first floor stained glass pane (set in a six pane casement window) which projects at an acute angle to appear permanently ajar.

David posits, “Vincent more than likely introduced the ceiling beams and light fitting in the hall. And he designed the hall fireplace. It’s very Malone Roadsy!” This airy space is painted a deep ochre which Charles calls “John Fowler orange”. Upstairs, Free Style panelling looks Vincentian. So does the recently reinstated glasshouse. Back to David, “The conservatory is actually almost entirely new except for the brickwork. It took three years to recreate. The pale green paint inside is the original colour.” Tyrella isn’t quite as Georgian as it first appears. “The middle bit behind the new Regency addition is William and Mary.” The house used to be even bigger. “My father demolished about a third of it – the cream room, jam room, butler’s pantry, the dark kitchen and so on.”

Tyrella was the seat of Reverend George Hamilton and his wife Ann Matilda, daughter of the 5th Earl of Macclesfield, at the end of the 18th century. Rural legend has it that the Reverend used the stones from the old parish church to rebuild the house in 1800. Did this slightly sacrilegious behaviour cause his downfall? He would go bust shortly afterward. Arthur Hill Montgomery bought the estate in 1831. Six years later, Samuel Lewis records in his Topographical Dictionary of Ireland: “Tyrella House, the handsome residence of Arthur Hill Montgomery, is beautifully situated in a richly planted demesne of 300 acres, commanding extensive views over the bay, with the noble range of the Mourne Mountains in the background, and containing within its limits the site and cemetery of the ancient parish church.”

Arthur was the fourth son of Hugh Montgomery of Grey Abbey House on the Ards Peninsula, County Down. Bill Montgomery, a great-great-something-grandson of Hugh, still resides at Grey Abbey House with his wife Daphne. Dwelling on the past, David comments on the subject of ghosts, “I hate to disappoint you. All the people have sold the house, left, and gone on to do something else. Spent money on it, changed hands. None of them have lingered. I don’t miss ghosts – wouldn’t want one.”

It’s time to enter the dining room. Plat du jour de nuit. A love song to Northern Irish cuisine. Spinach and ricotta tartlet; stuffed sea bream; and mascarpone, raspberry and lemon tart. No spirits of any kind but plenty of Pinot Grigio (Renideo 2009) and Sauvignon Blanc (Pays d’Oc 2012). The dining experience isn’t always this tranquil according to the host. When Country Life visited in 1996, dinner was interrupted by ebullient bovine neighbours nosily emerging from between the rhododendrons. He smiles, “The magazine published ‘during dinner a herd escaped and raped the garden like a Mongol horde’. Marauding overweight rogue cattle licking the dining room windows wasn’t the look we were going for at all!”

Descendants of the previous owners, the Robert Neill and Sons Ltd dynasty, recall early 20th century life. Coline Grover says, “I lived in the house with grandparents and relatives various from 1940 until they sold it in 1949, and moved with them to Old Forge House in Malone, south Belfast. Tyrella House was wonderful with a swing house underneath the nursery wing. It was incorporated into the property and had two marks on the ceiling where if you went high enough your feet touched the ceiling! And there was a rock garden with a two storey playhouse called Spider House.”

Coline’s cousin-in-law Ian Elliott adds, “The Georgian house had a boudoir and some lovely Arts and Crafts additions – and that fabulous view to the Mournes. In the 1920s after the 1st World War it was bought by the Neill family – brothers Jack, Samuel and William – as part of their businesses of coal, construction and farming. They already owned East Downshire Fuels in Dundrum as well as Neill’s Coal in Bangor, Kingsberry Coal in Belfast, and Bloomfield Farm in Newtownards where the shopping centre is now. The family circle elected Billy Neill to live and farm there with his wife Vera. She was formerly Phelps of Kent, a direct descendant of Jane Lane who helped Charles II escape from the Battle of Worcester in the 1640s. They raised their three children there. The Corbetts, whiskey distillers from Banbridge, have owned it since 1949.” Coline’s brother Guthrie Barrett concurs that “Billy Neill sold Tyrella in 1949”.

“I haven’t been back to Tyrella House since 1949,” says nonagenarian Beresford Neill, known to all as Uncle Berry. He lives in Deramore Park, Malone, now. “A most wonderful childhood. Absolutely beautiful. Tyrella was completely and utterly the back of beyond. For goodness sake, it was completely feudal. There were no neighbours. We had our own entrance into the church next door and our own pew. My father got married in February 1917 and he bought the estate: 300 acres, a 3.5 acre walled garden, a 48 roomed house.”

He continues, “There was no electricity. In 1906 a gas heating machine was installed. It had huge pipes and a great big cage in the kitchen. There was no telephone until 1933. How Mama coped I don’t know. We’d a cook, housemaid and three gardeners. There were three bathrooms – one for staff, two for the family. We always had dogs – mostly Labradors. There was a large wood to the side of the house and a rock garden. The rocks were transported in 1890 from Scrabo to Tullymurry by train, then by horse and cart to Tyrella. It was a tremendous effort!”

“Berry reminisces, “In 1944 I enlisted as a private soldier in the Rifle Brigade. It’s now called the Rifles. It was a very swish regiment. After the War, I got transferred to Ballykinler Camp. I spent the whole of 1946 there. I’d a marvellous time! I could walk over the fields from Tyrella to Ballykinler in 10 minutes. We had the most enormous beech tree at Tyrella but a storm split it down the middle. It was sawn up by a gardener of course but a stump remained. One quiet Sunday afternoon I decided to blow up the remains of the tree. I thought I was the last word in explosives! I got seven anti-tank mines. I made a fuse and set them off. Bang! The birds stopped singing. Silence. Then … tinkle tinkle. Several of the windows in the house shattered. Sheer bloody stupidity! I should’ve opened the windows first!” Neill Guy Beresford “Berry” Campbell would die peacefully in Malone in 2020.

“We don’t usually open to paying guests in November,” admits David due to people not understanding that large Irish country houses aren’t overheated hotels. Heavy curtains and concertina shutters are good at keeping out the chills though in the guest bedrooms. A newly installed biomass boiler has added a level of contemporary comfort. “I’ve kept the 1906 boiler with its original instruction manual. It’s beautiful – like the beast of a furnace on the Titanic!” That would be Uncle Berry’s huge pipes and great big cage.

And bags at dawn. Peering over the bedroom landing, the oval staircase resembles a gargantuan pencil sharpening, a banister bordered carpeted curlicue, a variation on the Fibonacci spiral. Downstairs, breakfast is laid out country house style – buffet on the sideboard. “I do recommend Lindy Dufferin’s Greek Style Yoghurt,” says David. Historian Dr Frances Sands opined during an exclusive visit to 20 St James’s Square London, “Breakfast was the only meal of the day you served yourself. That’s why there is side furniture in the breakfast room. If there is no separate breakfast room, really then the dining room should be referred to as the eating room. There was a huge fear of odour in Georgian times. The eating room would have had no curtains, carpet or silk wall hangings. Seating would have been leather.” The dining room or rather eating room at Tyrella House was originally the billiard room.

It is impossible to leave Tyrella without mentioning the beach. The Mountains of Mourne thrillingly tower over kilometres of unspoiled golden strand between Clough and Killough. Coline Grover observes, “Tyrella Beach never changes of course.”

Architects Architecture Art Country Houses Hotels Luxury People Restaurants

The Durdin Robertsons + Huntington Castle Clonegal Carlow

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date January 4, 2025

Carlow Sweet Chariot

Every view of this multifaceted castle unveils a different vein. The gunpowder grey entrance front: rectilinear massing and rhythmic rows of windows. The steel grey driveway approach: 12th century abbey ruins and pointy dormers betwixt turrets. The bleached white courtyard: a picturesque jumble of crowstepped gables and battlemented bow windows. The sunburnt terracotta garden front: pillared arches and Stygian loggias swinging low under cantilevered boxy glasshouses.

Ever since 1826, when early adopter Joseph Nicéphore Niépce fixed the image of his family courtyard in Gras on a bitumen glass plate, architecture and photography have been fond bedfellows. This is despite one being about static volumes and the other decisive moments. Yet is Huntington Castle beyond expression in a hackneyed Hockneyed happening holistic Polaroid collage, provenance and ambiance rarely surviving the transition from three dimensions to two? Ancestors of the Durdin Robertsons include Lord Rosse founder of the Hellfire Club, flame haired Grace O’Malley Pirate Queen of Connaught, and, a little further back, Noah’s niece Sheila Benson. Notable visitors darkening its doors over the years have included Lavender’s Blue, William Butler Yeats, Mick Jagger and Hugh Grant in order of descending decadence. But even more notably, the Durdin Robertsons are still very much in residence.

The same cannot be said, it seems, for just about every other country house in Ireland. Heritage is crumbling. No one’s picnicking, foreign or indigenous, everyone’s panicking in this land. One person who knows all too well is chartered building surveyor and architectural historian Frank Keohane. He was tasked with compiling Buildings of Cork, 2020, the Irish version of a Pevsner guide. “I’ve a sneaking suspicion that more books are sold on ruins than intact country houses,” Frank ruminates. “Take the semi derelict Loftus Hall which is really exposed near a cliff on the Wexford coast. The owner does ghost tours – the devil comes for dinner, and so on. But you need to be practical, ok? Ruins may photograph well but sooner or later if left they disappear. I hope it’s a section in Loftus Hall’s history and not the final chapter.”

Frank observed in 2014, “Out of the 545 entries in Vanishing Country Houses of Ireland, 18 have been ‘restored’. But I use the term loosely. Dunboy Castle, immortalised by Daphne du Maurier in Hungry Hill, was to be converted into a six star hotel. Horrific extensions were added though! Lough Eske would have collapsed if it hadn’t been rebuilt and converted into a hotel but it’s a bit trim and prim for me. Kilronan Castle has been loosely restored with an extension in a pseudo style of what I don’t know. The shell of Killeen Castle has been restored but lies empty surrounded by a golf course. Dromore Castle, of international importance, still in ruins. Bellamont Forest, Carriglas, Hazelwood, Whitfield Court, the contents of Bantry House … all at risk. At least at Killua Castle the family has started by restoring and moving into the wing.” He highlighted that Monkstown Castle has fortunately been saved by Cork County Council.

Huntington Castle is now home to the dashing Alexander Durdin Robertson, former Irish Guard, his beautiful artist wife Clare and their sons Herbert and Caspar, following a sojourn off Northcote Road in London’s wildly fashionable Battersea. Alex’s mother lives in the coachman’s cottage in the courtyard. Built as a garrison in the 1620s and extended right up to the 1920s, it was converted to a home in 1673 by the first and last Lord Esmonde, passing by marriage into the descendants of the current incumbents. Restored 17th century terraced formal Italian gardens, rectangles of lawn and a circular pond, darkly orchidaceous in this majestic last December, wrap around the castle like ghostly folds of a billowing crinoline dress.

A 600 year old silent avenue of tall French lime trees connects the castle to Clonegal. The village guards a pass through the Blackstairs Mountains where Counties Carlow, Wexford and Wicklow collide. “Mandoran,” as Lady Olivia Durdin Robertson would say. “County Westcommon,” as Molly Keane would call it. Clonegal is cute as a cupcake – a river runs through it – lined with pretty Georgian terraces. The only discordant note is a smattering of uPVC framed windows, the plastic scourge of heritage.

Alex’s great grandfather was the last architect to alter the building, making minor changes and erecting concrete framed glass houses in the kitchen garden. Manning Robertson was not just a mere architect but a town planner and writer. The original influencer. He produced plans for the cities of Dublin, Cork and Limerick as well as Dun Laoghaire, hellbent on introducing the concept of welfare homes, when the profession was in its infancy. The journey from modern to modernism to modernity had begun.

Town planning mightn’t be the sexiest of subjects but his seminal 1924 book Everyday Architecture, as well as being aeons ahead of its time, is a riot, full of titillating tips and illuminating ruminations. “Unfortunately uneducated taste is nearly always bad.” Or, “The glazing of a well proportioned window is divided into vertical panes; one horizontal window might be tolerated in a village, just as no village is complete without its idiot, but the whimsical should never usurp the place of the normal.” Unexpected chapter headings shout “Slippery Jane”, “On Lies and Evasions” and “Smoke, Filth, and Fog”.

Manning’s daughter Olivia inherited his talent for writing and published five books. Field of the Stranger, a highly original read, won the London Book Society Choice award in 1948. Another polymath – an explorer of psychic fields, a landed cosmonaut – she illustrated this novel with her own wonderfully witty black ink drawings. It would take a heart of stone not to laugh out loud at priceless passages such as Olivia’s description of the antics of a fortune teller, “She’s great at it – once she told Margaret how she saw a bright change coming, and Margaret got the job in Dublin in no time after.”

Another literary gem worthy of Hunderby is the incident of the wart. “I knew a young chap – he was a footman at Mount Charles – and he had a wart, and he was ashamed to hand round the plates on account of his wart. I was always warning him not to meddle with it, but he cut it, and what happened but he got the jaw lock and died in a fearful manner, twisted and turned like a shrimp, with his heels touching his head.” Arch humour continues in Olivia’s novel with chat over afternoon tea about the perils of mixing tipples with talent. “‘Why,’ declared Miss Pringle, ‘I have lived for many years in Booterstown, Dublin, and everybody knows that Dublin is swarming with writers and artists, most of them geniuses and all drinking themselves to death. I am told one cannot enter a public house without falling over them. Or them falling over you more likely.’” Strangers misbehaving.

The hilarity of an amateurs’ night out is most accurately captured in a calamitous village play scene: “Amidst an excited murmuring, the curtain jerked spasmodically and slid up on the left side; our expectation was increased by a glimpse of a posed female chorus in plumed bonnets, violet velvet capes and white Empire gowns. The curtain fell. There was another jerk, and this time the righthand curtain jumped up coquettishly, only to sag back to its comrade … As if to show that they had only been joking, the curtains suddenly fled dramatically apart …” Her tragicomedy reaches a hysterical crescendo when the chorus starts belting out The Charladies’ Ball in “nightmarish counterpoint”. Who will survive?

Olivia fretted in her prizewinning novel about the survival and subsequent disappearance of country houses: “I was afraid that Mount Granite might fall a prey to house demolishers, who were exploiting the temporary shortage of materials by buying up eyesores, gaping roofless to the weather. I had seen so many wreckages of architecture, besides rare specimen trees felled and sold for firewood, that I was fearful such a fate might befall The Wilderness.”

Almost three decades later John Cornforth would worry in Country Life 19 January 1974, “A policy for historic houses seems to be much harder to work out in Ireland than in England for historical as well as economic reasons, and places of the importance of Castletown, County Kildare, and Malahide Castle, County Dublin, have only survived through lucky last ditch operations, organised in the first case by Desmond Guinness and the Irish Georgian Society, and in the second by Dublin Tourism in conjunction with the National Gallery and Dublin County Council.” As Frank Keohane critiques, hotelisation was nearly as great a threat as demolition during the crazy boom years. One word: Carton. Two words: Farnham House. Saved, but at what a cost. Love; hate. Such Ballyhoo. Wish they were Luton Hoo. Anyhoo. It can be done and undone. Three syllables. Ballyfin.

It’s all about Huntington Castle this wintry weekend. First sight of the castle is a romantic fairytale come to life. A mosaic of yellow squares (in 1888 it was the first house to have electricity installed in Ireland) flickers through a veil beyond The Pale of leafless spidery branches entwined with Celtic mist and mysticism. It’s crowned by jagged toothed battlements (spaces for fairies) silhouetted against the melancholic velvety sky. Country Life, Tatler and Vogue are stacked up in coffee table demolishing piles. Huntington is so photogenic it could easily be the cover boy of all three.

