Hospitality Since 1788 A history of The Lansdowne, Kenmare

The Lansdowne has stood at the top of Kenmare for a very long time. Not quite forever, although there have probably been mornings when it felt that way. For many years, the story told about the building was that it began life as a grand townhouse for the Lansdowne family. It is a fine story. It just doesn't appear to be the right one. The records point to something rather more interesting. This site appears to have been about hospitality from the beginning.

A town being built around an inn In 1788

Kenmare was still a town in the making. The great Lansdowne estate was attempting to turn a remote settlement at the head of Kenmare Bay into a functioning planned town. Surveyors had measured it, streets were being laid out, new settlers were being encouraged in and the necessary ingredients of town life were being assembled: a market, courthouse, school, mill, malt house, tradesmen, farmers and, importantly for our story, an inn. That year, the traveller and clergyman Daniel Beaufort arrived in Kenmare after the difficult journey from Killarney. He found accommodation with Mrs O'Sullivan, at the establishment associated with the site of today's Lansdowne. It was not yet the grand hotel we know today. Indeed, Beaufort's account suggests that Mrs O'Sullivan had rather more guests than she had suitable beds, and accommodation for servants and horses left something to be desired.

Every hotel has to start somewhere

By 1809, things had improved Twenty-one years later, the naturalist and traveller Lewis Weston Dillwyn arrived in Kenmare. He found what he called a "comfortable Inn", kept by Mrs Sullivan and recently built by Lord Henry Petty. Kenmare itself he described as a "small & straggling Town." Dillwyn and his companions had sensibly sent word ahead asking for dinner to be ready. They finally arrived at about half past eight, tired and hungry, only to discover that dinner would take another hour. More than two hundred years later, we offer no comment on this. The important thing is that by 1809, there was a purpose-built and comfortable travellers' inn here. Unfortunately, it didn't last.

Fire and Lansdowne number three

The early inn was destroyed by fire. And this is where the building standing today begins to emerge from the historical fog. When another traveller, the Reverend James Plumptre, came through Kenmare around 1814-15, he found: "A new inn was also nearly finished, built rather upon a magnificent scale." Nearly finished. Magnificent scale. The evidence therefore suggests that today's Lansdowne is probably the third incarnation of hospitality on this site: Mrs O'Sullivan's earlier establishment; the comfortable purpose-built inn recorded in 1809; and, following the fire, the much larger inn begun around 1814 and probably completed in 1815. Buildings rarely arrive into history as neatly as we'd like them to. They burn, grow, acquire neighbours, lose bits and gain bits. The Lansdowne has been particularly good at this.

The King's Arms

The inn became known as the King's Arms, and later the Lansdowne Arms. This was the age before railways and motorcars, when travelling through Kerry required considerably more determination than it does today. A coaching inn was therefore much more than somewhere to sleep. Horses had to be rested, fed and changed. Carriages needed attention. Travellers needed dinner, whiskey and news, perhaps not always in that order. The great archway through the hotel led into its coaching and stable yard, and for much of the nineteenth century The Lansdowne was part hotel, part transport hub and part window on the world beyond Kenmare.

Wordsworth, Bonaparte and the travellers

Some interesting people passed through this little town. The poet William Wordsworth came to Kenmare in 1829. The principal coaching inn is the obvious place for a traveller of his standing to have stayed, although frustratingly no surviving hotel register has yet allowed us to put his signature in a Lansdowne bedroom with absolute certainty. There is also a long-standing connection with the Bonaparte family, involving Napoleon's nephew during his Irish travels. Again, the tantalising bit of paper that would turn tradition into certainty remains to be found. We like these stories. But after more than two centuries, The Lansdowne has accumulated enough genuine history that we don't need to improve upon it.

