It is hard to know how to tell the story of the Spa Hotel in Lucan. I could write a thousand articles about it and each would be different. Over the years it has served as everything from a playground for Dublin’s Anglo-Irish aristocracy to being an unofficial community space for Lucanians.
I can see the green copper spire from the velux window in my attic. The walk from my house to the entrance is precisely a kilometer, or precisely two if I want to walk on to the Springfield Hotel.
As I walk over the flyover bridge, I look up at the building on my left. The Spa has been here a long time, first opening in 1758 as a health spa, making the most of the spa waters nearby. As I reach the entrance, I stop a moment to look at the buildings. Directly in front of me is the County Bar – itself the original Spa Hotel building. I had my first “legal” drink in here when I was 18. I wish I could say it was a pint or a dram of whiskey, but in truth it was a Cremé de Menth, the only drink that, while damaging your liver, at least momentarily gives you pleasant breath. In my defense, it was bought for me. Against my defense, I bought the second myself.
To my extreme left, the car park and facade of a more modern extension to the building. I, however, walk up the hill towards the green spire of the Victorian part of the hotel. The hotel was popular until the 1850s and, indeed, Lucan was sold to tourists as a resort town – a river resort. By that time, however, with William Dargan’s railway expansions, tourists and day trippers went elsewhere to spend their holidays and the original hotel closed down, becoming a school at one stage. However, with the coming of the tramlines to Lucan in 1881, the resort was back in business and the green spire was erected. This is the part of the hotel that I know best. I have seen many a Lucan Dramatics Society production here over the years – even taking part myself once in “Of Mice and Men” where I was given just one line to say. And how did I do? Well, I only fluffed one line …
As a teenager in the scouts, the Spa would give us the hall free of charge once a year where we held fundraising discos. I can still recall the day an elderly gentleman approached to say that he was here for the disco and I had to tell him that it wasn’t really age appropriate for him. “What? Is it not hurling?” he asked. I had to explain that I wasn’t sure who had told him what a disco was, but hurling was a relatively small part of it …
I walk around the side of the building and follow the track away from the hotel through the woods. I take an off-track through the ivy and fallen leaves and am soon on a wooded slope overlooking Lucan Golf Course. It is very quiet here. The trees do quite a good job at blocking out the roar of the nearby N4. It is surprisingly peaceful. At the base of one tree, I find my first oyster mushrooms of the year. However, being past their prime, I decide to leave these forest pearls behind.
I return to the main track and make my way to the Crescent, a beautifully intact Georgian housing terrace dating from 1790, a real architectural gem in Lucan’s crown. When these were first built, they allowed people to stay away from the hustle and bustle of the hotel and have their own access to the Demesne and its spa waters. I follow the road past them and down to the right, where I pass by the Round House, not only one of the oldest residential buildings in Lucan, but also one of the most unique and beautiful.
This road emerges back at the side of the County Bar building, near where I had, during a previous ramble, explored the possible location of the old Demesne tunnel, the non-public entrance to the Demesne.
The spa waters themselves have long gone, but there are some wonderful descriptions of the smell of the waters, with John Rutty, writing in 1772, stating of the scent that “It may be smelt at the distance of many yards, especially in frosty weather, or in rainy weather. It is limpid, and in the well has a bluish cast, and throws up a white bluish foum [sic] to the surface …having the flavour of a boiled egg, and when strongest, of a semi putrid egg.” I wonder if the scent carried as far as the hotel?
Of course, although the waters were a couple of hundred meters from the hotel, the Spa opened a ‘Pump Room’ in the 1930s. Here it pumped the water in from the spa, allowing people the opportunity to partake in the waters without having to leave the comfortable surroundings of the building itself. Indeed, by then, theSspa had rebranded itself as Ireland’s ‘National Spa’, also offered electricity-based therapies and ultra violet therapies to visitors.
I am back at the road having completed a loop of the Spa. I am writing this on the day after many of the lockdown restrictions have been lifted. It makes me think of the first easing of restrictions, back in mid 2021. I came to the Spa with some friends for my first post-lockdown drink – which was a whiskey and not a Cremé de Menthe. Took me about 20 years to get that one right. Of course, back in 2021, you couldn’t just have a drink, you know. You had to have a ‘Substantial Meal’, which cost €9. “Give me a whiskey and a substantial meal” you’d say. That was so long in the past that you kids probably don’t even remember that.