Obituary: Mary Bowe, restaurateur and hotelier who ran Co Wexford’s luxury Marlfield House (2024)

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Mary Bowe, who has died aged 87, was a hotelier and restaurateur with an international reputation who was known for her vision, optimism and energy.

Colleague and television presenter Francis Brennan, who knew her for 45 years, has described her as “one of two doyennes” of the sector in Ireland, the other being the late Michelin-star chef Myrtle Allen.

When Co Wexford’s Marlfield House, which she ran with the support of her husband Ray, was invited into the Relais & Chateaux marketing association of luxury hotels, she instilled its values in “every corner” of the business, her daughter Margaret has said.

Mary Bowe, née Murphy, was born in October 1936 as the eldest of seven children reared by Marjorie and Larry Murphy, who ran a farm at ­Gillardstown House, Castlepollard, Co Westmeath.

She attended school locally in ­Collinstown, then as a boarder at the Loreto Abbey in Rathfarnham, Dublin.

Obituary: Mary Bowe, restaurateur and hotelier who ran Co Wexford’s luxury Marlfield House (1)

After secondary school, she studied at the Shannon School of Hotel Management, a natural progression as she had inherited her mother Marjorie’s talent for and love of cooking for large family and friends.

She was in one of the first classes to graduate from Shannon, which she did in 1958. There she made many lifelong friends and worked on placement in Heidelberg, Germany, and in the Waldorf Hotel, London.

She was working as a manager of Woodbrook Golf Club in Bray, Co Wicklow, when her father had the idea to introduce her to Ray Bowe, who was the estate manager in Tullynally Castle, Co Westmeath.

The two met in the Greville Arms Hotel in Mullingar, Co Westmeath, and were married within the year. They had two daughters, Margaret and Laura..

Keen to return to her career after the birth of her second child, Mrs Bowe opened a bed and breakfast at their first home in Ballinesker, on Curracloe beach, Co Wexford.

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Esker Lodge, as it was known, quickly developed a reputation for accommodation and food, where Mrs Bowe would cook for up to 80 people.

Her daughter Margaret recalls: “Guests would be asked to phone in their order in the morning, be it four or 14 people, and Mary would then head to Walkers and Meylers fish shop in Wexford in her little bubble car to do her shopping to prepare the exact number of each dish”.

She and sister Laura have memories of “setting tables, polishing glasses” and having to cope with “itchy hands from peeling fresh Dublin prawns and shelling Kilmore Quay mussels before disappearing to the beach 100 metres away for the afternoon”.

“There was absolutely no waste,” she noted. “This was our first lesson in good food margins.”

By night she cooked for over 100 people, going into the restaurant to charm her guests after dinner

A weekend away in east Cork’s ­Ballymaloe House, originally founded as a restaurant in 1964 by the late Myrtle Allen, changed Mary and Ray Bowe’s life. The couple set their sights on buying a similar country house to run as a hotel, which they did after they bought Marlfield in 1977.

The couple worked 18-hour days. He hand-picked the lamb and beef, and she cooked it “to perfection” — as she had done in Esker Lodge, which garnered her great reviews from the Good Food Guide and Egon Ronay.

“By day, she was the florist, head housekeeper, gardener, receptionist and accountant, and by night she cooked for over 100 people, going into the restaurant to charm her guests after dinner, all dressed up to the nines and looking like she had stepped out of a magazine,” her daughter Margaret said.

Mr Brennan was still in college and on placement in the Berkeley Hotel, Dublin, when he met her first.

He remembers her “sophistication” and eye for quality and style, her attention to detail and her sense of fun when they travelled together on a Relaix & Chateaux marketing trip in Italy.

“I remember I had about eight calls to travel agents to make and was walking quite fast, and she was clipping along behind me in her high heels — she then asked me would I do her calls for her if she paid me,” he said.

“We always sold Ireland, rather than individual properties, together.”

The Bowe couple spent winter holidays visiting Michelin-star restaurants and luxury hotels in Europe for new ideas. At one point, Mrs Bowe did a paid “stage” or working holiday with Jane O’Callaghan of Longueville House in Roger Verge’s Moulin de Mougins restaurant in France.

On her arrival home, she introduced his dishes to her own menu, which she insisted on writing entirely in French.

One of her first questions of the day was ‘Were the ducks fed?’ and the second was usually ‘Is the hotel busy tonight?’

She was invited to join Ireland’s Blue Book in its formative years, and Marlfield House became part of the Relais & Chateaux association in 1983.

The previous year, a Turner-style conservatory was built at Marlfield, designed by architect Alfred Cochrane. A grand entrance hall and state bedrooms were added in 1989, and Mrs Bowe then attended many house auctions to purchase antiques and paintings for the new rooms.

Daughter Laura said her mother had “exquisite taste and natural flair for interior design, another of her great skills evident throughout Marlfield”.

Young Laura was often taken out of school to attend auctions with her mother, and remembers there was “nothing she loved more than raising that paddle board above her head” to purchase something she liked.

Daughter Margaret joined the business in 1994, and this gave Mrs Bowe a chance to launch herself with gusto into a “social life of dinner parties and art exhibition openings, never coming home empty handed”.

Mrs Bowe was a fellow of the Irish Hotel and Catering Institute, and kept links with the Shannon school which she had attended — helping to raise funds for major developments, and meeting and encouraging students on many occasions.

Obituary: Mary Bowe, restaurateur and hotelier who ran Co Wexford’s luxury Marlfield House (2)

Daughter Laura returned to work with her sister at Marlfield in 2004. The daughters said this allowed their parents to take more time to themselves, eating regularly in the hotel’s Duck restaurant and entertaining guests with many life stories.

When not working, Mrs Bowe loved nature and animals and had 34 breeds of bird in her pond at one point, including wigeon and teal ducks, swans and geese.

After Mr Bowe died in 2019, she moved into Marlfield to be with her family, including her three grandchildren in whom she instilled a love for animals.

One of her first questions of the day was “Were the ducks fed?” and the second was usually “Is the hotel busy tonight?”.

“If she couldn’t be found, she was probably saving a clutch of ducklings on the pond,” daughter Laura said. Mrs Bowe also always had a cat at her side, her last one dying a week before Mrs Bowe’s death.

She survived Covid-19 and other illnesses in her later years, and was only in hospital in Wexford for 48 hours before her death.

Mrs Bowe is survived by her daughters, three grandchildren, Beau, Hannah and Ava, and extended family.

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Obituary: Mary Bowe, restaurateur and hotelier who ran Co Wexford’s luxury Marlfield House (2024)
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