Tipperary, Ireland

Closed 1977

The Disappointed Tourist: Bed & Breakfast, Ellen Harvey, 2023. Oil and acrylic on Gessoboard, 18 x 24″ (46 x 61 cm). Photograph: Etienne Frossard.

A Bed & Breakfast located at 34 Kickham Street, Carrick on Suir, Tipperary, Ireland that closed in 1977. The painting is based on a contemporary photograph of the buildings (which is why the road has signs painted on it that apparently weren’t there in the 1970s) provided by Bernadette who also sent me sketches of the sign.

This was the house I grew up in. It had 15 rooms and my mother ran it as a Guest House. She kept it beautifully and it broke my heart to see it falling into disrepair so badly over the years. I’m afraid I do not have an image of the house before it was boarded up. The windows were ordinary sash windows. They were wood and painted white. One bar across the middle. They opened top and bottom. The windowsills were darker grey. There are spikes on the bottom windowsills to prevent people sitting on them. The house was light cement coloured, pale grey.The front door was of mahogany wood and was varnished a dark orange colour. The door had two glass panels in the top section. The glass had a slight bubbled design and was opaque. There was a side entrance to the garden underneath an archway and a large garage and workshop at the back. The door to the garden was painted dark green. It had a latch in the middle and opened inward. No window boxes or flowers but a sign hanging over the front door which my father made. It hung perpendicular to the house. The sign was a type of light box about 6 inches depth, it was about 15 inches wide and about 12 inches ta It said BED and BREAKFAST on both sides painted red. The background was a translucent white. He put a light in the sign so you could see it from a distance. My dad was an electrician, it was his version of a neon sign in the days before you could get a neon sign. Bernadette K.