Georgian estate on 98 acres close to capital

Co LOUTH/€3.25m:This spacious country house has many extras, such as a three-acre walled garden ,writes ROSE DOYLE

RAHANNA, ON 98 lush acres of Co Louth farm and woodland just outside Ardee, was built in 1823 and has had the good fortune to be much appreciated by all who have lived there since.

Today’s 600.3sq m (6,460sq ft) country house is alive with its past, full of preserved and functioning original features telling the story of life as it was lived by the landed, if not the gentry, in late Georgian/early Victorian Ireland.

Scheduled for auction on April 2nd through Knight Frank, the AMV of €3.25 million is pitched at a “realistic level” says agent Harriet Grant. It’s location, a short drive from the M1, on the north side of Ardee, puts it well within commuting distance of Dublin for those looking to swap city life for country pursuits.

Rahanna needs modernising, particularly the kitchen but, given the retreat of developers from the market, may well find a new owner in someone keen to use it as a family home and appreciative of its special features.

The grounds include a courtyard with stables and coach-houses, farmyard with stone-cut buildings and hay barn, and a walled garden with orchard and glass house.

Two storeys over a self-contained basement, the main house has seven bedrooms and four reception rooms while in the basement there is a bedroom, livingroom and bathroom as well as store rooms and wine cellar.

Rahanna was built for Claridge Ruxton and his wife Mary Ann; the Ruxtons owned swathes of land in the county as well as demense houses, and lived there until 1890.

The vendor’s father bought the property in 1952 and was, she says, “hugely attached to it, keeping it going until he died last August aged 88. He took great care to preserve the best of its features.”

Rahanna’s story is told in the double mahogany doors to the billiard room, hung by the builder to ensure the womenfolk weren’t disturbed by the noise of their men at play. It’s told too in the vents around the smoking room’s mahogany panelled ceiling and in The Cloister, the smokers’ very own discreetly private, wood panelled toilet.

The past lives on in the glowing colours of a stained glass window spanning the ground and first floors, in the original doors and tiled floors, in the fireplaces in almost every room, in elaborate plasterwork and glorious, hand-painted wallpapers as well as in a dumb-waiter large and sturdy enough to have transported the vendor and her brothers between floors when they played as children.

Squarely imposing rather than elegant, Rahanna is positioned to give the best views of the sweep of tree-lined avenue, three-acre walled garden, woodland walks and meadowland. The hallway is wide, high ceilinged, 42ft long and given glorious light by the tall, stained glass window to the rear.

The drawingroom has a delicate charm and a wonderfully rambling ceiling rose. This room too has windows with front and side garden views and the style of the hand-painted wallpaper is picked up in window shutters inlaid with gold.

In the diningroom there are front and side windows and an alcove made to hold an ornately carved Nelson sideboard.

The billiard room has one of the loveliest of Rahanna’s marble fireplaces.

Outside, the woods have any number of sheltering walks and a pheasant keep.

Trees come in notable and aged variety, laurels have been shaped to make a maze and a Magnolia in the walled garden is said to be one of the largest in Ireland.