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Report - - McEniff Ard Ri (Jury's) Hotel - Waterford, Ireland - May 2015 | European and International Sites | 28DaysLater.co.uk

Report - McEniff Ard Ri (Jury's) Hotel - Waterford, Ireland - May 2015

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MJ-XX

28DL Full Member
28DL Full Member
Background & History:

This huge hotel was opened in the 1960's and had a total of 160 beds with stunning views overlooking Waterford city. I'm not sure what it was originally called but sometime during the 90's Jury's group acquired it and it became known as Jury's Hotel.

In the early 2000's ownership was changed again and it became known as McEniff Ard Ri Hotel. It was struggling to perform in the 2000's and closed down sometime around 2005, since then it sat dormant slowly decaying and forgotten about.

Throughout the years it's gone through numerous changes, in the beginning you had a couple of illegal raves there, and skateboarding inside. Later it became a location for squatters and junkies, who also decided to trash the entire building beyond repair, literally knocking the entire rear wall of the structure.

The local council decided to seal the entire building up as it looked horrible over the city and was often brought up in the local newspaper and media.

At least 3 fire's have ripped through the hotel since then, as well as people abseiling down the front of it illegally. They've really sealed it up tight and now nobody really occupies or visits it anymore. They removed a lot of the surrounding buildings including the lobby, leisure centre and swimming pool.

Currently there are no plans to do anything with the site.

Report:


Solo explore. The hotel grounds itself are fairly easy to access, you can come at it from a few different routes but I chose to avoid walking right up the front drive as security tends to check frequently down there.
To my surprise there was no CCTV or any form of security around the building itself aside from welded doors and shutters.

It's right by a dual carriage way, so i frequently got spooked by the sounds of vehicles which I thought was security coming up to check, but as it turned out it was just my imagination. Judging by the amount of objects on the road leading up to the hotel, security probably don't drive up the whole way often.


1. View from the hill behind the hotel.

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2. Spotted this. Play on words, I like it. and I took it's advice!

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3. The entire rear face of the hotel was knocked out by vandals, here you can see the local council sealed it up with corrugated sheeting.

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4.

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5. Side

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6. Old indoor swimming pool/gym complex. I used to go swimming here as a child. Sad to see it knocked down.

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7. Front of the hotel

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8. You need to be good at climbing if you want to get inside.

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9. Crawl along here for a bit, bit dodgy. It's hard to spot but there is a tiny hole about the width of my body I had to climb up to actually get into the hotel itself.

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10. Honestly there's not much left of interest in this hotel. Every floor is identical, a hallway with lots of rooms. There is a cool basement but still not much to see but pipes and water there.

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11. Most of the rooms are full of trashed desks or beds.

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12. Open elevator shaft

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13. I decided to take the stairs instead.

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14. Just sidenote which should probably be obvious, but due to the past fires in the hotel, the place is absolutely filthy. You will come out head to toe in black soot. My entire face and arms were black and sweaty. Its damp, humid, and dark inside. Lots of climbing and tight spaces. Keep that in mind!

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15. And visible across the road is a previous explore of mine. R&H Hall which you can read here. http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/r-h-hall-flour-mills-waterford-ireland-september-2014.t92219

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Apologies for the poor photos, I had no tripod with me. Thanks for reading!
 

Lavino

................
28DL Full Member
That's one burnt out shit hole . Still a well done for the effort on getting in there.:thumb
 

MJ-XX

28DL Full Member
28DL Full Member
I think it looks so nice on the outside but there's nothing inside, good report though as an explore is still an explore.

Yeah. Unfortunately it's only a shell of what it used to be. Back around 2008 I visited it there as a teenager up to no good, like everyone else who visited it. This was before the knocked the ground floor buildings, and boarded up the windows.

I remember the pool being fully in tact as well as gym and leisure suites, the rooms were all reasonable condition, the reception had tons of documentation and reservation stuff to read and more.

There's some content out there detailing what it was like.

Here's some that are NOT mine I found.

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and check out this interesting video.

 
Last edited:

The Shepshed Diamondback

Slithering down a drain near you
28DL Full Member
makes me wish id started exploring years ago instead of recently discovering how big it is, as that way I could have visited places which are shells of their former selves.
 

Denny01

28DL Full Member
28DL Full Member
Good Review.
My friend told me that his uncle was a security guard there during last year and that he had been replaced with CCTV cameras that are viewed in Cork.
 

MJ-XX

28DL Full Member
28DL Full Member
Good Review.
My friend told me that his uncle was a security guard there during last year and that he had been replaced with CCTV cameras that are viewed in Cork.

Nope. As far as I know security check the front gate regularly. But there's absolutely no CCTV camera anywhere around the site. The road leading up to the hotel has a bunch of weird metal wire on it that looks like it was ripped out for scrap metal, which indicates to me that nobody has moved it to drive a van up in a long time, so I doubt security even drive up that far to check.
 

HM96

28DL Member
28DL Member
Amazing photos,It used to be so beautiful, such a shame it was left to be in a state, would love to see more pics of it in its glory days :(
 
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