Country season off to a flyer

Around the Block: The country season gets off to a flying start this week with the sale of Bective in Co Meath, the landmark estate on the Boyne near Navan which is being sold by the former Bula Mines chief Michael Wymes.

The sale may well mark the final chapter of the long-running saga between Bula on one side, and Tara Mines and the State on the other. The row raged through both the High Court and Supreme Court for many years, with huge costs awarded against Wymes along the way. The final blow must be the decision to run the proposed M3 through the heavily wooded estate which will take away some of the magic of the walled demesne. Still, there will be no shortage of runners for Bective, which like its neighbour Bellinter, may well end up as a hotel, or God forbid, a spa resort. Bective, along with Dunsany and Ardbraccan, were the three remaining unspoiled estates in Meath, a county which once had numerous old piles with loads of land. But the country house market is changing fast and each year fewer houses are coming on the market with many of the best having been restored by a generation of moneyed folk who no longer rely on income from farming to keep the roof in good shape.

Paddy steals the show

Real Estate Alliance showed its mettle last week when it attracted over 300 people to its first ever conference and lunch at Dublin's Berkeley Court Hotel. With Brian Cowen as the guest speaker, they couldn't go wrong in these heady times. He was backed up by top planner Hendrik Van der Kamp and economist Jim "Let-the-good-times-roll" Power with John Bowman in the chair. Afterwards everyone agreed that the star of the show were not the heavyweight speakers but property developer Paddy Kelly's personal recollections of his trials and tribulations in the property business. Unlike many of those present, Paddy remembered the bad times as well as the good, citing his involvement in Lloyds as a fiasco along the way. These days, he has more pies than he can possibly get his fingers into, but he urged the audience to involve younger members of their families in the business saying that, at his age, it is now all about succession. Property developers are a notoriously cagey bunch when it comes to talking about their business, so it's unlikely that Paddy Kelly's candour will start a new trend, but then you never know. There is no shortage of fascinating stories to be told by developers out there. Can we start with Paddy McKillen, Gerry Gannon, Peter Cosgrave, Joe O'Reilly and not forgetting Mick Bailey?

Changing address

How can one housing estate have so many addresses and such a choice of post codes? Confusion seems to reign over whether the Manor Estate is in Walkinstown, Greenhills or the more salubrious Terenure, or if it's postcode is Dublin 12 or 6W?

A reader who always believed that the Manor Estate was located between Walkinstown and Templeogue in Dublin 12 called to query the geographical knowledge of four estate agents. Sherry FitzGerald, which is selling a house on Mountdown Park, and HOK, which is selling one on Fernhill Road - both in the estate - have the address as Terenure, Dublin 12. Meanwhile, Property Partners Declan Bolger, which sold a house on Mountdown Park, and Property Partners Murphy Mullan, which sold one on Mountdown Road, both have the address as Terenure, Dublin 6W.

When we called Property Partners Murphy Mullan we were told they work off the 2002 edition of Thom's which says the postcode for the area is 6W. Our 2002 edition, which says it is Dublin 12, was obviously from a different print run.

A call to Walkinstown postal sorting office uncovered that "some people who live in the Manor Estate like to believe they live in Terenure but Terenure is Dublin 6W". A more correct address, apparently, would be Greenhills or Walkinstown, Dublin 12. "But Manor Estate, Dublin 12 would get there just as good."