West’s new role: Hotel boss at wife’s £4.6m castle
THE Affair star Dominic West was heartbroken when he and his wife, Catherine Fitzgerald, were forced to put her ancestral £4.6 million Glin Castle in Ireland up for sale because of the cost of its upkeep.
However, I can report they have now made an unexpected move and will turn it into a boutique hotel instead where the Old Etonian actor, best known for playing an alcoholic detective and an adulterous author, will take up the unlikely role of hotel manager.
‘No, we’re not selling any more, I’m happy to report,’ confirms West, 46. ‘We’ve done a marvellous U-turn.
‘Selling up was absolutely heartbreaking for all of us, especially my mother-in-law and my wife and luckily, we’re reopening it as a hotel, all going well, some time next year.’
The castle in West Limerick, which is the home of the Knights Of Glin, has been in Catherine’s family for 700 years and has famously played host to Sir Mick Jagger, Marianne Faithfull and Talitha Getty.
But the couple, who met as undergraduates at Trinity University in Dublin and, after a brief separation, wed at Glin in 2010, were forced to put it on the market in April last year after Catherine’s father, the 29th and last Knight of Glin, Desmond Fitzgerald, died in 2011.
Before his death, the actor’s fatherin-law attempted to turn the castle into a hotel in 2002, but failed and was forced to close it down seven years later due to the recession, when he also had to sell off £1.9 million of family heirlooms. But West has not been deterred from the task himself. ‘I’m going to manage it,’ he adds. ‘I want to be in charge or as much as my schedule will allow.
‘Obviously there will be someone in place far more experienced and qualified than I coping with the day-to-day. But we want to be there. We’re going to be heavily involved. That’s why we’re moving home to Ireland.’
The couple, who have four children, currently divide their time between their two homes near Chippenham and in West London, which landscape designer Catherine has decorated with framed posters of her childhood home.
‘We spend a large amount of time there already,’ says West. ‘It is for all intents and purposes home for us.’