The excited chatter ebbed and flowed like the gentle lull of the waves that swelled outside. I had butterflies in my stomach as my new husband and I waited to walk into our wedding reception. Just before, Carol Barrett comes up to us with her husband Richard.

“Congratulations and welcome,” she says sincerely, “we are so happy to have you here in Dunmore House for your special day.”

That was seven years ago now but that welcome hasn’t changed. Carol walks around the tables in Dunmore, sometimes sitting and chatting to locals, other times asking residents visiting west Cork about their day on the beach. It’s like she is welcoming you into her sitting room because, to her, Dunmore is home – where she grew up.

With this welcome, there is no hurry, it’s like the atmosphere inside reflects those gentle waves. On sunny days, the music of the sea is interspersed with the excited shrill of families on Inchydoney Beach while to the right, the Atlantic stretches as far to the horizon.

When Carol’s grandmother first arrived in 1934, however, she wasn’t quite so enamoured with the view. “Mary O’Donovan famously said, ‘There is nothing here but water,’” Carol says laughing. “In fairness, she and my grandfather Jerry bought Dunmore as a house and farm, you can’t do much farming in the sea.”

Despite that, it wasn’t long before Dunmore started its hospitality journey, becoming a place where people come to escape, although in those times it was for very different reasons.

“There was the polio epidemic and the war so older ladies and children stayed at a time when cities weren’t safe. But it really became a country house when my father’s brother married in a local hotel. Afterwards, my grandmother announced, ‘We could do so much better,’ and in 1948, they got a bar license and started hosting weddings.”

Mrs O

Ten years later in 1958, another Mary arrived on the scene. At the local dance in Clonakilty, she caught the eye of Derry O’Donovan, the son who later inherited Dunmore House.

Sitting with her daughter and grandson Peter, Mary bursts out laughing when I ask did she fancy Derry straight away?

“I suppose I did,” she says with a glint in her eye. Reminiscing she adds: “I remember my first night here, I couldn’t sleep from the noise of the sea. I thought, ‘I’m never going to be able to sleep again,’ but now I fall asleep every night to the sound of the sea.”

At that stage, Derry’s father had passed away and his mother went to live with her daughter. “That was it, I started cooking and baking, I was thrown in at the deep end. I had become Mrs O.”

Mrs O is a name that has stuck, equal parts a term of endearment and a mark of respect to the proprietor of the country house. The same way Carol is not known locally as Carol O’Donovan or Carol Barrett, but instead Carol Dunmore.

“We became synonymous with the house and the place,” explains Mary. That’s because Dunmore became a destination locally.

Derry sadly passed away in 2018 but Mary says: “My husband was a great businessman, very innovative. We expanded the house multiple times so we could host bigger weddings. Back then people would get married at 10 in the morning and their wedding breakfast was really a fancy lunch. We’d serve grapefruit segments and soup and roast chicken.

“And back then there would be a sherry reception and on the table next to the cake, whiskey bottles would sit proudly, that was the thing back then, it was part of the display and grandeur.”

There was also live music on Tuesday nights but it was the golf course that was Derry’s big project which Mary says added a vibrant element to a country house in the 1960s. “Oh I remember the golf nights,” says Carol wistfully. “The golf dinner nearly had a mythical status, it was like three weddings, the Met Gala of west Cork,” they agree laughing.

Happy memories

Which brings Carol onto her childhood in Dunmore.

“I never remember working as a child. But I could pull a pint at the age of 10. And recently, I was chatting to a guest who stayed here when he was young. I said, ‘Did we go to the beach with you guys?’ And he replied, ‘No even as kids, ye were busy here’. But it was a very happy childhood. The local women who worked here helped look after us,” Carol says, listing off, “Sheila, Bernie, Bessie, Esther, Mrs Peck, Mrs White, but it was always Mom that put us to bed at night and was there in the morning.”

The plan for Carol to run Dunmore happened organically. Her sisters were nurses while her brother was a teacher. Carol lived away for a few years but Dunmore was home.

“When I married Richard in 1989, we moved to our own family home. That last night before I left Dunmore, I cried and cried. But sure I was only moving two minutes down the road.”

