Great Southern Hotels - Caragh Lake

dmcronin · 03-04-2012 2:31pm #1

Where is/was it, what happened to it?

Trying to find on osi mapviewer, presume it is marked as 'Caragh Castle', the Lawrence photos show a castle-like structure.

Losty Dublin · 03-04-2012 7:10pm

Good question. There is a former GSWR hotel in Kenmare...

http://www.parkkenmare.com/hotel-historytimeline

And one in Killarney, the now Malton Hotel.

On the lake itself you have either....

http://www.carrighouse.com/

Or...

http://www.ardnasidhe.com/

Hope this is some help, though I doubt it is.

fuerte1976 · 03-04-2012 7:13pm

No Great Southern was/is in Carragh Lake. Try Parknasilla in Sneem (was one) ?? Or in Killarney as mentioned already .

Judgement Day · 03-04-2012 7:37pm

There was a 'Southern Hotel' in Waterville too but I have a feeling that it and that at Caragh Lake never made it into GSR ownership. I often thought of going to look for the latter but never did, despite getting as far as the remains of Caragh Lake Halt. It's more than 30 years ago now but I seemed to remember that there was the remains of a platform.

Pic below of the Caragh Lake Hotel from the Lawrence Collection held by the National Library.

Ref: L_ROY_05434

Judgement Day · 03-04-2012 7:53pm

Great Southern Hotel, Waterville - Lawrence collection - so it's before the 1925 amalgamation.

National Library Ref: EAS_2388

corktina · 03-04-2012 8:05pm

im pretty sure Carragh Lake WAS a GS hotel. Not sure WHERE it was though, in the middle of nowhere I thought

Losty Dublin · 03-04-2012 8:22pm

Waterville made it into the group as the hotels were all subsumed into GSR and its GSH subsidiary company, and hence CIE. There is a Waterville Lake Hotel which was build in 1970; maybe it was the location of the GSWR hotel.

Judgement Day · 03-04-2012 8:45pm

Mystery solved - I think. If you look closely at this map you can see Caragh Castle which was privately operated as a hotel and then taken over by the GSWR and renamed Caragh Lake Hotel. It is clearly the same building as in my earlier post. Also on the map (top right corner) you can make out Caragh Lake Halt on the railway - within easy transfer of the hotel.

Caragh%2BCastle%2BMap.JPG

Caragh%2BLake%2BHotel%2Baka%2BCaragh%2BCastle.jpg

dmcronin · 03-04-2012 9:08pm

Thanks lads.
Impressive when viewed from the front, bit of a Scottish Baronial style going on there.

I did have a hunch it was privately owned at one stage and another (logical) hunch that it couldn't be far from Caragh Lake halt.

On a side note, went and checked out the revamped ex MGWR Mulranny Hotel website. Irritatingly, they seem to be allergic to the word 'Midland'....'The Railway Station at Mulranny was built and open in 1894 by Great Western Railways' etc.

Judgement Day · 04-04-2012 12:02am

Took a look at the Mulranny Park website http://www.mulrannyparkhotel.ie/ and the mistakes are fairly amateurish but non untypical of the lip service paid to history/heritage - ah shure it's only for tourists and they won't know any better. However, the apartments stuck on the station platform are a far worse abomination than the website.

The Irish Narrow Gauge Trust surveyed the hotel/station as a possible site to relocate to in the early '90s - before Dromod - and it was the remoteness rather than price that put us off! Look at the pre-Celtic Tiger price quoted in the 1994 advert from the Irish Times -and weep..

mulrany%2B003.JPG

pedroeibar1 · 05-09-2012 10:27am

Judgement Day wrote: »

There was a 'Southern Hotel' in Waterville too

The Great Southern & Western Railway company, whose line to Kenmare opened in late 1893, bought the Southern Hotel Company (which owned the 'Bishop's House Hotel' and others) and planned its first two new hotels at Parknasilla (a.k.a. Bishop's House) and Kenmare. The railway company and its chairman showed their support by purchasing £25,000 of ordinary shares in the venture, and agreed to forgo any dividend on them until the dividend paid on the preference shares reached a cumulative dividend of 6%. The financial press of the day were impressed and one commentator promoted the investment saying “It is an excellent and most promising enterprise that we present to the public and we can have no hesitation in commending it under a Board so admirably constituted.”

