Victorian hotel that's bedded down in Sandymount

TradeNames: The Mount Herbert Hotel has expanded at a leisurely pace to occupy a parade of Victorian era houses in Sandymount, says Rose Doyle.

There's a sense in Sandymount that the area wouldn't be the same without the Mount Herbert Hotel.

It's a part of the landscape, growing imperceptibly while staying the same, forever and reassuringly a rambling Victorian façade by Dodder river walks.

That's the appearance of things anyway. Inside, where a stylish expansion has created cool, Italianate spaces extending into Victorian gardens, it's another story.

The Mount Herbert's venerable/contemporary cachet, the envy of newer and grander hotels, is all down to age and care and continuity.

The row of houses which make up today's Mount Herbert Hotel began life in 1860 and were built on the Dodder bank site of Haig's Distillery. Fifty years old last month, the hotel began life the year Ireland joined the UN, Albert Einstein died, James Dean was killed and Marlon Brandon won an Oscar for On the Waterfront.

The Mount Herbert started as a B&B in May 1955 when George and Rosaleen Loughran, newly arrived in Dublin from Downpatrick and Cookstown respectively, bought 7 Herbert Road, originally the home of Sir William Robinson, the 19th century founder of the HCR chemist chain and chairman of the Metropole Group.

Their son, John, second of their five offspring, runs things today. He tells the hotel/family story with not a little help from George who, at 85, is fitter than many a fiddle and the Mount Herbert's pulse. Rosaleen, sadly, died a year ago.

"My parents came from relatively poor farming backgrounds," John begins, "arriving here in 1952/3. They married in Foxrock Church, lived in Bray for a while, before moving to Tritonville Road. My father was in the motor business, my sister, Patricia, their first born, was two years old and my mother was pregnant with me when they bought 7 Herbert Road." It cost £2,450, the deposit was £62.

The Loughrans ran it as a B&B and, less than a year later when they bought the neighbouring semi, George left the motor business. With the help of friends who arrived from Northern Ireland "to give a dig out", George modified the interior while Rosaleen became the hard-working, public face of the fledgling hotel.

George Loughran, relaxed, immensely charming and looking all of 60 years, is only slightly nostalgic when he says Herbert Road was more beautiful then, "the trees meeting like a tunnel", and wryly humourous when he says "the people who lived on the road though they were aristocrats, I got verbal abuse for starting a hotel here. It took me a while to break down the barrier of snobbery."

He reveals the tip of the iceberg that is his own story when he says: "I left school at 14. My mother had me destined for the priesthood but I told her no, and that I was never going to work for anyone but myself. My brothers died at 15 and 17 of TB, working for farmers who treated them badly."

George and Rosaleen Loughran's five children - Patricia, John, Paul, Caroline and Louise - were all born in Herbert Road.

Between 1955 and 1992 the Loughran family bought eight houses along Herbert Road, "as they came up. We were in no rush to expand."

George it was who covered the brick frontages with plaster and white paint, added the distinctive black window surrounds. When John Loughran bought the end houses he kept them as they were. "There's a symmetry," he explains, "with the centre four black and white and the outer four brick."

B&B in 1955 cost 12/6d, high tea 3/6d. Luncheon, in 1959, cost 5/-.

It's a shock to discover that the local conviction about the Mount Herbert as a temperance hotel is wrong.

John sorts myth from reality. "By 1963 my parents were finding the drink side of things troublesome, with people drunk and falling around. They found they'd prefer to run things with a wine licence only, no bar, just B&B with high tea from 5pm-6.30pm, mixed grills, etc. The hotel was run like that until 1998 when my brother, Paul, and I reintroduced the bar."

The Loughran offspring all helped in the hotel through the years. "In the early days my brother and I were sent to an aunt in Cookstown for the summer so our rooms could be rented out," John says.

The Northern Ireland connection proved useful, with the hotel popular with "all persuasions. We were just as busy for All-Ireland finals as we were for Church of Ireland Synod meetings," John says. "The other big weekends in the year were the Dublin Horse Show when, between farmers and stable grooms, you'd find 10 on a floor in a room sometimes! We do well on rugby match weekends too and have the cast of The Halfpenny Bridge staying for months now."

A lot of customers considered having no bar a plus; it meant they could get a night's sleep. Even today the bar in the Mount Herbert closes at midnight.

"We've a duty of respect to guests," John says, "who can't sleep if there are people clattering around. It's disruptive and there's no money in it anyway."

Staff, in the early days, were country girls sent to work in Dublin, as young as 14-15 in some cases. Many still keep in touch.

"They'd make beds and breakfasts and head off to the Ierne and National Ballrooms in their time off.In those days, too, we'd have a lot of British holidaymakers, people didn't go to Spain so much then. There was no Jurys in Ballsbridge, the Intercontinental opened in 1962 and the Botanic Gardens were where the Berkeley Court now is until 1978-'79."

George Loughran handed the running of the hotel to his sons, John and Paul, in 1988.

"We started a development/expansion plan," John explains. Then in 1999 Paul decided to go into property development and sold me his share of the business. I'm the sole family member running things but the important thing is that we've managed to pass things from one generation to another with all of us siblings remaining very close. The others come in and out all the time. It's good for my father to see his offspring together - too often business tears families apart."

John Loughran married Audrey, a receptionist in the hotel, in 1980 and they have four children - Lorraine, Gerard, Oisin and Sinead.

The new style Herbert Hotel is the result of John's feeling that, while the old style was "viewed with affection by locals and customers", the expectations of a modern hotel needed to be met. The rambling feel is still there, the rooms comfortable, the style relaxed, uncluttered with lots of cool grey, white, shining wood and windows and doors leading to those lovely Victorian gardens.

"We want to surprise guests," John says, "with a traditional look outside and a 'wow' when they come in."

Architects RKD on Northumberland Road are the people responsible, with decor by Derek Heavey.

John and his father didn't see eye-to-eye on all the changes. "I'm sensitive to him, as my father," John says. "He's god to the staff, who love him to bits."

George Loughran lives, as he has done for 30 years, in the hotel penthouse. "I've had a fantastic life," he admits, "and a fantastic wife. I couldn't have achieved what's been achieved in the Mount Herbert without her. I don't think anyone could have had the staff, or the relations with them, I had. But our five children were a greater achievement than anything in the hotel."

John has no idea what the future holds. "I'm only the protector of a business, here to carry it forward to the next generation. It was handed to me in good shape and I've a duty to keep it in good shape."

George, fittingly, has the last word. "Work doesn't do you any harm. It's your attitude to it that's the killer. Rosaleen and I were made to measure for the business."