Hotel review: Cork city’s only five-star is family-run and in full bloom

A new glass-box cocktail bar has added a twist to its traditional comforts. Hayfield Manor is a luxury hotel that doesn’t look down its nose at you...

Inside Hayfield Manor, Cork city's only five-star hotel has a new glass box cocktail bar

Pól Ó Conghaile

It feels like there are fewer and fewer family-run hotels around these days. When I step into the lobby of this one, I realise just what we’re losing.

Hayfield Manor’s door is held open. There’s a real fire, two locals chatting over pints in a wood-panelled bar, and a family playing cards in the drawing room. Photos of the extended Scally family — who also own the Killarney Royal and Great Southern — are hung close to a gallery of celeb visitors like Graham Norton, Enya, Katie Taylor and an off-duty Leo Varadkar in Vans trainers. On a landing, one guest has found a nook to read his newspaper as sunlight splashes across several paintings.