Art break hotel

INTERVIEW:Bill Kelly is the fourth generation of his family to run Kelly's Hotel in Rosslare and – among other passions – he has continued a love affair with art begun by his parents in the 1950s

‘ARE THEY THE nuns that used to be upstairs?” asks a woman. “I don’t know, I thought they were in the bar,” says her companion, who may have been her daughter. “I think they’re lovely nuns.”

The two women are looking at a series of photographs by Jackie Nickerson that hang along one of the corridors of Kelly’s Hotel, Rosslare. I, meanwhile, am relaxing in a comfy chair and shamelessly eavesdropping.

There is a great deal of art in Kelly’s, inspiring a great deal of conversation, and while Nickerson’s nuns are a good place to engage in a little listening in, you also hear remarks in the vicinity of the large Mark Francis in the dining room, the rich orange Callum Innes, the lovely collection of Tony O’Malleys – in fact anywhere you happen to be in Bill Kelly’s hotel.

“It came from my mum,” says Kelly. “The collection was my father’s passion, which encouraged mum; a lot of the collection is hers. When they got married there wasn’t much art in the hotel; that’s going back to the early 1950s.

“My mum said the first bit of money they made after they were married, dad wanted to buy a Yeats painting, and she told him: ‘There’s no way you’re spending £500 on that!’ But over time, and together, they bought a number of paintings – though not that Yeats.”

Kelly may have inherited his parents’ passion for art, but he has also gathered several other passions along the way: for wine, sport, horses (for a while) – and for giving guests at Kelly’s the best experience he possibly can.

In the beginning, the hotel operated as tea rooms, opened in 1895. But from great-grandfather, to grandfather, to father to son, each generation added, improved, built and created.

“Back in my grandad’s time, the hotel was almost incidental to the farm. There was a pig farm, so any left-over food was given to the pigs. Then we were just open for four months a year,” remembers Kelly. “Tourism was very different. Irish people didn’t really go on holidays – you’d go and see your auntie and uncle or something like that, in Cork or Kerry, and that was your holiday. This idea of going away on your holidays was something new. Dad promoted that with the resort hotel.”

Then Kelly’s father died: “I was 15 then; it was very shocking. He was 50, and back then I thought it was old, but now I realise how young he was. And it was a huge challenge for my mum – she had seven kids, and the hotel, to look after. I really appreciate her for that now.”

Kelly’s mother Breda ran the hotel with the help of managers Austin Cody and Paddy O’Brien, and Kelly, her eldest son, went off to hotel school in Lausanne, Switzerland, to learn the ropes. “Mum did try to discourage me in the beginning, but it’s all I ever knew, and she was thrilled when I went into it.”

Kelly also returned from Switzerland with a wife, Isabelle Avril, and another passion: wine. “Isabelle was in college with me, and her family are in the wine business.” The Avril family are from Châteauneuf-du-Pape, which Kelly agrees is not bad in a wife, and a great help to the hotel cellars. He got on well with his new father-in-law, Paul Avril, who died last year.

“He and his son Vincent both studied in Burgundy, so even though many French wine growers are very insular on their own wine, their passion is much broader.”

The Avrils make their own Clos des Papes, one of the elite wines of the region, but they also introduced Kelly to more of the wines of France, and he and Vincent now go on wine-tasting trips. Just to keep up to date? “But of course,” smiles Kelly. He returned from Lausanne bristling with new ideas. “I think initially my mum was a little afraid to give me too much of the rein. I wanted to move the reception; it was in a cubby-hole at the back and there wasn’t enough room for the size of the operation we were running. I wanted to bring it to the front of the hotel.

“But moving the reception was unforgivable. And I said: ‘Mum we’re going to do it anyway.’ And I’ll always remember, we didn’t talk much for nearly a month – there was a strong sense of ‘reserve’, but it was a good idea, and she had the heart to change her mind. You can never argue for long with my Mum.”

Breda Kelly is still very much involved, coming into the hotel every day. Do they argue? “No, she just tells me . . . We get on very well,” he says, with affection, “but she’s a very determined lady – she didn’t get through the period she did without having a sense of vision and determination. We have healthy arguments; she probably keeps me in touch with reality, keeps my feet on the ground.”

This is not always an easy proposition – we move on to Kelly’s next passions: sport and exercise. “My wife calls me action man because I always like to be doing something,” he says ruefully. “We’ve always emphasised healthy activities for children when they come here, so we’ve kept out the one-arm bandits and all those things, and in that way it has held its character. But you can’t stop development.”

In many ways Kelly is an old-fashioned man. Not in the sense of being stuck in the past, but of having values that seem, unfortunately, to be increasingly out-dated, such as families sticking together; committing to principles over profit; lots and lots of fresh air and exercise – which once almost led to his downfall.

“When the kids were younger they were mad on horse-riding. I bought a horse myself so I could join them, rather than just watch. We used to go down on the beach, and go in swimming; you take the saddle off and just let the horse swim, though you have to watch when you come out of the water, they shake themselves down and you can go all over the place.”

The horse was a thoroughbred which hadn’t made it as a race horse, and with typical never-say-die attitude – which nonetheless seems out of place with such a quiet-spoken, gentle sort of man – Kelly took him out cross-country. “We were going over a fence and he fell, and I fell too, and I thought, I probably don’t need this.”

The family live at what Kelly describes as “a safe distance” away. “It’s an old farmhouse and it’s a godsend to rear a family in the countryside,” he says. “Isabelle has been involved in the hotel a little, but with six daughters [big families run through the generations in Kellys] she has plenty going on.”

The Kelly children range in age from 22 to 12. One of the family’s daughters, Faye, has Down syndrome, and Kelly has been eloquent on the subject of communications skills being vital for Down syndrome and other special-needs children.

“We’re very close to the work being done in Gorey and Wexford, and, in particular, St Patrick’s School in Enniscorthy. He adds: “Faye is the best thing that ever happened us.”

Given that Kelly’s is such a family affair, and as Bill is the fourth generation to run the place, and the third to be called William (which makes me think they take their dynasties seriously), I wonder whether one of his own children looks like stepping into their father’s shoes?

“The eldest, Laura, is studying hotel management at the moment. She studied commerce and Italian in UCD, and in her final year, I asked her what she wanted to do. And she said, ‘The more I look around, the more I’m interested in the hotel business.’

“I don’t know if she’ll come to Kelly’s, and I don’t know if it matters. Of course I’d love her to come back, but with a family business you have to be sure, and with the hotel business you have to be doubly sure because you have to give so much of yourself. Hotels work very well without that sort of input, but I feel that’s what gives us a little bit extra, the fact that we are all family.”

Kelly’s latest project is a book on the hotel’s art collection. “I still buy,” says Kelly. “It’s very hard not to. It’s the sort of thing that’s a passion that makes no financial sense. But if you’re into art, and you see it as something that holds you – well . . . I’d buy more art than anything else.”

Art, wine, family, sport, travel, the hotel, hospitality – Bill Kelly has so many passions, I start to see the point of his wife’s nickname for him.

For the Love of Art, a book on the Kelly's Hotel art collection, is published on May 31st and will be available in Avoca shops. Proceeds from the sales will go to Goal's Haiti fund; kellys.ie