Cashel Kings Hotel bought for relaunch

High on a hill overlooking one of Ireland's biggest tourist attractions, the Cashel Kings Hotel has stood derelict for close on 20 years. Hamilton Osborne King has recently agreed terms of sale which will see it redeveloped.

A familiar sight on the Cork-Dublin road, this Co Tipperary hotel has had a troubled history and will require a substantial investment of finance and faith. The Cashel Kings Hotel stands on 15 acres. The hotel and lands are being sold with planning permission for a 22 twin-bedroom hotel, with six holiday apartments, conference facilities to host 250, and separate bar and ancillary facilities.

A leisure centre and swimming-pool are also part of the draft, and planning permission for a touring and caravan park on the north side of Ballyknock Hill has also been granted by Tipperary South Riding County Council.

A new sewage system will be required. Cashel is a prime spot for a commercial hotel. Some 250,000 tourists visit the Rock of Cashel every year, according to the town's Heritage Centre.

There are many other additional sites of general interest in the catchment area, especially the Bolton Library, and Bru Boru, the Irish traditional music centre, named after the famed king who died in Clontarf in 1014, having earlier occupied the royal palace on the Rock.

But there is a shortage of tourist accommodation in the town. The recently refurbished Cashel Palace Hotel in the town centre has 23 bedrooms catering to an upmarket sector. Kearneys Castle Hotel is a small establishment with around 12 guest rooms; due to its location, expansion would be difficult.

A new 70-bedroom hotel is planned for the centre of the town and is earmarked to become Tipperary's first four-star hotel. The new hotel, situated at the site of the old town wall on Lower Gate Square, is being developed by Dermot Delaney. In addition to accommodation which will cater for tour busloads, it will also have four penthouse suites, a swimming-pool and leisure complex and conference facilities.

The new hotel will also be the first hotel to cater for the local market in the town. Weddings, parties and occasion events will now be able to take place in the function room: up to now, the nearest function facilities were at Dundrum House Hotel, some eight miles away.

The Cashel Kings Hotel was built in the late 1960s by a local syndicate of eight investors; the former Minister for Science and Technology, Dr Sean McCarthy was among the local professionals involved in the venture. The building, situated on a hill overlooking the Rock of Cashel, and surrounding countryside, was designed by architect Peter Legge, who was also responsible for the design of the popular Derrynane Hotel on the Ring of Kerry. The Derrynane Hotel is probably the best example of how the Tipperary hotel originally looked.

"The Cashel Kings Hotel was ahead of its time. It was a large glass building with a very distinctive Mediterranean style, which was out of place in Ireland. It was never a viable commercial venture," says Dr McCarthy.

"Originally there were 40 bedrooms, and then we built on a function room to hold 400 people, but that just added to costs and overborrowing. We closed down after about 10 years; it was too expensive to maintain," he adds.

Since then, the hotel site has changed hands many times and there have been many subsequent owners, including a Canadian tour operator who had plans to redevelop the site for his operation. The hotel has been bought and sold but never reopened.

It is now a shell, stripped bare of anything of value over the years and reported to be in need of substantial structural repair.

The Cashel Kings Hotel is not the only establishment in the town to have suffered from a troubled past. The redevelopment of the Cashel Palace ran into difficulties a few years ago. Present proprietors Susan and Patrick Murphy took over the premises two years ago and it is now trading well.

Until then, the historic building - built in 1730 by Sir Edward Lovett as the Archbishop's Palace - was in the hands of the Irish-American Keyes family for many years.

The Keyes family, who had further hotel investments in Arizona, undertook a very ambitious renovation and refurbishment scheme during the 1990s, including the installation of a new roof. But financial problems emerged and they sold the hotel.

Cashel is situated on the main Cork-Dublin route and residents have long campaigned for a bypass road to alleviate the heavy traffic that has turned the town into a notorious bottleneck. Tour buses also contribute to traffic congestion in summer months.

The bypass will run to the East of Ballyknock Hill, so the Cashel Kings complex will no longer be seen from the Cork-Dublin road.