A pair of peacocks, two pigs, two cats (Nutmeg and Spook), two lurchers and three dachshunds (but no partridge in a pear tree) greet strangers. There are flowers on the first floor and soldiers in the attic. Only the latter are dead, strangers in the night. “I believe time is spiral,” confides Alex. “It’s linked to quantum mechanics. When apparitions appear they’re like jumbled video clips out of sequence.” He leads ghost tours at Halloween and the house and gardens are open to the public most of the year round. The castle must pay for its keep (pun). “We’ve developed bed and breakfast around this tourism. These houses drink money. It costs €25 an hour to heat Huntington. We’re not suitable for weddings and turning the house into a venue would destroy the fabric.”

Twin gilt mirrors in the drawing room frame back to front latticework, crewelwork, fretwork, trestlework, needlework and pieces a’ work. Reflections in the glass; reflections of the past. “The Aubusson tapestries are incredibly all done by hand,” reveals Alex. “They’re a real show of wealth, of opulence. The arrow slit window cut into one of the tapestries is a retained feature of the original castle.” It’s Friday evening. Time for dinner. Outdoors, the gardens slowly disappear into the tender coming night. Whatsoever things are lovely, think on these things. The dining room is dim with haunted shadow, walls fading through a glass darkly to trompe l’oeil in a mirage of Bedouin tent hangings and a fanfare of fanlights.

Centuries of ancestors in oil paintings watch the strangers in the room encroaching on a space of their own. Barbara St Leger, daughter of Warham St Leger, Mrs Alexander Durdin, born 1748 died 1820. Theric Hon General Sir William St Leger MP, Lord Deputy of Munster, 1627. Lieutenant Edward Jones, born 1688 died 1741. Helen, wife of Arundel Hill, daughter of Garrett Nagle and maternal great grandmother of Mrs Herbert Robertson, born 1752 died 1830. Matthew Jones, Collector of Youghal, 1625, father of Mrs Melian Hayman a maternal great great grandfather of Mrs Herbert Robertson, born 1719 died 1768. Alexander Durdin, legum doctor of Trinity College Dublin, born 1821 died 1892. Mrs William Leader Durdin, Mary Anne Drury daughter of William Drury, born 1801 died 1883. Mrs Alexander Durdin, Melian Jones Hayman, daughter of Matthew Hayman.

Barbara St Leger for one has never left Huntington. Dinner by candlelight is served. Winter salad with goat’s cheese and soda bread, beetroot aplenty, for starter. Salmon steak, creamed Wexford potatoes and seasonal vegetables with dill mayonnaise is the main event, a rhapsody to the countryside. “We use eggs from our own hens,” notes Alex. Pudding is elderflower posset (raspberries on top; Florentine to the side) just as good as The Culpeper’s in Spitalfields London lemon variety. Which is very good indeed. Both times it’s a work of quaffable art.

And so to bed. Fond bedfellows. Strangers misbehaving. Leaving behind the dying embers of the day, the journey, as rambling as this article, takes sighing twists and tiring turns along narrow wainscot lined passages and staircases heavily hung with armoury and taxidermy and history. “That snouty crocodile,” points Alex, “was shot by Great Aunt Nora.” The naming of bedrooms is a rather charming country house tradition. In clockwise order, the principal bedrooms at Drenagh in County Londonderry, a Sir Charles Lanyon special marooned in the mosses of Limavady, are Orange Room, Monroe Room, Bow Room, Blue Room, Balcony Room, South Room, Green Room, Rose Room, Yew Room, Chinese Room, McQuillan Room, McDonnel Room and Clock Room.

At Huntington, in any (very) old order, 16 principal bedrooms are similarly named after colours and features including: Blue Room, Green Room, Yellow Room, White Room, Red Room, Mount Room and Leinster Room. As Sir Edwin Lutyens once remarked, “I am most excited about towels.” He’d love the bathrooms here. They’re the first resort, the last word, something to write home about, fit for the life of Tony O’Reilly. Elizabethan style plasterwork ain’t the norm for an en suite. It is here. Slumber in the fourposter of the Blue Bedroom comes swiftly. But the solemn blackness of the night is rudely interrupted by bloodcurdling screeching. Yikes! Is it a banshee? What if a Lady Olivia Durdin Robertson style fate is still to come?

Sunday morning. “That noise you heard the first night is an owl’s mating call,” Alex confirms. Phew. Oh the agony (of leaving Huntington) and the eggs to see (for breakfast). But London’s calling, a city full of enticing strangers. Contemporary Indian architect Charles Correa considers, “Film is very close to architecture. Both are dealing with the way light falls on an object and defines it but the difference is time. A director can create huge shifts in emotion with a jump cut or an edit but architecture cannot move, so an architect can’t produce those sudden shifts. On the other hand, that stillness is also a magnificent property.”

Nowhere is as strangely still as a weekend in the otherworldliness of Huntington Castle. Rooms and gardens and gardens in rooms and rooms in gardens have evolved at an imperceptible pace over half a millennium. That wonderfully liveable layering of history inherent in homes such as architectural supremo Fergus Flynn-Rogers’ Omra Park, forever clinging unselfconsciously to the crooked coastline of County Louth’s Omeath, is apparent upon first entering the house. That unmistakable patina of age, authenticity whatever that is, so easily lost when the marquee of contents is auctioned while the green neon Fire Exit sign flashes above the entrance door for nobody to see. A proper ancestral pile. A gothic pastoral ideal. A place of Arcadian awakening. Not too trim and prim. Frank Keohane would approve. So very Clonmere Castle. So very Castle Rackrent. So very Huntington Castle. Whisper it. So very.

Architects Architecture Design Developers Hotels Luxury People Restaurants Town Houses

House of Tides Restaurant Newcastle-upon-Tyne +

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date December 14, 2024

Riding the Wave

“And the place where new life must start – this may be a surprise, because nobody seems to care two hoots for it at the moment – is the quayside. Whichever way you come to Newcastle, get down to the quayside first,” orders Ian Nairn in his 1967 guide Nairn’s Towns. We obey and not just because the city’s leading restaurant is on the quayside in a Grade I Listed former house opposite the Grade II* Listed Wetherspoon’s pub which was once a house and attached warehouse. Both date from the 16th century. Almost six decades after Nairn’s Towns was first published, the quayside is now a much loved tourist and cultural asset.

The House of Tides was launched a decade ago by husband and wife team Kenny and Abbie Atkinson. He’s now one of the north of England’s most acclaimed chefs. Past roles include a stint as Head Chef of Seaham Hall, Durham, then owned by Von Essen Hotels. “We didn’t want our restaurant to be in a glass box or near bars and clubs which is quite difficult in Newcastle,” relates Kenny. An historic merchant’s dwelling jammed against the gargantuan Tyne Bridge is definitely not a glass box and Wetherspoon’s is the only nearby bar. Clubland has never quite ventured this direction.

The pedestrian route from Newcastle Railway Station to the restaurant is full of intrigue and surprise. Tyne Bridge arches its way across the grounds of Newcastle Castle splitting the keep from the gatehouse. There were no Conservation Areas in Victorian times. Moot Hall is one of the visual treats en route: a Greek Revival courthouse soon to be converted into a hotel by the Gainford Group which owns the jolly decent County Hotel opposite the station. Completed in 1812, architect John Stokoe gave the entrance front a tetrastyle fluted Doric portico and the river facing front a hexastyle portico. Ian Nairn states, “John Stokoe makes the official masters of the style – Smirke, Wilkins and so on – look like pallid pedants.” Next to Tyne Bridge, steps called Long Stairs, bordered by overgrown vegetation and the backs of houses, descend to the quayside. Long Stairs feel a little isolated, a bit ghostly, a tad eery, even by daytime. Later, as dusk falls, orbs will appear.

First impressions of House of Tides – and lasting memories – are of rustic robustness. The three and four storey block has a stone faced ground floor, reddish brown brick upper floors and a pantiled roof. Some of the vertically proportioned sash windows have been reduced in size to casements leaving the original lintels charmingly floating like architectural eyebrows. Inside, the ground floor is one long open bar with informal seating. The restaurant occupies a similar space upstairs.

Rather than being hidden away, the kitchen faces onto the street. Its location adds to the drama of servers parading upstairs to the first floor restaurant, then standing to attention before waiters relieve them of their plates. That’s about as formal as it gets. “Are you enjoying the chilled vibe?” asks our waiter before methodically listing the ingredients as each course of the tasting menu arrives. “How do you remember all that?” we enquire. “I’ve no idea!” he laughs and summarises how the penultimate course, Buttermilk (pear, celery, lemon verbena), is a “journey from savoury to sweet”. A segue on the tongue. The mild vinegary tang jogs our memories of traditional pudding in the Aachen Town Hall cellar brasserie.

The first three courses – Gougère (butternut squash, miso), Goat’s Cheese Parfait (curried granola, rye crackers), Crab (spiced shrimps, crumpet) – set the scene. Refined unfussy food; accessible fine dining. A clarity of culinary vision matched by the white, off white and cream décor complementing the rusticity of the slanted windows and slanted timber floors and slanted plasterwork laden beams. Sourdough (malt butter, toasted yeast) is straight from the baker’s oven. Seatrout (kombu, trout roe, dill, dashi), Cod (mussels, Grelot onions sea herbs) and Monkfish (celeriac, onion, persillade) are three subtly sexy fish dishes. Kenny’s twists of tradition include gooseberry ketchup and wasabi ketchup. Blackberry Crémeux (apple, crème fraîche, meringue) has form and more. No wonder the restaurant snapped up its Michelin star just six months after opening.

“At House of Tides we believe our wine list is an extension of the ethos of the restaurant,” Kenny admits. “It is a collection of our favourite wines and reflects the tastes and passion of the people that have worked to put it together. Our ambition is to take you on a journey through the vineyards from around the world.” As Francophiles we are happy to go no further than across the Channel. A Peu Près Sauvignon Blanc, Loire Valley, 2020, for the savouries. Vigneron Ardechois, Coteau St Giraud, Late Harvest Viognier, 2020, for the sweets. Below at street level, during the course of lunch the bollarded space in front of House of Tides has been carpeted yellow with the fall of autumn leaves.

After lunch we will climb back up Long Stairs to inspect the Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin designed needle spired St Mary’s Catholic Cathedral on the far side of the railway station. The organist is practising for a wedding. He plays two minutes of Franz Schubert’s Ave Maria, two of Johann Pachelbel’s Canon in D, Johann Sebastian Bach’s Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring, César Franck’s Panis Angelicus, Richard Wagner’s Bridal Chorus and Ennio Morricone’s Gabriel’s Oboe. A musical tasting menu.

Tags abbie atkinson, augustus welby northmore pugin, county hotel, house of tides restaurant newcastle, ian nairn, john stokoe, kenny atkinson, lavenders blue, long stairs, moot hall, nairns towns, seaham hall, sexy fish, sexy fish restaurant, st marys catholic cathedral, stuart blakley, von essen hotels, wetherspoons

Art Design Fashion Hotels Luxury People

The Londoner Hotel Leicester Square London + Halfpenny London Christmas Tree

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date November 21, 2024

The Most Brilliant Season

Kate Halfpenny, Founder of Halfpenny London, shares, “I design organically from the heart, experimenting with sumptuous fabrics, allowing myself the freedom to play with proportions and break the rules, creating beautiful pieces that excite me, push the boundaries and – more importantly – make you feel like the very best version of yourself when you wear them.” She adds about her eponymous bridalwear, “Halfpenny London has spent two decades dressing literally thousands of women for their wedding day.” And now it’s her turn to dress a Christmas tree for the reception of the world’s first super boutique hotel, The Londoner.

Gigantic bows made from repurposed bridal fabric cutoffs embody the designer’s dedication to conscious creations and the hotel’s commitment to conservation. Baubles are so last season. Hand drawn renderings on disks inspired by gold coins, a play on Kate’s surname, appear between the bows. Cocktails crafted with London perfumer Miller Harris’ bridal fragrance embrace the marriage theme. Yellow fin tuna and green pea canapés are fit for a wedding breakfast. Fashion into decorative taste, scent into taste, taste into art, this festive season is all about fabulous fusion. Nobody does it better than Halfpenny London. Nowhere does it better than The Londoner.

Tags halfpenny london bridal fashion, kate halfpenny, lavenders blue, londoner hotel leicester square, miller harris perfumer, stuart blakley

Architects Architecture Art Design Developers Hotels Luxury People Restaurants Town Houses

The Royal Crescent Hotel + Montagu’s Mews Bath Somerset

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date November 6, 2024

The Silent Banshee

In the late 20th century Cotswolds based neoclassical architect William Bertram converted one of England’s greatest country houses into a hotel and a pair of England’s greatest townhouses into a hotel. At one time, both were owned by Von Essen Hotels. Cliveden House Hotel, Berkshire, and The Royal Crescent Hotel, Bath. Two of the three centremost houses of Royal Crescent were combined and a Dower House built in the mews in the early 1980s. In his book Bath (1944), Tony Smith sums up the country’s most majestic concave semi elliptical piece of architecture: “The whole conception and plan of this dazzling achievement is eloquent of the halcyon days of Bath.” Professor David Watkin describes it in The Practice of Classical Architecture: Quinlan and Francis Terry (2015) as “a half crescent facing down a grassy slope”. In 2010, the Terrys even designed their own crescent of retirement homes in Danbury, Essex.

“As the black of a dinner jacket sets off the bright colours of a dress, so the squares, crescents, quadrangles and circles of bath provide a geometric stage for the flow of life,” reckons Jan Morris in the introduction to An Architectural Guide to Bath by Charles Robertson (1975). William Lowndes notes in The Royal Crescent in Bath, (1981), “The central house of the Crescent is Number 16. It is one of the largest houses, and the adjacent houses also come into this category. There are two distinguishing features about the façade of Number 16 which emphasise its commanding position at the apex of the great curve of the Crescent. Four columns are grouped in pairs, and there is an arched first floor window from which both arms of the Crescent can be viewed in all their elegant symmetry.” There is a third distinguishing feature: it is the only house with single pane wide hall windows flanking the entrance door.

The treatment of the centre of the Crescent has been the subject of much scholarly debate. Charles Robertson notes, “The colonnade is not perfectly continuous; in the middle there is the most unobtrusive of breaks, four of the columns being grouped in pairs with a round headed window in between. This method of marking the centre has been variously criticised as being either unnecessary or insufficient. The former view was voiced as early as 1773, as quoted by Walter Ison, ‘The wretched attempt to make a centre to the Crescent where none was necessary is absurd and preposterous, in a high degree. The pairing of the pillars is too small a difference to be noted in so large a building …’” This 18th century critic radically suggests a chapel should have been placed in the middle of the terrace.

“The houses have had some notable occupants,” opines William Lowndes, “particularly during the first 50 years of their history. Elizabeth Montagu, who rejoiced in the spaciousness of their rooms, entertained many of the outstanding literary figures of the late 18th century there … The first dramatic change for over 100 years came in 1950, when Number 16 became a guesthouse. In 1971, together with Number 15, the guesthouse designation was abandoned, and The Royal Crescent Hotel was launched.” He records the presence of a ghost in Number 15: a lady in a long blue silk dress at the top of the stairs. She graciously descends, bestowing a warm smile on guests and staff, before disappearing. He guesses it is the social reformer and patron of the arts Elizabeth Montagu still enjoying her home from beyond the grave. “I believe unique places and people are what give the fabric of our lives richness,” says Edward Gabbai, Founder and Director of the Boutique Hotel Awards.

A hotel is the perfect alternative use and does not require subdivision: these houses were built for entertaining. John Haddon frets in Portrait of Bath (1982), “Conversion is not easy and some of these flats are not particularly convenient, although others are rather splendid. After all, these houses were built without electricity or gas, upstairs piped water, bathrooms, or, in many cases WCs, and they were heated by coal fires, so that to provide separate entrances, kitchens, lavatories and bathrooms on each floor calls for a good deal of ingenuity, although more recent conversions to what the selling agents like to call ‘prestigious apartments’ is made easier by gutting the building and rebuilding behind the original façade. Moreover, subdivision of Georgian rooms destroys their proportions and creates units which tend to be too high for their width. On the other hand, if a room is left as originally built it is expensive to heat.”

