With its blue mountains, “colossal” skies, and wide empty beaches, Connemara is “a country unto itself”, and the most beautiful region in the west of Ireland, says Stanley Stewart in Condé Nast Traveller. Oscar Wilde, whose father had a summer house by Lough Corrib, spoke of its “savage beauty”. His contemporary Oliver St John Gogarty called it “half of heaven”. And the early 20th century revolutionary Patrick Pearse – who was executed for his part in the Easter Rising – was one of a circle of Irish patriots who believed “the soul of Ireland, the essence of the country” lay in Connemara, which contains Ireland’s largest Gaeltacht, or Irish-speaking area.
Several of the region’s best hotels – Currarevagh, Delphi Lodge, Ballynahinch – were once grand houses; there is also the…