The plan was AFAIK to have a chain of hotels strategically placed around the Ring. Luggage label from early 1900's:-

Judgement Day · 05-09-2012 11:46am

The Parknasilla Great Southern is back in the news today - Nama are flogging it. Offers in the region of €10 million anticipated i.e a quarter of what was paid for it at the height of the boom.

Losty Dublin · 05-09-2012 12:25pm

Judgement Day wrote: »

The Parknasilla Great Southern is back in the news today - Nama are flogging it. Offers in the region of €10 million anticipated i.e a quarter of what was paid for it at the height of the boom.

You beat me to it, JD. With it's location and a wee bit of history behind her, I can''t see it sitting unsold for long.

pedroeibar1 · 05-09-2012 12:58pm

Judgement Day wrote: »

The Parknasilla Great Southern is back in the news today - Nama are flogging it. Offers in the region of €10 million anticipated i.e a quarter of what was paid for it at the height of the boom.

No, it never was a NAMA hotel because it was financed by Bank of Scotland Ireland which was not a NAMA bank. BoS I (since closed down by Lloyds) appointed a receiver to Parknasilla way back and it is he who has put the hotel on the market. Very cheap at €10 million, considering the replacement cost of the hotel and the cost of creating a 12 hole golf course.
FWIW it cost £12,293 to build in the late 1890’s. Architect was J F Fuller, (my interest) a local man who also designed Ashford Castle, Kylemore Abbey, Farmleigh, Park Kenmare, etc. A surprising number of private houses designed by him now are hotels.

Judgement Day · 22-09-2013 6:39pm

I spent quite a while today (a year on from the last post in the thread!) wrestling with the Caragh Lake Hotel and I still haven't solved the problem to my satisfaction - a site visit looks like the only answer. During the course of my researches I did discover this nice postcard view of the Great Southern Waterville Hotel which compares favourably with the earlier photograph.

GS+Hotel+Waterville.jpg

gobnaitolunacy · 23-09-2013 2:42pm

Reckon the original entrance (of Caragh Lake) was between the two entrances on south side of the road (the posh stone one and the beige painted one surrounded by site machinery)

https://maps.google.ie/maps?hl=en&tab=wl

seagoebox · 27-09-2013 9:29am

Southern Hotel, Caragh Lake (and Southern Hotel, Parknasilla) from a GS&WR tourist arrangements guide dated 1st May to 31st October 1901. Also included in the guide were the recently built Southern Hotel at Kenmare, and the Southern Hotel at Waterville

Patrick Foley · 15-11-2013 6:07pm

In the 1901 census their was a hotel in the ownership of The Great Southern
Company,its location is as follows ! in the Poor Law Union of Killarney,in the Electoral Division of Carragh in the townland of Tooreenasliggaun.There were 12 rooms in the hotel. In the 1911 census the hotel was still there and had increased in size to 36 rooms.The townland of Tooreenasligguan is in the Carragh Lake area.

