Lough Rynn Castle

“The importance of remarkable staff”

I would personally like to leave a 5 star review for service received last night in the bar. A waitress named Kate made our experience excellent. She was excellent in attending to our needs and went above and beyond to make our experience remarkable. It is servers like her that make a hotel deser... more

I would personally like to leave a 5 star review for service received last night in the bar. A waitress named Kate made our experience excellent. She was excellent in attending to our needs and went above and beyond to make our experience remarkable. It is servers like her that make a hotel deserve their 5 stars!

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“Hard pass”

We arrived quite late & very frazzled due to Google Maps! Be careful routing there. The room was in the owners house & not the nice main building. The AC was non existent & and we only had 2 tiny windows to let in any air. It stayed 23-24C the entire time. The furniture was very dated and... more

We arrived quite late & very frazzled due to Google Maps! Be careful routing there. The room was in the owners house & not the nice main building. The AC was non existent & and we only had 2 tiny windows to let in any air. It stayed 23-24C the entire time. The furniture was very dated and chipped, stained. The window seat was beyond awkward trying yo shut the blinds for sleep. Getting them closed was a production, not to mention dangerous if someone falls. Dinner stops around 9;30 pm so I decided I just wanted a cheese sandwich toasted which I did receive. That & my ice cream hit the spot. We slept so poorly due to the room heat & no compensation at all wad offered at check out. Maybe the rooms in the main house were better but this was just a sloppy operation.

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“I won’t be back!”

My friends came in from the US to visit the area to find out as much as they could about their ancestors and chose Lough Rynn Castle (formerly named by the Clements family as Lough Rynn House and/or Estate), it’s not a castle! Beautiful house, beautiful grounds, beautiful gardens and lake… no pro... more

My friends came in from the US to visit the area to find out as much as they could about their ancestors and chose Lough Rynn Castle (formerly named by the Clements family as Lough Rynn House and/or Estate), it’s not a castle! Beautiful house, beautiful grounds, beautiful gardens and lake… no problem there at all whatsoever. Rooms were fine, quiet, clean, a bit fusty and tired, no awards for interiors or any elcectic elements here! Big issue was staff. Service. Ambience. Waiting. Snickering. Overstretched children serving the guests. So where to start… On checkin we were given our two rooms. One had a couple. One was single occupancy. I asked the two people at the reception desk how big the “beds” were in the rooms (remembering my friends are from the US and I know we have different bed sizes, also he is about 6’3”), the answer I got was they are doubles. I asked “double beds”, she said yes, I said so the beds are 4’6” wide in the rooms, she looked at me like I was speaking some ancient long forgotten language. When I saw her blinded confusion I said “or are they 5” or bigger”? She repeated they were double rooms and I said I understood that but that I was just trying to establish how big the beds were in their double rooms, I then thought “or maybe she means the rooms have two beds in each room that are double in size”, no not that either. All she knew about the rooms is that they are double rooms and could not for the life of her (or her colleague) comprehend that in hotels (and indeed houses) there are different size beds and she did not have that information. Some hotel websites will actually give you the size of the bed within its schedule of rooms. This question just not have blindsided two reception/check in staff at Lough Rynn Castle. Great start. The beds were fine. They were not 4’6”/135cm but your staff should know this. Arrival drinks! We popped into the bar for a drink… that was ok, nice chap, served promptly, all good there. Dinner! How long do I have… we chose to eat in the bar which means about two or three spaces where they serve bar food. We decided to get a drink if the bar before dinner. We sat at the bar for simply ages, the two or tree floor staff which also included the bar staff out in the floors were running around fulfilling guest orders so the bar staff weren’t there, they were in other areas taking orders, making them up, and delivering them meanwhile guests at at the bar looking at an empty space. Eventually as one appeared behind the bar frantically doing drinks I managed to get his attention for a fraction of a second to ask if there was anyone available to get us a drink. After some time we did get our drinks order in. I ordered a glass of wine. I saw the child (not exaggerating) fill my glass (ish), but he used up what was left in the bottle. I saw him notice it wasn’t what he’d normally fill up to, I saw him look into the fridge for another bottle, I saw him observe there wasn’t one, and I saw him make the decision that what was in my glass would do! I said it to him and he laughed and said it was the right amount. I told him I saw him look for the next bottle and just didn’t bother, it wasn’t just a dribble in the bottom of the glass so I let him off with his cheeky smile and response. We decided to go into dinner in the drawing rooms or whatever it might be referred to. The chap in charge of tables had already designated a very nice table for us but asked us for a few minutes for him to get it ready. He never came back to us so eventually we made our way in to our table which was a table with a white cloth and three menus. My friend said “oh they haven’t finished setting it yet” so we stood around for a while and then just sat down. This was 7:55pm. At 8:25pm still sitting at this table with three menus on it we had not been approached by one single person. Again there seemed to be one very young girl flying about the place. I saw her look at us several times but she just didn’t have it in the tank to approach us. We sat there with the drinks we had to wait intermably for in the bar in front of us with the 3 menus and nothing else. My friend (who is super polite and kind) did go outside to see if there was any danger of getting someone to approach us. Someone did. A grown up finally appeared. His name was Andrew, he had a name tag that said Duty Manager.. I asked him if he’d just come on duty. He said no that he has been in the restaurant, I said to him that we had had zero service since sitting down. He was super understanding and knew what was going on. He said “that’s why I’m here”… another grown up appeared too, I think when the restaurant service had been taken care of the sent the grown ups to the bar area service. At the appearance of Andrew and his colleague everything went well. Food was prompt. Drinks were prompt. Everything went well. While we were waiting for service I did manage to steal one tea light from a sideboard and added to our table to create some semblance of ambience!!!! Next day at check out there was an issue with some vouchers my friends had been given at check in to go against cost of dinner but they tried to stone wall the use of them because seemingly they’re to be presented at dinner but after the debacle of that hot mess it clearly slipped their minds. They did however persuade the front desk staff apply them. Breakfast was a dream. The tables were beautifully set. The lady looking after us was 100%. That I have zero negative comments on. Sadly the bar and dining experience, which is a huge part of a country house hotel stay, was so abissmal I would never return.

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