Hotel where Kelly and Collins stayed recaptures its grandeur
Friday, 16 March 2007
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A Dublin landmark which has played an important part in the city's history has come back to life following a makeover.
The Shelbourne Hotel, grande dame of the city's central St Stephen's Green, is an internationally known institution. Its guest list includes John F Kennedy, the Rolling Stones, Paul Newman,Jack Nicholson, Grace Kelly and James Cagney.
A social outpost of empire in the days of British rule, more recently it has become a haunt of Ireland's new rich. It has also hosted politicians, artists and literary figures and others in its bars, which are among Ireland's foremost.
The makeover is aimed at restoring the faded grandeur of a hotel which has stood in Dublin's city centre for almost 200 years.
After a previous facelift the hotel "begged respectfully to inform the nobility, gentry and families visiting Dublin" that "the most distinguished hotel in Ireland" had reopened.
It advertised that "the continental languages" were spoken by management and waiters. According to one enthusiastic author: "It stands for grandeur, for a certain social idea of life; it is the image of style."
Its ambience was described by another Dublin writer almost a century ago: "Well-dressed women with vivacious voices; tall men with shining hair. Tall and carefree, they walk about as if they owned the hotel, with the rest of the empire - careless and carefree people, for whom the best is about good enough." All this was shattered when part of the 1916 rising against British rule took place on its doorstep, with rebels moving into St Stephen's Green and trading shots with police and troops.
Today a bust of their leader, Countess Markievicz, stands in the park. At the time, inside the hotel upper-crust ladies insisted on continuing to take tea despite the noise of sporadic rifle fire.
"Not till a bullet entered, shearing the tip of a rose-petal from the hat of a lady, did the guests reconsider their choice of scene," it is recorded. They retreated hastily to a back room, the staff carrying their tea-cups.
The hotel kept going, with a skeleton staff, during days of fighting as bodies and a dead horse lay outside. Those inside kept away from the windows, played cards by candlelight and held nightly sing-songs.
The hotel, however, became a target after 40 soldiers made their way in from the back, placed sandbags at some of the windows and opened fire.
The rebels fired back but the troops heaved a heavy machine gun up the stairs. The rebels had no answer to this devastating fire and abandoned their positions.
After this episode the Shelbourne entered a more political phase and it was in room 112, under the chairmanship of Michael Collins, that the Irish constitution was drafted.
Recent decades have been untroubled by violence as it maintained the reputation for international standards. Its staff also have a reputation for discretion and for refusing to confirm or deny reports that in the 1970s many prominent Irish figures, including politicians and the odd judge, took part in late-night carousing, heroic drinking and poker-playing.
Certainly, there is no shifting the belief that the actor Peter O'Toole once had a bath in champagne there. The Shelbourne may have reinvented itself but that tale, along with the upstairs machine gun, remains part of the hotel's heritage.
