Breac.House — The texture of place

Silent dia­logue

At the nor­t­hernmost edge of the Republic of Ireland, on a headland along the Wild Atlantic Way, one of the island’s most dra­matic natural sce­narios unfolds, reve­aling its tim­eless and untamed beauty: Horn Head. Covered with a soft blanket of grass and vibrant purple heather, the cliffs plunge 180 metres into the churning waves of the Atlantic Ocean. Sea birds nest in their cre­vices as the archaic land­scape is a pro­tected habitat for a rich variety of flora and fauna. The view sweeps far and wide across the water and the striking sil­hou­ettes of Errigal and Muckish Mountain. Wind-crested dunes, golden sandy beaches and secluded bays line the spurs of the headland.

Every now and then you come across the remains of Celtic stone circles or pre­his­toric field marks and you sense that at this outermost corner of the world the mys­tical heritage of the past is ever-present and blends with the present to an inex­tri­cable whole. Right in the middle of it all, Breac.House stands in silent dia­logue with the endless sky, with mist and sunsets, with storms, stars and the dancing aurora borealis. Just one stone bridge con­nects Horn Head with the mainland, beyond the bridge you will find the vibrant former fishing village of Dun­fa­naghy, which is per­vaded by the spirit of Donegal: you can see it in the fri­endly faces of its people and read it in their hands, which witness this places’s pulsing crea­tivity and a life in close contact with nature and the ele­ments.

In every beginning lives a magic within

Niall came to Donegal as a child during the summer holidays as his mother’s family ori­gi­nated from this area. Decades later, he and his wife Catherine bought a small weekend cottage near Dun­fa­naghy to escape their fre­netic work life in Dublin and to inhale silence and unspoilt nature in the wild vastness of Horn Head. The weekend escapes quickly turned into extended stays and each time the return to the hustle and bustle of the Irish capital became less tempting.

“We wanted to find a way to move here com­pletely, while con­ti­nuing to work. But then we both got the same idea that Horn Head would be a great setting for a special and very high quality accom­mo­dation for holi­day­makers. We ima­gined a house that would con­tinue the archi­tec­tural tra­dition of this area and at the same time reflect our own travel expe­ri­ences around the globe. It was obvious that this idea would only work in the exact right place. And then we found it — or did it find us? We had walked by this pro­perty a thousand times before! One day we saw a “for sale” sign hanging on the fence. And we knew this was it: the perfect place! From here, you have a view above the sea, moun­tains and lake that makes you feel like you are flying.”

Catherine and Niall con­tinued to work in their old jobs and simul­ta­neously began to breathe life into  their vision: a luxu­rious yet essential, authentic and cos­mo­po­litan home — not a hotel. For guests who are looking for some­thing slightly dif­ferent. It took a year to design and plan, another year to build, and then the time had come for a fresh start: both left the Dublin finance world behind  and pre­pared them­selves for their new role as hosts. Pro­fession became vocation.

“Viele Prin­zipien sind die gleichen: gute Kom­mu­ni­kation, Zuhören können, Bedürfnisorientierung…all diese Dinge. Wir sind weder Archi­tekten noch hatten wir je zuvor in der Hotel­branche gear­beitet. Aber wir lieben gute Gestaltung, feinen Service und exzel­lentes Essen und wir haben uns dem Konzept unseres B&B aus der Per­spektive des Gastes ange­nähert und Räume und Inhalte geschaffen, wie wir sie uns auf unseren eigenen Reisen“Many client ser­vices prin­ciples we learned in our former roles are pretty much the same as what’s required at Breac.House: good com­mu­ni­cation, attentive lis­tening, empathy…all these things. We are neither archi­tects nor have we ever worked in the hotel industry before. But we love good design, fine service and excellent food and we have approached the concept of our B&B from the guest’s per­spective, creating spaces and expe­ri­ences that we would like to encounter on our own travels. One question we raised again and again was: Would we like to spend our holidays here our­selves? It was pro­bably the firm belief in what we love that guided us and it has worked … so far”. wün­schen. Eine Frage, die wir uns wieder und wieder stellten war: Würden wir hier selbst gerne Urlaub machen? Es war wohl der Glaube an das, was wir lieben, der uns antrieb und es hat funk­tio­niert.”

