Plans submitted for virginia park lodge

Paul Neilan

Celebrated chef Richard Corrigan has lodged his planning application with the council to redevelop Virginia Park Lodge.
Corrigan is believed to have already invested €3 million on the 100-plus acre venue, which he intends to run as a wedding venue and as a supplier to his other restaurants, creating 70 jobs.
“I also intend to put in place a semi-professional cookery school and a restaurant, which I hope to have opened within 18 months. It is a phenomenal operation,” he said last year. “It was in a sorry state when I bought it but we are making a huge investment in it.”
The Ballivor-born TV chef also operates Bentley’s Oyster Bar and Grill,
Corrigan’s Mayfair and Bentley’s Sea Grill at Harrods, employing over 250.
The application at Virginia Park Lodge, formerly Park Hotel, are for works “within the curtilage of protected structures”.
The development will consist of retaining the arch at the western end of the lodge, retaining the pavillion structure to the south to provide for up to 320 guests and for landscaping and servicing works.
The application also seeks to restore and convert an “existing roofless boathouse to form a guest apartment, for a mezzanine floor level under a new thatched roof, to reinstate a porch canopy on north west elevation”, to restore the gate lodge into a two-bed dwelling and do the same at the existing building in the north west corner of the walled gardens for gardening staff. A decision is due by November 10.