Five additional show-stopper bedrooms are to be revealed next spring in true Ballyfin glory, lining up in stately style alongside the hotel’s 15 existing, hugely impressive bedrooms and suites.
Set within 600 acres of private parkland and originally designed by the great Irish architects, father and son, Richard and William Vitruvius Morrison in the early 1820s, Ballyfin (www.ballyfin.com) has long been admired as one of the most lavish late Georgian houses in Ireland. The mansion was relaunched as a hotel in May 2011 following an ambitious eight year restoration programme - longer than it took to build the house originally!
Ballyfin Demesne was once the ancestral seat of the Poles, Wellesley-Poles and the Cootes. In the past three years its name as a hotel has become known as a world-class one with Ballyfin steadily carving a great reputation in Ireland and far beyond. Since its 2011 relaunch, impressive accolades have been garnered from Dublin to Australia and appreciative guests return to what they consider their special discovery, where the warmest of Irish welcomes awaits.
“We’d always intended to add a handful of extra bedrooms at some stage but that time has arrived earlier than originally envisaged,” explains Managing Director, Jim Reynolds. “Thanks to Ballyfin’s increasing popularity and its natural inclination towards exclusive-use celebrations - often across a whole weekend - we have recognised, for some time now, a real demand for added capacity. So from next spring, our five splendid new bedrooms will help us rise to the occasion even more.”
Ensuring that Ballyfin’s interior design scheme glides through to this next stage, in keeping with what was introduced with the 2011 relaunch, is Colin Orchard. (It was for his work on the relaunch of Ballyfin that ‘House & Garden’ named Colin the 2012 winner of its prestigious ‘Pineapple' award which recognises the designer, considered by the magazine, to have ‘made the greatest contribution to hotel design that year’.)
So it is that when Ballyfin re-opens next March, after its annual two month winter closure, this new collection of five new rooms will bond seamlessly with the existing 15 bedrooms and suites to feature a complementary interior design style right across Ballyfin’s full range. In tune with Ballyfin’s heritage - and the associated gracious lifestyle enjoyed, and hospitality extended, here in the 19th century, particularly, when owned by the well-heeled Coote family - each room will bask in its own very distinctive personality.
In this manner, the chinoserie decorative theme of one of two lake-view rooms will complement the similarly subtle Indian accents of its next door neighbour, for example, while another will murmur elegantly in a French fashion. A further room’s recall of a verdant garden will harmonise well alongside that of a suite with an Irish country house flavour. (Each room will be properly christened as they are unveiled next spring and will bear similarly-styled titles in keeping with those that already exist.)
Sharing a lobby door and with compatible colour schemes, the two rooms fronting onto Ballyfin’s 28-acre lake can be teamed together, if required. One of this pair will be characterised by the delicately detailed chinoiserie adopted for the wall fabric, curtains and bed drapery with select pieces of statement Oriental furniture beckoned alongside. In turn, faux-painted rosewood chairs conspire with an Indian ‘tree of life’ inspired curtain fabric to summon up the complementary flavour next door.
Overlooking a courtyard on one side, the main corridor linking all five new rooms (which can be privately grouped for a Ballyfin gathering of 10 friends or family members) is flanked on the other side by two balconied bedrooms. This pair look out onto a new, water feature that has been purposely-designed by Jim Reynolds (who also devised Ballyfin’s Cascade) to complete this aspect.
One of this duo features a coral and moss-green toile de Jouy fabric for the walls, curtains and the coronet-topped bed drapery to pave the way for the room’s prevailing French Empire tone and pale painted wood furniture.
Next door is the ‘Garden room’. The talented muralist, Lucinda Oakes, has been commissioned to summon up the illusion of outdoor slumber within a dreamy arbour. In her Sussex studio, Lucinda is hand-painting onto a set of canvases an incredibly detailed and highly decorative trellised framework that will wrap right around the bedroom. Entwined with luxuriant foliage, her low, faux trellis dado panelling corners upwards into arches that open out to convincing vistas with a profusion of roses, lilies, wisteria, peach trees and the like. There’s birdlife to be spotted too with a coot here and there, in whimsical tribute to the Coote family who previously called Ballyfin their home. A chic, simple four poster will be strategically placed within the mural’s framework while, also incorporated into the design, the entrance into this room and the French windows out to the balcony will be cast as doorways through to a vision of lush surrounding landscape, mimicking what actually awaits Ballyfin guests within its expansive parkland. In sync with the room’s botanical nature and palette of greens will be light decorative furniture and upholstery in rosy flushes to pinpoint the mural’s floral and fruity shades.
Looking back to the Cascade and stretching right across a complete rear elevation of Ballyfin, the Irish country house suite’s walls will be glazed with a soft golden glow. Lavished upon this background colour will be splashes of green, blues and aquamarine marrying the leafy pattern of the suite’s bedroom curtains, four poster bed’s drapes and sitting room sofa with a wonderful linen and silk striped print by Jean Monro. As with all Ballyfin bedrooms, comfortable upholstery will mix with a selection of antique pieces of furniture.
Indeed, it’s as particular pieces of signature furniture or artwork are discovered that the jigsaw pieces are put in place and Colin’s vision is pulled together. He tracks down many of his jigsaw pieces by visiting Decorative Antiques & Textiles Fairs and also alerts Dublin and London antique houses to what he’s seeking. Antique shops in London, Paris and the Cotswolds are combed too while in Dublin, Johnston Antiques and O’Sullivan Antiques are also regular ports of call, as is George Stacpoole Antiques in Adare.
“I’ll give particular dealers who I work with closely a list of what I have in mind so they can keep their eyes out for something that will suit. It may be that I start out with a certain idea around a particular piece for a certain room and then a chance discovery will lead to a significant rethink,” adds Colin.
Yet Colin is at great pains to point out that the ideas and vision for Ballyfin’s rooms are not just down to him alone but very much involve a collaboration.
From 2005 through to 2011, Colin worked closely with the hotel’s owners on the interior design element of Ballyfin’s renovation and their aim that Ballyfin should re-emerge as though the generations of its earlier owners had simply left the house as they had lived in it. The requisite grandeur was to be deftly balanced alongside the informality that typifies warm and embracing Irish hospitality. “Picking up on this approach once more around the five new rooms, our collaboration has only naturally become far more intuitive - particularly as the house and demesne have a beating pulse again and a profile of guest to consider who has a clear anticipation of the Ballyfin experience.”
“During the relaunch project for Ballyfin, I was there every six weeks or so, across the space of three to four years,” mentions Colin, who has returned regularly since to attend to particular upgrades and slight reworkings. “It is really fabulous to feel so connected to a house of Ballyfin’s standing, to know it so well inside-and-out and to continue to be involved as it now evolves further as a hotel. Ballyfin’s members of staff are the warmest of souls and have become old friends so it’s been great to share the excitement of this next stage with General Manager, Damien Bastiat and his team.”
To contact Ballyfin, e-mail info@ballyfin.com or phone 00 353 (0)5787 55866. For more details visit www.ballyfin.com.
