Need to know
Rooms
42, including six suites.
Check–Out
12 noon, but flexible, subject to availability. Earliest check-in, 4pm.
More details
Rates include a two-course breakfast: the first a selection of fruit, scones, pastries, cereals and cheeses; the second a choice of warm à la carte dishes.
Also
There are especially adapted accessible rooms in the Carriage House and Garden Wing, with grab bars, a shower seat and an emergency cord in the bathroom. And there’s a lift to all floors in these buildings. Accessible parking is available too.
At the hotel
Spa with thermal suite and yoga room, gym, hair salon, three acres of sweeping gardens, lounge with a fireplace, drawing room, ballroom, concierge, charged laundry service, free WiFi. In rooms: TV with casting capabilities, mini larder, Melitta pour-over coffee system with local Ponaire coffee, tea-making kit, desk, bathrobes and slippers, air-conditioning, Memo Paris bath products.
Our favourite rooms
Honeymooners, sequester yourselves away in the Gate Lodge, which is decorated in shades of pink, has a private patio and sits away from the main house to give that little extra privacy. Or, if you’d like to be among the action, the blush-hued Main House Avenue Suite is rather swoonsome, with high ceilings and original cornicing, evocative artworks and a canopied bed. Families staying should book the School House (not quite as scholastic as the name suggests).
Poolside
In the spa there’s a peaceful space with a 17-metre heated indoor-outdoor pool (with five alfresco metres). Large windows let you glimpse the garden and the iconic Rock as you run laps.
Spa
Take a cue from Ireland’s remarkably well-preserved bog bodies and submerge yourself in a peat mud bath, or one filled with hand-harvested Atlantic seaweed, or aromatic salts – they’ll all leave you looking refreshed. But the hotel spa has many ways to soothe, buff and beautify: perhaps a spiced mud wrap or sugar scrub, a gua sha facial, massage with basalt river stones? In three treatment rooms (plus one for couples), each with their own steam room, therapists apply luxurious products from Bamford, Voya and Skin by Olga; practice global knot-untying techniques (Japanese shiatsu, Swedish, Indian head massage); and scrub and smoothe. Or get steamy on a spin through the thermal suite of sauna, pool, Jacuzzi and experience showers.
Packing tips
As you might guess from the many grand pieces of equine artwork and statues of stallions, there’s a lot of horsing about to be had here, so bring your boots and breeches.
Also
The Magniers also have a fine eye for art – copies of pieces from their collection (Lowrys, Laverys, Orpens, Jack Butler Yeats…) and some originals hang in heavy frames throughout.
Children
Little ones are welcome here – don’t worry, most of the antiques and original artwork are above the reach of little grasping hands. Rooms fit at least a baby cot, and babysitting can be arranged on request.
Sustainability efforts
Cashel Palace’s owners, the Magnier family, have done some fine necromancy in keeping this 18th-century residence near mint. Working with a local architect and craftspeople, and referencing vintage photos from the Laurence Collection, they pieced together how the house once looked and set about re-tiling the roof in traditional Bangor Blue slate, rebuilding four chimneys and rescuing pitch-pine timbers to reuse as beams in rooms. Its brick and limestone façades were both repointed, the basement’s flagstone floor was salvaged, wood panelling was repaired, and throughout original cornicing, fireplaces, windows and doors were gently restored. But, in reviving the past, they’re also safeguarding the future: all new builds have been designed to NZEB (Nearly Zero Energy Building) specs and are powered using renewable sources. Lighting is LED or photosensitive, heating is underfloor, and air-con is room-key controlled. An antique well discovered during refurbishment provides some of the water supply and the hotel has a Garbage Guzzler to compost waste. This is used to keep the kitchen gardens (part of the All Ireland Pollinator Programme) flourishing, and the hotel’s food sources (nearly all within the county borders) are a part of Origin Green, a sustainability initiative from Ireland’s food and horticulture agency. Greenhouse produce comes from the owners’ Coolmore Stud farm, and herbs and greens are grown in a hyper local, pesticide-free vertical farm in Ballyporeen, while an onsite hops garden nods to the hotel’s links with Guinness.