Castlemartyr Resort, Cork
A new 104-bedroom five-star hotel and spa, integrated sensitively onto the grounds of the historic Castlemartyr Demesne.
- Location Castlemarty, County Cork
- Client Oracle Property Developments
- Project Hotel and Spa Development
- Scale 20,000 sqm
The Challenge
To create a composition of facilities and structures that harmonises in scale and form while respecting the site's inherent heritage character.
The Story
Castlemartyr Demesne presents as a sensitive site for a development of this nature. Existing structures included a grand 18th Century Manor House and the ruins of a 13th Century Norman castle, surrounded by mature landscape. The project brief required a full adaptive re-use of the manor house and the integration of this heritage building into the new hotel and hospitality campus development.
The Outcome
New elements introduced to the resort arrangement were conceived with retrained materiality to reduce visual impact. Sited with deference to the existing manor house, they were developed as a contemporary extension to the west of the existing house, laid out to avail of partial screening offered by existing mature woodland connected to the original house by a glazed highly transparent modern intervention.
The completed hotel appears as a series of linked 'pavilions in the park', with the refurbished main house acting as the focal point, main entrance and reception. New is differentiated from the old in a clearly modern architectural language, but in a restrained manner with materials chosen to sit comfortably in the existing surroundings.