John Wood the Younger employed several builders on the 30 houses. They were all constrained by defined dimensions and designs on the cut limestone ashlar façade while allowed to run amok inside and to the rear. Over the course of eight years starting in 1767, the 152 metre long 15 metre high 114 engaged six metre tall Roman Ionic columned terrace took shape in all its geometric sophistication. The columns support a continuous returned balustraded parapet, modillion cornice and frieze. The occasional plate glass window, blind box and metal balconette are almost the only later derivations from the architect’s original concept. One other variation counteracting the powerful elongated temple front is found in the fanlight glazing bars including single pane; three vertical panes; diamond, oval and fish eye patterns. The number of entrance door panels also varies. Clever maths is at play to allow a central door in a terrace of an even number of 30 houses: 95 windows are shared unevenly. Number 1 is three bays wide on the curve; Number 2 to 13 are each three bays wide; Numbers 14 to 16 are each four bays wide; Numbers 17 to 29 are each three bays wide; and Number 30 is four bays wide on the curve.

The architect stipulated that the exterior woodwork must be painted white in perpetuity. Two centuries later, Annabel Wellesley-Colley broke the covenant much to the horror of her neighbours. In 1972 she painted the front door of her house yellow, and to make matters even worse, hung yellow blinds either side of it. She then took to sunbathing on her balcony wearing a yellow bikini. Naturally, Annabel chose the same hue for the suit she wore to the consequent public inquiry at Bath’s Guildhall. She won. “I am a descendent of the Duke of Wellington whose favourite colour was yellow and I regard it as my duty to uphold the tradition!” declared Annabel Wellesley-Colley. The door of Number 22 is still yellow. Charles Robertson wasn’t impressed: “The yellow door and blinds demonstrate how idiosyncrasy can spill over into bad manners.”

Lunch in Montagu’s Mews overlooking the gardens is an incredibly stylish affair. The delicately decorated ground floor reception rooms of William Bertram’s building flow into each other with grace and charm. Elizabeth Montagu would approve if she ever ventures beyond the staircase hall of Number 15. After the geometric perfection of the famous façade, the rear elevations of the Crescent are a glorious asymmetric jumble best viewed over Cornish day boat fish. “A fascinating disharmony,” observes Richard Morriss (on the architecture not the food) in The Buildings of Bath (1993). “A hodge podge, job lot look, an enthralling muddle,” adds Jan Morris (still on the architecture).

Julia Kent provided a review for House and Garden in May 1987, “The restaurant at The Royal Crescent Hotel is an elegant setting for elegant food, the style of which is contemporary yet classic. First courses have recently included gâteaux of wild mushrooms (a crisp potato galette with creamed spinach and girolles) with timbale of trout with a ragout of shellfish and a rich langoustine butter sauce. For the main course, you might opt for fillet of salmon steamed with cucumber and chive cream sauce. A three course meal from the à la carte menu costs about £27.00.” Lunch is a trifle (or two) more expensive these days.

A lifetime ago, Min Hogg, Founding Editor of The World of Interiors, shared her thoughts that interiors can be classified as either cluttered, hot climate, designer decorated, minimal, ancestral, simple, shabby chic or eccentric. Her London home was definitely “shabby chic” (a term she’d invented) while her Canary Islands retreat was of course “hot climate”. Min did admit, “To subdivide all the glories of interior design into a mere eight categories is shockingly presumptuous but they are fundamental.” The original drawing room of Number 16 currently falls into “modern” unlike the “ancestral” interior of the great fun museum in Number 1 Royal Crescent, one of the two five bay fronted end houses. The middle bay of each of the two end houses is defined by a wider gap between the engaged Roman Ionic columns either side of the central first and second floor windows above a pedimented Doric doorcase. This could have been an alternative solution to the central treatment of the Crescent. The corners of the end houses are emphasised by paired engaged columns on the principal elevations.

Who could forget the cartoon amidst the ancestral decoration of Number 1 Royal Crescent sitting room of a gentleman performing the Dicky Dangle Dance? Back at The Royal Crescent Hotel, the modern art of the drawing room recalls The Snob Spotter’s Guide by Philippe Jullian (1958), “Molly was telling me that at the beginning of his career Picasso used a lot of blue in his pictures. She calls it his Blue Period.” Truer to form, Montagu’s Mews is subtly “designer decorated”. Min often commented, “Beautiful interior decoration will always be one of life’s greatest pleasures.”

Tags annabel wellesley colley, architect william bertram, charles robertson, cliveden house hotel, david watkin, elizabeth montagu, francis terry, jan morris, lavenders blue, min hogg, montagus mews, philippe julllian, quinlan terry, richard morriss, royal crescent hotel bath, royal crescent museum, snob spotters guide, stuart blakley, von essen hotels

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Murlough Country House + Dundrum Down

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date September 11, 2024
37 Comments on Murlough Country House + Dundrum Down

The Business of Heaven on Earth

County Down, the east coast riviera of the north of Ireland, is blessed with large Georgian houses. The five bay two storey variety with all the upright prettiness of a doll’s house is especially prevalent in the southern half of this county. Woodford House, Dromara; Milltown House, Lenaderg; Beech Park, Leansmount and Kilmore House, all in Lurgan; Tullymurry House, Newry; Cabragh House, Rathfriland; and Annaghanoon House, Waringstown are just a few examples.

Murlough Country House (formerly known as Murlough Farm) on Keel Point betwixt Dundrum Bay and Murlough Bay looks earlier than most. The roof is higher; the wall to window ratio greater; the window boxes deeper. It firmly falls into the category ‘middling sized houses’ (a phrase originally adapted by Sir Charles Brett from Maurice Craig’s 1976 Classic Houses of the Middle Size) in Philip Smith’s 2019 guide to architecture in South County Down, a continuation of Charlie’s series. The windowsills and entrance door are painted peach to match the colour of the jagged brick eaves.

We spoke to leaders in tourism and the arts to garner their views ahead of staying at the house and experiencing the local village of Dundrum. Tim Knox, Director of the Royal Collection, observes, “Murlough Country House is indeed a rather fine house, charmingly Irish and looking very good newly harled and painted.” Charles Plante, international tastemaker and former Art Advisor to Sir Hardy Amies, Queen Elizabeth II’s dressmaker, remarks, “This house brings together neoclassical and provincial architecture in an appealing vernacular – the Georgian style at its best and rarest in Ireland.”

David Roberts, Director of Strategic Development at Tourism NI, elaborates, “Northern Ireland’s heritage is a cornerstone of our tourism offering. For more than a decade, Tourism NI and our partners have been working closely together to drive investment in high quality heritage experiences and accommodation which are attractive to visitors. Our research has shown that the ‘culturally curious’ segment of visitors represents great potential for being attracted to Northern Ireland in the future.”

He tells us, “Historic buildings can provide exciting, place based visitor experiences which can encourage longer stays in one location and more local exploring. Promoting connections between places and a more regionally balanced tourism sector are key objectives for the emerging Northern Ireland tourism strategy. The visitor brand for Northern Ireland ‘Embrace A Giant Spirit’ embodies and draws inspiration from the area’s heritage. Tourism NI is delighted to have Murlough Country House as a provider of high quality visitor accommodation. It provides a fantastic base for visitors to explore the Mournes and the wider area.”

Philip Smith writes, “The first Murlough House was not the large Victorian era Italianate style villa built by Lord Downshire but this smaller less formal yet in many respects more interesting house about one kilometre to the east. It is a charming unpretentious two storey over high basement block with a steeply pitched hipped roof, large multiphase but relatively homogeneous triple pile return and two sturdy centrally positioned chimneystacks.” Mourne Farm started out as a slim rectangular block with a central staircase return wing. An extension either side of the return enlarged the building: the blocked up rear elevation windows of the 18th century house became cupboards. Horn free sashes give way to the later horned variety.

He notes that the long straight tree lined avenue is a good indicator of age and is likely to be early 18th century despite not appearing on Oliver Sloane’s Down Map of 1739. The present house is marked on Kennedy’s Map of 1755. The Centre for Archaeology Fieldwork at Queen’s University Belfast completed an Excavation Report of Blundell’s House at Dundrum Castle in 2009. Included in this report is a 1758 ink, graphite and wash drawing by Mary Delany titled The Ruins of Dundrum Castle. In the background it appears to show Murlough Farm albeit three rather than five bays wide. The Delanys rented Mount Panther three kilometres to the north of Dundrum around that time.

Philip continues, “Since the mid 1600s, the Blundells had been absentees and thereafter their house may have been occupied by their agents; but by 1748 the ‘slate house by the castle of Dundrum’ was reported to be in ‘disrepair’ and not long after this ‘Murlough House’ begins to appear in the record; it may well, therefore, have been built as a replacement.” The hillside and hilltop ruins of the 12th century Dundrum Castle form a spectacular backdrop to the village and the perfect vantage point to survey the Ancient Kingdom of Mourne.

Dr Ciarán Reilly records in The Evolution of the Irish Land Agent: The Management of the Blundell Estate in the 18th century, 2018, that the career of father and son Henry and John Hatch as agents of the 5,600 hectare Blundell Estate lasted over 50 years. The Dublin based Henry Hatch, taking up his position in 1747, would have housed property managers at Murlough Farm. The 3rd Marquess of Downshire, a Blundell descendant, would deliver a 91 metre long pier for Dundrum in the early 19th century. The Downshire family still retains a house in Murlough.

The Armstrong family lived in Murlough Country House from 1991 to 2023 before selling it to the current owners. Belfast architect Dawson Stelfox advised on heritage matters. “We restored the blue slate and copper nail roof,” Elaine Armstrong confirms, “and added hipped roofs over the two flat roofed extensions to the back. We also added the authentic orangery style Conservatory. When we got the front door lock restored, the craftsman said the key dates from 1730. It’s a special building and we fell in love with it. We’re so thrilled to see it being brought back into life as holiday accommodation.”

Like many Belfast citizens, Clive Staples Lewis developed an early love of the Mourne Mountains. Or the Mourne Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty as it’s now known: all 57,000 protected hectares. The novelist, theologian and mathematician wrote, “I have seen landscapes, notably in the Mourne Mountains and southwards which under a particular light made me feel that at any moment a giant might raise his head over the next ridge. I yearn to see County Down in the snow; one almost expects to see a march of dwarves dashing past. How I long to break into a world where such things were true.”

The restoration of Murlough Country House and its 2.4 hectare estate – a little piece of Narnia – is an essay on correct conservation, surpassing any former glory. The courtyard facing elevation, or southeast front, is different in character to the entrance front. All three storeys are on full display and the series of hipped roofs lends it the delineated air of a château. The white painted harling of the house so admired by Tim Knox contrasts with the grey rubblestone and cut stone of the outbuildings. This is holiday accommodation at its finest.

On the lower ground floor, the large southeast facing Shield’s Conservatory with a dining table for 12 people projects into the courtyard. Agar’s Snug, a cosy room with a wood burning stove leads off the professional chef’s standard Shield’s Kitchen fitted with Shaker style cupboards. Blundell is an accessible bedroom and shower room suite. No 18th century house is complete without a Boot Room.

At ground floor level, the elegant Entrance Hall terminated by a flying dogleg staircase is flanked by Maitland, a drawing room, and Downshire, a cinema. Formerly a dining room, a dumb waiter still connects Downshire to the lower ground floor. The Entrance Hall spans three metres and three centuries of living (from 18th century elegance to 21st century technology). An abbreviated enfilade. Mitchell is the king size ground floor bedroom with a shower room next door. It’s impossible to tell it was once the kitchen. Four first floor bedrooms look out across the gardens to Murlough National Nature Reserve and onwards to the Mountains of Mourne. A tasteful roundelay.

Annesley is the principal suite and faces northwest with views onto the side lawn. The walls are painted ‘clover’ in the Edward Bulmer range. A vintage Louis de Poortere rug adds even more vibrancy. Dual aspect super king size Armstrong bedroom occupies the full depth of the 18th century main block. Two shuttered northwest facing windows set into the thick walls frame the front lawn and paddock; a third window overlooks the driveway. The king size Macartney also overlooks the front lawn and paddock. Lore has it that the handblown glass in the two sash windows of this room was salvaged from a Jacobean house. Magennes is a northeast facing king size bedroom. A former nursery, this sunny yellow room was featured in a Farrow and Ball book. We recognise Nina Campbell and Christopher Farr curtains and cushions.

“Oh I do love a bit of T ‘n’ G,” our friend Min Hogg, Founding Editor of The World of Interiors, told us over coffee one time in her nursery floor apartment above the treetops of Brompton Square in London. There’s plenty of tongue and groove panelling in these bedrooms. Naming rooms is very much a South County Down tradition: think Mourne Park House. At Murlough, the rooms are called after families associated with the house and area. No 21st century country house is complete without a Sauna.

The abutting estates of Murlough Country House and Murlough House share a coastal landmass of great natural beauty attached to mainland all protected by the National Trust. Wetlands on one side, sandy beach on the other. Designated in 1967, Murlough is Ireland’s first National Nature Reserve and has the country’s best and most extensive dune heath. We stroll through its 280 unspoiled hectares. Wildflowers, wildfowl, wild ponies (everything is wild); unbothered living, forever steeped in Sunday stillness … it’s hard to believe Belfast is only 50 kilometres away and Dublin 150 kilometres. We care to disagree with Clive Staples Lewis, “Adventures are never fun while you’re having them.”

Now London based, artist Anne Davey Orr shares her reflections with us from across the water on Murlough. As Founding Editor and Publisher of Ulster Architect magazine, former Board Member of Belfast Civic Trust, Arts Council, National Trust, Design Council and Chair of The Lyric Theatre Belfast she is well placed. “Murlough or Muirbolc in Gaelige means ‘seabag’ or ‘inlet’. The modesty of this title hides its importance on a number of levels.”

Anne continues, “These heartlands of the MacCartan and MacGuinness clans were forfeited to John de Courcy when he marched on Ulster in his attempts to conquer Ireland. MacGuinness Castle was renamed Dundrum Castle. Donal Oge MacCartan, a MacGuinness cousin, surrendered the castle in 1601 to Lord Mountjoy, in Irish terms renowned for the gaol named after him in Dublin. In 1605 it was made over to Lord Cromwell and sold to Sir George Blundell in 1636.”

Maurice Craig states in The Architecture of Ireland, 1982, “John de Courcy set out from Dublin and took Downpatrick in 1176. He married the daughter of the King of Man and kept princely state himself, founding Inch Abbey and (through his wife) Grey Abbey, and beginning the castles of Carrickfergus and Dundrum.” The layering of the centuries. The entrance to Murlough Country House encapsulates the duality of its character: simple square capped pillars heralding a farmhouse; a stretch of walls attached to either side suggesting something grander. On the far side of the main road, the Slidderyford Dolmen – a megalithic portal tomb – makes Dundrum Castle look positively modern.

Neighbour Edward ‘Ned’ Cummins calls by for coffee in Shield’s Conservatory. We get chatting: “I’ve lived here all my life. My dad came to work here with horses on this farm when he was 14 years of age. I own the retired racehorses in the field next door. If I hadn’t accepted them they would’ve gone to France to be eaten. The proper way into this house was down my lane before what they call the ‘Downshire Bridge’ was built. Before that there was a wooden bridge. Where would you get a causeway like that going to a private house?”

Coffee and conversation are flowing. “The Yanks stayed here during the War. The trees down the driveway are all big trees but you come to a place that is nice and flat and they’re very small trees. The Americans cut the trees down and brought aeroplanes into that field there. They took over this whole farm too. There’s a strip out there for the planes to land. There was a load of Nissan huts round the back. They’re all gone now. The Annesleys bought this place for £12,000 I would say shortly after the War. They built the bathroom extension in the 70s. It’s block not stone. The buildings behind the house are the Coach House, Middle Barn, Piggeries and Woodworker’s Barn. The one roomed Bothy was the gamekeeper’s house.”

