Qualla: Butler Arms Hotel

Butler Arms Hotel: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dr Neil Clifton, CC BY-SA 2.0. Charlie Chaplin came for the fishing. He stayed for twelve summers. From 1959 onward, the Tramp - now seventy years old, exiled from the country that had made him famous, raising children in Switzerland - brought his family across Europe each year to a turreted, white-fronted hotel on the wind-scoured edge of the Atlantic. Waterville suited him. The Butler Arms suited him. The locals, who quickly learned which guest preferred which pew at Mass, suited him most of all.

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Image: Dr Neil Clifton | CC BY-SA 2.0

Butler Arms Hotel: An Inn Built on a Cable

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Myrtle26, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Butler Arms opened in 1884, founded by the McElligott family at exactly the moment Waterville turned into something more than a fishing village. The first successful transatlantic telegraph cable had landed in 1866 at nearby Valentia Island, connecting Ireland to Heart's Cont...

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Image: Myrtle26 | CC BY-SA 2.0

Butler Arms Hotel: The Chaplin Summers

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Holger Uwe Schmitt, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Chaplins discovered Waterville almost by accident. Charlie loved to fish; the family enjoyed the peninsula's privacy. From 1959 through 1971 the family returned to the Butler Arms annually, sometimes for weeks at a stretch. Oona O'Neill Chaplin, Charlie's wife, brought her Ir...

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Image: Holger Uwe Schmitt | CC BY-SA 4.0

Butler Arms Hotel: Writers, Bankers, Lords

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit N Chadwick, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Chaplins are only the headline. The American banker J. P. Morgan reportedly stayed in the 1920s. Sir Horace Plunkett came twice in 1891, just after he had been appointed to the new Congested Districts Board that was attempting, with mixed success, to lift the west of Ireland ...

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Image: N Chadwick | CC BY-SA 2.0

Butler Arms Hotel: Still Standing at Land's End

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kemiah, CC BY-SA 3.0. Press Up Entertainment, Paddy McKillen Junior's hospitality group, took ownership in 2022. The building remains - cream-walled, gabled, looking out across Ballinskelligs Bay toward the Skellig Islands rising twelve kilometres offshore. The Atlantic still rolls in. The Waterville ...

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Image: Kemiah | CC BY-SA 3.0