My Favourite Room
A gorgeous period coach house in stunning grounds
There are not many careers where regular meetings with film stars are a routine part of your days. Yet both of Laura Bowe’s professions have involved just that. As a film set designer, she’s worked with Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan, Geoffrey
Rush and Jamie Lee Curtis, while as a hotelier, she’s looked after, among others, Martin Sheen, Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep.
Yet meeting the stars was never part of the allure in either career — for her, it was all about design.
When Laura Bowe announces: “I live over the shop,” she says it with a smile. The phrase ‘living over the shop’ conjures up notions of small businesses — chip shops, shoe repairs, late-night grocery stores — with cramped living quarters above. Whereas Laura’s ‘shop’ is the extremely elegant and multi-awardwinning Marlfield House Hotel in Gorey, Co Wexford.
And her own living quarters? The top of a gorgeous coach house, which has the advantage of two staircases — one leads to an independent entrance to her home, while the other links her to the hotel.
The decor of her coach house is very close to that of the hotel, though it’s stamped with a simpler, more pared-back style. While the hotel is sumptuous, with large, show-stopping antiques, glittering chandeliers and mirrors, and dramatic curtaining, Laura’s home is more laid-back, with smaller pieces of period furniture and simpler, more familyfriendly curtains and blinds.
However, the similarity is certainly there, and this is probably because one of Laura’s responsibilities as co-manager of Marlfield — with her sister, Margaret — is the upkeep of the buildings and the decor itself. And back in the day, she trained in architectural renovation, a qualification which honed her talent for old buildings and historical pieces.
“I studied architectural design. It qualified me to do renovations,
“I don’t think I went to school for the first month. Mum had us endlessly French-polishing furniture”
conversions and extensions, retail design, and municipal and hotel design,” the elegant Wexford woman explains.
However, Laura is at pains to point out that she has kept the style of the hotel very much as her mother did, her mother being the legendary Mary Bowe, who created the hotel over 40 years ago, in 1978.
“I was nine when we moved here,” Laura reminisces. “As kids, Mary had a restaurant further down the coast. Ray, my dad, was always in the cattle business, then they bought Marlfield, a Regency house which was part of the Courtown Estate. There was great excitement to be moving into a big house like this; nobody had lived in it for a couple of years. My mother turned it around in about six months. We moved up in the May; I don’t think I went to school for the first month. She had us endlessly French-polishing furniture,” Laura says with a laugh. She adds, “There was a lot — a lot —of pressure to get it going.”
The 19-bedroomed hotel took off immediately, and the whole family was involved. Ray, who kept his cattle business going, looked after the magnificent 40 acres of gardens, and Laura and her sister waitressed and did any other jobs that needed to be done. “We worked here every summer; we weren’t allowed to work anywhere else,” Laura laughs.
However, neither Laura nor her sister studied hotel management when they
“Even as a teenager I would help her with fabrics, and my mum would drag me to auctions with her”
finished school, and according to Laura, that was a conscious decision. After an arts degree in UCD, she went first to Chelsea College of Design, then to North London University, while Margaret studied marketing.
“We knew that we might be coming back to the hotel, so we wanted to try something else. I was always interested in design. Mum was gifted at design, and did all the decor herself. I remember even as a teenager, I would help her with fabrics when she was doing up the suites, and she would drag me to auctions with her,” Laura explains. “That focussed my interest, and after UCD, I went to study three-dimensional design in Chelsea College of Art, and then I did my honours degree in architectural design in North London University.”
Laura was also interested in film, having worked on My Left Foot when she was in UCD. “Because of that, in the back of my head, I had the idea I might do set design and set decoration, and that’s what I subsequently did,” she says.
After her studies in England, she came back to Ireland in 1994 and the film business was booming, with a lot of American money pouring into production here, so Laura had constant work for the following 13 years.
“It was a bit like the hotel industry — full-on, with 13-hour days, but I loved it. I worked on lots of movies — The Tailor of Panama, Veronica Guerin, and various TV series.
