Trade NamesHoteliers Elaine and Henry Reid established their lakeside Connemara hotel during the difficult years of the 1980s and have since prospered, writes Rose Doyle

That houses have lives beyond bricks and mortar is a given. With some it's also a given that they change, adapt and, seemingly, live forever.

Ross Lake House Hotel in Oughterard, Co Galway, has a more than decent longevity pedigree. Built to survive in the mid-1800s, it has since then, with sturdy grace and through peace and upheaval, lived the life of a grand country house.

It's still living the life of a grand country house, though these days and for 25 years now, as a country house hotel. Beloved by its owners and by guests who keep coming back, today's Ross Lake House is an example to us all about adapting to survive.

"It was built to continue," Elaine Reid says, and she should know. Intimately involved with Ross Lake House since the Christmas in 1980 she and husband Henry fell in love with it, she knows its secrets as well as it knows her dreams. Henry's too.

"We were meant to come here," Elaine says and Henry adds that "it's a quite spectacular place to live personally. The silence of it. There's a lovely feel to this house. I always felt it was a lucky place, with a lucky charm about it."

Lucky indeed. Ross Lake House was more than a little down on its luck on that St Stephen's Day in 1980 when the Reids came upon it and, according to Elaine, "derelict and in disrepair as it was, we fell in love with it".

The owners then were George and Gisella Heilman, who were German and spending most of their time in that country. "It took a year to buy it, with complications and everyone trying to put us off," says Elaine. "It was in pretty bad shape when we took over in 1981 but we were young and didn't really know what we were taking on. We only saw the vision and not the mistakes. Friends gave us six months, said we wouldn't last. Eventually the penny dropped and we realised we were, in fact, mad. Henry and I had our only meeting ever, after six months, to decide whether to close the doors or battle on. We battled on and opened in February 1982."

It had taken Ross Lake House about 130 years to become a country house hotel. Long before, in the very beginning, it had been Killaguille House. James Edward Jackson, who built it in the mid 19th century, was land agent for Lord Iveagh at Ashford Castle.

Jackson, at a time of great poverty in the surrounding Connemara, was considered a benign landlord. He gave employment to 30 people, needing them to help run what was then a 1,200-acre estate with a nine-hole golf course. He was a cousin of Violet Martin of Somerville and Ross fame - of their 14 books it was a collection of short stories Some Adventures of an Irish R.M. which became most popular.

When he died in 1907, James Edward Jackson's son, Alfred, inherited the estate. The times were different and so was Alfred who, after a few short years, was obliged to sell off some of the land. With independence in 1922 the new state's Land Commission took over what was left and divided it among local farmers. The Jackson connection died with Alfred, who left for India and died there.

Killaguille House had a varied and lively existence through the first part of the 19th century. Its ascendancy class owners included the Strevens sisters, Lord Hardinge and a Captain Crowe who broke the mould when he sold to the Heilmans in 1969. They kick-started its new life, renamed it Ross Lake House in tribute to the fishing waters of the nearby lake, and converted it into an hotel in 1971.

It had ceased to operate as an hotel by the time the Reids came along - its first Irish Catholic owners. Henry's a Galwayman, Elaine comes from Wexford and their story has grit, persistence and vision.

They met in the Great Southern Hotel in Rosslare. Henry was manager, Elaine on reception. They married in 1975 and, working together, began to think about setting up their own place. They were on their first ever Galway Christmas together when they came upon Ross Lake House which they bought for £114,000. It was a price which, Elaine says, "was over the odds at the time".

In the beginning, in the early 1980s, "the bar business kept us going", Elaine says. "It was great. Then Oughterard began to open up and new bars began to open. Our business has changed since then, though we're always glad to have local custom. We've moved the bar to the back of the building too and it's much smaller."

In the early years they had to "batten down the hatches. I had to learn to cook, Henry to pull pints. Interest rates were very high - we were on about 26 per cent for what we borrowed to buy, Vat was 18 per cent - but you just turned a blind eye to that because you couldn't afford to pay it. Nobody could. Then there was the devaluation of the pound, and the rod licence row . . ."

She draws a breath. "Things began to change with the Vat amnesty. Once you'd paid your Vat bill you could get on with the business. There was a change in the country after that. Then people who'd money abroad, too, were allowed bring it back, so there was more money around. But then there was September 11th ! That had a huge effect on tourism in this country."

One of their first ever guests was Willy Brandt, a Swiss fisherman who came twice a year for 15 years to stay in the same room and fish in nearby Lough Corrib. "He wanted his ashes scattered on Lough Corrib," Elaine says, "so when he died his son brought them over, stayed with them a last night in room and the following day we went with him - Henry, myself and local people he was friendly with, and scattered them on the lake."

Henry remembers the important bit. "We took a bottle of whiskey, too, gave him a really good send-off."

Guests return, and return, all the time. The famous visit from time-to-time, too - Maureen O'Hara stayed, so have Russian and American ambassadors. "It's a very warm, welcoming house," Elaine says. "Guests say it's homey, comfortable, not at all austere. We've kept it as it was, spent a lot of money keeping its Georgian character. We did a huge development in 1988; there were no bathrooms with the bedrooms until then. In 1991 we built a new kitchen and banqueting room."

Not that any of it was plain sailing. "Every time we thought we were getting there something happened. Now there's the water problem - though it doesn't affect us since we get our water supply from Buffey Lake, at the back of the house."

Ross Lake House Hotel has 13 bedrooms. "We started off with 13, knocked and rebuilt, and ended up with 13 again," says Elaine. "We've got two suites and de luxe rooms. It has a great sense of its place in the locality."

Ross Lake House Hotel is, Henry says, "the only traditional Irish country house hotel in a 12-mile radius of Galway".

Elaine says they've felt, over the years, "that we were meant to come here. The way we found the house when we were just casually looking, by accident almost."

Ross Lake House, Henry says, "has a future as well as a past now".