Cork: Tower power

The Bell Tower Restaurant, Castlemartyr Resort,

THE Bell Tower Restaurant at Castlemartyr Resort stands on lands that epitomise a very bloody and tragic strand in history. Where guests today enjoy fine dining, cavort and occasionally seduce each other, where they are flummoxed by the choice between a five or six iron, a Beaujolais or a Bordeaux, blood was spilt and necks stretched with enthusiasm and regularity.

A castle, a big house, sieges, executions, displacement, abandonment, betrayal, brutal treatment of local communities, restoration, ancient burial places, a Catholic teaching order, a period of Versailles-like over-reach and, today, a complex of buildings moated by a golf course trying to survive today’s economic realities.