The Hotel has been carefully refurbished to take account of its historical and national importance including the retention of the orginal staircase in the hotel's White's Bar. The Hotel opened on the 7th of October 2008 and is now taking bookings for Weddings and Christmas Parties. The Shirley Arms Hotel is a family owned hotel and our staff would be delighted to help you with any enquiries you may have.
History of Shirley Arms Hotel
In 1821 there were three hotels listed in Carrickmacross: the Commercial and Post Hotel and the Shirley Arms Hotel on Main Street and one smaller hotel on Bath Street. The Shirley Arms Hotel is a formal classical composition built in the early nineteenth century, pre-1820. The building sits in a prominent position on the former Shirley estate, forming part of the formal set-piece of what is now known as Courthouse Square, a neat and elegant closing of the two vistas of the Main Street and the Castleblayney Road. In 1835 the hotel appears as a simple block with a small annex to the north and gardens along Rope Walk. There was a stack yard with large warehouse and ancillary buildings in the courtyard to the west or rear of the hotel. Thirty years later the hotel had expanded to contain a larger annex to the north, possibly used as a manager’s house and with two returns to the rear. These returns were removed in the twentieth century to facilitate the building of the modern extension to the rear. Also in the twentieth century, the yard to the rear had become an enlarged closed courtyard and there was an additional yard surrounded by small store buildings to the west. Kavanagh’s quote confirms its use as a storage yard, possibly for grain for the town’s many distilleries or for building materials.
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The Shirley Arms Hotel is a Protected Structure, under the provisions of the Local Government (Planning and Development) Act 1999 and is of national importance.