The following year Mary and Derry built a house beside the hotel and Dunmore officially got hotel status. Carol ran the business with her parents for years but it was officially handed over 15 years ago. Now a similar set up has begun to emerge as Carol and Richard’s son Peter makes his own stamp on Dunmore. Like his mother and his grandparents before him, he is everywhere and nowhere, giving guests their space yet on hand with a dinner recommendation or wine suggestion in an instant.

Family operation

Now more than ever, Dunmore House is a family operation. Peter’s twin Niall lives in Dublin working in aviation, although “he rings everyday for an update on the place”. But it is his sisters Julie and Ciara who complete the family team.

Carol says proudly: “Julie is in her final year of medicine and Ciara has qualified as a vet so they have their own careers but they’re still here at Dunmore everyday.”

As we chat they are in the dining room deliberating over a new dessert to add to the menu while also updating the social media page. “In an ideal world, we’d all run the place, then I’d never have to worry about taking a weekend off,” says Peter. As he talks, the weight of the responsibility is evident.

“It’s not the hard work or the hours, that doesn’t phase me,” he says, but very honestly, the 30-year-old admits: “But I do worry. It’s a lifetime commitment and I think about that sometimes, the pressure it could put on a relationship.”

Staff relationships

That sense of family infiltrates throughout the staff, the same faces who are there year after year – Donna, Adrian and Liam behind the bar. But there is one member of staff who is just like family: Anne Marie Harte. In fact, they laugh that she is family (“She is a cousin of a cousin or something like that”) but the details are dismissed, she is simply declared family.

Anne Marie is the face to thousands of Cork couples who got married in Dunmore over 30 years. Carol said: “Anne Marie is a wedding guru, it’s her joy. She is just so personable and relaxed, she brings an aura of calm to every wedding.”

A few years ago, Anne Marie found her own love and moved to Germany with her husband Klaus Schorowsky but she still returns every few months to work the busy periods. On the day of our interview, Peter says: “Anne Marie is actually flying home today. I did a quick check this morning and our wedding bookings are pretty good so I’m OK about her coming back,” he jokes.

Wedding days

Weddings are still their speciality. “It’s the view, the atmosphere, the package,” explains Carol. And a huge part of the success is the food.

“Derry always said, ‘You put as much effort into cooking something badly as you do into cooking something well, so you might as well do a good job.’ And west Cork is a Mecca for ingredients. It was always the best steaks, the nicest lamb, the freshest seafood, the best of everything.

“So in our kitchen we have that home cooking and local produce but also innovation with Ballymaloe courses and the likes of Kevin Aherne from Sage working here.”

But no matter how many chefs cross the kitchen door, it’s still Carol’s vision, her style of cooking and her influence on the menus, just like her mother.

Mary says: “When I was in the kitchen, there were some evenings that I would walk down to Duneen beach after the wash-up was done. But then I’d come back and start making brown bread for the next day.” Her daughter is the same. “I love that quiet time,” says Carol.

Part of their innovation is their own ocean garden. Pointing towards the rocks on the seashore, Peter says: “For years, that was just gravel and then Mom got the idea to create a garden. Now so much of what we serve is grown here.”

Garden greens and edible flowers, tomatoes and herbs, spring onions and kale are influenced by the salty sea air and are handpicked by the chefs who carry the baskets the five-minute walk from the shore to the kitchen.

Bright future

This innovation is set to continue. Carol says: “After 55 years, this is our last year of the golf club. It was such a strong element of our business for a long time but golf memberships across the country have waned and ours is no different. It’s been a hard decision, it was a big part of my father’s legacy but Derry wouldn’t want us to keep it for sentimental reasons, he always knew a business had to move forward and innovate.”

It also opens the door for a new era at Dunmore. Peter says: “Nothing is set in stone but that space allows us to expand our wedding offering. So we might do casual dining in the old clubhouse, like a pizza restaurant for parties the day after the wedding, little walkways for pictures, perhaps a new area for drinks receptions that overlook the sea and we’re also looking at different accommodation options, like cabins, a posh kind of glamping for guests. It’s going to be exciting and fun. Since my great grandparents moved here in 1934, Dunmore has always moved with the times, and that won’t change anytime soon.”