|
Luxury on the Lough
MALCOLM ROGERS takes a gander down to Ghan House in Carlingford to sample some of the area’s fine wines and gourmet treats — and the good news is it’s only four hours from central London.
My Official Guide to Ireland (1934 edition, William Strain & Co., Belfast) has little to say on the subject of Carlingford.
On the page opposite the advert for White’s Table Jellies (“The jolliest jellies in jellydom for as little as 2d”) it merely gives the opinion that “Carlingford was at one time a town of the first rank in Ireland, but is now little more than a village with a charming situation on the Cooley Peninsula. The coastline can be particularly bracing.”
Well, less of the ‘little more than a village’ if you don’t mind. It’s still charming, right enough, and on a fine soft day the coastline can indeed be bracing, but today Carlingford is a thriving town with restaurants, cafes and pubs galore.
The area was raided by the Vikings in the 8th and 9th centuries, followed by the Normans in the 12th century. Carlingford has always been a popular place, you see. Relics of this past remain everywhere: two castles (yes two, in a wee place like this!), fortified town houses, a mint (now that’s a real licence to print money), a tholsel (which, although sounds like a throat condition, is in fact a gate-house), and a Dominican Friary. Carlingford has more ancient buildings than any similar-sized town in the whole of Ireland, and to wander the old medieval streets is to get a real breath of the area’s history, a history for which the word ‘chequered’ barely does justice.
By George!
Celts, Vikings, Normans, Cromwellian forces, Dissenters, etc., have all massed at the town gates of this old place, but to experience the Georgian influence, you have to pay a visit to Ghan House.
The poprietor is Paul Carroll, a genial Louth man who used to work as a photographer in London, before returning home to help run the House.
“My mother Joyce Carroll bought the place in 1991 to run it basically as a cookery school,” he said, “but when I came back in 1997 I realised its potential and we opened a restaurant, and soon after that the hotel facilities.”
The house, built in 1727, is surrounded by castellated walls and a guard tower, and set in beautiful gardens.
“The first floor drawing room is a very handsome room,” Paul explained as he ushered me upstairs. “This,” he announced, “is where we serve dinner.”
He didn’t need to say any more, because it’s one of the finest dining rooms you could ever clap eyes on. For an impossibly romantic setting you couldn’t really better it, with the Cooley Mountains as a backdrop and the Mountains of Mournes sweeping down to the sea just across the Lough.
The establishment is run by the Carroll family with style and flair — romantic snug bars, intimate dining rooms, and heavy on open fires and candles in the winter, aperitifs in the garden in the summer.
Your fish is my command
Before you order you meal you can take your ease in the great drawing room downstairs, order up a gin and tonic, and browse through the menu.
“We don’t like to hurry anyone,” explains Paul. “If you book here for dinner, you’re here for the night. We’re not one of those places which tries to turn over two or three sittings a night. So you can relax over a drink, and decide what you want for dinner, before ambling up the dining room when it’s ready.”
And what a menu it is! The style of the cooking is modern Irish contemporary (in other words, far from where we were rared), but is absolutely delicious, using as it does local produce — Cooley lamb, mussels and oysters from the lough (so fresh, you probably passed them on the sea-shore on the way downMy Official Guide to Ireland (1934 edition, William Strain & Co., Belfast) has little to say on the subject of Carlingford.
On the page opposite the advert for White’s Table Jellies (“The jolliest jellies in jellydom for as little as 2d”) it merely gives the opinion that “Carlingford was at one time a town of the first rank in Ireland, but is now little more than a village with a charming situation on the Cooley Peninsula. The coastline can be particularly bracing.”
Well, less of the ‘little more than a village’ if you don’t mind. It’s still charming, right enough, and on a fine soft day the coastline can indeed be bracing, but today Carlingford is a thriving town with restaurants, cafes and pubs galore.
The area was raided by the Vikings in the 8th and 9th centuries, followed by the Normans in the 12th century. Carlingford has always been a popular place, you see. Relics of this past remain everywhere: two castles (yes two, in a wee place like this!), fortified town houses, a mint (now that’s a real licence to print money), a tholsel (which, although sounds like a throat condition, is in fact a gate-house), and a Dominican Friary. Carlingford has more ancient buildings than any similar-sized town in the whole of Ireland, and to wander the old medieval streets is to get a real breath of the area’s history, a history for which the word ‘chequered’ barely does justice.
By George!
Celts, Vikings, Normans, Cromwellian forces, Dissenters, etc., have all massed at the town gates of this old place, but to experience the Georgian influence, you have to pay a visit to Ghan House.
The poprietor is Paul Carroll, a genial Louth man who used to work as a photographer in London, before returning home to help run the House. 
“My mother Joyce Carroll bought the place in 1991 to run it basically as a cookery school,” he said, “but when I came back in 1997 I realised its potential and we opened a restaurant, and soon after that the hotel facilities.”
