Sheltered dower house in valley on the Nore

The River Nore runs through the five-acre grounds of a Co Kilkenny house now on the market for €875,000. Kate McMorrow reports

There can be few more inviting places to settle than Inistioge and Thomastown, picturesque Co Kilkenny villages that attract more than their fair share of artistic residents.

In the the triangle encompassing Inistioge, Thomastown and Kilkenny city, you'll find companies like Jerpoint Glass, Nicholas Mosse Pottery, Clive Nunn Furniture and Grennan Mills Art School, where artist Barrie Cooke taught in the 1980s.

New to the market with New Ross agent PN O'Gorman is an ivy-covered dower house in the area with all the credentials for a lifestyle change. Rathsnagadan House is on five acres of sheltered gardens, with a coach-house, stables, workshop and direct access to the River Nore. The 307sq m (3,300sq ft) six-bedroom house near The Rower village is quoting €875,000 by private treaty, a sum that might stretch to an artisan cottage in an affluent Dublin suburb.

Inistioge is eight km from the house and Thomastown a 15-minute drive away.

Rathsnagadan was built in the mid-19th century as a dower house for the Bolger-Hynes family. The current owners have considerably upgraded the accommodation over their 20-year tenure, adding extra bedrooms and updating the kitchen and bathrooms. Their now grown-up children kept ponies in the stableyard and roamed the countryside in relative freedom.

The house is set deep in the Nore Valley, close to the border of Kilkenny and Wexford and with views across to Mount Brandon. With six bedrooms, new owners could operate a Blue Book-style B&B or just use the house as a family home. At first glance, ivy-covered walls and the blue-painted door give the house a romantic Provençal look.

The front door opens to a flagged hallway with a high ceiling and inner arch. Reception rooms have a comfortable lived-in air, with soft pastel walls, deep sofas and no sense of a house "done up" for the market. The wood-floored sittingroom has an original cast-iron fireplace and double doors to the garden.

This room links with a formal diningroom, also with period fireplace. Deep ceiling coving is particularly fine. The study and office also include cast iron fireplaces.

While revamped in recent times, the kitchen has a deliberate old-fashioned look, with its quarry-tiled floor and old pine units. The steel island unit with hot plates and warming ovens was bought from a New Ross boarding school which was closing down. A gas-fired stove heats the adjoining breakfastroom.

Upstairs, three of the six bedrooms have en suite showers and there is a separate family bathroom. Mature gardens surround the house, with the Nore meandering through fields into the distance. The five acres includes two paddocks, a coach-house, stables and workshop.