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The Merrion, Dublin
The Merrion, Dublin, has a nicely-warm 18-yard indoor pool with a trompe l'oeil wall at one end showing an allegorical classical country house, parterre garden, drapes and a monkey. What a way to start a day.
By: Mary Gostelow
There were two of us in the pool of The Merrion's Tethra Spa and there was plenty of room.
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Facing away from the mural, I swam towards a glass wall, on the other side of which were tables, chairs, fresh fruit and juice and today's quality newspapers. The Spa has limited its outside membership to 150 so it never seems to get too busy. After my pre-set lengths, I dried my bikini in the spinner that all good hotels should offer, and went upstairs to shower, ready for breakfast.
I love Dublin. It has so much history, and this hotel certainly oozes it. It was created by two entrepreneurs, Martin Naughten and Lochlann Quinn, who, working as Landmark Investments, turned four adjoining four-floor 18th century terraced houses on Dublin's Merrion Street Upper into a hotel. Martin Naughten owns Ireland's largest electrical company, Glen Dimplex, with a portfolio including Carmen hairrollers, Dimplex heaters and the retro Roberts radios. Lochlann Quinn, a former banker, is Chairman of Ireland's Electricity Supply Board and the National Gallery of Ireland, and he is a renowned art collector - he and his wife Brenda also own the 118-acre Ch de Fieuzal vineyard in the Graves region of France.
So, Messrs Naughten and Quinn wanted a hotel that reminded them of the Hotel Le Bristol, Paris. They worked with local architects Burke Kennedy Doyle & Partners, and with design director Alice Roden. What is now a 145-room Leading Hotel of the World opened in 1997. One of the four houses, Mornington House, is said to be the birthplace of the Duke of Wellington, 1769-1852, but the buildings today all flow magnificently into each other.
Right now, with an added 21st century wing, the hotel flows around three sides of a fabulous garden, the size of a football field. Like the pool's trompe l'oeil, it too is laid out with parterres. Here you see the Merrion Rose, commissioned to celebrate the hotel's fifth birthday in 2004: produced by County Carlow rose grower David Kenny, it is a deep rose pink hue with a yellow and white eye and it grows to height of about two feet (it was bred from Eyeopener and New Year and it won a Certificate of Merit from the Royal National Rose Society Trials). The garden also hosts a particularly fine lifesize sculpture of James Joyce, sculpted in 2000 by Roan Gillespie, born 1953.
Yes, The Art Collection at the Merrion Hotel is magnificent, and it is recorded in a book of that name by Lochlann and Brenda Quinn. Among many favorites are paintings by John Boyd, born 1957, who specializes in full-color lifesize silhouette paintings of men with exaggerated noses and ears - see his Futile Defense (Fabricated Evidence), 1998, near an elevator in the new wing.
On top of the new wing is The Merrion, Dublin's premier suite, a two-floor, 2,800 sq ft penthouse with 1,000 sq ft of terrace with a cedarwood hot tub. On our last visit, however, we stayed in The Merrion Suite, 387 (there are actually several 'The Merrion' suites), quietly overlooking the garden. It was agreeably calm, and our art included framed collages of valuable postage stamps and a quiet blue seascape. Both salon and adjacent bedroom had mushroom carpets, cream walls, soft fabrics. The salon had a decorative antique fireplace with mantle, surmounted by a gold-framed mirror, and the minibar had a half bottle of L'Abeille de Fieuzal Pessac-Léognan 1999. We liked the good lighting - which of course we expected, considering the ownership of The Merrion, Dublin - and free, fast wired internet access. The bathroom was completely marbled, with grey-flecked white stone, and we had an electric towel rail, and the bath towels really dried the body. Toiletries are specially-commissioned Heather & Moss, from Garden of Ireland, and bedlinen is Frette. All rooms, by the way, have sensor-activated door keycards, and, as one would expect, but one does not always find in Ireland, televisions are flatscreen. It was tempting to become a couch potato here, reading not only the supply of intelligent glossy magazines but also the hardback books provided, John Stanislaus Joyce by John Wyse Jackson with Peter Costello and Wandering Woman: Travels out of Ireland, by AA Kelly.