The house, built in 1727, is surrounded by castellated walls and a guard tower, and set in beautiful gardens.
“The first floor drawing room is a very handsome room,” Paul explained as he ushered me upstairs. “This,” he announced, “is where we serve dinner.”
He didn’t need to say any more, because it’s one of the finest dining rooms you could ever clap eyes on. For an impossibly romantic setting you couldn’t really better it, with the Cooley Mountains as a backdrop and the Mountains of Mournes sweeping down to the sea just across the Lough.
The establishment is run by the Carroll family with style and flair — romantic snug bars, intimate dining rooms, and heavy on open fires and candles in the winter, aperitifs in the garden in the summer.
Your fish is my command
Before you order you meal you can take your ease in the great drawing room downstairs, order up a gin and tonic, and browse through the menu.
“We don’t like to hurry anyone,” explains Paul. “If you book here for dinner, you’re here for the night. We’re not one of those places which tries to turn over two or three sittings a night. So you can relax over a drink, and decide what you want for dinner, before ambling up the dining room when it’s ready.”
And what a menu it is! The style of the cooking is modern Irish contemporary (in other words, far from where we were rared), but is absolutely delicious, using as it does local produce — Cooley lamb, mussels and oysters from the lough (so fresh, you probably passed them on the sea-shore on the way down in the car) and, of course, fresh fish. Paul Carroll has a saying: there’s no smoke without salmon.
Long story short: this is a first-class guzzling experience. The décor is stunning, and the staff are friendly, with not a hint of attitude. There’s an old joke about the epitaph a head waiter had on his headstone: “God finally caught his eye”. This simply has no relevance here. Each course is served with friendly attention and aplomb.
Oh, and by the way, after your meal you can retire to the private bar until the wee small hours. Which very neatly and seamlessly brings me to the subject of accessibility to Ghan House. Do you know, you could leave London at 9am and be in Ghan House by lunch time. A new motorway runs directly from Dublin Airport to Dundalk (about 45 minutes), and Carlingford is approximately another 20 minutes out along the coast.
And the beauty of the place is such that you won’t need to use your hire car again until you head for home. Carlingford is so self-contained (as is the way with medieval towns) that you can junk the jalopy for the duration of your stay.
For that matter, you don’t even need to hire one — there is a coach directly from the airport to Dundalk, and a taxi will bring you the rest of the way.
The thrill of the grill
Now my idea of cooking is that when the smoke alarm goes off, the food’s done. In fact, my cooking is such that I’m thinking of installing a row of those vending machines you see at airports. That way I’d always having a ready meal available.
However, after attending my first cookery school at Ghan House, I may well have a radical re-think. Ursula Ferrigno specialises in Italian cooking, instructing you in the simple pleasures of authentic Italian rural living — the sort of idyllic thing that stares out at you from the packets of pasta on the supermarket shelves.
Ursula has been demonstrating her cookery technique at Ghan House since the Cookery School opened in 1993, and if she can teach me to cook a very appetising tagliatelle, she can teach anybody.
By the way, Ursula’s style is not from the Gordon Ramsay school — in fact during my lesson I think I was only cursed at three times (and not once by Ursula).
Ursula is one of a group of teachers and demonstrators who run classes at throughout the year. Other tutors specialise in pastry and breadmaking, desserts and gourmet spreads, Thai food extravaganzas, or feasts prepared from local food —everything from wildfowl to venison. From duck to buck, as it were.
A myth is as
good as a mile
The Cooley Peninsula is an area of huge archaeological and mythological importance. The central epic from the ancient Ulster sagas, the Táin Bó Cuailgne, or the Cattle Raid of Cooley, is set here in the hills above Ghan House.
The Táin saga centres round the great brown bull of Connacht and the great white bull of Ulster, and Queen Maeve’s efforts to secure the latter. Too often dismissed as a load of old bull, Ghan House’s expert-on-call, Imelda A’Loan, runs daytime trips round the Peninsula, visiting the old battle sites of Cú Chullainn, and getting members of the party to act out parts of the saga.
There is also much musing on the significance of the various archaeological remains that abound hereabouts — such as the 4,000-year-old dolmens that litter the area. These stone configurations look like ancient bus stops, but it seems unlikely that this was their real purpose.
Equally intriguing are the various pagan healing stones inside the Christian burial place of St. Brigid. Almost as interesting as these, was the packed lunch which the people at Ghan had prepared for our lengthy pilgrimage round the Peninsula.
Quote, unquote
I started with a quote from an official guide book, so I’m going to finish with one. My AA Tourist guide (1966 edition) in their French section describes the area round the Cooley Peninsula as “absolument époustouflants”. I’m not sure exactly what that means, but I get the general drift.
In any language, the place is enchanting and worthy of a visit. For a restful break, you could book yourself and your friends into Ghan House for the entire weekend, sample the gourmet food in the restaurant or book the private dining room downstairs — and sample some high living at modest cost.
| 