The Merrion Hotel

Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington, is believed to have been born in 1769 at Mornington House, 24 Upper Merrion Street, in Dublin. That house is now part of The Merrion Hotel, which joined four Georgian townhouses on the street into a single hotel in 1997, directly opposite Government Buildings and close to Merrion Square.

History

Upper Merrion Street was built up in the second half of the eighteenth century, when Dublin was one of the largest cities in Europe and its aristocracy and professional families were moving to the new streets south of the Liffey. Mornington House belonged to Garret Wesley, first Earl of Mornington, Wellington's father. The exact birthplace of the duke has long been debated, but the family's Dublin home was here. The boy born into it went on to command the allied army at Waterloo in 1815.

The four houses were restored and joined by a group led by the Irish businessmen Lochlann Quinn and Martin Naughton, and the hotel opened in October 1997. A new garden wing was built behind the houses to provide additional bedrooms, so that the historic rooms could keep their proportions.

Architecture and design

The restoration kept the tall sash windows, the fireplaces and the stucco ceilings of the Georgian rooms, some with rococo plasterwork. Between the original houses and the garden wing lie two formal gardens laid out in eighteenth-century style. The public rooms in the main house are furnished as drawing rooms, with open fires and antique furniture, and they are used through the day by residents and Dubliners alike.

The hotel holds one of the largest private collections of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Irish and British art in the country, with works by Jack B. Yeats, Paul Henry, William Orpen and Louis le Brocquy hung throughout the public rooms. The Art Tea, served in the drawing rooms, pairs pastries with paintings from the collection.

Rooms and suites

There are 142 rooms and suites, divided between the Georgian main house and the garden wing. Rooms in the main house keep high ceilings and period detail, while those in the garden wing are more contemporary in layout and look onto the gardens.

Dining

Restaurant Patrick Guilbaud, founded by the French chef in Dublin in 1981, moved into the hotel when it opened and has held two Michelin stars for many years. The Garden Room serves all-day meals, The Cellar Bar occupies the vaulted eighteenth-century cellars beneath the houses, and No. 23 is the hotel's cocktail bar.

Wellness

The Tethra Spa, beneath the hotel, has a swimming pool, a gym and treatment rooms.

Weddings and events

The Merrion hosts weddings, private dinners and meetings in a series of rooms within the Georgian houses, several of them with original plasterwork and views over the gardens.

Location

The hotel stands in the heart of Georgian Dublin. Merrion Square, the National Gallery of Ireland, the Natural History Museum and Leinster House, seat of the Oireachtas, are all close by, and St Stephen's Green and Grafton Street are a short walk to the west. Trinity College lies a little to the north. Few other addresses offer a luxury hotel in Dublin so close to the national institutions. The Luas Green Line stops at St Stephen's Green, Pearse station serves DART and suburban trains, and Dublin Airport is around half an hour away by car, depending on traffic.