When it started 50 years ago, Woodlands House Hotel was a B&B in a four-bed bungalow on a farm in Adare, Co Limerick. Now it's an 89-room destination four-star hotel and spa which, Oliver Callan claims, can be seen from space. Mary Fitzgerald started the business with her late husband Dick on a farm that supplied produce to the hospitality industry.
Mary told Oliver that Woodlands House Hotel started because tourism was growing in the area – Adare Manor had opened to the public as a visitor attraction – but there weren’t many places for people to stay:
"I put up a cardboard sign – B and B – and put it at the crossroads because we’re three quarters of a mile off the main road, so people thought we were crazy: 'People come to the middle of nowhere? Not a hope it would work!’ But it did."
In 1976, Hollywood came to town. Marty Feldman – known for his work with Mel Brooks on Young Frankenstein and Silent Movie – came to Adare Manor to film The Last Remake of Beau Geste with Michael York. Some of the cast stayed with Mary and Dick in their four-bed bungalow, all sharing the same bathroom:
"But there you are, that’s the way it was at the time. When I tell my American visitors that nowadays, they look at me as if to say, ‘This is crazy,’ but you know, that’s the way it was and it’s not that long ago."
The business may have started modestly, but it grew very quickly and by the early 1980s Mary and Dick had twenty rooms in a much-expanded B&B. And, Mary says, the idea of bringing en-suite rooms to Woodlands was inspired by the Pope, who followed his visit to Ireland in 1979 by travelling to the US. This led Mary to decide that she’d like to visit America too:
"We kind of followed him on and we stayed at the Days Inn in Orlando – my first visit to Disney – and I was absolutely fascinated by these closet kind of thing with a toilet and a shower and a wash hand basin outside and I said, ‘God, this is fantastic.’"
That was 1979. By 1981, Mary had built twelve en-suite rooms, something she says was life-changing for the business. Something else that was life-changing for Woodlands was when Mary and Dick started their restaurant – a novelty in the area at the time:
"There was no restaurant in Adare – isn't it hard to believe now where we have fourteen restaurants now, there wasn’t even one in the early eighties."
That was until The Farmhouse came along. And in the early days, guests at Woodlands could have full board – breakfast, lunch and dinner. A great service, but not easy for Mary and Dick to provide:
"I made the dinner, he served it. He made the breakfast and I served it. That’s the way it was, that was the deal."
When you run a hotel and restaurant, of course, you need to be prepared for the big events and functions that come your way. Mary – who has an amazing memory for dates – recounted the first dinner dance at Woodlands in November 1983:
"Ninety people [and] I ran out of potatoes. At a farming function. Imagine! My God, we never ran out ever again since, I can guarantee you."
And when it comes to functions and event, they don’t come much bigger or much more significant for the rural hotelier than the National Ploughing Championships. It gives a local business an opportunity to appear on the national stage and in 1991 Woodlands got that opportunity from the Ploughing’s managing director Anna May McHugh, something Mary describes as groundbreaking:
"Anna May McHugh, a fantastic woman, came in and said, ‘Mary, if you put on extra bedrooms and you increase your public spaces, you can be the headquarters.’ And I did. I had it all done in a year."
The expansion of the hotel over the years has been significant, but the original bungalow outside which Mary hung the cardboard B and B sign, still stands at its heart.
"I go in and out there every day and, you know, I get emotional sometimes because I never lose sight of where we came from and that’s a reminder every day of it."
Mary and Dick’s four children are all involved with the business now and that fact is reflected in the name that’s writ large at the entrance: Fitzgerald’s Woodlands House Hotel & Spa.
You can hear Oliver full, uplifting chat with Mary by tapping or clicking above.