Ned ends, “Brunel designed SS Great Britain and it ran aground in Dundrum Bay in 1846. The captain got drunk and ran it straight into the sand bar. Brunel came over and stayed in the Downshire Arms Hotel for about a year. He orchestrated strapping the ship and hacking it up to get it seaworthy again. SS Great Britain was the first iron hulled screw propelled steamship.”

Peeling ourselves away from Murlough Country House, we wend our way into Dundrum, the gourmet capital of South County Down. Thrice. Colour seeps into Irish village architecture and Dundrum is no exception. Lunch is in Mourne Seafood Bar (the exterior is painted duck egg blue on the ground floor, goose grey on the upper floors and the northeast wing is sorbet yellow). Dinner in The Buck’s Head (painted olive green). Drinks in The Dundrum Inn (pineapple yellow and blackcurrant purple). The striking house with a gable clock and weathervane opposite Mourne Seafood Bar is salmon pink. Next morning coffee is in Cúpla with its damson blue signage – its name comes from the Irish for twins after Dominque and Shane Gibben who own the café.

But first there’s a visit to Dundrum Coastal Rowing Club. Andrew Boyd and Robert Graham proudly show off two boats they’ve built: Danny Buoy and Mystic Wave. “It started off as a community project to reconnect people round this coastline with our boat building heritage,” explains Robert. Traditional St Ayles skiffs were built by locals along the County Down coast from Donaghadee to Dundrum. “It took us six months to build Danny Buoy. We finished it the night before the 2016 Skiff World Championship Rowing Race. We just got it out into the bay to give it a test that it floated and then went straight into the race and won! We generated lots of interest and so we ordered the second kit and built Mystic Wave.”

Andrew is the founder of Kilmegan Cider. He relates, “I started about a mile away from Dundrum. It was my parents’ orchard and every year when we were younger we had to gather up the apples and store them in boxes. Waste not! We’d make a wee bit of apple wine and there was one year I went down and all the apples were lying on the ground. The fieldfares and redwings were having a field day. I decided to try a batch of cider with an old winepress. So it started as a hobby and grew from there. I registered it in 2014.” Kilmegan Cider has been winning national and international awards ever since.

It’s time for lunch in Mourne Seafood Bar which is in the former Downshire Arms Hotel, a grand three storey building dominating Main Street. Owner Chris McCann joins us. “Bob McCoubrey launched Mourne Seafood Bar in Dundrum in 2005 and in Belfast a year later. We took over the Dundrum restaurant seven years ago. Chris Wayne is our Head Chef. We stick to what the brand is – it’s in the name – and just have one meat dish on our menu. Our mussels come from Strangford Lough. Our oysters come from Carlingford – they have a sweetness and there’s a consistency of quality and supply. Wednesday night is lobster night. We’ve 10 guest bedrooms too.”

Samphire, known as ‘sea asparagus’, is a popular garnish foraged from Murlough Beach. Nowhere in Ireland is further than 85 kilometres from the coast. In Dundrum, make that one kilometre. Reisling served has the surprising label ‘Donaghadee’: the German winemaker married a County Down lass. Platters arrive – this is tasting on an epic scale! Cracked crab claws, langoustines and mignonette oysters. We devour the entire starters menu.

“All our food is farm or sea to plate,” welcomes Bronagh McCormick who took over The Buck’s Head with her business partner Head Chef Alex Greene in April 2024. He’s a regular on the TV programme Great British Menu. The pub was built in 1834. She records, “We’ve 75 covers in our dining room and we’re opening rooms for guests to stay over. We’re kept pretty busy with dinner reservations at least four weeks in advance.” Wheaten bread made with treacle sums up the menu: local with a twist. Pan roast salmon with gnocchi and charred broccoli continues the Dundrumesque seafood theme. Alex tells us later they also own the Fish and Farm Shop in nearby Newcastle. They’re custodians of produce.

“There’s nothing we’re not trying and there’s nothing we’re not doing,” Alex shares over coffee and cakes in Cúpla. “It’s very much an evolving product. We’ve a lot of repeat business, especially on a Sunday. We run Sunday lunch up to 7pm. We’ll add a couple more vegetarian options but if you put too many dishes on the menu the quality starts to drop. It’s better selling 30 of one dish in a day than three of 100. But you don’t want to make the menu too small either with not enough choice for people. Our meat mostly comes from my family farm three miles up the road.”

The Dundrum Inn, a few doors down from The Buck’s Head, is the perfect place to pull a late night Guinness and order a nightcap (make that a round of Kilmegan Ciders) in the large beer garden while being entertained by live music. The Dundrum Inn has been going for 190 years so far and is still a social hub. “Dundrum Village Association organises the Summer Festival,” says Community Leader Alan Cooley. “It brings everyone together. Food stalls, bands, circus performers and a raft race fill a Saturday each July.”

“Let’s go out on our boat!” is a thrilling suggestion by our hosts upon leaving Cúpla. Soon we’re riding the waves fantastic. Leaving behind Dundrum Bay to enter the Irish Sea, looking back, the castle has vanished under a cloud and gradually landmass fades to grey and disappears. Splash, crash, splash, crash! We’re now in the midst of the vast grey sea which has merged with the vast grey sky. There’s no horizon; everything’s grey. A grey seal swims by giving us side eye.

We recall Andrew Boyd telling us, “When you get the high tide running out of the bay and you have a bit of a southerly wind, there’s a roar of the sea known as Tonn Ruairí. This is the ‘Wave of Rory’ named after a Viking who drowned in Dundrum Bay from the forces of a mystic wave. It makes a crashing roaring sound. As much as the sea round here is beautiful you need to respect it.”

Brian de Breffny, writing in Castles of Ireland, 1977, breaks away from conventional architectural historian mode to wax lyrical, “Something of Dundrum’s distant Celtic past seems to cling mysteriously to the castle and its wooded hillside. Perhaps more than any other place in Ireland, it suggests too the world of the Norman adventurers and mercenaries – conquerors and Crusaders who fortified a castle in Ulster and talked there of the palace castles of the Seleucid rulers they had seen in the East – the world of the overmighty barons and Plantagenet kings.” Almost half a century later, his words still ring true.

There was a sense of crossing a border when we went over that triple arched causeway for the first time … we’d crossed a line into a slight otherness. And when Murlough Country House appeared, there was a sensation of arrival, of distant belonging. We would succumb to the enchantment of days spent passed in South County Down. Later, much later, unfurling thoughts and images of Dundrum, we realise anew it’s a place to experience the serious business of joy. And to parrot Clive Staples Lewis, “We meet no ordinary people in our lives.” And visit no ordinary places.

Tags 3rd marquess of downshire, andrew boyd, anne davey orr, architect dawson stelfox, brian de breffny, bronagh mccormick, bucks head dundrum, charles plante fine art, chris mccann, clive staples lewis, community leader alan dooley, cupla cafe, david roberts director strategic development tourism northern ireland ni, dominique gibben, downshire arms hotel, dr ciaran reilly, dundrum castle, dundrum coastal rowing club, dundrum village association, greyabbey, head chef alex greene, kilmegan cider, lavenders blue, mary delany, maurice craig, min hogg founding editor of the world of interiors, mount panther, mourne park house, mourne seafood bar, murlough country house, murlough farm, philip smith, robert graham, shane gibben, sir charles brett, stuart blakley, tim knox director royal collection, tullymurry house newry

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Marlfield House Hotel + The Duck Restaurant Gorey Wexford

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date August 19, 2024
29 Comments on Marlfield House Hotel + The Duck Restaurant Gorey Wexford

A Bon Mot Cast in Stone

“Margaret and Laura Bowe inherited good taste from their parents,” states architect Alfred Cochrane. He worked on Marlfield House Hotel over a 15 year period starting in 1982. “Mary their mother has incredible style and she wanted more accommodation. My work at Marlfield is Postmodern. I wanted the Conservatory to be a room away from the house, not directly attached. It’s inspired by Richard Turner’s Botanic Gardens Belfast and the National Botanic Gardens Dublin glasshouses as well as Brighton Pavilion. The pond front of the single storey wing is designed to resemble a French hunting lodge. I had to insert a fire wall into the Staircase Hall of the original house. The Bowes bought superb 18th century fireplaces like the one in the Library. Great artists were brought on board: Marina Guinness and Victoria Ormesby-Gore created the Print Room and Nat Clements painted the murals in the Entrance Hall. Mary’s husband Ray dammed a stream to create the pond.”

Alfred’s work augments Marlfield’s presence both physically and aesthetically. Creative clients helped. “We’re all mad about design,” declares Laura Bowe. “Our family all have a good eye. I worked in Alfred’s practice for a while.” Mary and Ray bought the house and 15 hectares from the widowed Lady Courtown in 1977. It was built in 1852 by the 4th Earl of Courtown as a dower house. The house is tall, slim and elegant. Three storeys: four bay entrance front; four bay corresponding garden front with a two bay breakfront; and two bay bowed side elevation. The other side adjoins a two storey ancillary wing. Faced with rugged semi coursed rubblestone and red brick quoins. A parapet free pitched roof over deep eaves is punctuated by tall chimneystacks. The 5th Earl swapped some of the ground floor multi pane windows for plate glass sashes in 1866. “Courtown House was across the road,” comments Laura. “It was sold to the Irish Tourist Board in 1948 and pulled down.” Jeremy Williams records in his 1994 guide Architecture In Ireland 1837 to 1921, “Courtown House, the seat of the Earls of Courtown, was much modified during the 19th century … William Burn was involved in remodelling the house.” The 9th Earl, James Patrick Montagu Winthrop Stopford, recently enjoyed a weekend at Marlfield.

The vivid reinvention of the former dower house, a joyous revivication, begins at the entrance to the grounds. In place of traditional stone pillars are Alfred’s whimsical wrought iron columns supporting wry wiry pineapples. This design is shadowed in a gazebo on the lawn. The entrance portico of the house bridges the gap between Neoclassicism and Postmodernism. There’s a layering of stylistic language at play, apropos for a polyglot architect. A Doric centrepiece steps forward from smooth stone bays; it’s deconstructed to become not so much a broken pediment as a broken temple ‘glued’ together with glazing. Beyond lies the vast semicircular Entrance Hall partly mirrored in plan by a bowed external water feature. A picture gallery connects the Entrance Hall to the State Suites of the single storey wing: the French Room, Georgian Room, Morland Room, Print Room, Sheraton Room and Stopford Room. “Inspiration for the Print Room came from Mariga Guinness’s work at Leixlip Castle and of course Lady Louisa Connolly’s famous Print Room at Castletown,” notes Margaret. “When the doors are pulled across the bed alcove, wedding ceremonies are often performed in this room.”

There are another 13 bedrooms, all with marble bathrooms, upstairs in the main house. Guests can dream and more in coronet, fourposter and half tester beds. The Conservatory on the garden front balances the State Room wing on the entrance front. History, luxury, harmony, geometry and symmetry: all are important at Marlfield, a billet-doux to hospitality. The Conservatory, an adventurous addition, is a tripartite triumph in cast iron and glass. A central projection balloons up to a storey high ogee shaped dome. The vertical frame of distinctive lattice metal pilasters topped by stylised Ionic capitals is as stylish as anything produced in the Regency era. The Ionic order with cerebral associations bestowed upon it by Vitruvius has long carried intellectual heft. Soaneian mirrored cornicing, cills and starburst ceiling roses reflect the omnipresent brilliance.

“I worked with Alfred and his business partner Jeremy Williams in the summer vacations while I was studying architecture,” says Albert Noonan. “I was involved in drawing the magnificent curvilinear Conservatory. Extending a period property is full of design challenges. Alfred tackled these challenges with confidence, building on historic references to create a statement piece that harmonises well with the original building both inside and out. The Conservatory is a joy to walk around and the interior with frescoed walls brings the beautiful gardens into the Dining Room. Stylistically it has not dated and looks as good today as when it was first built.” It reminds us of sitting in the conservatory of Ballyfin, County Laois, or Rokeby Hall, County Louth.

Albert reminisces, “As a young architect I was impressed by the uplifting experience of visiting Alfred’s projects. His designs deliver on functionality but they also incorporate creative details that add a sense of intrigue and visual interest. This approach to design influenced my career – I endeavour to create designs that not only meet clients’ brief of functionality but also create appropriate environments that are uplifting and pleasurable experiences for the end user.”

In a mark of approval, a continuum of tradition, an aligment of the story arc, a refinement of the built form, he would return to Marlfield to design the restoration and conversion of the coach house, potting shed and gardener’s tool shed into The Duck. The hotel and restaurant share the same avenue but then it forks off into different, albeit abutting, worlds. “The Duck is a meeting point for all directions in good or bad weather,” Margaret clarifies. “People come in the summer to sit on the terrace. People come in the winter to be near the fire. It sits 100 for lunch and 120 for dinner.” There’s a rustic feel inside: exposed stone walls and timber panelling. “The beauty of the restaurant is it overlooks the kitchen garden. There’s a kilometre long walk around the meadow. This whole place is in use, all 36 acres.”

Two years later, Albert designed the remodelling of the tiny Gatelodge, transforming it into a spacious two bedroom single storey residence. “It’s extremely popular,” confirms Margaret. “People never stay once.” A pair of simple gate pillars marking the entrance to the Gatelodge garden is repeated in the hedge opposite lining the avenue: that symmetry in action. He recalls, “The original Gatelodge was a classic and modest design and the extended building retains these attributes externally. Internally, we created visual interest through elevated ceilings and a varied palette of materials and textures including exposed brick walls, timber panelling, stone flooring and earthy muted colours. Laura has a great eye for furniture and fixtures that convey a sense of luxury and comfort.” An opaque circular ceiling window – like the one over the Staircase Hall of Alfred’s County Wicklow home – lights the Lobby leading into the large open plan Reception Room.

“Following on from the Gatelodge project, the Bowes wanted to provide more bedroom accommodation,” remarks Albert. “Rather than extend the main house it was decided to provide five freestanding Pond Suites. They’re of a contemporary design intended to complement the woodland setting. Each Suite has large windows and a terrace orientated to capture great views over the pond and island.” Margaret adds, “They’re called The Peacock, The Fox, The White Heron and The Blue Heron. We named the two bedroom suite The Nest.”

He continues, “The Pond Suites are constructed in a lightweight timber frame walling sitting on bored pile foundations to minimise disruption to the ground beneath. The floors are floating just above ground level. Main exterior walls are clad in cedar which will transform into a silver grey finish over time. The rear walls and monopitched roofs are clad in black coated zinc. We used Crittal steel windows. The monopitched design maximises the height of the façade glazing.”

As night falls and sun sets, dinner in the Conservatory hits more high notes than a Wexford Festival Opera diva. First there’s the prelude of parmesan and spice bread which sides the Courgette and Goat’s Cheese Canapé. Mozart in a mouthful. Seared Irish Scallops (roast apple purée, Granny Smith crisp) form the brisk and lively first movement of this incredible edible symphony. Pachelbel on a plate. Roast Onion Soup is lyrically relaxing. Bach in a bowl. Fillet of Pan Seared Halibut (concasse of tomato, sugar snap peas, mussels, lemon beurre blanc) ups the tempo and pumps the mood music. Tchaikovsky on the tastebuds. Marlfield Garden Rhubarb Millefeuille (vanilla pastry cream, candied ginger) provides a rollocking finale. Pudding is La Passione. Encore will be breakfast and encore une fois coffee and shortbread while the car pulls up for departure.

