Wicklow hotel and equestrian centre well groomed

TradeNames:The Bel-Air Hotel and Equestrian Centre near Ashford is very much the traditional country house retreat, says Rose Doyle.

You don't often come across someone as involved and in love with the place they grew up in as Nonie Law. Maybe it's because, in a manor house alive with history, in rolling parklands and stables full of horses to keep her feet off the ground, she's got more to appreciate than most.

"I love it," she's low-key, no need for emphasis, "love it. This is more than just a house. It's unique, a bit of the past. From the parklands (200 acres of them) there are views to the sea. Horses and this house go well together too, always have and do to this day."

The Bel-Air Hotel and Equestrian Centre near Ashford, Co Wicklow has been in the hands of Nonie's family since 1937 and has a pedigree going back to the 15th century. Or earlier, no one's sure.

House, lands and horses are Nonie's lifeblood. They keep the veins of her siblings healthily pumping too. "We're that sort of family," she says, "we just carry on the traditions set down by our grandparents and parents for Bel-Air, hoping to make it better."

She tells the story of how it all came to be with an economy that allows facts speak for themselves.

"My grandparents, Bridie and Tim Murphy, were from Kilkenny and, some time in the 1920s, ended up being hoteliers and owning Cliff Castle Hotel in Dalkey."

At this point the story of the manor house which is now Bel-Air must be interjected. Originally Cronroe Manor, it was a seat of the O'Byrne clan in the 15th century, part of Ballinderry Estate, given to the O'Byrnes by the Normans.

"Over the years the lands were split up," Nonie explains, "and Cronroe passed through a number of owners until it was bought, in the 1860s, by Julius Casement, an uncle of Roger Casement. Roger Casement spent a great deal of time here as a child."

The Casement family sold on to the American Nicholas Burns in 1934. Burns turned Cronroe into an hotel, which he ran with this wife, and changed the name to Bel-Air. Three years later Bridie Murphy came on the scene.

"They were having an auction at Bel-Air and my grandfather said to my grandmother that she might be able to buy some hotel beds for Cliff House. When she got back to Dalkey she told him she'd bought the entire place along with the beds. Imagine! That's how we came to own Bel-Air."

Tim and Bridie Murphy ran the Bel-Air and Cliff Castle hotels concurrently until the mid-1960s, when they sold Cliff Castle. They had three growing daughters by then: Ita, Ena and Fidelma. It was Fidelma, the youngest and Nonie's mother, who developed a passion for Bel-Air, and horses.

"They grew up in Dalkey and used to visit Bel-Air. My mother, at four years of age, refused to go back to Dalkey after one such visit. She was sent to the Dominican Convent boarding school in Wicklow town until she was 17 and lived in Bel-Air in between times.

"At school in the 1950s she used do errands for the nuns in a pony and trap and started to give riding classes, teaching bits and pieces about horses to her fellow students. So the riding school began . . ."

When Fidelma Murphy finished school she made horses her life, running all-day treks to such Wicklow high-points as Glendalough, Brittas and the Devil's Glen. Bord Fáilte wrote that she was "an example of an enterprising young woman".

"During the 1960s," her daughter says, "she had about 50 horses and there used be great gatherings here on Sunday afternoons, a real who's who with people like Cearbhaill Ó Dálaigh, who went on to become the president," says Nonie.

Bridie and Tim Murphy meanwhile ran Bel-Air Hotel. "As they got older my mother helped more in the hotel," Nonie says. "In the 1950s and 1960s Bel-Air was the place to have a wedding. They were non-stop, everybody in Wicklow came here."

Fidelma Murphy married Bill Freeman from Coolgreany in Co Wexford; she met him when his sister came to work in the stables. They had four children - Aileen, Maggie, Nonie and Willie.

Nonie is properly admiring of her mother. "She was unbelievable, running a hotel and with stables in Coolgreany and at Bel-Air. She believed in horses and she believed Bel-Air was a wonderful, wonderful place. My dad ran the farm here and one in Wexford. They did everything, both of them. We grew up in Wexford, on my father's family farm but when my grandmother died we moved here."

That was in 1981. Tim Murphy had already died, more than a decade earlier in 1970.

Bridie Murphy, her granddaughter says, seemed to her childish eyes "a stern lady. She loved to play poker late into the night in a little room at the back of the hotel. My grandfather was the businessman and she was the front-of-house person, meeting and greeting guests. I remember her as tall and thin with white hair. She wore tweeds and a beret-style hat tipped sideways."

Fidelma and Bill Freeman's offspring helped out in Bel-Air as they grew up - "things like folding serviettes, sheets, washing up, polishing cutlery. We just got in and did it. We're a Wicklow-Wexford family, I suppose, and though the Wexford farm's not in the family any more we've got lots of ties in Coolgreany."

The family's love for the old house has ensured its integrity: Bel-Air Hotel retains much that was Cronroe Manor.

"It's the original building with some additions to the back," Nonie says. "Most of the heavy, old furniture in the bedrooms and pictures are here since the Casements' time. It suits the high ceilings. The gilded mirrors are still in place and you still walk in to a main hall with a huge staircase. It has big rooms, fireplaces, balconies, sash windows, comfortable couches. We've central heating and the bedrooms are en suite and all that, but it's still essentially a big country house in which you can feel at home. I love it!"

Bill Freeman died, suddenly, three years ago. Fidelma Freeman died some 18 months ago. Both were too young and are sadly missed.

Their children have a firm hold on the hotel and equestrian centre they worked so hard to keep going.

"Willie runs the farm and hotel," Nonie explains. "Aileen helps in the hotel and Maggie and myself run the Equestrian Centre. Maggie and myself are married, to two brothers who work together in their family business." (Maggie's husband is Gordon Law, Nonie is married to Nigel Law.)

"I've got three children, Maggie's got one, three-year-old Jake. We're into generation number four and bringing them up as we were. They've been riding since they could walk. Jessie, my youngest, came out on a mock hunt recently, my oldest boy Kevin is 10 and hunts regularly and Saranne, my daughter, did the opening meet of the Bray Hunt when she was just eight. It's mostly drag hunting in this, the Bray Hunt area. My mother was wonderful with horses - people would send her unrideable horses and she'd have them in competitions within a week."

As a family, she assures, "we're doing our level best to carry on the riding school and hotel as our mother and father did. We're making small changes. We've only 10 bedrooms so we've developed special riding holidays which bring lots of people from abroad. We started to do marquee weddings this year too and have had a fabulous response. We're hugely aware the house is 70 years in the family and had a huge celebration on November 10th with video footage covering the years since the 1930s and a photographic exhibition too. We did it to raise money for St Luke's Hospital and the tickets sold out in 10 days! A house like this costs a lot to run so we have to make things work."