Cahir House Hotel stands on the Square, across the road from the castle. It is the only hotel in the town itself, and the building is the reason the castle stopped being lived in.
The house before the hotel
Cahir House replaced Cahir Castle in the 1770s as the home of the Butlers of Cahir, whose titles included Baron of Cahir and Earl of Glengall. A castle is a fine thing to own and a cold thing to live in, and the family did what most Irish aristocratic families did in that century: they built a comfortable Georgian house nearby and moved into it.
Pierce, Lord Cahir died in 1788 without an heir, and the estates passed to Richard Butler of Glengall. He and his wife Emily Jeffereys were young when they took up residence, and they entertained on a scale the town would have noticed. The house stayed in the family for around sixty years, until 1853, when Richard, Earl of Glengall was declared bankrupt and the estates were sold.
Twenty years later his daughter, Lady Margaret, bought Cahir House and the Cahir estate back. The family held it until 1961, when her son Richard Butler Charteris died, ending an association between the Butlers and Cahir that had run for six hundred years.
The hotel
Miss Nora Burke leased the premises in 1927 and opened it as Cahir House Hotel, which is what it has been ever since. The visitors' books from those years carry an unlikely run of names: Eamon de Valera, W.T. Cosgrave, Mae West, Douglas Fairbanks, Walt Disney and Jackie Kennedy.
Today it is a three star hotel with 42 ensuite rooms. A good number look out over the Square towards the castle. Ask for one of those when you book. A back room is a perfectly good room in a perfectly good hotel. A front one is the reason to stay here rather than anywhere else.
Eating and drinking
The Butler Room is the hotel restaurant, named for the family. Lunch and dinner, and better in the evening. It is the most formal dining room in the town. There is also a bar, used by the town as much as by guests.
If you would rather eat elsewhere, everything in the best places to eat in Cahir is within a few minutes' walk, and so are the pubs.
Weddings and functions
The conference and banqueting side takes up to 400 for weddings, meetings and private functions. That capacity is why the hotel is as much a local institution as a visitor one, and it is also why you should ask, when booking an ordinary weekend, whether there is a wedding in the building.
Staying here
The practical case for the hotel is simple. It is across the road from Cahir Castle, the Swiss Cottage walk starts close by, the Square is the town, and you can leave the car for the duration. Cork, Limerick, Waterford and Kilkenny are all inside an hour if you are using Cahir as a base rather than a destination, and the M8 junction is a few minutes away. Getting to Cahir has the detail.
The town's other beds are covered on hotels in Cahir, bed and breakfast in Cahir and self catering in Cahir.
Booking
Book directly with the hotel where you can, and ask about the room aspect when you do. Rates, packages and availability all move, and the hotel's own site is the only current source for them.