The W.B. Yeats' Equestrian Library / W. B. Yeats' Learbharlann Na Gcapaill

Ireland is known for its writers. Its poets. Its horses. And there've been a lot great writers, poets. and a lot of great horses. A lot of fellows lost their money over a horse race.

And that's a good saying up there, When money is tight, and hard to get, and your horse has also ran, when all you have, is a heap of debt, a pint of plain is your only man. It's a very true saying in Ireland. A lot of fellows have spent a lot of money on the horses but they still have a love of the ponies and these horses we have up here — three of Ireland's most famous horses.

Our grandfather, Frank O'Dowd was a great horseman. He loved the horses and he really inspired us to add that to the front library sign, which is the Yeat's Leabharlann Na Gcapaill, which is the Gaelic for Yeat's Equestrian Library. William Butler Yeats being a famous poet, writer, you know? We tried to tie it all in. So we've got a lot of Jonathan Swift, Flann O'Brien, Oliver Goldsmith, William Butler Yeats, a lot of famous Irish writers, poets, interesting stuff. We actually have — a lot of our display cabinets throughout the hotel have gotten memorabilia and things from family members going back a hundred years.

I've even got a letter from my great-aunt in there who was good friends with Michael Collins back in the time of the Irish Revolution. And she actually laid Michael Collins out when he got shot in Cork in 1923. He got shot in the back of the head in Cork in 1923 after he tried to put the treaty together to bring all 32 counties together, so she was in charge of bringing in doctors back in the early '20s to Vincent's Hospital in Dublin and the soldiers when they would get shot by the Black and Tans they'd bring them in, do night surgeries and get them back out.

The Street-Scape

Here we were really challenged with how were we going to make it Irish. And I think at the end of the day we got it, you know? We wanted to capture Ireland and when you look at the front of any building, it's like how are we going to make this to give it the look at feel that we want? And I really think that we captured it here with the traditional shopfronts.

Wild Clover Day Spa, which is the day spa here; Brendan's Blarney Banquets, which is where we do our weddings and catering and conferences; we've got Kathleen Leonard's Celtic Crafts which is a gift shop that we have inside; Oifis An Phoist is Gaelic for "post office" so of course you can post your letters in there.

But again, that would be done typically in green back in Ireland and that's the exact color you would see the post office over in Ireland.

We've got the Telefòn box over here. You would see the same color telephone box around the different parts of the country. Yeat's Leabharlann Na Gcapaill, we spoke about that just a bit. W. B. Yeats Equestrian Library. Ireland's been known for the horses and everything else.

Then we have our car port for the Irish Cottage and our pub, Frank O'Dowd's Authentic Irish Pub. We've really created that Irish look and feel, so if anybody has been to Ireland, this is what they'll see when they're driving down the countryside. Little streets. They'll see all of the colorful shopfronts and as we take a tour of a couple of the rooms you'll see in a lot of the paintings which were painted by Ròisìn O'Shea, she's a famous Irish painter. And she really captured that in a lot of her artwork, so again, that's something that we'll see in a few minutes. And a lot of the signs we've got here, Kells, Galway, these are different towns that — our grandfather was from Kells, so we put that up there. We've had many a pint in Galway City when we were heading out to the Aran Islands. And then you've got County Cork.

You've got all of the flower boxes in front of the windows, which you would traditionally see in a lot of the areas back home.

We've got a dolmen over here; we thought it was important to put something in our parking lot when people come in — a symbol of what is this? This is different. And this is something you will see in a lot of country fields as you head around Ireland.

It was a burial site for the Druids so you go back actually four thousand years ago and that's what they used to mark their sites with. So there would have been families of people buried in these fields that were marked by the Druids, at least by three stones and a capstone on top so you got the dolmen, that's what they call it. But we haven't buried anyone there yet. Come close!

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All photographs captured from video stills using a Canon GL2 and Canon Rebel. Photography credits: Joshua Heston