She met her ex-partner Brian in the industry, and they have two kids, Beau (17), and Hannah (12). Her last job in the industry, a film called Short Order, was produced by Brian, and Laura won an Ifta for her set design. But after that, she decided it was time to get out of film and
“I got George, the peacock, a female on St Valentine’s day last year, but she took off. I’ll get him another one in February”
join her sister Margaret in the hotel business, taking on much of her mother’s role, as Mary had decided to retire.
“I was also working in commercials at that stage, and I decided I didn’t want to work in the area, the hours weren’t fair on the kids. I was at the top of my game, but it was good to leave on a high,” she says.
Coming back to Marlfield was a complete contrast; just after Laura came back, the hotel hit a recession, and for a while, the business was extremely challenging. “It was a time when everyone wanted the big Celtic Tiger hotels. We went out of fashion for a little while, and for us, it was a matter of treading water,” Laura says.
“It was literally a case of micro-managing to wade our way through it.”
They kept going, ploughing every penny — as their mother had always done — back into the business, updating bathrooms, fixing the roof, and so on. Fortunately, they got through it, and they realised they then needed to do something really creative.
They already had a fine-dining restaurant in the hotel called The Conservatory, so just over three years ago, they built The Duck, which is a less formal restaurant, with the interior
“It was filmed in Italy and there were beautiful cushions and Fortuny lamps. At the end of the film, Helen Mirren bought half the stuff and I bought the rest”
completely designed by Laura, and it has been a roaring success.
“The success took us by surprise.
It’s brought a lot of life into the place, hitting all the marks. We would have four generations sitting down together to Sunday lunch en famille. At weekends, the younger crowd come for cocktails and burgers,” she enthuses. “We do a lot of sharing boards — fish sharing boards, garden sharing boards; monkfish curries, lamb koftas. It’s done wonders for business — people are staying longer, dining one night in The Conservatory and one night in The Duck. It’s bringing in local people; lots are coming for afternoon tea.”
Laura and Margaret, who also do 40 weddings a year, have added a twobedroomed gate lodge and plan to add five more pavilions dotted around the pond in the garden, and a beauty pod with treatment rooms.
As if Laura isn’t busy enough, she’s the incoming chairperson of the Blue Book, a collection of small, luxury family-run hotels and restaurants, but she says that’s a pleasure, as the Blue Book is so good for business, and she loves the interaction between the different member hotels.
The hotel is very much into sustainability and local produce, and according to Laura, the chefs are often to be found in the gardens, checking out the vegetables and herbs.
They are also very much into animals, and welcome guests with their pets. The hotel has its own pet peacock, George, whom Laura feeds every morning. There have been peacocks there since the beginning, when Eamon de Buitlear and his wife, Lally, gave Mary her first peacock, and he lived for 27 years.
“George is on his own. I got him a female on St Valentine’s day last year but she took off. I’ll get him another one in February,” she says, adding they all love animals. Laura and her kids share their lovely home with two cats, Naomi and Roman, and two Jack Russells, Ziggy and Susie.
Laura’s parents had lived in the coach house until 11 years ago, when they moved to Enniscorthy, and at that point Laura and her kids moved in. She decided to make the kitchen/dining area bigger and also exposed the brick, highlighting the home’s origins as a coach house.
She also refurbished the gorgeous living room and three bedrooms — her own has the most stunning views of the hotel gardens — and all the rooms are furnished with delightful antique pieces and hung with wonderful old portraits, and paintings she has bought in the Solomon Gallery.
She admits she is an inveterate collector. “I used to have to buy a lot of antiques and other bits and pieces for the films I worked on, and at the end of every film we sold off everything. I bought a lot myself,” she says, adding, “I remember one film, The Roman
Spring of Mrs Stone; Helen Mirren was the star. It was filmed in Italy, and there were beautiful cushions and Fortuny lamps. At the end, Helen bought half the stuff and I bought the rest.”
Fortunately, Laura and her sister are planning a lot of expansion, so there will be no shortage of places to put the excess purchases, and with her exquisite taste, they will be just right for the hotel. LIFE 24 November 2019 | Sunday Independent | | 29