he western-style hotel  came into vogue only after The Suez opened up India in the second half of the 19th century.  These hotels provided all the comforts of home, as different from the traditional Indian choultry where you cooked your own food with your own utensils, slept on the ground on your own ‘bedding’ and used your own metal vessel at the well and beyond for your ablutions. They also provided ‘permanent’ residence for bachelors and even for many a family, at least till they found a home they could call their own in a city where there were not many homes as yet at addresses more suited to European residence.

It was the Imperial Hotel, established in the City in 1854 that was one of the first Western hotels in Madras.  The Branch Elphinstone Hotel at 6 Elphinstone Road also described itself in 1880 as “one of the first established hotels in Madras and highly patronized by Gentlemen and Ladies of the Presidency”, while the Victoria family Hotel at “‘Ameer Bagh’, opposite to General Neil’s Statue, Mount Road” advertised at the same period that it “is one of the best established hotels in the Presidency and is three storied”. The Imperial was owned by ‘Triplicane Ruthnavaloo Moodelliar’, the Branch Elphinstone has no connection whatever with the Elphinstone Hotel. It was when the Elphinstone took the Victoria Family’s place at Ameer Bagh by ‘C Narrainsawmy Moodelliar & Son’, and the Victoria Family by ‘C Casavah Modeliar & Grandson’.  Finally come the real western Hotel.
This was the property where the Albany Succeeded it in 1886 – Very likely the house John Binny Senior built – and which Eugene Oakshott bought on April 23, 1891.  As seen from the agreement, the property by then was known as the Connemara and P. Cumaraguru Mudelly and P. Chokalinga Mudelly, who were running it on a three – year lease, were allowed to continue running it for the “unexpired residue” of two years.

On December 3, 1890, a week after it opened, rechristened, the hotel was describing itself in an advertisement as the ‘Connemara’, “a newly established hotel.
Of the many hotels in Madras, the Connemara is the only one which has been built specially for a Hotel, and it may very fairly claim to be the then leading Hotel in Madras.  It occupies a site at the back of the magnificent premises of Messrs. Spencer & Co. Ltd, and abuts on the Cooum river.

The hotel prospered from the first with Oakshott’s partner James Stiven in charge.  Some reports describe Stiven as Manager of the Connemara, others describe him as Proprietor, but what seems to have been the case is that he leased the property from Oakshott to run it as his business, after the lease given to him from the Mudelly brothers ended in 1893.  As proprietor of the business, Mr. Stiven was determined to make the Connemara the best hotel in Madras.