THE MUTINOUS clouds of August can't subdue the beauty of this place . . . the graceful trees; the mature garden; the gurgling stream; the fuchsia and prince's feathers of the hedgerows; the stone walls of the west of Ireland.
Then there is the house. It has eye-brightening beauty, a perfectly proportioned manor house in a gorgeous setting. A former owner, film director John Huston, described this building, several kilometres outside Craughwell, Co Galway, as "the most beautiful house in Ireland".
There's seems to be a quality of constancy to this house, St Cleran's, that has straddled its more than two centuries of existence. There have been changes, of course. The house has had host of colourful residents since it was built in 1784.
Take the man who is commemorated by the stone plaque outside. Robert O'Hara Burke was born in St Cleran's in 1821 and emigrated to Australia, where he became a police inspector in the gold-mining areas. In 1861, he became the first man to cross Australia from south to north.
Another chapter will close later this month when the company of the late Merv Griffin, the US TV chat show host who bought St Cleran's in the 1990s, closes the hotel it has become and puts the house up for sale.
Griffin, who died last year, made his fortune as an entertainer and as the creator of the game shows Wheel of Fortuneand Jeopardy.
When Griffin bought the house, he spend more than £4 million transforming it into a boutique five-star hotel with 12 rooms and 20 employees, all living in the locality.
The house was owned by the Burke family until the 1950s. At the time of Griffith's Valuationin the 1850s, for example, it belonged to John Hardiman Burke and was valued at £45.
In 1906, its owner was Anne Maxwell (nee Burke).
In the 1950s, John Huston came to Ireland on a fox-hunting holiday. He fell in love with the country and bought St Cleran's. His son Tony and daughter, the actor Anjelica, spent their childhoods in St Cleran's.
Indeed Anjelica's Galway accent in her masterful performance as Gretta Conroy in her father's film of James Joyce's The Deadwas 100 per cent authentic, coming from her years living there.
She attended the local primary school run by the Sisters of Mercy and the whole family rode with the Galway Blazers. Her brother Tony would sing Kevin Barryfor visitors in the front hall at Christmas - the regulars in Huston's time included Elizabeth Taylor, Cary Grant, John Steinbeck and Marlon Brando.
In a later interview, Anjelica recalled her sadness at her father's decision to sell the house in 1973. "When Dad remarried in the 70s, he decided to sell St Cleran's. I think it was one of the hardest decisions he ever had to make, but things had changed. My mother had died. My brother and I had grown up."
The house passed through a number of hands over the next two decades, including a racehorse owner, a British major and American lawyers, before it was bought by Merv Griffin and refurbished as a luxury hotel.
According to Marcia Newberger of the Griffin Group, he spared no detail: "The Griffin Suite, for example, had the original limestone fireplace, John Huston's huge walk-in wardrobe, mosaic tiling in the shower room, gilt swan's head taps on the bath and the niches in the entrance where Huston had displayed his Oscar statuettes."
Griffin's death last year led to a reappraisal. The Griffin Group had divested itself of all its hotels in recent years including the Beverly Hilton. St Cleran's remained its last hotel.
"Merv had a great love for his Irish ancestry and St Cleran's was an investment of his heart," Newberger added. "Obviously with the dollar's decline against the euro, as well as an examination of the global economic downturn, it seemed less practical to keep this last remaining vestige of Merv's hotel empire."
The property with its 43 acres will be offered for sale from September 1st.
• See also: www.stclerans.com