Long­house legacy

Breac.House is situated in an area that shows Ireland at its wildest and most exposed. There is a long tra­dition of ver­na­cular archi­tecture here which was con­ceived to provide shelter from the ele­ments. The tra­di­tional long­house has suc­cessfully defied the ele­ments since the Middle Ages and is a common thread linking the sett­lement tra­di­tions of the coastal com­mu­nities of Ireland, Scotland and Scan­di­navia. Solid and built from local stone, covered with grass, reeds or rough slate depending on the local resources available, the long­house is an archi­tec­tural concept that has shel­tered many gene­ra­tions of families from the cli­matic moods of the Atlantic Ocean: sleek, single-storey elon­gated buil­dings, with rounded corners and small, irre­gular windows, with thick walls and paved with the driftwood that the grass cutters reco­vered from the nearby marshes. The houses adapted so per­fectly to the out­lines of the hills that the storms swept over without not even noticing them.

Just a few decades ago, the county of Donegal was richly dotted with these old white­washed cot­tages, but today the number of remaining, intact buil­dings has dimi­nished. Many of them fell victim to dubious moder­ni­sation mea­sures and lost their ori­ginal form and soul, others are slowly but surely falling into decline. A super­ficial glance may not find any­thing more than an idyllic postcard motif in these grass-covered ruins, but a closer look reveals the tragedy of their dis­ap­pearance: the long­house is a pre­cious witness to the Irish way of life and respectful solu­tions are needed in order to pre­serve this cul­tural legacy and anchor it in the present.

The archi­tec­tural idea behind Breac.House starts right here: “With our building we wanted to take the archi­tec­tural tra­dition of Western Ireland to the next level. But how do you express a cen­turies-old building concept and its mate­rials in a con­tem­porary, appe­aling way?” The answer lay in the texture of the place.

Speckled

breac is the Irish and Scottish Gaelic word for speckled and refers espe­cially to the spotted poly­chromy of nature. The manifold shades of the rocky heath land­scape, its soft colour palette as well as the raw beauty and rough texture of the natural ele­ments became the design motif of Breac.House and a sublime visual and haptic expe­rience for its inha­bi­tants: warm wood and chunky tweed, pure wool, Fanad granite, Ardara quartzite, clay, stones and seaweed. The essence of Donegal — tou­ching strongly recom­mended!

For the archi­tec­tural rea­li­sation of their vision, Catherine and Niall brought the award-winning Donegal firm of Mac­Gabhann Archi­tects on board. The brother duo Tarla and Antoin Mac­Gabhann — sup­ported by a talented team of local craftsmen — have mas­terfully managed the balancing act between ancient con­cepts and modern shape and function. Today, Breac.House appears as a har­mo­nious liaison of unas­ha­medly con­tem­porary design and tra­di­tional building wisdom. Dark larch wood covers the elon­gated building and makes it blend into the hilly heathland. Its out­lines are distinctive yet in careful dia­logue with the sur­roun­dings: Breac.House echoes the sleek sil­houette of Muckish Mountain (meaning “pigs back” in Irish), it reflects and respects the genius loci and trans­lates a cen­turies-old tra­dition into con­tem­porary living con­cepts.

Ode to the essence

Outside wild, unspoilt nature, inside a soft, warm and most com­for­table shelter. The three guest rooms open up to the Atlantic Ocean with huge glass fronts and you feel as if floating in a space cabin through the dra­matic coastal scenery. The heart of the B&B is the open-plan living and dining area, glazed to the front it opens up to the roof.

Breac.House is sleek and clear — almost monastic. It is a place for reflection, for con­tem­plation, for silent obser­vation. Straight lines and clean shapes define the light flooded spaces and reveal Catherine and Niall’s love for Scan­di­navian design and Japanese living con­cepts: Ever­y­thing has its place and ever­y­thing has a meaning. Every gesture is full of respectful awa­reness. Some inge­nious, thoughtful amen­ities make the guests very quickly very happy. More will not be revealed at this stage!

“When our guests enter their room for the first time, they are some­times sur­prised and say “Oh, there’s nothing here! And after a few minutes, they will say “Oh wow, we have ever­y­thing we need!” We have created a lot of invi­sible storage spaces to accom­modate all the stuff you need without visually over­loading the rooms. You may not see them, but they’re there.” says Niall with some satis­faction. “We don’t want to dis­tract eyes and soul from this view for any­thing in the world!

Closing the circle

The con­tem­plative cha­racter of Breac.House embraces a further source of inspi­ration: it pays tribute to the archi­tecture of Liam McCormick (often referred to as Ire­land’s Alvar Aalto), who designed several modernist church buil­dings in Donegal in the 1950s, 60s and 70s and has left a remar­kable archi­tec­tural heritage.

