Former surgery in Birr is just what the doctor ordered

Co Offaly €1m:A Georgian house that was once the local maternity hospital in the historic heart of Birr is on the market for €1 million, writes Property Editor Orna Mulcahy.

The blue house on Oxmantown Mall in the heart of Birr, Co Offaly, has a brass plate hanging on the wall of one of its front rooms. Dr McManus, it says, opening hours, 6.30 to 8.30pm.

That was 6.30 in the morning: all day long through the 1950s and 1960s, the house was a busy surgery where Dr McManus and his wife also raised eight children.

From 1960 to 1970, the house, which the family leased from the Earl of Rosse, was also the local maternity home with a labour room on the upper return and a ward and two private rooms on the top floor.

A single bathroom served the expectant women and the new mothers, and a housekeeper kept the fire going in the ward with regular deliveries of coal.

Two big ledgers record all the babies that were born in the house which is now owned by the doctor's daughter and her husband, Deirdre and Sean Hanniffy.

They bought it from the Rosse estate in the early 1970s and went on to raise their five children there. It's now time to downsize and the house which forms part of an elegant Georgian street leading to the gates of Birr Castle is on the market.

Joint agents Sherry FitzGerald Fogarty and Donal Boyd are asking €1 million for the three-storey house and its walled garden of one third of an acre. It's a wide, double-fronted house facing Birr's recently refurbished Theatre and Arts Centre.

While the house has been very well maintained over the years, new owners may decide to give it a thorough revamp that might include replacing the modern fireplaces with original Georgian chimneypieces, and restoring the old coachyard, with its original cobbles and stables, to the rear of the house.

The front door opens into a small hallway that has the main livingroom on the right hand side.

It's a lofty, well-proportioned room with high ceilings and tall sash windows overlooking the street. The glazed brick fireplace dates from the 1960s.

Across the hall is a second room used for formal dining, and a door and steps leading up to a storeroom; in the doctor's day, this was a darkroom for developing X-rays.

A lower return leads to a cosy room with storage and a toilet. There is also a utility or cold room close by a door leading to the back garden.

The basement kitchen is warmed by a Stanley range, and across the basement hall is a study or sittingroom.

The first of the bedrooms is on the return along with the bathroom while the top floor has three further bedrooms.

The 200 ft garden is mostly in lawn, though at one time it kept the family in vegetables all year round.