Review: The historic Greville Arms Hotel in Mullingar, Ireland

Mullingar is a town in Westmeath in Ireland, a little over an hour by train from Dublin. It is famous for being the hometown of One Direction’s Niall Horan and for the Greville Arms Hotel.

Built around 1869, the hotel was originally Lord Greville’s home, he being the owner of the town and landlord through to the 1920s. I stayed in this hotel recently, so read on for the review.

Lunch In The Bistro

I arrived around lunchtime and it was too early to check-in. Feeling hungry, I headed off to the busy bistro for some lunch. I grabbed a tray and picked the bits and pieces I wanted for my meal.

The food was very good and it came to €17.90, which was reasonable. Happily the place was buzzing, with people at almost all the tables enjoying their meals.

Check-In Is At 3PM

I asked again at check-in around 2:30pm if my room might be ready and it was not. The hotel had been completely full the night before (a Wednesday night, of all things) so it would be 3pm or nothing. To pass the time I sat in the Ulysses Bar as it was pouring with rain outside.

The bar is quite nicely fitted out in a traditional style, which makes it seem quite cosy. They serve a proper afternoon tea for those who wish to have it, with proper tea sets, cakes and so on. A mother and daughter were the only ones having it when I was there. I imagine the bar is lovely at night and in winter.

Room 111

At check-in, I was allocated room 111, which was on the first floor. The carpet underfoot was pleasantly thick and I found the room to be quite clean.

Everything was present and correct, with places to charge devices on the desk. For some reason my computer didn’t like the free Wi-Fi, so I had to connect via my phone on a hotspot, but that was no showstopper. When it came time to shower, it took forever running the water until it became hot. It’s a bit of a shame as it’s a total waste of water to have to wait two minutes or more for the water to get up to the correct temperature, but it’s an old building, so perhaps not too surprising. The bed was passably comfortable, I’ve slept in better and worse so this was fine. Unfortunately the chairs, upholstered in a light fabric, were showing stains from goodness knows what. Both were in a pretty bad state and were the let down of the room. It just looked icky!

A Museum

The Greville Arms Hotel also houses a small museum. I am not entirely sure how it came about, but there are a large amount of actually quite interesting items in the cabinets on the landing.

At the moment, you need to be staying at the hotel to go upstairs to access it. There is a lady on door duty taking names for contact tracing, if you’re not staying overnight.

Dinner Time

The restaurant is only open Friday, Saturday and Sunday, so dinner was in the bistro, even though it was table service. Once again it was packed with people when I went, most of them in a pensionable age range.

Three courses cost me €27.85 without any drinks as I had water. I wouldn’t rate the burger, it was quite average, but fine. Dessert was pretty amazing though, so that was certainly the highlight for me! Service was pretty good, no real waiting and they were all friendly.

Breakfast And Home Early

Unfortunately you can hear quite clearly into the other rooms. Whoever was in room 110 came back around 1am and started talking quite loudly, there were three of them, an Irish Mammy, one of her children and clearly whoever the child was married to. They gasbagged happily until I called reception at 2am to ask if they could ask them to keep it down, which they did fairly swiftly.

Breakfast was included with my rate and you collect it at the bistro and residents eat in the restaurant. I found it to be pretty good, though I was not particularly hungry after the two large meals I’d had the day before. Since Mullingar was largely rained out, I decided to leave one night early, after a single night rather than two.

Overall Thoughts

The Greville Arms Hotel in Mullingar is very centrally located in Mullingar, about five minutes or so walk to the train station and in the middle of all the action. The staff are lovely, the food okay and the rooms adequate.

While I had nothing really wrong with my stay (you can’t fault the hotel for other guests chatting loudly in the small hours), I wasn’t particularly blown away by any of it either. Still, for the price I am not complaining and they seem to be doing extremely well. The place was busy all the time I was there, so they’re doing something right.

Have you stayed in the Greville Arms Hotel before? Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.

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