“I joined the team in 1994 after working in event management in London,” Margaret concludes. “Laura arrived back in 2004 after leaving the film industry. She is responsible for brand development and I take care of the sales department. On a daily basis, we manage the hotel together. Ireland is essentially a rural country and I’ve lived in the countryside for much of my life. My love of nature is my way of expressing the attachment, this Irish identity.” A tortoiseshell runs past into the herbaceous border. Margaret mourns, “George the peacock and the ginger cat died a couple of years ago. In July and August, George was always crowing, calling out for a lady. There are three cats now. They just appear! There are lots of birds too.” On cue, a heron swoops out of the pond, past two gliding ducks.

Five years after opening, Marlfield became a member of the coveted Relais et Châteaux group. Add sustainability to its list of qualities. The Gatelodge has triple glazed windows and a heat pump. That open plan layout is never draughty. “We strive to constantly reduce our carbon footprint,” assures Margaret. “We operate on green energy and are moving towards biogas. The Pond Suites are close to zero carbon. Our menus use local produce within a radius of a few kilometres. Over the last two years we have planted at least 150 trees.”

Courtown House long gone, Marlfield House is in its golden era. The dowager is now the doyenne.

Architects Architecture Art Design Developers Fashion Hotels Luxury People Restaurants Town Houses

Pont Street + 11 Cadogan Gardens Hotel Chelsea London

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date August 12, 2024

Beautiful as a Story

“Architectural fashion is so often a reaction to what went immediately before. There’s even a perceptible difference between the father A W Pugin and the son E W Pugin’s work. The second generation architect’s designs are more rationalised,” believes artist and architectural publisher Anne Davey Orr. “Later, the use of concrete in the 20th century would issue in a much more open expression of materials and structure.”

The penultimate decades of the last two centuries both stuck to something of a “more is more” mantra. A sort of turn of the century syndrome. Eclecticism gone wild. Not without honour and slightly mad. Pont Street for the 1880s and 90s; Postmodernism for the 1980s and 90s. Out went conformity and goodbye to context; in came variety and hello to contrast. It was the ever inventive cartoonist Osbert Lancaster who came up with the name Pont Street Dutch due to the style flourishing in Chelsea. It could easily have been North German Revival, Flemish Revival or New Queen Anne. Or even Hans Town or Cadogan. Sir John Betjeman abbreviated it to Pont Street, making it even more geographically precise. He calls it the “new built red as hard as the morning gaslight” in his poem The Arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel. These days the SW postcodes are as golden as they are terracotta.

That’s the name explained but who invented the style? Architect John James Stevenson claimed Queen Anne as his creation. The practice Ernest George and Harold Peto produced some of the most overblown examples in Harrington Gardens but really the style was to become synonymous with the dominating work of Norman Shaw. Pont Street rang the death knell, scrawled the writing on the wall, beckoned the banshee for regular terraces, heralding an asymmetric age of individualism. “Look at me, look at me!” screams each house as the rooflines tipsily whoosh and swoosh over more Dutch gables than Keizersgracht. Against the navy canvas of a sun drenched winter’s morning, and to be repeated nine years later on a sun drenched summer’s morning, the red brick dressed with white stone renders Pont Street a patriotic tricolour.

Such strength of character allows 20th century blips such as the picture window spanning the penthouse of 41 Lennox Gardens to be immersed into the wider townscape. The houses celebrate their birthdays: “1884” shouts 25 Lennox Gardens from metre tall letters on its third floor. A few doors up, 43 Lennox Gardens announces to the world it’s a year younger. A wander in wonder along the streets of SW1 and SW3, the blessed boulevards of the Cadogan Estate, throws up a maximalist impure visual feast, an aesthetic eyeful, for the devil and angels are in the detail.

At a glance, here are some of the hyperactive highlights. Keyhold silhouette broken pediment copper domes in Sloane Gardens. Double decker dormers in Culford Gardens. Witch’s hat copper turrets where Draycott Place meets Blacklands Terrace. Quoined porthole windows peering out of 54 to 58 Draycott Place. A neo Elizabethan fretwork loggia hugging 3 Cadogan Gardens. Pierless Brighton balconies clinging onto 85 to 87 Cadogan Gardens. A château mansard atop 89 Cadogan Gardens. Twin Queen Anne fanlights surmounting the doorcase of 105 Cadogan Gardens. Stumpy Ionic pilasters holding up egg and dart capitals framing the porch of 60 Cadogan Square. A pair of ballsy busty bulbous oriel windows on the side elevation of 63 Cadogan Square. And that’s just at a glance.

Pont Street the address bisects Cadogan Place Gardens under the watchful eyes of the 18 storeyed 1961 Jumeirah Carlton Tower. But the great swathe of red is mostly found between Sloane Street and Lennox Gardens. The extremities of Pont Street dive back into stuccoland. A morning of architectural investigation must be balanced by an afternoon of gourmet indulgence. Historically, afternoon tea was the outcome of dinner slipping to beyond 7pm by the opening years of the 19th century. Hiccupping ladies at first surreptitiously downed tea and gobbled cake in their boudoirs after midday. By 1842, trailblazing trendsetting taboo busting gal about castle Anna Maria Russell, 7th Duchess of Bedford, was bolshily dispensing tea in her sitting room to fill the gap created by the evening meal becoming later and later thanks to gaslighting. Fast forward to the Pont Street era and both sexes were merrily letting rip into cucumber sandwiches and scones with clotted cream in the drawing room or on the lawn. Where better then to indulge than 11 Cadogan Gardens, the hotel launched by the eponymous Estate in 2012? A Darjeeling fuelled calorific high awaits: Carrot Cake Explosion; Chocolate Fudge Bar; Lemon Drizzle Loaf; Macarons; Raspberry Orange Battenburg.

The first part of the hotel’s name is mildly misleading: the reception rooms and 54 bedrooms are spread across four townhouses (“5, 7, 9 and 11 Cadogan Gardens” being something of a mouthful). Bright red brick with white trimmings, in some places to stripy effect (more bands than a 12th of July march); terracotta tracery and scrolls; rusticated Doric columns and shortened Ionic columns; rectangular metal balconies and semicircular brick balconies; windows of every frame and shape and type (more casements than a West Belfast cemetery; and again more sashes than a 12th of July march) and orientation (more than a Pride march in London); oriels, chamfered bays and rectangular bays; flat, round arched and segmental arched windows; mini, Dutch and swan neck gables; 11 Cadogan Gardens is as dynamic Pont Street as it gets. The last part of the hotel’s name is wildly accurate. It faces a densely treed green square. The only two London members of the exclusive Relais et Châteaux group are 11 Cadogan Gardens and its sister hotel further round the square, The Chelsea Townhouse.
The interior is just as eclectic. A maze of lacquered cloistered sequestered panelled hallways and lobbies and corridors and passageways leads into the consciously picturesque opalescent Drawing Room. Starched linen at the ready, afternoon tea awaits, designed to instil a divine inertia into the remainder of a stimulating day. Decked and bedecked, espaliered and jardinièred, the Terrace is tucked between the townhouses and the mews. Alive with remote anticipation, it’s a place to dwell on the meaningfulness of life. Another surprising place is the Versailles inspired Mirrored Hall, a space designed to contemplate the advantage of beauty. Monochromatic photographs of supermodels line the descending staircase to the basement gym. Oil paintings of aristos line the ascending staircase to the bedrooms. Souls of different ages bordering the universe in process of consummation. This hotel has a distinct and dynamic personality, one that is warm and sensuous.

Over to the father of town planning Manning Robertson of Huntington Castle, County Carlow, for some pontification on not just Pont Street but classification itself. Everyday Architecture, 1948, “Definitions of architecture are as unsatisfactory as any other expositions of the aim and meaning of the arts; but if architecture is to be alive at all it must clearly involve the erection of buildings to suit the demands of the period, and the embellishment of those buildings according to the dictates of the materials in use, the treatment being a direct reflection of the outlook of the epoch, based of course upon past work, insofar as it is applicable. We cannot say that the 19th century, which produced principally a dead copying of the past, did not reflect itself truly; it was, on the contrary, amazingly accurate in illustrating that the worship of material prosperity is not consistent with a high level of art.”

Tags 11 cadogan gardens hotel, 11 cadogan gardens hotel chelsea london, 7th duchess bedford, anna maria russell, chelsea townhouse, ernest george, harold peto, huntingdon castle, huntington castle carlow, jumeirah carlton tower, lavenders blue, manning, manning robertson, osbert lancaster, oscar wilde, pont street architecture, sir john betjeman, stuart blakley

Hotels Luxury People Restaurants

Hôtel Meurice Calais + Charles-Augustin Meurice

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date August 7, 2024

The Last Word

More than a mere port, it’s a tale of two cities: Calais-Nord is a manmade island surrounded by canals and basins. St Pierre is the part of the mainland that hugs the island to the south and southeast. Calais has its own unique charm. Like Paris, there is a Notre Dame and a hotel called Meurice. The Calais variety is on Rue Ernest Lejeune in Calais-Nord. Since 1835, its Parisian equivalent has been on Rue de Rivoli. A glass of wine costs €4.50 in the former; €32 in the latter. To stay in one of the 41 rooms near Parc Richelieu will cost you at least €76; it’s a minimum of 12 times that for one of the 160 rooms overlooking Jardin des Tuileries. The interior of Hôtel Meurice Calais has mid 20th century geometric panelling and strongly coffered ceilinged rooms filled with local antiques. Le Meurice Paris was given an early 21st century cosmopolitan makeover by Philippe Starck. True to the designer’s form, it’s a luxurious whimsical creation playing with scale and form. The Paris hotel is two kilometres as the common buzzard flies from Notre Dame. The Calais one, 100 metres from Notre Dame.

Charles-Augustin Meurice (1739 to 1820) was an enterprising postmaster who realised the strategic location of Calais for English tourists travelling onwards to the French Capital. In 1771 he launched a coaching inn in Calais and eventually 46 years later opened another one in Paris, capturing custom at either end of the 36 hour journey. Monsieur Meurice trailblazed such innovations as laundry soap, currency exchanges and English speaking staff. The Calais hotel uses Damana bathroom products; the Paris one, Maison Francis Kurkdjian. Like much of Calais, Hôtel Meurice was destroyed in World War II before being rebuilt in a rationalist style in the 1950s. A sweeping staircase leads from the open plan ground floor reception to bedrooms on upper floors overlooking a walled garden to the rear.

Tags charles augustin meurice, damana, jardin tuileries, lavenders blue, maison francis kurkdjian, meurice hotel calais, meurice hotel paris, parc richelieu, philippe starck, stuart blakley

Architecture Art Country Houses Design Developers Fashion Hotels Luxury People Restaurants

The Gunton Arms Thorpe Market + West Runton Beach Norfolk

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date July 23, 2024
10 Comments on The Gunton Arms Thorpe Market + West Runton Beach Norfolk

Why Bee Aye Ate Al

It’s so exclusive there’s a two month waiting list for a weekend meal and a six month wait for a bedroom. There’s a no vehicle policy – a green path crosses 400 hectares of rolling parkland to the front porch (the car park is hidden behind a copse). It has one of the finest private collections of contemporary art in Britain. The ground floor rooms are decorated by England’s best known restaurant designer. The owner is married to an American supermodel. Welcome to The Gunton Arms. Cheers!

The story starts in 1982 when property developer Kit Martin, businessman Charles Harbord-Hamond and art dealer Ivor Braka purchased the Gunton Park Estate and restored the buildings and land. The main house, Charles’s family home, was carved into several properties. Kit’s father Sir Leslie Martin ran the Department of Architecture at the University of Cambridge along with Sir Colin St John “Sandy” Wilson in the Modernist mid 20th century.

The Gunton Arms, a long low two storey building faced with grey stone and decorated with fretwork gables, was originally Steward’s Farm, a shooting lodge attached to Gunton Hall. In 2011, Ivor launched The Gunton Arms, a pub with 16 bedrooms, in the Victorian building and the rest is history. Or at least a new chapter of history.

Jonathan Meades writes in The Plagiarist in the Kitchen (2017), “Nothing needs reinterpreting. Nothing needs a ‘twist’. The wheel has already been invented. The best a cook can do is improve on what’s there – that usually means stripping out redundant ingredients. It means going back to the very foundations, of starting from zero in order to reach a point that has been reached many times before.” The menu at this pub takes a leaf out of Jonathan’s book. There may be dishes like Portwood asparagus and feta salad with shallot dressing on the menu but traditional pub grub like cod fishfingers with chips and mushy peas also makes an appearance.

Knightsbridge based Ivor explains, “I’m closely involved but not every day. Luckily I took the advice of Mark Hix, former Head Chef of Le Caprice, J Sheekey and The Ivy among others. Mark effectively gave me his Head Chef Stuart Tattersall and Simone, Stuart’s partner, to take on my first pub. They’d wanted to start their own pub in the country but decided under Mark’s encouragement to join me.” Steaks are cooked on an open fire. St Véran burgundy tops the wine list.

Who better to do an impromptu tour of the pub artwork than the owner himself? His story. “What is common to all of the pieces is that they are made by people who have a passionate commitment to what they create. They are not for decoration only to just be easy on the eye; they are to stimulate, to provoke thought and to evoke emotion.” The list of artists reads like a guide to 20th and 21st century art from figuration to abstraction: Frank Auerbach, David Bailey, Tom of Finland, Lucian Freud, Gilbert and George, Damien Hirst.

But Ivor doesn’t neglect local and historic connections either: “At high level over the wood panelling in the entrance hall there are photographs relating to the history of Gunton, Gunton Hall and especially the Suffield family and its connection with the Royal Family and Lillie Langtry, the actress and mistress of the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII. Langtry was the most celebrated beauty of her day. Whilst the Prince of Wales was staying at Gunton Hall she stayed at the shooting lodge to be close to him.” The current Prince of Wales frequents the pub. History repeating itself. “To one side of the front door is a work by Hans Peter Feldmann, an artist who specialises in adding the unexpected to old paintings he has found in antique shops. Here, he has given a formally posed 19th century lady a black eye, a clear reference to domestic violence. It’s a picture that’s comic but with obvious serious intent.” History, updated.

The Elk Room is the main bar and restaurant. Ivor says, “This room is dominated by the massive fossilised skull of a Giant Irish Elk, the largest deer that ever lived. It was found in a peat bog in Ireland and is over 10,000 years old. I bought it at an auction in Ireland and it was formerly in Adare Manor, a Gothic house designed by Pugin for the Earl of Dunraven.” Like several major Irish country houses, such as Carton in County Kildare, Adare Manor in County Limerick is now a five star hotel resort.

“In the corner of the room are a series of lithographs depicting alcoholic women and their children by Paula Rego. Born in Portugal but working all her life in England, Rego is regarded as one of Britain’s most distinguished artists. Her work has a dark humour and complexity of purpose redolent of the tragicomic vision of Goya or Cervantes. These lithographs are the result of a request from a wine producer to design memorable labels for their product. Rego responded by letting her imagination run riot with this series focusing on lonely women with babies desperately turning to drink.” The company never did use them. Too memorable.

The Elk Room flows into The Emin Room. “Addiction is again a running theme in this interior: the addiction to love and emotional need which comes over strongly in Tracey Emin’s three neon works Trust Me, I Said Don’t Practice On Me, and Everything for Love,” Ivor relates. “All these works directly convey a need for sincerity, for total emotional commitment and a huge fear of the possibility of the lack of it. The neons are executed in the artist’s elegantly distinctive forward sloping handwriting. To me, Tracey Emin, with her total dedication to her work and her directness, is one of the most impressive artists working today.” Martin Brudnizki designed the downstairs rooms; Robert Kime, the upstairs.

Racy humour is all around. Falling Leaves by Jonathan Yeo, famous for his red portrait of Charles III, is actually a collage of cutouts from porn magazines. Ivor jokes it’s “clitorati”. As a male appendage counterpart, a metal doorknob drops the K. There’s a chromatically vivid image by British photographer Miles Aldridge of the Buffalo New York born supermodel Kristen McMenamy. She rose to success in the 1990s with her ethereal alternate beauty. Kristen is a Donatella Versace favourite and friend of Linda Evangelista.

