Veronica with Bloomfield since hotel opening

In April 1980, Mullingar woman Veronica McCrone joined the staff of the Bloomfield House Hotel - and thirty years on, she's still there!Last week, hotel directors John and Elizabeth Connaughton and Ronan Byrne, General Manager, congratulated Veronica, who has seen huge changes over the three decades she has spent at the hotel, which started out as a romantic dower house, built to celebrate the marriage of Dora Bloomfield to George Rochfort, and which later became home to the Missionary Franciscan nuns, who set up a convent and school there.In 1980, just a year after the departure of the nuns, the 29-bedroom Bloomfield House Hotel was opened by a consortium of local businessmen and Veronica joined the team at that stage.Since then, the hotel has twice been upgraded: in 1998, it added a further 36 bedrooms and its leisure club and spa, and in 2004, a further 46 bedrooms were added, and the lobby, bar, restaurant and bedrooms were refurbished and a new carvery provided. Veronica, is married to James McCrone, who works for Westmeath County Council at Belvedere House and Gardens, and the couple have a son and a daughter. Veronica's son has followed her footsteps into the catering industry, having left banking for a career in hotels. Ironically, her daughter, who started out woring in hotels, now works for the bank! Outside of the hotel, Veronica's passion is fashion, and high heels and designer outfits are her weakness - one inherited from her late mother who never, Veronica recalls, left the house without her heels.Apart from the changes in the hotel itself, Veronica has noticed many changes in traditions over the years, particularly on the wedding scene."Standard setups, paper napkins, grapefruit segments have beenreplaced with chair covers and bows, linen napkins and elaborate menus," she told the Westmeath Examiner this week. "In addition, people's fashion sense has also changed a lot, and now, classy, chic dresses have replaced the peach and pink bridesmaid meringue dresses!" Management at the Bloomfield are proud to have staff who have stayed with the hotel for thirty years, and others who aren't far behind in terms of their years' of service to the Bloomfield.