But that was not for us, as The Merrion, Dublin is a place for great exercise. Best way to get up to suite 387 is take the 75 blue-carpeted stairs behind hotel reception - someone has a great contract here, for the blue carpet, sometimes with an integral golden Celtic pattern, that covers every horizontal facet of public areas other than on the ground floor or basement level. To get down to the spa or The Cellar restaurant, it is another 70 stairs down with 11 steps up along the way.
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And as well as the spa's pool and gym, there is great outdoor running, either around Merrion Square, which dates back to 1752, or the nearby St Stephen's Green park, established in 1663. We also took a fact-finding 30-minute run north to the River Liffey and across architect Cyril O'Neill's Sean O'Casey bridge, finished 2005, to check on Dublin Convention Centre, an extraordinary non-vertical Kevin Roche structure that opens September 2010 - a Santiago Calatrava bridge, already under construction, will link the convention centre directly to the south bank of the Liffey).
Drawing rooms from the original quartet of houses have been turned into main public areas for The Merrion, Dublin. Each room seems to flow into the next; there are highly polished old-wood floors, working wood-log fireplaces and comfy seating. You may sit here with your laptop, working surrounded by Old and Modern Masters on the walls. Next to you are some local society ladies having elegant afternoon tea, or a glass of a pick-me-up, or a light snack.
The hotel plays host to Ireland's only two Michelin-star restaurant, Patrick Guilbaud, still managed by the suave Stéphane Robin. He proudly showed off the restaurant's latest addition, a fabulous adjacent conservatory jutting into the hotel's garden. The size of a squash court, it has lots of Dedon seating and a ten-foot wide gas-fuelled fire set in a giant stone chimney. This area is, of course, attractive to the smoking contingent but it is also highly agreeable for pre- or post-dinner drinks or coffee. Gulbaud's in-restaurant chef, Guillaume Lebrun, offers seven-course surprise tasting menus but we also really liked the 'local feeling' of some of his à la carte dishes, say Dublin Bay prawns with Tobiko wasabi, or Galway Bay oysters, or thinly-sliced Crubbeen (pigs' trotters with Maris Piper potato salad).
We in fact ate local fare that night, anyway. We opted for the more-simple The Cellar restaurant, with its stone walls dancing up, as it were, to the barrel-vaulted ceiling. We went for the new-season green Irish asparagus from Co Dublin with buffalo mozzarella and tapenade, followed by Pat McLaughlin's marinated Charlolais rump from Castledermot, Co Carlow (the hotel's Executive Chef Ed Cooney is also bringing on to his menu a new line of rare-breed Irish Dexter beef from Ger O'Leary in Co Tipperary). Cooney had come from the Landmark Hotel, London, for the hotel's opening. He says he intended to stay a couple of years, and initially he benchmarked with other culinarians in town. Now, he says, he merely does his own thing. He has stripped food back to basic - he goes for seasonality, and such local suppliers as Glenilen for his Irish Country Butter. Yes, there is even Irish wine on the list of The Cellar restaurant: Lusca is made by David Llewellyn from grapes grown in Lusk, North Co Dublin. In honor of the ownership of The Merrion, Dublin, however, we opted for an outstanding bottle of L'Abeille de Fieuzal 2006 Pessac Léognan 2006. There are big china-stoppered bottles of still and sparkling Merrion water on the table.
At dinner, china on The Cellar's crisp starched linens is Figgjo, from Norway. At breakfast, when light show-biz background music cheers the mood to compensate for the increasingly depressing financial news headlining the newspapers on offer, the china is Irish-owned Wedgwood. The central buffet is memorable for its glass pots of superb Probiotic Natural Yoghurt, with no added sugar, made by the Kingston family's Glenilen Farm Artisan Dairy in west Cork - and for the stewed, sugar-free blackberries and the loaves of fabulous crusty bread that you cut yourself with those hotel bread knives that are all too often, thanks to Health and Safety, impossible to cut with properly.
As we leave The Merrion, Dublin, going down the seven stone steps from the outer hall to Upper Merrion Street, doorman Jim kindly says 'be careful, do not slip'. He opens the door of the waiting BMW-7 series and Alan drives us off, to the airport.
The Merrion, Dublin, Ireland
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