Mayo memories: Breaffy House Hotel was reopened in 1970 after fire
By Tom Gillespie
IT is 55 years ago this month that Breaffy House Hotel, outside Castlebar, reopened after being almost destroyed in a major fire almost a year earlier.
The blaze, on November 18, 1969, completely destroyed the main building, causing an estimated £150,000 worth of damage, but was prevented spreading to a new extension which was opened at a cost of £103,000 a year earlier.
A 15-year-old boy was the hero of the pre-dawn blaze which gutted the luxury hotel.
After the alarm was raised by ‘Boots’ John Lavelle of Breaffy, when he came on duty at the 19th century property, guests and members of the staff leaped or clambered down drain-pipes or knotted bed sheets in their night clothes from smoke-filled rooms.
Six people were injured while escaping from the blazing building and were taken to the County Hospital in Castlebar, where two of them - James Brogan of Ballinamore, Co. Leitrim, and George McMunn, Beltra, Co. Sligo - were detained.
A badly charred briefcase, containing £3,888 in cash, the property of Mr. McMunn, a tobacco company representative, was later recovered beneath debris from Mr. McMunn’s bedroom.
Firemen from five towns fought the fire - the worst ever in the area - and prevented it spreading to a new extension.
The hero of the blaze, John Lavelle, told The Connaught Telegraph: “I don’t sleep in the hotel and when I came on duty shortly after 7 a.m. I noticed thick black smoke billowing into the kitchen.
“I dashed to the staff quarters and woke members of the staff who roused the guests on the second storey.”
There were 17 guests staying in the 40-bedroom hotel and some of them jumped in their night clothes from the windows onto the lawns and held blankets while others flung themselves to safety or clambered down drain-pipes.
Castlebar fire brigade was alerted by the hotel’s managing director, Mrs. Una Lee, who had returned from a Spanish holiday on the Monday night.
Almost a year later the official reopening of the hotel was performed by Dr. T.J. O’Driscoll, director general of Bord Fáilte, who said it would be unreal to say that 1970 has been a good year for tourism, adding: “The industry will always be the subject of a number of factors outside its control but to express despair and suggest nothing can be done to offset these factors is sheer defeatism.
“There has been a slowing of growth of visitor arrivals from some areas but we have seen continual traffic making a significant improvement. The promotional work and marketing in Continental Europe is beginning to pay dividends.
“I believe that we have confidence and show confidence so we shall overcome any problems we may encounter - and we have in Breaffy House an example of how, in a single unit of industry, the factors of courage, character, cooperation and confidence have been brought together, with considerable success.”
The fire completely destroyed the interior of the main hotel building, and while a function room, bedrooms, kitchen and staff quarters were undamaged, business carried on, on a limited scale, under managing director Mrs. Lee.
Now the hotel has been restored at a cost of about £300,000, the paper reported.
The hotel, Dr. O’Driscoll said, had 45 bedrooms (all with baths), conference facilities, and was also equipped to handle private banquets.
New features of the hotel were a hairdressing and beauty salon and a gift shop.
The 18th century buildings, he said, stood on 60 acres of wooded farmland on the main Castlebar to Dublin road, and was formerly the home of Brigadier D. A.S. Browne. It was purchased, for use as a hotel, in 1962 from the Irish Land Commission by the late Mr. Michael Lee.
Earlier Dr. O’Driscoll had stated: “Courage is an essential character of a good hotelier in the tourist industry. Courage to accept fresh concepts and to ensure that traditionalism in thinking of operational techniques does not inhibit development. Courage, character, cooperation and confidence are the four C’s of the tourist industry.
“Mrs. Una Lee and her fellow directors have consistently shown courage in the Breaffy House project.
“When Mrs. Lee and her late husband came to the west from their first management assignment in Co. Dublin they showed courage in taking on an exciting new project in an area where tourism was developing comparatively slowly, although already being nurtured by a small number of excellent experienced hoteliers.
“Faced with the decision of whether or not to ‘go it alone’ in management after her husband’s death, she made the right decision. That, too, required courage, allied to the know-how she had acquired as a student at the Shannon College of Hotel Management of which she is such a distinguished graduate.
“Courage has been shown in getting the business going so quickly again after the fire which interrupted the hotel’s record of progress. This is a character which we salute, just as we salute the lively mind which has devised and marketed a range of special interest holidays based on Breaffy House. I understand that you can even learn to fly while on a very relaxing vacation in Castlebar.”
Dr. O’Driscoll continued: “Mrs. Lee does not believe in stay-at-home management. She understands the important management techniques of delegation of duty and gets out into the markets for herself to discover what travel wholesalers are thinking and to sell them the idea of a holiday based in the west of Ireland - particularly an activity holiday which it is so essential to offer today (1970).
“Of course not all visitors want an activity holiday in the physical sense of the term, but they do want facilities for something to do - either physically or mentally. It satisfies the need for improvement which the discerning tourist desires, and it is the discerning tourist we want to see coming to Ireland in increasing numbers - the tourist who seeks some character in this increasingly standardised work.”