Most people know Dublin’s O’Connell Street. Fewer realise that the man it is named for came from a stone manor house ten minutes’ drive from this hotel, on the wooded slope above Derrynane Beach.
The Liberator
Daniel O’Connell (1775–1847) was a lawyer, a politician, and arguably the greatest figure of 19th-century Irish history. His Catholic Emancipation campaign — which won the right of Catholics to sit in the UK Parliament — was the first mass political movement in Europe to succeed without bloodshed, and he ran much of it from this very corner of South Kerry.
Derrynane House
The family seat sits on 120 hectares of woodland, gardens and coastal trails, all now part of Derrynane National Historic Park and open to the public year-round. Inside, the rooms are laid out as they were in O’Connell’s lifetime — including the ornate chariot given to him by the citizens of Dublin in 1844.
A day’s visit
Allow two hours for the house and gardens; longer if the weather is kind. The 18th- and 19th-century planted gardens lead down through woodland to a Gothic summer house and out onto Abbey Island — the sandy spit you can walk at low tide, where the ruined 6th-century abbey sits behind its walled graveyard. There is a small tearoom in the visitor centre for lunch.
Visiting from the hotel
Derrynane House is a ten-minute drive from the hotel; the front desk is happy to arrange a taxi if you would rather walk back along the coast. A combined visit with the Mass Loop walk makes a full and rewarding day’s outing.
