I didn't quite know what to expect at Macreddin—a bustling village or town, or another one of those Irish non-places of which Gertrude Stein might have said, "There's no there, there." The landscape is beautiful to be sure, but that's Wicklow for you. There are parts of Wicklow so ruggedly picturesque that it's possible to convince oneself, erroneously, that this must be the land in which Edmund Burke became enraptured by the sublime.
Still, Macreddin itself was beside the point. The objective was to visit the Brooklodge Hotel to find out how the recently installed environmental sustainability measures were performing, and why they were installed in the first place.
Country house hotels aren't for everyone. I, for example, am torn between the twin poles of hyper-urbanism and the ultra-rural. As a result, country house hotels don't even appear on my radar.
However, the Brooklodge is not a non-place. Set in large grounds complete with golf course, spa and a microbrewery, to 40 bed hotel is, if not Brobdingnagian, at least very spacious.
Sitting in the lobby, waiting on the hotel's manager and co-proprietor, Evan Doyle, to arrive it becomes clear very quickly that this is a popular destination. I arrived at 11AM on a Monday morning, right in the middle of the checkout process for the weekend's guests. Sitting within earshot of reception, I heard superlative upon superlative bestowed upon the hotel's staff—unprompted. From the spa to the restaurants to the general comfort level, everything was, it seems, a pleasure.
Clearly already a hit with guests, in an era of increasing environmental consciousness, does the hotel have a further ace hidden in its sleeve: sustainability?
The hotel's restaurant, the Strawberry Tree was—and is—Ireland's only licenced organic restaurant. In fact, when the Green Party was searching for a location suitable for its 2006 'think in', it lit upon the Brooklodge, choosing it because of its organic restaurant and "other eco-friendly measures." Those "eco-friendly measures" include a move to renewable energy sources.
Engineering solutions
For businesspeople like Doyle, the key reason to switch to renewable energy sources is financial: the price of oil and gas has exploded in recent years, making renewables, once a fringe interest in Ireland, a solid business proposition.
Evan Doyle himself explains: "The big push was energy costs. The hotel was [originally] built with traditional gas and electricity supplies."
Aside from spiraling energy costs, the Brooklodge took the opportunity to go green when the decision was taken to expand the hotel in 2005. Two new blocks were designed and built. The first, a conference centre and set of bedrooms opened in the summer of 2006 while the second, a function room, kitchen and further guest bedrooms, is due to open in January 2007.
"When we built the conference centre, we discovered there was an underground spring and I'd heard that, on the continent, they had been used for geothermal heating," says Doyle.
Used in conjunction with a biomass burner, the hotel has now moved entirely to environmentally conscious energy sources, retaining the existing gas supply only as a failsafe backup system: "I suppose we've spent €350 – 400,000 on renewable energy sources [and systems]. It has to be looked at from a business perspective."
And it has been: as a result of switching to renewables, the hotel's heating bill has been slashed, and further savings are on the cards: "Since we pushed the button the price of energy has sky-rocketed," says Doyle.
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