Yet there’s also serious commentary. He finishes, “Kitaj constantly involves his Jewishness in his art and this small portrait derives from a famous photograph of Hitler’s admirer and Nazi sympathiser Unity Mitford. Kitaj is deliberately implicating the English upper classes with antisemitism and an admiration for the German fascist regime.” History must not repeat itself.

“I will defend the fashion world to the end because I know it personally,” opines Kristen, who is Ivor’s wife. “From the outside it might look like a vanity project of marketing and capitalism. But from the inside it’s a lot of great people. I don’t think I was specially phenomenal looking – because I wasn’t. I had to work a little bit harder than the others. You look at some girls and they’re just so incredibly beautiful. But some of those beautiful girls don’t last because they don’t have something, that magic. I would say with the top girls you gotta have something more than just the way you look.”

The following morning, a stroll along the windswept West Runton Beach, which as the crow flies is about as close to Amsterdam as London, waves splashing “barely suggestive of the violence of the deep” (James Baldwin, Another Country, 1963), is like being immersed in an Edward Seago watercolour. Now that’s another artist whose work should be hung at The Gunton Arms. Just saying.

Architects Architecture Art Design Developers Hotels Luxury People Restaurants Town Houses

Hôtel Atlantic + La Liégeoise Restaurant Wimereux

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date July 7, 2024

Toto Le Chien

Daniel Lehmann is President of Jeunes Restaurateurs which brings together 390 high end restaurants and 160 hotels across the Continent. The organisation has 25 French members. He relates, “Facing the sea is the pretty town of Wimereux. La Liégeoise is the gastronomic restaurant of a luxurious hotel, Atlantic. This family establishment is run by the great Chef Benjamin Delpierre and his wife Aurélie. Here, Chef Benjamin offers delicious seafood dishes and innovative cuisine awarded a star in the Michelin Guide. You can dine in the dining room, on the terrace or opt for the hotel’s brasserie, L’Aloze.” Or you can sip at the bar of L’Aloze: cocktails and mocktails; boissons fraîches and boissons chaudes.

Aurélie adds, “Our gourmet restaurant La Liégeoise will leave you with unforgettable memoires. The room impresses with its decoration and panorama of the sea. The food is a perfect mastery of preparation and cooking.” The couple met at the Paris Ritz while working for the two Michelin starred Michel Roth. Benjamin was a graduate of the Lycée Hôtelier du Touquet, a leading hotel school in Paris. They took over the running of the hotel and restaurant in 2019. Benjamin’s parents had bought the hotel in 1995. Alain and Beatrice Delpierre relocated their 13 year old restaurant La Liégeoise from Boulogne-sur-Mer to Wimereux.

Arther Eperon, a Kent resident, reviewed the hotel for The New York Times in 1972, before the Delpierres took over: “If you take the old coast road from Calais, over the cliffs from which Napoléon and Hitler both looked across the Channel and dreamed frustratedly of invading England … Just down the coast is Wimereux, a little resort that resembles a faded print of around 1913; you expect the children shrimping among the rocks to wear sailor suits. The old Atlantic Hotel fits the setting – it has only 10 bedrooms, and there are umbrellas and tables on the pathway promenade where you take aperitifs. But the Atlantic is known to gourmets for its fish menu. The turbot and sole are magnificent, the chausson de crabe (local crabmeat in a flaky pastry) has earned the little hotel high rankings with international guides, and there is an unusual pâte of sea bass in pastry that is delicious.”

Hôtel Atlantic opened in the 1920s and its distinctive Art Deco façade with a central arched frame soon became a focal point of the promenade. In 1938 Chef Patron Michel Hamiot launched a popular rotisserie restaurant in the hotel, a forerunner to La Liégeoise. The back of the hotel was damaged in World War II and the front in the 1980s by a coastal storm. In 2003, the original 10 bedrooms were supplemented by another eight in a new top storey and adjoining terraced house. Most of the bedrooms have a balcony or terrace.

The joy of having a first floor restaurant is the uninterrupted view across the Strait of Dover. Dining one day after the summer solstice only enhances the experience. Just as all 18 bedrooms have sea views, so every table has one too in the stepped restaurant. A hush descends under the chapiteau ceiling as everyone watches agog while the amber sun sets on the horizon, at first reflected, then submerged, then disappearing into the opal hued sea. The surprise cheeseboard arrives and dinner continues as darkness falls.

Tags alain delpierre, aloze, arther eperon, aurelie delpierre, beatrice delpierre, chef benjamin delpierre, daniel lehmann jeunes restaurateurs, hotel atlantic wimereux, la liegeoise restaurant, lavenders blue, michel hamiot, michel roth, stuart blakley

Architecture Country Houses Hotels

The Eccles Family + Bel-Air Hotel Ashford Wicklow + Ecclesville Fintona Tyrone

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date May 2, 2024
6 Comments on The Eccles Family + Bel-Air Hotel Ashford Wicklow + Ecclesville Fintona Tyrone

The Writing on the Wall

Is Ashford the Los Angeles of Ireland? No. But it does have its very own Bel-Air. Mansion, not zip code. Originally called Cronroe, Bel-Air in County Wicklow not surprisingly got its name from an early 20th century American owner, clearly feeling homesick. The original name lives on in nearby Cronroe Lane. Right from the get go, it’s had a back yard for dilettantish partying. In the 18th century, fairs were held on the real estate. Tents erected, punch and whiskey sold, and a good time had by all. A forerunner of Glastonbury or Electric Picnic. These days, the party is more likely to be indoors.

Missing from Mark Bence-Jones’ Irish country house guide, here’s the architectural summation. The current house harks back to 1890. Period. Typical of the twilight moments of the 19th century, extreme Victoriana is clearly on the wane allowing the early plainer trappings of Edwardiana to emerge. Red brick has given way to grey render. Detailing is concentrated on the entrance: a gabled campanile rising past the hipped roofs forms a pyramidal silhouette. The timber panelled double front door below a large plain fanlight is framed by floral capped columns. Segmental arched two pane sash windows are either single, in couples or threesomes. Some are set in canted or boxy days. Stepping inside, the timber staircase takes off with great gusto. Not quite Lissan House in County Tyrone; nevertheless a flight of fancy.

It all really got going in 1716 when Sir John Eccles, the Collector of the Port of Dublin, arrived. He was descended from the Scottish Barony of Eccles. Settling down, his son Hugh built the original house in 1750. An Eccles generation or two later, Cronroe was sold to Julius Casement in 1862. After it was burned down in the 1880s, Julius built the present house. A rather better known relative was his cousin Sir Roger Casement. Roger spent many summer vacations at Cronroe. Outbuildings and stables with light Gothick touches appear to predate the house.

In 1934 its American owner Nicholas Burns took over. Despite selling the house to the Murphy family just three years later, the name stuck. Tim and Bridie Murphy converted Bel-Air into a hotel and riding school with the help of their three daughters Ena, Ita and Fidelma. In 1980 Fidelma and her husband Bill Freeman took over. A third generation of siblings Aileen, Margaret, Noni and William now run the show. It’s perfect for a house party; no carriages required. Disco in the drawing room. Speakeasy in the library. Encapsulation of feeling in the bedroom.

William Murphy explains, “This is a home rather than just a hotel. It’s full of history too. There are ghosts – but they’re all good! The painting over the hall fireplace is of Lady Casement. She appears to be watching everything going on around her. My mother was redecorating a bedroom and uncovered Roger Casement’s signature under the wallpaper. She had his signature certified – it’s protected now in a glass display on the wall. The poet Seamus Heaney was a regular at Bel-Air and spent time writing here. We’ve a 200 acre farm and 50 horses.”

It’s still very much a country house so Bel-Air although it stopped operating as a hotel in 2019. Not even a modern extension. The same can’t be said for an Eccles manor north of the Black Pig’s Dyke. Ecclesville in Fintona, County Tyrone, was the seat of another branch of the Barony. Two refined early Georgian main elevations were placed at right angles to each other like Castle Grove in County Donegal: a six bay slightly asymmetric entrance front and a five bay symmetric garden front. Breakfronts, dentil corniced setbacks and ground floor windows set in blind segmental arches gave rhythm and subtle character. The interior was equally fine, especially the plasterwork in the interlinked drawing room and music room.

The last owner of Ecclesville was the rather jolly cross dressing multi barrelled man about town Raymond Saville Connolly de Montmorency Lecky-Browne-Lecky. His chauffeur driven two toned green Austin 16 was often spotted around Fintona and nearby Omagh. Clad in his trademark mauve suits, a penchant for performing convinced him to convert a barn into a theatre. He died in 1961 aged 80, leaving his estate to the nation. Three centuries of heirlooms were auctioned by Ross’s Auctioneers of Belfast raising £23,500. No buyer was found for the house and after a stint as a nursing home, it was demolished in 1978. Traces of Ecclesville still remain. The name lives on in the Ecclesville Equestrian Centre built on the estate. Its entrance piers and sweep of railings are mostly intact. A salvaged stone Eccles family arms dated 1703 which was placed over the front door of the house is on an outbuilding.

At the top of Church Street in Fintona, rising out of the overgrown cemetery of the medieval ruins of the old Church of Ireland church is a statue of a female clinging to a cross. On its plinth are the words: “In memory of my beloved husband John Stuart Eccles of Ecclesville County Tyrone who died 24 April 1886 aged 38 years. Eldest son of the late Charles Eccles Esq who died 4 November 1869. Also of my two infant boys. This monument is erected by his sorrowing widow. ‘Suffer little children to come onto me and forbid them not; for such is the Kingdom of God.’” The widow is buried beneath the statue: “This tablet has been placed here by Rose and Dosie Eccles in memory of their beloved mother Frances Caroline Eccles who died 12 February 1887.” A stone dog guards her final resting place. Down the hill of Church Street, an old photograph of Ecclesville stands on the mantlepiece of Jack’s coffee shop. Bel-Air and Ecclesville: two houses, an overlapping family history, sashes and Casements, two fates.

Tags barony of eccles, bel air ashford wicklow, bel air equestrian centre ashford wicklow, cronroe, ecclesville equestrian centre, ecclesville fintona, electric picnic, jacks coffee shop fintona, lavenders blue, lissan house, nicholas burns, sir john eccles, sir roger casement, stuart blakley, william murphy

Architecture Art Design Hotels Luxury People Restaurants

Hôtel Le Bristol Paris + Café Antonia

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date April 24, 2024
7 Comments on Hôtel Le Bristol Paris + Café Antonia

La Façon Dont Nous Vivons Maintenant

There aren’t very many good architecture critics and there aren’t very many good restaurant critics and there certainly aren’t very many critics who know their onion domes as well as their onions. Jonathan Meades is one. Café Antonia in Hôtel Le Bristol is too new to have been included in his lively 2002 Restaurant Guide but, to give you a flavour, he critiques three of our all time Parisian favourites. Way back in 2008 we hit one of the French Capital’s most vertigo inducing restaurants: Le Jules Verne, Eiffel Tower, which he awarded 7 sur 10. “The immediate views of this vertical Forth Bridge are captivating. And even were the restaurant situated at street level, it would still be worth patronising. The cooking is precise, considered, mostly balanced. Haughtily offhand service.” Le Jules Verne was where we first tasted the delights of the vineyard of St Véran which would become our tipple of choice at the Oxford and Cambridge Club London.

A few years later, Parisienne socialite Maud Rabanne introduced us to her regular and we haven’t stopped revisiting it since: Le Meurice, Rue de Rivoli, 8 sur 10. “The hotel is a Versailles for the bourgeoise. The building is so large, so labyrinthine, and there is just so much of everything – marble, glass, mirror, gold – that cornucopia soon becomes the norm. The dining room is staffed by several armies of tailed waiters and equipped with no end of trolleys and incendiary devices. The cooking excels when it tends toward the down-home – rather incongruous in such a setting – but disappoints when going in for conventional grand hotel stuff. There’s one problem: the pianist. Shoot?”

Memorably, the day after Notre Dame went up in smoke, we lunched in L’Orangerie, one of three restaurants in the Four Seasons George V, Avenue George V, 10 sur 10. “The George V should really be called the Louis after Louis the decorator. Containerloads of tapestries, gilded console tables, marble busts, rococo mirrors and so on have been brought from Rue St Honoré. The place is bursting with everything save self restraint. It does without saying that the restaurant does swell lines in pomp and neo directoire pediments. Two sorts of salt, two sorts of butter, absolutely no chance of pouring your own wine. The cooking is sumptuous, magnificent, not least because it quite lacks the chichi that mars much hotel cooking. Wines: predictably big names at predictably big prices.”

And that brings us on rather nicely to a big name of the landscaping world. They don’t come much bigger than the Italian born Pimlico office based Lady Arabella Lennox-Boyd. She hasn’t looked back since studying landscape architecture at Thames Polytechnic. In 2018, the then 82 year old was commissioned to redesign Le Bristol’s courtyard garden. “I wanted to get away from the usual hotel good taste with the ubiquitous formal white and green theme.” Instead, she introduced a pastoral idea combining topiary with loose plantings and flowing grasses. “A countryside feeling in the city.” She also wanted “a sense of mystery so that the garden cannot be seen in its entirety from any one point”.

While the façade of Le Bristol is a serious urban presence in stone, the inner facing elevations are light creamy stucco. What would have been a blank party wall in the courtyard garden has been given the green treatment. Forget a mere green wall. This is more like a two storey green mountain of layered planting towering behind first floor level pyramidal topiary set perpendicular to the courtyard garden.

“It was quite unconventional for a Roman girl whose role it was to get married and produce children and maybe have a job as a lawyer. Instead of which I’m in gardens doing manual work and dealing with soil. I have a feel for plants; I have a connection. I sometimes put myself in their shoes: if I was them what would I want?” She smiles, “You’re never too old!”

The landscape designer selected flora native to the greater Paris region or France more broadly, including European beech and hornbeam, Gladwin iris and hart’s tongue fern. “I included plants that provide shelter and nectar in all seasons. This garden is colonised by nature.” Rectangular black slate fountains add to this sensory driven garden. “Designing a garden is like painting with plants but there is so much more to consider. I am proud to have created a space where things are planted according to their natural habitat.” Her little black book includes King Philippe and Queen Mathilde of Belgium, the Duke and Duchess of Westminster, and of course the Oetker family who own Le Bristol.

Lady Arabella’s great chum Countess Bergit Douglas, a relative of the Oetkers, masterminded the Louis XVI interior design of the three Haussmannesque buildings that make up Le Bristol. The hotel has never looked better since Hippolyte Jammet (great name!) opened it in 1923. He must have been something of an Anglophile, naming his hotel after Frederick Hervey, 4th Earl of Bristol, an 18th century connoisseur of luxury travel. The socialite Lady Victoria Hervey is a descendant although the family have long since lost their seat of Ickworth in Suffolk. The dazzling and dazzlingly talented Josephine Baker and her pet cheetah frequented Le Bristol throughout the Roaring Twenties. After a postwar spell as the American Embassy, the hotel was bought by German businessman Rudolf Oetker in 1978. Then in 2014, our Knightsbridge London hangout The Lanesborough became part of The Oetker Collection. Little wonder Le Bristol feels like a home from home.

C’est le déjeuner sur l’herbe encore une fois. That ultimate Parisienne (if not born one soon became one) is the muse of Café Antonia in Le Bristol. Yes, Marie Antoinette. Her mother’s pet name for her was Antonia. Françoise Ravelle revels in Marie Antoinette Queen of Style and Taste (2017), “She singled out creators who had the knack of lifting their art to the height of perfection, and she became closely involved in the design of her dresses, her furniture and her gardens. In the small kingdom of Marie Antoinette her ministers were her couturiers, cabinetmakers, bronze works and painters.” The 18th century Royals’ painter François-Hubert Drouais’ portrait of Marie Antoinette, part of the private collection of Le Bristol, presides over Café Antonia. Her Majesty was passionate about the arts and loved attending the Opéra de Paris where she could escape the Court’s strict etiquette. Café Antonia reflects this sophisticated yet informal outlook, flowing from an expansive drawing room through French doors into the courtyard garden.

