KILLEAVY CASTLE ESTATE, COUNTY ANTRIM, NORTHERN IRELAND
Australian philanthropists Mick Boyle and Robyn Craig turned a small, dilapidated castle on a ramshackle estate into a successful hotel that mixes the contemporary with the historical. Inhabiting a sliver of the hiker’s paradise and Area of Outstanding Beauty, Slieve Gullion, Killeavy Castle Estate has won prestigious awards including Castle Hotel of the Year. In addition to running the hotel in an eco-conscious manner, the couple are planting wildlife corridors on their acreage that is already home to a significant portion of Northern Ireland’s indigenous trees, with resident squirrels, badgers, owls and others thriving within. More than 90 per cent of the food served is produced within the grounds of Killeavy Castle Estate or sourced within a 32-kilometre radius.
THE SALTHOUSE HOTEL, COUNTY ANTRIM, NORTHERN IRELAND
On the Causeway Coast of Northern Ireland, Ballycastle is a small seaside village offering beautiful sunrises and a buzzing food scene. It’s here you’ll find the Salthouse Hotel, a carbon-neutral stay amidst emerald-green cow paddocks above town. It’s got pretty rooms and a lovely spa but the beautiful bar and restaurant space with outdoor terrace and outstanding Atlantic Ocean views is where you’ll likely gravitate. Impressive eco features include electricity provided by onsite wind turbine and solar PV panels, and heating and hot water provided by air source heat pumps.
INCHYDONEY ISLAND LODGE & SPA, COUNTY CORK, IRELAND
For quintessential Irish coastal beauty, you can’t beat West Cork, and Inchydoney Island Lodge & Spa has the box seat on a particularly dazzling slice of it. This elegant resort-style property has an outstanding spa with a stunning seawater therapy pool, Ireland’s first. The hotel is also home to one of Ireland’s largest solar arrays and runs fully on renewable energy. With staff regularly doing beach clean-up expeditions, there’s a real commitment to careful custodianship over a beautiful piece of coastline.
CLIFF AT LYONS, COUNTY KILDARE, IRELAND
The location for Cliff at Lyons may be off-the-beaten trail – but what a trail. An abandoned collection of historic buildings, restored and turned into a picturesque luxury hotel by the late founder of Ryanair, Cliff at Lyons sits on the Grand Canal, a waterway running from Dublin to the River Shannon. Here, the canal, shadowed by a scenic trail leading to the grave of Arthur Guinness, founder of the eponymous brewery, winds through bucolic farmland. With a two Michelin-starred restaurant, Aimsir on site founded by a pair of passionate foragers whose menu features all-Irish produce, Cliff at Lyons also now has The Mill Restaurant. Both share the spoils of impressive onsite sustainable farming.
See cliffatlyons.ie
GREGANS CASTLE HOTEL, COUNTY CLARE, IRELAND
An incredible glacial era landscape, The Burren offers a nature experience that is truly unique. Adjacent Gregans Castle has provided shelter and inspiration for nature lovers for two centuries. (Tolkien stayed in the former private home in the 1950s, with the landscape contributing to Lord of the Rings.) A hotel since the late ’60s, Gregans Castle Hotel has a history of mixing environmental care with luxury. Recently, in association with the Burrenbeo Trust, the hotel donated a plot of land to the Burren Pine Project where guests can sponsor a Burren Pine Tree, Ireland’s only native pine, believed to have been extinct for 1500 years before a small stand was discovered in the remote east of the Burren.
See gregans.ie
MARLIN HOTEL, DUBLIN, IRELAND
Opened late 2019, this funky new-build hotel near St Stephen’s Green was successfully designed to fit 300 rooms into a relatively small space without feeling squished. The building itself was conceived with environmental impact in mind. A glass and aluminium curtain walling with horizontal and vertical fins reduce the cooling load on the building while the top two levels of the are set back and fully glazed. In deference to the historical surrounds, stone cladding is used to group sections of the building together to reduce the scale sympathetically. Serious business that may be, but the lobby, with its caravan-turned-coffee cart and vinyl record library, is fun, fun, fun.
See marlinhotel.ie
Julietta Jameson travelled as a guest of Tourism Ireland and Tourism Northern Island.
