John Brennan reveals ambitious project to secure Dromquinna's legacy

John Brennan has a vision for Dromquinna — he wants to transform the 40 acres into world-class destination gardens. Vickie Maye meets Ireland’s most famous hotelier in Kenmare to hear his ambitious plans

John and Gwen Brennan at Dromquinna Manor - Gardens. Picture: Miki Barlok

Sat, 08 Aug, 2026 - 06:00

Vickie Maye

When I meet Shelly Maguire, CEO of the Blue Book, and tell her I’m travelling to see John Brennan’s new gardens at Dromquinna, she tells me this is his legacy project. She should know — thanks to a long history with the Park Hotel

Kenmare, the Blue Book and the Brennans have been working together for decades.

But John waves off the compliment with a good-natured brush of the hand. All this talk of legacies would involve ego, and John Brennan doesn’t have time for that kind of thing.

Heading into his 14th season of At Your Service, he eschews celebrity, hates being recognised.

No, his ambitious vision for the gardens will be Dromquinna’s legacy, he clarifies, not his own.

And it is quite the vision.

A 10-year project, they are only 18 months in. And the plans are pioneering. John and Gwen Brennan want Dromquinna to be a destination, not just for its glamping and renowned weddings, but for its gardens. His inspiration? Gravetye Manor, designed in the 1800s by Irish-born William Robinson, and recently declared by Vogue as one of England’s most beautiful gardens.

It all began when John and Gwen stopped off at the Scilly Isles off the coast of Cornwall. They paid for the tour of Tresco Abbey Gardens. As is his way, John saluted one of the team on the grounds, and did an about turn when she responded with an Irish accent. He took note, he laughs, of her dirty fingernails — this was a woman, he thought, who knew soil.

Two years later, his eyes on the 40 acres of land at Dromquinna, he found himself struggling to find the right person to transform the land. They all had clean fingernails he recalls, laughing. And so he sought out the young woman who he met those years ago at Scilly. She was no longer working there but a couple of days later he had a call. She was now based at the gardens at Airfield, near John Brennan’s childhood home. It was like a sign.

He began to describe his vison for Dromquinna.

“You want Gravetye,” she declared.

“And that was it,” said John. “I knew I had my woman.”

Gwen and John Brennan. Picture: Miki Barlok

It all aligned, but John is slow to give in to the easy concept of fate.

“I believe in it alright,” he says, pausing for effect. “But you have to push it a bit.”

Today, phase one of this mammoth undertaking is complete with the opening of a new glasshouse and gardens where once there was just road and grass.

We visit for its quiet launch for locals, a violist playing The Beatles under the shade of a tree. It is idyllic — and a world away from the Dromquinna estate John and Gwen bought in 2011. He shows photos on his phone of a dilapidated manor house.

“There was no roof,” Gwen recalls, “and there was even a tree growing in one room.”

The grounds were so overgrown it took them six months to find the tennis courts.

Yet they fought for years to buy it.

It lay abandoned for a decade.

“We’d pass the gate twice a day,” says John.

Initially, John says, the aim was for it to be an insurance policy — a viable business in case the luxury market failed to reboot after the Celtic Tiger collapse.

“It was a very difficult period,” says John. “We were very lucky because we had just done our first episode of At Your Service in 2008. So all of a sudden we had a national profile, which we didn’t have to buy or pay for because it was a television programme. So we did all right during the very, very difficult years. But we did not know what was going to be the future of the Park Hotel and if we were going to be able to stay in business or not. The luxury market was stagnant at the time and if we didn’t make the money at the front reception...”

Initially, it proved difficult to determine who even owned Dromquinna. It had moved between consortiums, with plans at one point to build 64 houses on the waterfront site. Then, when AIB put it on the market, interest was high. Well-known chefs and high-profile businessmen approached John for advice on this prime Kenmare site — land John had his eye on for years.

“Can you believe that,” says John, still incredulous.

Eventually, in 2011, John and Gwen secured the manor house and its 40 acres. On the morning, he got the call, he was due to film for At Your Service. It also just so happened to be the day John was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma. As is his practical, pragmatic way, he simply got in the car and drove to set.