rnashwest · 02-06-2014 9:51pm

First photos I have ever seen of the hotel - wonderful - and that map!!.....my great grandfather Dennis Clifford used to gilly for the guests there as a boy and eventually returned after decades in S Wales to buy the adjacent property Caragh Cliff at auction in the 1920s - this was eventually sold off in the early 1960s by my great grandmother but my grandparents Tim + Enid Clifford bought the original stables and coach house and spent their holidays and retirement there. We spent idyllic childhood holidays thru the 1960s + 70s until it was sold in 1981.
- The hotel had been demolished and land owned by the Brown brothers who I believe sold it off as building plots. I can remember the terraced hotel gardens but just the odd wall remained of any building. The location is on the left hand side of the road from the old post office out towards the Ring of Kerry road just before the end of the trees - there never was much of an entrance to mark it but I expect one of the new houses will have utilised any old driveway.
At one time the hotel had been owned my Mrs Louise Connerp (not sure of spelling) - after she sold the hotel she rented and lived at my grandparents place - Caragh Cottage converted from Caragh Cliffs original coachouse - I can remember her as wonderfully very English and eccentric - it was a very special time with many fantastic local characters.

Judgement Day · 02-06-2014 10:46pm

By coincidence, I turned up this postcard of the Caragh Lake Hotel yesterday while searching for postcards by Walter Hayward Young aka "Jotter".

The above and lots more interesting railway material available here: http://killorglinarchives.com/

Nuala C · 04-12-2019 12:18am

rnashwest wrote: »

First photos I have ever seen of the hotel - wonderful - and that map!!.....my great grandfather Dennis Clifford used to gilly for the guests there as a boy and eventually returned after decades in S Wales to buy the adjacent property Caragh Cliff at auction in the 1920s - this was eventually sold off in the early 1960s by my great grandmother but my grandparents Tim + Enid Clifford bought the original stables and coach house and spent their holidays and retirement there. We spent idyllic childhood holidays thru the 1960s + 70s until it was sold in 1981.
- The hotel had been demolished and land owned by the Brown brothers who I believe sold it off as building plots. I can remember the terraced hotel gardens but just the odd wall remained of any building. The location is on the left hand side of the road from the old post office out towards the Ring of Kerry road just before the end of the trees - there never was much of an entrance to mark it but I expect one of the new houses will have utilised any old driveway.
At one time the hotel had been owned my Mrs Louise Connerp (not sure of spelling) - after she sold the hotel she rented and lived at my grandparents place - Caragh Cottage converted from Caragh Cliffs original coachouse - I can remember her as wonderfully very English and eccentric - it was a very special time with many fantastic local characters.

Hello - Richard? Are you Pat Clifford's son? My family were great friends with your grandparents Tim and Enid and your grandaunt Louise. The entrance to the Caragh Lake Hotel was where Eden Court now is.

rnashwest · 04-12-2019 8:37am

Hi there - yes that's right - mum (Pat) is around and living near me now in south west Wales - which family are you from? - thanks and good to hear from you - Richard

L1011 · 18-04-2020 12:15am

Judgement Day wrote: »

There was a 'Southern Hotel' in Waterville too but I have a feeling that it and that at Caragh Lake never made it into GSR ownership. I often thought of going to look for the latter but never did, despite getting as far as the remains of Caragh Lake Halt. It's more than 30 years ago now but I seemed to remember that there was the remains of a platform.

Ran across a 1926 tourist industry publication with a GSR ad in it listing their hotels - Caragh Lake is present but Waterville is not.

https://arrow.tudublin.ie/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?filename=10&article=1002&context=irtourjap&type=additional

L1011 · 27-04-2020 2:55pm

Caragh Lake vanishes from the GSR standing advert on the back page of that magazine after the April '32 issue

As it was a tourist season only hotel (the others, excluding Parknasilla, were year-round) this would suggest that it did not open in GSR ownership for the '32 season.

Its still in the national hotel listing separately at that stage but it may have continued under a new owner.

edit: June issue has a photo with this caption:

"View from the grounds of (Caragh Lake Hotel, Co. Kerry
(formerly one of the Great Southern Chain of Hotels),
recently purchased by Mrs. Huggard, Proprietress of the
Butler Arms, Waterville, and the Royal Hotel, Valencia."

So it went on out of railway ownership for a while, but I'm not sure anyone cares about that now :pac:

Great Southern Hotels - Caragh Lake

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