Five things you might not know about Ashford Castle

Ashford Castle, arguably Ireland’s most exclusive hotel, has gone into receivership. Here are five things you might not know about the spectacular joint on the banks of Lough Corrib.

By Shane Breslin

1. It’s a bit like Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory

The place is behind iron gates, and no-one goes in, or no-one comes out. Well, no-one goes in, anyway. Not unless they’re expecting you. That’s because Gerry Barrett, the owner of the place, took the decision in September to install electric gates to keep the great unwashed from pressing their noses against the windows, which are presumably hand-cut from crystal.

Previously, you could take a drive into the resplendent grounds, but with no public bar or restaurant available, you had to content yourself with the view from the outside. Which was mighty impressive. We can only imagine what the inside was like. Literally.

2. That decision caused plenty of local ire. Oh, and Eamon O Cuiv got involved too

By installing those fancy gates, Mr Barrett placed an insurmountable obstacle in front of the impoverished locals, for whom a right of way dated back hundreds of years. And if there’s one thing you don’t do in Ireland, apart from cutting down a hawthorn bush or ploughing up a fairy fort, it’s deny locals a right of way.

A group of 150 people from the Cong area and its surrounds, plus the formerly powerful former Fianna Fail Minister Eamon O Cuiv, convened for a formal protest. The demonstration was the subject of a High Court injunction by the castle owner, but just two months later the whole place goes belly-up. Which must be some sort of record – it took the fairies 20 years to get Sean Quinn.

3. You can stay there for €65 each a night

There have been some horror stories surrounding the price of staying in the hotel, with one headline in the Irish Daily Mirror this morning suggesting the cheapest room is almost €300 and you could pay more than €900 for the Reagan-Pitt-Lennon suite.

And yet, that might be wide of the mark, because we’ve managed to source a site selling rooms at a fraction of that price for the first three months of 2012. It’s an Avvio link which we were brought to through TripAdvisor, so it's reputable enough, and it’s advertising a “stay two nights, get third night free”. For €390 all-in, you get three nights B&B for two adults. That’s just €65 each. Or about 20 quid more expensive than your average box-room in a family-run B&B approximately seven miles from the middle of nowhere.

Given that Ashford Castle’s receivers insist that the hotel will continue to operate for the foreseeable future, taking advantage of that offer shouldn’t be that big a risk. But as always, let the buyer beware.

4. Oscar Wilde called it home

Or, more precisely, he called an estate right beside Ashford Castle home. Wilde’s father, Sir William Wilde, himself a noted scholar, medic and travel writer in a time when travel was an onerous pursuit, built himself a nice little residence, Moytura House, away from the hustle and bustle of the city, and Oscar spent some of his early years there. Moytura House, which we reckon is not the same Moytura House as this one, was built in 1865, when the future playwright and intellectual was about 11.

Not this Moytura House

And Wilde wasn’t the only celeb who spent plenty of time in and around Ashford Castle down the years. John Lennon, Brad Pitt, Ted Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and King George V of England all stayed there at various times.

5. The castle might look fantastic – but the grounds actually belong to us

That’s what it seems, anyway. As part of that demonstration against the closure of the right of way, it was revealed that the grounds of the castle were actually owned by state forestation company Coillte, and leased back to Ashford Castle for a period of 99 years.

So when the decision-makers at Ashford were deciding to block that public right of way, they were closing public access to public-owned grounds. The cheek.

[Main picture via Elin B/Flickr Creative Commons]