Françoise Ravelle reveals, “Perhaps Marie Antoinette’s personal touch is her association with a forever bygone epoch, described by her artist friend Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, ‘Women reigned at the time – the Revolution dethroned them.’” Females are taking central roles at Le Bristol, from the garden creator to the garniture stylist to the beau monde guests. True to form, there are plenty of Catherine Deneuve and Kristin Scott Thomas doppelgangers holding court in Café Antonia making elegance an art form. And some gentlemen of class as well. “De riens, messieurs,” waves our waiter. Lunch is all about crème d’asperges vertes, avocat; oeuf poché sur toast et saumon fumé; and patisserie du jour (chocolat, beaucoup de chocolat!).

Bob Middleton arrives and whisks us off on a whistlestop tour of the hotel. “I am the Manager of 114 which is one of three food offers in Hôtel Le Bristol excluding the banqueting and the room service. The name comes from its address: 114 Rue du Faubourg St-Honoré. We opened in 2009 and the restaurant has one Michelin star since 2013. There is also the three Michelin star restaurant Epicure overlooking the courtyard garden. Vincent Schmit is our Head Chef in 114 and he is assisted by 25 people who work in the kitchen. Then we have 30 people who work in the restaurant itself. We have a great place, we have a great team, we have great customers, what more can I say?” Vincent Schmit waves up from the lower level kitchen. “Bonne journée!”

And how would Jonathan Meades mark Café Antonia? Bien sûr 10 sur 10.

Art Design Hotels Luxury People Town Houses

Hôtel Le Temple de Jeanne Paris et Les Mecs

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date April 20, 2024

Et Puis le Printemps Est Arrivé

Paris is the friendliest city ever. It does help if you’re beautiful photographing well from every angle and speak a little French. Who said the medieval era was all about torture? Named after Queen Jeanne de Bourbon wife of Charles V, Hôtel Le Temple de Jeanne proves it wasn’t all bad. We’re doing Paris! But first there’s a quadruple upgrade to the quarter hectare bedroom (in relative Parisian terms) to be had.

Tags hotel temple de jeanne paris

Art Design Hotels Luxury People Restaurants Town Houses

The Standard Hotel King’s Cross London + Decimo Restaurant

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date April 4, 2024

Post Vernal Equinox

After the elevating experience of Messiah in the Royal Albert Hall we’re off again to The Standard, a short cab ride away in King’s Cross. Fusion food or at least that of twinned origin is the whole rage right now. Japanese Peruvian is still going strong at Nobu Park Lane. Mexican Japanese at Azteca Öme has just opened on Battersea Rise. And then there’s Spanish Mexican at Decimo reflecting the Michelin starred Bristolian Chef Peter Sanchez-Iglesias’s family heritage. “Decimo” is Spanish for 10th. We’re back in the red bubble lift to the 10th (of course) floor.

We have friends in high places: all the staff greet us like long lost relatives thanks to a rather lively party in the hotel on the Monday of the same week. “More Veuve Cliquot?” You mightn’t have to be a model to work here but it certainly helps. The best table in the house, the southwest windowed corner, is even better this evening thanks to a golden sun setting over the rooftops below. The cacti and beading of the Andalusian meets Pacific Coastal interior is all aglow.

How can such simple ingredients taste so good? The clarity of the evolving tablescape just emphasises the perfection of the food: smoky marinated red peppers on a marble block; spicy monkfish and pimentón on a wooden board covered with parchment paper. There is bread and oil and there is Decimo bread and oil. Same goes for the fried potations and alioli. Pear with Foursquare spiced rum (Trés Leché) deserves a Michelin star in its own right. This restaurant is next level.

Tags azteca ome battersea rise, chef peter sanchez Iglesias, decimo restaurant standard hotel kings cross london, lavenders blue, nobu park lane, stuart blakley

Art Design Hotels Luxury People Restaurants

Four Seasons Hotel Park Lane London + Pavyllon Restaurant Afternoon Tea

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date March 29, 2024

A Why for an Eye

“Time, the great surprise. The tribulations of disguise,” cries musician, fashionista and philanthropist Daphne Guinness. In contrast to the Japanese Peruvian fusion of its neighbour Nobu, Pavyllon restaurant in the Four Seasons is all about Anglo French old school glamour. Park Lane is the second most valuable address in the London edition of the board game Monopoly, only beaten by the adjacent Mayfair. Inn on the Park London which would later be renamed Four Seasons opened in 1970. It was the group’s first European hotel, having started in Toronto nine years earlier. The architect was the Austrian born American Michael Rosenauer who had offices in London and New York.

The 11 storey 193 bedroom hotel has been materially and metaphorically elevated into the 21st century by the crack team of Reardon Smith (structural rebuild), Eric Parry (rooftop spa and Presidential Suite extension), Pierre-Yves Rochon (public areas interiors), Tara Bernerd (guest rooms and suites interiors) and Chahan Minassian (Pavyllon restaurant and Bar Antoine interiors). The first stuffed morels with duxelles sweetbread were still warm when Chef Yannick Alléno scooped up a Michelin star for Pavyllon (and his own 17th), the launch of the British expression of his trademark French cooking. Daphne Guinness: “You can blow out the candle in this chimera of time to end the beginning transcending a new paradigm.”

The design of Pavyllon and the adjoining Bar Antoine are all about blocks and stripes of calming colours to generate a Parisian apartment meets London club ambience. And a touch of Manhattan sophistication: Park Avenue reborn as Park Lane. Murano chandeliers comprising interlocking Cs designed by Chahan illuminate marble and lacquered panelling to establish a sense of understated luxury. New York artist Peter Lane’s pair of ceramic stoneware sculptures in a verdigris glaze pay homage to Michael Rosenauer’s penchant for incorporating artworks into his designs. At his Grade II* Listed Time and Life Building on Bruton Street, Mayfair, completed in 1954, the architect inserted an open base relief by Henry Moore on the second floor elevation.

Born in 1961 in Lebanon, Chahan’s family moved to France when he was 15. After a stint as European Creative Director for Ralph Lauren, he launched Chahan Interior Design in 1993. “Monochromes and textures mark a lot of my interiors,” he discloses. He always has more than 20 projects on the go, involving four to eight international flights a week. “Those days get intense between site visits, overlooking floorplans and designs, planning schedules and designing along the way. No lunch breaks. I read my 350 to 450 emails on my phone and manage to coordinate answers between my team and suppliers. I dine around 10am and sleep at 2am after catching up on work reports.”

Afternoon tea in Chanan’s relaxation inducing environment might cost an arm and a leg but life is for living. A breeze of staff in sandstone hued uniforms serve pistachio then sunflower seed nibbles. The well trodden afternoon tea sequence has variations on the theme. It’s all about differentiation in London five stars, whether The Goring’s Pink Panther with its bottomless curried cauliflower sandwiches or Sanderson’s Mad Hatter’s and its cuckoo cakes. Three finger sandwiches are oak smoked salmon sandwich with shiso butter and teriyaki sauce; Hafod cheddar sandwich with tomato condiment and spring onion; and devilled egg with watercress and mayo. Petite cubic scones come with raspberry compote, orange marmalade and vanilla cream.

Pastries are apple coriander tartlet (green apple ganache, pickles, black lemon); Jaffa cake (orange, caramel); marble cake (vanilla, chocolate, gianduja); mini baba (cachaça, mint, lemon); pavlova (sugar free meringue, fruit); and vanilla caramel cookie (almond praline, hazelnut). Moonlight Yunnan white tea proves to be the perfect accompaniment to the savouries and sweets. What better way to spend a Saturday afternoon in early spring? Daphne Guinness would approve: “Life is a dance and time is the key from the dawn of creation to the twilight of humanity.”

Tags architect michael rosenauer, bar antoine, chahan interior design, chahan minassian, chef yannick alleno, daphne guinness, eric parry, four seasons hotel park lane london, lavenders blue, nobu, pavyllon restaurant afternoon tea, peter lane, pierre yves rochon, reardon smith, stuart blakley, tara bernerd

Architecture Art Design Hotels Luxury People Restaurants

The Lanesborough Hotel Knightsbridge London + The Garden Room

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date March 20, 2024

This Room’s On Fire

We’re back in town and we mean business. Straight off the hot mess express. Owning it. Cutting deals. Not just gadding about. Chop chop. We’re pumped up and pimped up between the plumped up poshness. In a basement next to the bright lights’ busiest roundabout. Sounds glam? It’s The Lanesborough’s Garden Room, darlings. Antiques and antics, busts and bust ups, teas and tiaras.

“A sky full of stars a room full of cigars,” postdebutante Annabel P wistfully murmurs before sinking behind the smoky haze into a Napoléon II club chair. The Garden Room’s impeccable Manager Neil Millington and his team are on it like a Selina Blow bonnet in this exclusive Cuba-on-Thames. “I’m going to keep the table as authentic as possible.” Bolney Estate Bacchus magically appears and reappears. Bad Pollyanna. Bad. And a legacy’s worth of Hoyo de Monterreys. “There are three cuts: punch, straight and V.”

Fresh from VIP seats applauding the thrillingly talented singer Noah Francis Johnson (the late Dodi Fayed’s brother-in-law) bring the (Soho) house down in White City (London not Tel Aviv), we’d glided past a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II en route to The Garden Room. Her painted lips parted: “We are so bemused.” An image of Salisbury’s Wilton House carried our reflection. People do say we’re a pair of oil paintings. “Welcome back!” chime Neil and his cohort each time we re-enter The Garden Room. Standing to attention of course. You can get the staff these days.

“When the party’s over and the lights go on …” sang Noah. This party’s only getting started so keep those lights dim!

Tags bolney estate bacchus, dodi fayed, garden room, hoyo de monterrey cigars, lanesborough hotel knightsbridge london, lavenders blue, manager neil millington, napolean iii, noah francis johnson, selina blow, soho house jaffa, soho house white city, stuart blakley, wilton house salisbury

Architects Architecture Art Country Houses Design Developers Hotels Luxury People Restaurants Town Houses

The Wilder Townhouse Hotel Dublin + Gráinne Weber

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date March 16, 2024

Incomplete Madness

Arriving at the west facing hotel on a sunny March evening is simply glorious. Doughnuts on demand in the new light filled conservatory and adjoining terrace. In contrast to the stuccoed pairs of Regency villas on the other side of Harcourt Terrace, The Wilder Townhouse is red brick Victorian. It’s a slightly wonky L shape in plan. Designed by architect James Hargrave Bridgford, the building has a long and complicated history. A Church of Ireland notice summarises its unusual genesis:

“The Asylum for Aged Governesses and Other Unmarried Ladies, first opened AD 1838. The only one in Ireland. Proposed new house, Harcourt Terrace, Dublin. In a former circular we gave an elevation of the proposed house, having four storeys, which was objected to as having rooms at such a distance from the entrance hall, that the ascent of the staircase to the upper rooms would be very trying for old and infirm people. We have, accordingly, modified our plan, which will be much more convenient in every way, and we have secured a plot of ground which gives us ample space for all sanitary and commodious arrangements, but the cost will be considerably more than for the original plan. We obtained four estimates from competent builders, and the lowest was £2,800 for the whole building; having, however only £1,600 in hand, and being determined to avoid debt, we have decided to build only the first block shown in the above drawing, with the portion of the wing included within the lines AB and CD. After this is done, we shall wait on the Lord for the means of completing the structure, which, when finished, will be all that can be desired. Subscriptions are earnestly solicited and will be thankfully received by the Trustees, or any Member of the Committee, whose names and addresses are given. Cheques and post office money orders to be made payable to Miss Eliza Meredyth.”

And a quote from Blackrock, County Dublin, based architect Gráinne Weber explaining its latest reincarnation: “Following on from work on Frankie Whelehan’s sister property, the Montenotte Hotel in Cork City, we were asked to take a look at a former residential institutional building on Harcourt Terrace and Adelaide Road in Dublin. A Victorian Protected Structure, it had planning permission for apartments but our client wished to develop it as a hotel. We achieved planning permission for a 42 bedroom guesthouse from An Bord Pleanála as architects for the project and proceeded to substantially upgrade the building’s shell and core: from there went on to create an interior which was modern yet sensitive to the building’s heritage.”

Hôtel Les Bains in Paris and Ham Yard Hotel in London provided two sources of inspiration for the interior design. House of Hackney wallpapers, Matthew Williamson fabrics and contemporary paintings reinvigorate the period interiors. The original inhabitants could only dream of today’s rainforest showers in marble bathrooms and Maison Margiela toiletries. Rooms are of course named after governesses who resided here: for example, the Miss Wade Suite was named after Charlotte Wade whose name appears in the 1911 Census. The Lady Jane Room is named in honour of Jane Harrison, Jane Jeffers and Jane Mercer who also all appeared in the 1911 Census. It’s also an acronym of the owner’s wife and daughters’ names: Josephine, Aoife, Niamh and Eimear. Records reveal 19 governesses were evicted down the years for being quarrelsome.

Gráinne’s client Frankie Whelehan expands the story, “What I was trying to achieve was something a bit different: a bespoke guesthouse with limited food and beverage, catering for a niche market that is under represented in Dublin. The name Wilder is a little bit of playacting because we are focusing on the international market coming to Dublin and Oscar Wilde is synonymous with the city. It’s all about experience. A notice in the deeds calls it ‘a home for bewildered women’ so we had that it mind too when naming the hotel.” The reception helpfully supplies a factsheet on governesses:

· They were employed to teach and train children in private middle and upper class households. The majority were Protestant; in the 1861 Census, 74 percent of Irish governesses were Protestant.

· In contrast to nannies, governesses concentrated on teaching children rather than catering for their physical needs.

· From the 1840s to 1860s, governesses accounted for 10 percent of the total teaching force.

· The profession began to decline at the end of the 19th century when schools became more common.

· The Governess Association of Ireland was established in 1869 on 3 Lower Leeson Street. It provided a two year course and an examination in Trinity College. Once completed, a certificate of proficiency helped to push for better wages.

· The average salary was £40 to £60 per annum but certified governesses could earn up to £80 a year.

· Governesses often didn’t have pensions and could end up homeless or in workhouses.

· The Asylum for Aged Governesses and Other Unmarried Ladies served a great need.

Last used as artists’ studios, the planning permission for hotel use granted by Dublin City Council was subject to a third party appeal in 2017 by neighbours on Harcourt Terrace. Inspector Jane Dennehy found in favour of the applicant: “The proposed development would not be seriously injurious to the integrity, character and visual amenities and setting the existing building, a Protected Structure, would not be seriously injurious to the architectural character, visual amenities and residential amenities of the residential Conservation Area and would be acceptable in terms of traffic and public safety and convenience, and would be in accordance with the proper planning and sustainable development of the area.” The Wilder Townhouse finally opened in 2018.

The February 2024 edition of Business Plus magazine reports: “In the 11 month period to November 2023, Dublin achieved the highest hotel occupancy rate, 83 percent, out of 35 European markets. Dublin also ranked seventh highest in terms of Revenue Per Available Room. Dublin has circa 25,860 hotel bedrooms. By comparison, the Stockholm hotel bedroom stock is about 39,000 while Amsterdam has a total stock of around 42,000. Dublin has fewer bedrooms than both comparably sized cities, despite having the fastest growing economy in Europe.” The Wilder Townhouse provides 42 of the very best bedrooms Dublin has to offer.

