Renvyle House Hotel is situated on the verge of Ireland's west coast, nestled between the Twelve Bens and the Atlantic Ocean. Over several centuries it has been built, pulled down, rebuilt, burnt to ashes and rebuilt once again.

Its often turbulent history has mirrored the unpredictable changes of the troubled history of Ireland, but its most precious asset has been its resilience, its capacity to survive.

"When Yeats was on his honeymoon he came to stay with us at Renvyle, a lovely sea-grey house in Connemara on the edge of the Atlantic at the extreme edge of Europe," Oliver St. John Gogarty.

However, previous to that idyllic period Renvyle House Hotel had borne its share of trouble before and during the famine, the Land League and the Civil War. It began with the marriage of Gráinne O'Malley (Granuaile), a legendary Irish pirate queen, to Donall O'Flaherty, the heir to one of the oldest and most powerful Gaelic clans in Connaught.

The marriage ended with the controversial murder of Donall. Suspicion surrounds such clanns as the Joyces and also Granuaile's own family. The O'Flaherty's then left their home Renvyle Castle and moved to the site that is now Renvyle House Hotel.

The Blake family first opened it as a country house in 1883 and was host to guests such as Sommerville and Ross who wrote about it on their travels "Through Connemara in a Governess Cart".

It was also the home of Oliver St. John Gogarty (Buck Mulligan of James Joyce’s “Ulysses”) and has played host to many famous people including Augustus John, Lady Gregory, Churchill and W.B. Yeats. It has been a meeting place for the poets and writers who helped to create the new Irish Free State. It has been and is today, a successful modern hotel, retaining its own unique character and sense of history.