There was cancer treatment to get through, and the Park Hotel to manage — yet somehow, they hosted their first wedding at Dromquinna just 14 months later. In the meantime, Dromquinna’s signature glamping tents were pitched. At that stage it was obvious this was far more than an insurance policy. It was a labour of love.

Today, three years on from the sale of the Park Hotel, this family business is run by John, Gwen, and their 29-year old son Adam — who returned from a career sailing yachts around the world to manage the property with his parents in 2024.

Gwen and John Brennan at Dromquinna. Picture: Miki Barlok

The refurbishments have been constant — the Potting Sheds were renovated as alternative accommodation options; the larger Bolt Hole sleeps six, Blackberry Lodge has room for 12.

The next project is the gate lodge — it will be a two bedroom suite at the entrance gates. Today we meet at Shutters, the stunning waterside bar that sits alongside the celebrated Boathouse restaurant. The upmarket glamping communal area has a fire for smores, alongside a games room for kids. This is camping — but not as we usually know it. Breakfast baskets are delivered to the tents every morning, with pastries and fresh coffee.

All beautiful, memorable touches, but the vision, the legacy, right now is centred on the gardens — with William Robinson’s Gravetye the inspiration.

“Every other garden designed at the time was the manicured English garden — the four paths, the round bit in the middle with the fountain... But William Robinson created a wild garden at Gravetye,” says John.

“In the Park Hotel, we had gardens, but we never had a plan, and we would decide to do this this year and that next year, and then the following year we didn’t have any more money and we couldn’t do that. Plus we had a whole load of gardeners who chopped and changed every five or six years, and they all brought their own vision of what they wanted to do.”

Dromquinna gardener Holly. Picture: Miki Barlok

He was determined that Dromquinna wouldn’t suffer the same fate. And so he headhunted the girl with the dirty fingernails at Tresco. Eighteen months ago, horticultist Holly McQuillan moved to Kenmare, joining the team at Dromquinna as head gardener.

“It’s in the DNA. Her mother works in the Botanic Gardens in Dublin,” says John. “I said, ‘you’re made for Dromquinna, come down’. So we put together a plan in broad terms. The first phase was the glass house, and the planting around glass house.

“We spent the last 10 years getting the place under control. That was the first element.”

Now, John’s vision is to create an Alice in Wonderland garden, a dreamy sanctuary where you turn a corner and discover something new. The cliff walk, with its pathway to a bridge that guides you to a little island, is a taste of what’s to come.

There’s a practical reasoning behind this new business venture too. John sees the potential revenue stream these gardens could deliver, especially if glamping and weddings fall out of favour. He’s determined too that the manor house be kept in tact, so it has potential for a variety of uses.

He doesn’t, he says, want his son Adam to feel obliged to take Dromquinna on. Not that he has anything to worry about on that front. After years at sea, often in the world’s most exotic locations, Adam sees his future firmly in Kenmare.

“I always knew I’d come back and I can’t see myself ever leaving,” he says. We chat as he returns from a laundry run to Limerick, followed by some DIY repairs on the basketball hoop on the camping grounds.

“Honestly, I wake up excited to go to work,” he says, adding that his own wedding will be hosted there in time. “I have been working in hospitality since I was young — I was too small to work behind the bar so they had me stacking shelves at the Park. Later on I was washing dishes at Dromquinna.”

It can’t be easy, a mother, father, and son working together. But Adam disagrees. Perhaps the trick is that there are no job titles.

“There’s an equal respect that goes in three directions,” says Adam. “They aren’t mum and dad at work – they are John and Gwen.”

He is as enthused as his parents about the plans for Dromquinna’s 40 acres. It’s the midst of the heatwave when we chat to Holly, and she has just returned from annual leave. She can’t wait to get out to the gardens, she says, to protect her water-starved plants.

“I’m following the principles of Gravetye,” she says, echoing John’s vision. With every tree planted, she is, she says, sowing the seeds now for what’s to come in 50, even 100 years time.

Sitting in the stunning surrounds, on land that was once earmarked for 64 houses, there’s a relief in knowing the estate is in safe hands. As well as the ambitious plans for their destination gardens, the Brennans say they will never build on the 40 acres — they will only refurbish existing buildings.

“I think it would be wrong for the house not to be proud of its grounds,” says John.

All comes back to legacy — Dromquinna’s legacy.