Tags architect james hargrave bridgford, frankie whelehan, grainne weber architect, ham yard hotel london, harcourt terrace, hotel les bains paris, house of hackney, lavenders blue, maison margiela, matthew williamson, montenotte hotel cork, stuart blakley, wilder townhouse hotel dublin

Architecture Design Developers Hotels Luxury People Restaurants Town Houses

Wilde Restaurant + The Westbury Hotel Dublin

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date March 15, 2024

Come What May

Oscar Wilde: “I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.” A walk down O’Connell Street and beyond is a walk down memory lane. Dublin is full of ghosts of built and once human form. Clery’s department store closed in 2015. Across the River Liffey, and up Grafton Street, there used to be two department stores facing one another. Switzer’s, once owned by Mohammed Al Fayad, disappeared in 1990 while Brown Thomas has kept going. In 2021, the Weston family sold Brown Thomas and Selfridges in London for a few billion euro to a Thai and Austrian consortium.

Tucked behind Grafton Street, Powerscourt Townhouse Centre is comfortingly still intact as the city’s most original shop and restaurant destination. Once the urban seat of the Wingfield family, it’s full of the exuberant 18th century plasterwork made popular by the Italian Francini brother stuccodores. Walking over the uneven Georgian floorboards along the galleries has the unsteadying feel of being on a slightly rocky ship. Round the corner the only evidence that Odessa bar and restaurant ever existed, never mind being the coolest hangout in town circa 2001, is the sign, and even that’s about to disappear. Also tucked behind Grafton Street is another institution that is very much alive and kicking: The Westbury Hotel, part of The Doyle Collection.

Opened in 1984, this 205 bedroom five star hotel is still highly recognisable even after several multimillion euro renovations. The first floor restaurant Wilde overlooks Balfe Street below. A conservatory was added to the restaurant during one of the renovations. The 90s apricot colour scheme, linen tablecloths and synchronised cloche lifting have all long gone. In their place is a chintz free interior and informal vibe. Cane chairs, fern patterned cushions, botanical prints and tiled floor are all reminders this is definitely conservatory dining. Or rather lunching.

Dublin’s most wonderful waitress is an El Salvadorian lawyer. “Over six million people are squeezed into 21,000 square kilometres. It’s the smallest country in Central America,” she relates. “But there are great places to stay on the Pacific coastline. El Tunco beach and La Tibertand port are two of my favourite places. Our nostalgic produce is horchata: it’s a drink made from a blend of spices and seeds such as morro, sesame and peanut. My family own businesses and there used to be a lot of extortion. That’s all gone: the new President and his strict regime clamping down on gangs has been a gamechanger. El Salvador is the first country to have made Bitcoin a legal tender.” It’s time to book flights with United Airlines.

The Berkeley Court Hotel in Ballsbridge, a couple of kilometres south of The Westbury, has not survived. An RTÉ news report broadcast in 1978, “Providing first class comfort for guests is the aim of Dublin’s newest hotel The Berkeley Court. It is the newest hotel owned by Pascal Vincent Doyle. At £25 a night for a single bed, the majority of us will never be able to afford its delights. The 200 bedroom hotel is situated on the corner of Shelbourne Road and Lansdowne Road. Inside, it provides the standard demanded by wealthy American and Continental guests. With an emphasis on first class comfort, the luxury hotel is indicative of the upward trend of tourism in Ireland. The hotel was formally opened by Minister for Tourism and Transport, Padraig Faulkner.” This fellow epitome of late 20th century glamour was demolished in 2016 and replaced by apartments – Ballsbridge is the best residential address in Dublin.

Wilde deserves a Michelin star, or rather Oscar! It’s the best thing since sliced sourdough (of which there is plenty). So how much is lunch per person? Well, the same price as checking in for six nights to The Berkeley Court. Circa 1978. After Wilde, we’ll walk past the Oscar Wilde statue on Merrion Square and then we’ll head to The Wilder Townhouse to get dolled up for a wild (no E) night out in town. But not before Taizé Prayer in Newman University Church on St Stephen’s Green. Oscar Wilde: “Memory … is the diary that we all carry about with us.”

Architects Architecture Art Design Hotels People Town Houses

IDA Global Headquarters + Iveagh Gardens Dublin

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date March 14, 2024

The Green Stuff

Everyone knows St Stephen’s Green in Dublin. But not so many people are aware that its southside buildings back onto Iveagh Gardens, a lower profile yet equally fine park. The brick rear elevations of Newman University Church (a windowless apse), Museum of Literature Ireland (a bow window and a chamfered bay with Gothick windows) and Stauntons on the Green Hotel (a pair of shallow chamfered bays) all rise above the archery grounds.

Iveagh Gardens are entered from the opposite side, off Upper Hatch Street. A new addition to the encircling cityscape, this time facing the park, is the IDA Ireland global headquarters, completed in 2019. Designed by Dublin practice MOLA, the transparent façade is a glacial foil to the verdancy of the gardens. IDA Chief Executive Martin Shanahan says, “The new location at Three Park Place provides IDA Ireland with an excellent location from which to market to global investors.” The IDA was previously located for 35 years at Wilton Place opposite the canal. Wilton Place is being redeveloped to the design of architects Henry John Lyons.

The Anglo Irish Guinness family have done so much for Ireland including Desmond and Mariga Guinness establishing the Irish Georgian Society in 1958. “Without a doubt,” writes Carola Peck in Mariga and Her Friends (1997), “both Desmond and Mariga worked unremittingly and unstintingly to save Dublin’s architectural heritage.” A century earlier, Benjamin Guinness leased Iveagh Gardens to the Dublin Exhibition Palace. The gardens were designed by landscape architect Ninian Niven, merging French Formal and English Landscape styles. His descendent Rupert Guinness 2nd Earl of Iveagh donated the gardens to the nation in 1939. The public – and IDA employees on their lunch break – can still enjoy the one metre high maze, sunken gardens with fountains, archery grounds, rustic grotto and cascade.

Tags benjamin guinness, carola peck mariga and her friends, desmond guinness, ida ireland global headquarters, irish georgian society, iveagh gardens dublin, lavenders blue, martin shanahan, mola architects, newman university church, rupert guinness, st stephens green, stauntons on the green hotel, stuart blakley

Art Design Developers Hotels Luxury People Restaurants Town Houses

The Metropolitan Hotel + Nobu Restaurant Park Lane London

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date February 29, 2024

Still Cool Britannia

“Park Lane is synonymous with worldly riches and fashionable life. Down its entire extent, from where it joins Oxford Street to the point at which it reaches Hamilton Place, great houses jostle each other in bewildering profusion on its eastern side, while on the west lies the Park with its mass of verdure, and, during the season, its kaleidoscopic ever shifting glow of brilliant colour.” Edwin Beresford Chancellor, The Private Palaces of London Past and Present, 1908

The Metropolitan Hotel and The Met Bar opened on Old Park Lane, which is parallel with Hamilton Place, just as Tony and Cherie Blair were entering No.10 Downing Street. Both Mets were an instant hit with celebrities. The bar closed in 2018; the hotel is still going strong. So is Nobu’s first European outpost on the first floor via its own discreet street entrance. The parent London Nobu has been joined by offspring restaurants and hotels in Portman Square and Shoreditch. There are 55 restaurants and 36 hotels in the group internationally now from Dallas to Dubai, San Diego to San Sebastián.

In 1987 Chef Nobu Matsuhisa opened his first restaurant in Beverly Hills. His Japanese Peruvian fusion food reflects his place of birth and place of training. Actor Robert de Niro soon joined him as business partner and together they embarked on world domination. The phrase “signature dish” might as well have been invented for Nobu as every other course is famous.

“I’ve got the best table in the house for you,” beckons the front of house at Nobu Park Lane. Always. The corner window table, the dining equivalent of the C suite. A personalised card with the traditional greeting “Irasshaimase” stands next to the crisply folded linen napkins. The direct view of Hyde Park is framed by the Four Seasons on the left and The Hilton on the right, that comforting proximity of five star luxury all around. The interior is a reminder that nobody ever did minimalism better than the Japanese. Park Lane is still synonymous with worldly riches and fashionable life.

Tags chef nobu matsuhisa, edwin beresford chancellor, hamilton place, lavenders blue, nobu restaurant old park lane london review, stuart blakley

Architects Architecture Art Design Developers Hotels Luxury People Restaurants Town Houses

Boutique Hotel Club + Hotel Heritage Bruges

Post author By Lavender's Blue
Post date February 17, 2024
14 Comments on Boutique Hotel Club + Hotel Heritage Bruges

The Unfolding Star

Ann Plovie of Visit Bruges introduces us to the city, “The winter season represents cosiness and heartwarming moments with family and friends. Warm World Heritage City Bruges lends itself perfectly to this. Come and soak up the atmosphere in the historic setting of charming ‘reien’ (canals), monumental architecture and picturesque streets. Sip a fragrant coffee and enjoy a sharing platter. Discover some universal stories of care and empathy at the renovated Museum St John’s Hospital. The many almshouses also illustrate the care for the citizens of Bruges throughout the centuries.”

The poet Georges Rodenbach melodramatically explains in The Death Throes of Towns (1892) how during its Golden Age the city was once accessible by sea, “Here is how the drama unfolds. Once the town was linked to the sea by the Zwin, which via Damme sent a channel of deep water as far as Bruges, a royal river, where 1700 ships sent by Philip Augustus against the Flemish and English could easily manoeuvre … One day in 1473, however, the North Sea suddenly retreated and as a result the Zwin dried up, without them being able to dredge it clear or reestablish a flow of water; and henceforth, Bruges, now at some distance from that mighty breast of the ocean which had nourished her children, began to bleed dry and for four long centuries lay in the shadow of death.”

That silting would form a quilting, a protective layer, over the historic fabric, like the deliciously preserved Sandwich in Kent, “England’s prettiest town,” according to international tastemaker Charles Plante. The city in aspic would be rediscovered in the 20th century. Architectural historian Dr Roderick O’Donnell reveals, “It was important to the Romantic Catholic archaeological tourists and scholars, especially A W N Pugin, visiting in the 1830s, 1840s and 1850s.” Bruges plays a major role in Alan Hollinghurst’s novel The Folding Star (1994). He admires “the grand brick houses equally steeped in silence and discretion”, calling it a “beautiful little city”.

The house that is now the five star Hotel Heritage is positively recent by Bruges standards having been built in 1869 to the design of architect Louis Delacenserie. The earliest record of a house on this site does though date back to 1390. After a stint as a bank branch of Crédit Général Liégeois, it was converted into a luxury hotel. A new marble staircase and discreet lift were inserted for access to 18 en suite bedrooms on the first and second floors, and above. A top floor was added to provide four junior suites and an intimate roof terrace directly facing the Belfry, one of Bruges’s many landmarks.

As we exit our car we are greeted by name at the entrance porch. Our first floor bedroom has a balcony with horseshoe gaps in the stone balustrade overlooking Niklaas Desparsstraat (a relatively quiet street despite being a waffle’s throw from Grote Markt). Heavy bordered curtains, underbed lighting, underfloor bathroom heating, an iPad, a bowl of fruit and chocolates (this being Belgium), noon checkout … heaven’s in the detail in this European member of the Boutique Hotel Club.

Johan recalls, “In 1992, when we decided to buy and transform the building into Hotel Heritage, several factors contributed to our choice, primarily rooted in the historical significance and architectural charm of the property. The building itself carries a rich history, and we saw an opportunity to preserve and showcase its unique character. Many historic properties like ours often have a story to tell and can offer guests a sense of the past, creating a distinctive and memorable experience. We knew the neoclassical architecture and original details would add a touch of elegance and authenticity, making the hotel stand out. It’s located in the historic district near the cultural attractions.”

“We collaborated with interior designers to create a cohesive design that complements the historic building while providing modern amenities and comfort,” he adds. The first of the reception rooms, a sitting room off the entrance hall, is a cheerful upholstered avenue into another era, one of refinement, sophistication and elegance. Pictures of horses – Coronation, Cotherstone, Mameluke, Margrave, Our Nell, Plenipotentiary, Stockwell, Van Trump – hang on the floral wallpaper of the first dining room. The adjoining second dining room, also with tall windows overlooking Niklaas Desparsstraat, is rich and rightfully red (the hue that stimulates appetite and conversation). Full bodied crystal chandeliers softly illuminate the decorated painted ceilings. Two more clubby style sitting rooms are to the rear of the building, a chessboard and drinks trolley to hand.

Breakfast in the red dining room is both a buffet and table service affair, at once continental and full. It turns out to be one of the best hotel breakfasts we have ever had – and we get around. A vast chariot (trolley is much too humble a word) piled high with cold and hot delicacies dominates the floral dining room. On top of the sideboard are forests of fruit and two different types of cake each morning (apple and marmor today) and – this still being Belgium – three types of chocolate (dark, milk and white). After a Flanders cheeseboard with salmon, yoghurt, cereal, brioches, croissants, mushrooms and tomatoes it’s time for the waiter to up the ante. A spinach amuse bouche arrives followed by the hotel’s speciality poached egg on biscuit wafer. Strawberry and apple juice is in a carafe not a glass. When we lift up our china cups to drink coffee, a red butterfly is revealed on the saucers underneath (more heaven’s in the detail). Our waiter brings a chocolate mousse just in case we’re still hungry. Philippe Mallet Champagne starts the day in style.

“Begin with a visit to the Belfry of Bruges for panoramic views of the city,” Johan advises. We’re on the up. Maybe it’s the 7am Champagne but the two way spiral staircase in the 83 metre high building (equating to over 27 modern storeys) is a trial of balance and navigation. Still, the climb is worth it for the exhilarating view from the bell level gallery. At this height everything appears so homogeneously historic, revivifying Georges Rodenbach’s city of monuments amidst “the pervasive presence of the waters”.

Round a few corners from Hotel Heritage, Poortersloge is a contemporary art gallery serving as an incubator for nascent creative talent in Burghers’ Lodge which was built between 1395 and 1417. Inside, the brilliant white walls and ebon blackness of the ceilings match the monochromatic work of the 12 photographers work on display. The centrepiece of Kwart Voor Nacht (Quarter to Midnight) is a piece by the multidisciplinary Belgian artist Yves Gabriels. It’s a deconstructed biopsy: body parts and clothes fragments are arranged along a swing hanging in front of a hospital curtain. Yves suggests, “I am the surgeon in my anatomical theatre.” He creates skin using a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast. Bruges-la-Morte-Encore-Une-Fois. It’s not for those uneasy in dynamics below mezzoforte. The cadence of the city bells can be heard beyond the huge mullioned windows. In April, the well orchestrated Bruges Triennial will bring contemporary art and installations to the streets as well, hitting all the high notes.

Johan reminisces, “I appreciate the opportunity to reflect on the changes in Bruges since my upbringing in the city. Bruges has undergone a remarkable transformation, blending its rich historical heritage with a growing contemporary vibrancy. One noticeable change is the increasing global recognition and popularity of Bruges as a tourist destination. The city has gracefully embraced this influx, maintaining its charm while accommodating the diverse interests of visitors.”

He concludes, “The preservation efforts and restoration projects have been noteworthy, ensuring that the architectural gems and cultural treasures are meticulously maintained. The revitalisation of public spaces and historic buildings has added a renewed sense of vitality to the city. While change is inevitable, Bruges has admirably retained its enchanting atmosphere, and the community’s commitment to sustainability and cultural preservation has contributed to a city that continues to captivate locals and visitors alike. Overall, witnessing Bruges evolve has been a fascinating journey, and I’m excited to see how the city continues to balance its rich history with the demands of the present and future. I am happy to be able to contribute as a hotelier.” The city continues to unfold, revealing old and added layers of intricacy and delight. A new Golden Age is dawning.

Tags ann plovie bruges tourist office, belfry, boutique hotels club, charles plante, dr roderick odonnell architectural historian, georges rodenbach, hotel heritage bruges, isabelle creytens, johan creytens, kwart voor nacht, lavenders blue, philippe mallet champagne, pooterloge, st johns hospital, stuart blakley, yves gabriels

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