McCor­mick’s churches were unlike any­thing seen on the Emerald Isle until then: striking and distinctive from the outside and puristic, yet per­vaded with warmth and softness inside, they relate directly to the nature and history of their sur­roun­dings. St. Michaels Church in Cree­s­lough for ins­tance, which is located not far from Breac.House, reflects the out­lines of Muckish Mountain and six small ope­nings in the walls recall the irre­gular window shapes of the old long­houses with a humorous wink. And thus the circle closes and con­nects Ire­land’s inge­nious architect of churches directly with Breac.House — not only in terms of archi­tec­tural con­cepts: both, the son of the architect, who worked in Liam McCor­mick’s planning team, as well as the son of the building con­tractor, who rea­lised all his buil­dings, were part of the con­s­truction crew at Horn Head.

At home with friends

Catherine and Niall have inten­tio­nally designed Breac.House in a way that allows them to live with their guests under the same roof: “Actually one of the archi­tect’s ori­ginal ques­tions to us was whether we wanted to design two separate buil­dings, one for guests and one for us. We instinc­tively knew that we wanted to coexist and share common rituals with our guests. At the same time everyone has com­plete privacy. Besides the fact that to a certain extent we are always on duty, it is really great because we have deli­berately removed some of the tra­di­tional bar­riers of hos­pi­tality. It is somewhat like dancing: Some­times we move towards each other and come tog­ether and some­times we fall apart. Our guests like the fact that they live in our home, it gives them a feeling of security, belonging and comfort. In the evening, we invite our guests for an ape­ritif: Those who wish to have a chat and a glass of excellent whiskey join in, those who prefer their privacy, retreat to a quiet corner of the house or the garden. No matter what the guests prefer, they all feel that this house has an authentic, homelike cha­racter.”

Local crea­tivity

Ulti­m­ately, ever­y­thing at Breac.House rotates around the authentic expe­rience of the place. The guests get in touch with the local envi­ronment, the people, their tra­di­tions and arte­facts. Catherine and Niall designed the custom interior of their B&B tog­ether with a group of local makers, desi­gners and artists who share their passion for the creative spirit of Donegal. Breac.House’s guests are wrapped in Eddie Doh­erty’s soft tweed blankets, they lounge on Simon O’Dris­coll’s oak sofa, drink their Irish breakfast tea from the handmade pottery of the Moore sisters from Dun­fa­naghy and con­tem­plate in front of Super­folk’s Atlantic seaweed tri­ptych. The wild­flower honey and turf smoked salmon comes directly from the neighbour. A deeper insight into these creative and culinary col­la­bo­ra­tions can be found in the Breac.House Journal.

“Around Dun­fa­naghy, and the North West more broadly, many young locals have recently opened up new artisan studios, small shops and food busi­nesses and we are delighted about the coope­ration and inspiring exchange. We are very thankful for how kindly we have been wel­comed and how much support we have received from the com­munity, even if they cer­tainly were a bit scep­tical at first about the unusual look of Breac.House. We are not a sea­sonal business, we live here, this makes a big dif­fe­rence and we think they are now rather proud of their Horn Head hideaway”.

Rituals

Whoever thought the Finns invented the sauna has never seen a Celtic “sweat­house”! The Celts built their round, grass-covered sweat houses out of stone and turf and always very close to a water source. A small opening in the middle of the roof served as a smoke outlet for the fire that heated up the sweat­house and into which some big stones were placed. Then, the hot stones were dipped into the nearby river, stream or sea and quickly brought back inside: the Celtic steam bath was ready!

The wood-fired sauna in the garden of Breac.House re-inter­prets the ancient tre­atment method of the Celts in a con­tem­porary way, while remaining com­pletely off-grid thanks to grass, stone, wood and water. After an invi­go­rating seaweed bath, the two of you can relax here with a view of the vast land­scape and recall the expe­ri­ences of the day: a hike up Mount Errigal with a breath­taking view of the Scottish Islands, a hor­seback ride on the beach, a kayak tour in the early morning light, a visit to a local weaving mill or pottery workshop or simply a few cosy hours in front of a plate of fresh seafood and a pint of Guiness, some­where in a nice pub beyond the little stone bridge.…

May you take the time,

to cele­brate the silent wonders,

which in the noisy world

have no admirers.

Irish proverb.

Text: Britta Krämer, November 2020

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