Travellers leaving Dublin for Ireland's south east toward the end of the eighteenth century faced a beautiful but arduous journey by coach down along the coast and on through the Wicklow mountains.

In 1666, a bridge had been built over the Dargle River, marking the border between Dublin city's outskirts and the mountains and lakes of County Wicklow.

The Meath Arms Inn was built by the Quin family as a coaching inn overlooking this bridge in 1776, opposite the site where the first permanent settlement in Bray began.

The town was served with a regular coach service from at least 1770, and a mail coach service from 1790. It became fashionable for parties from Dublin to drive out to Bray and spend the day there, while people travelling from Dublin to Wicklow and Wexford in their own carriages generally stopped a night at Quin's.

It was chiefly through the hotel on the bridge that Bray became known to the wider world. In 1843, the English poet, Thackeray, claimed that: "Quin's dinner was the best in Ireland'. It's a boast this hotel still tries to live up to...

In 1858, the hotel was sold to William Dargan, the engineer and entrepreneur who had brought the railway to Bray four years earlier. He renamed it Quin's Hotel, and then set about constructing a road from the Railway Station to the Main Street, calling this, too, after the founders of the hotel - Quinsborough.

Quin's Hotel was sold again in 1866, and was re-named the Royal Hotel in 1867.

It was purchased by the McGettigan family in 1981 as part of the Regency Hotel Group, and its subsequent extensive development included the building of a very modern Leisure Centre in 1993.

So today, Quinn's Hotel has become the The Royal Hotel and Merrill Leisure Club, and visitors come by plane and car or ferry and touring bus, rather than horse and coach. Dublin city is a thriving European capital, but the Wicklow mountains on the other side retain their wild, peaceful beauty.

...And the hotel on the bridge between Dublin and Wicklow continues to span the best of both worlds.