And then came the Famine

Not every traveller's account makes comfortable reading. In 1847, at the height of the Great Famine, the English Quaker William Bennett travelled through Ireland investigating the terrible conditions he encountered. In Kenmare he described people: "actually dying of starvation within a stone's throw of the inn." We cannot yet prove that Bennett's unnamed inn was The Lansdowne. But the line is chilling regardless. Behind the doors of an inn, travellers ate and slept. A stone's throw away, people were starving. It is part of the history of this town and therefore part of ours.

Mr McCarthy's bill

By 1873, we can get wonderfully close to the everyday life of the hotel. An original bill survives on beautiful Lansdowne Arms Hotel stationery naming T. McCarthy as proprietor, complete with a little engraved picture of the building. The guest was charged for the things one might expect: breakfast, dinner, tea, ale, whiskey, a bed and attendance. And then there is one lovely little entry: "Mail Car fare." There, in three words, is the old Lansdowne. You could eat here, drink here, sleep here and arrange the next leg of your journey from here. The final bill was £5 0s 3d. And, we are pleased to report, it was paid.

A hotel goes to war

The twentieth century was not always kind to Ireland, and eventually the troubles outside came through the doors of The Lansdowne. During the Civil War in 1922, the hotel was occupied by soldiers of the National Army, the pro-Treaty forces of the newly established Irish Free State. The Anti-Treaty IRA wanted them out. Attacking a defended hotel from the street was not particularly attractive, so they chose another route. They entered the neighbouring building and bored their way through the party wall towards The Lansdowne. Think about that the next time you complain about noisy neighbours. For a period, this old coaching hotel at the top of Kenmare became a fortified position in the struggle over what the newly independent Ireland was going to become. And upstairs was one particularly troublesome prisoner.

The impossible woman

Her name was Albinia Brodrick, although she later adopted the Irish name Gobnait Ní Bhruadair. Her background was extraordinary. She was the daughter of an Anglo-Irish viscount who became an uncompromising Irish Republican, Irish-language advocate, nurse and member of Cumann na mBan. During the Civil War, Free State troops detained her in an upstairs room of The Lansdowne. Gobnait had no intention of being a cooperative prisoner. Escape through the window proved impractical,

the second floor was rather higher from the street than she would have liked, so she turned her attention to the room. She smashed what she could, tore open the mattress and began throwing its contents and other objects out the window overlooking the town. The soldiers reportedly reached the conclusion that they had acquired "an impossible woman." Eventually, they released her. The Lansdowne has dealt with difficult residents before and since, but Gobnait remains comfortably in the lead.

The estate finally lets go

Through all of this, another much older story continued quietly in the background. The land beneath The Lansdowne remained connected to the Lansdowne Estate. A remarkable 1913 lease survives between the Marquis of Lansdowne and Agnes Mayberry of the Lansdowne Arms Hotel, describing the hotel, its yards, out-offices and adjoining ground. So the relationship stretching back through the Petty-Fitzmaurice family and the creation of the town itself survived well into the twentieth century. In 1972, Bobby and Breda Hanley acquired The Lansdowne Arms and began another chapter in its history. Their guests explored the Ring of Kerry and Ring of Beara, visited Derreen Gardens and Derrynane, crossed towards Kilmakilloge, picnicked on beaches and returned in the evening to the hotel at the top of the town. Then, in the early 1980s, the remaining ground-rent interest associated with the Lansdowne Estate was finally bought out. After centuries, the old landlord connection was gone. The name stayed. And we rather like that.

Still an inn at heart

Kenmare has changed almost beyond recognition since Mrs O'Sullivan welcomed travellers here in 1788. William Street became Main Street. The horses disappeared. The mail car went. The railway came and went. Ireland endured famine, revolution and civil war. The great estates faded. Tourism arrived in motorcars and coaches and eventually with satnav. The building itself has burned, been rebuilt, extended, occupied by soldiers, attacked through a wall and survived at least one particularly determined woman on the second floor. But the essential purpose of this corner of Kenmare has changed remarkably little. People arrive. We give them something to eat, somewhere to sleep and, we hope, send them away with a story. We've been at it for quite a while.

The Lansdowne, Kenmare - Since 1788