Kilcullen tonsils and the Kildare House Hotel

The impending sale of the Kildare House Hotel brings back living memory in Kilcullen of the time in the late 1950s when it was still known as the County Infirmary, writes Brian Byrne.

Kilcullen estate agent John Dowling of Dowling Properties, who put the hotel on the market last weekend at a guide price of some €1.1m, says he knows people from here who remember going to the Infirmary to have procedures like tonsils removal carried out.

The landmark building dominated the approach from the Dublin Road when the main traffic south went through the town before it was bypassed. It remains impressive to those who drive through today and as the Kildare House Hotel it is very centrally placed for those who want to use the town as a base for the very many attractions in the mid- and south county.

Prior to its current name, it was for decades the Derby House Hotel, reflecting the relationship of the town to the biggest horse race of the year in Ireland. The Kingsland Chinese restaurant which was long associated with the building is also set firmly in the minds of many who enjoyed eating out, including Kilcullen families.

Its time as a hotel is very short, however, when compared to its use as a medical facility. An original part of the current building was opened in 1777 as the County Kildare Infirmary, initiated under the direction of Lady Louisa Connolly of Castletown House and replacing a temporary Infirmary which had been in adjacent houses for the previous decade.

There's not much documentation about the running of the Infirmary until two decades later, when it was seized as a headquarters for the Cork Militia, and the Infirmary's Surgeon Bolton was 'landed him out on the road with such of his effects as probably were devoid of utility to military manoeuvring men', according to contemporary reports. He subsequently kept open a dispensary for the poor in Naas, which he ran until his death in 1818.

When the militia left the building in 1817, the Duke of Leinster made strenuous efforts to have it returned to the people of Kildare as the County Infirmary. He succeeded, and after remedial works, it was reopened in February 1818. From then until 1886 it served the people of the county, being improved and enlarged all the the time. However, that year the cess-payers refused to pay the £600 levy (cess was a rate, usually paid by an areas's landed people, for the provision of local public services and relief works). The Infirmary was closed, and most of the staff dismissed except the Secretary and the Surgeon, whose salary was cut.

It's worth noting that in addition to the rate, institutions like the Infirmary were also supported by 'Subscriptions, Treasury Grants, Paying Patients, Petty Sessions’ Fines, Occasional Gifts' according to documents from the time.

In an interesting letter to the Kildare Observer in 1899, a former member of the Governors of the Infirmary, Mr Cooke-Trench, suggested the reason for the refusal of the rate by the cess-payers and Grand Jurors was that those from the north of the county saw no reason to keep going a hospital that was of little use to them, as they could get all services they needed in Naas or Dublin.

In that same year, the first Kildare County Council was elected, and a Kildare curate, Fr John Delaney, led a campaign to have the Infirmary reopened. He compiled a history of the building as part of that campaign. Following public meetings in Kildare, the Council promised support, and in 1903 it was opened again, with members of the Sisters of St John of God in Kilkenny taking over the nursing activity. The facility was then renamed as the County Hospital, and was grant-supported by the Council until it was taken over fully in 1933 by that body.

It was still used as a hospital up to around 1960, and subsequently was opened as an hotel. There was a serious fire there in 1968, which is recorded on a DVD produced by the Cill Dara Historical Society in 2015.

The property remained a 2-star hotel until 2014, when it was substantially upgraded and the name changed. With 21 en-suite bedrooms, a 200-seater ballroom, two bars and a restaurant, it is today far removed from its purpose in part of the 18th, the 19th and half of the 20th centuries.

I'd like to acknowledge the work of Mario Corrigan of Kildare Library Services, and the Grey Abbey Conservation Project, from which the information for much of the above narrative is gleaned.


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