A Georgian country house near Enniskerry, Co Wicklow, was restored using elements from some of Ireland's great houses, writes FRANCES O'ROURKE, Property Editor
BUSINESSMAN Mark Kavanagh – who developed the IFSC in Dublin’s docklands – is selling his Georgian house in Enniskerry, Co Wicklow, for €3.6 million. He and his wife Kathleen say that with a grown-up family, they have decided to move closer to Dublin.
Ballyorney House was extensively refurbished both before and after he bought it in the 1980s, using pieces salvaged from some of Ireland’s great 18th and 19th century buildings. The house, on six acres, about 15 minutes’ drive from Enniskerry village, is for sale by private treaty through Sherry FitzGerald
The most striking thing about Ballyorney House is not that it’s a beautifully restored house with a rich architectural heritage, filled with extravagant plasterwork ceilings, fireplaces and panelling. Or that there are unbroken views of the Sugar Loaf from the back of the house and its prizewinning gardens. It’s that this 743sq m (8,000sq ft) house manages to feel like a comfortable, even cosy, family home in spite of all its grandeur.
It’s a small Georgian country house built around 1810 “in which time steps backwards architecturally”, according to one description. A plaster ceiling rich with cupids and fruit in the red drawingroom came from former Dublin offices and dates from the 1750s; timber panelling on the main staircase came from a house on Middle Abbey Street and dates from the early 1800s.
A fire burns brightly in the large entrance hall of Ballyorney on a crisp sunny November afternoon: carpets cover polished wooden floorboards, heavy drapes frame deep windows; the walls are painted a rich peach and a polished grand piano is covered with family photos.
It’s a good scene-setter for a tour of the house, where small side rooms open off grandly decorated rooms and doors concealed in the walls lead to mini-kitchens, bars and, in one, a room for playing cards. It’s a little bit Jane Austen, a little PG Wodehouse; Georgian formality and 1920s chic.
The enfilade of rooms opening off the left of the entrance hall reveals the scope of the house: the red drawingroom, with its deep red walls lined with paintings, and that elaborate plaster ceiling, is plushly furnished with comfortable sofas and chairs, and opens into a panelled study (another rich ceiling, this one from Templeogue House).
A door to the side of this room opens into a kitchen equipped for entertaining; another door leads to a home office with a direct view of the Sugar Loaf.
And then you come to the room called, with some understatement, “the large drawingroom”. Modelled on the Provost’s House in Trinity College, Dublin, this ballroom-style room – again, richly furnished with sofas, drapes and tables covered in family photos – has a very high coved cornice and ornate ceiling (from Grove House in Milltown, Dublin) as well as four Corinthian columns (from a church in Co Offaly). A false door opens into a small bar, another door into a small room with a card table. A narrow arched door at the far end opens onto the back garden.
All this is just the most elaborately decorated part of a house whose hallmark is painstaking attention to decorative detail. It has modern comforts everywhere while keeping its period feel.
For example, the kitchen, with a large breakfastroom off it, has a granite-topped island, Belfast sink, big fridges, a huge bright red double Aga and large terracotta flagstones.
The panelled staircase, rising to a coved ceiling decorated with murals by painter Philippa Garner in 1979, leads to sumptuously appointed bedrooms upstairs, off a hall whose walls are fabric-lined.
This is where the home’s modern comforts are best seen: the main bedroom, for example, has a huge tiled en suite bathroom with bath and separate shower and a large separate dressingroom off it. A child’s room is decorated in fairytale fashion.
Another large double bedroom opens into a gym, which in turn leads to the tower, a Gothic extension with a spiral staircase added around 100 years ago.
This is like a separate apartment, with a spa room, bathroom, dressingroom and deep red chinoiserie bedroom.
And this is not to mention a teenagers’ wing to the right of the kitchen: upstairs here is a huge room (with a separate kitchen and bathroom) with a huge comfy sofa and a giant TV.
There’s another 279sq m (3,000sq ft) of space in two separate buildings: the two-bedroom guest lodge built 15 years ago is in keeping with the style of the main house, outside; inside, it’s a north American-style lodge with a high-ceilinged timber-panelled open-plan livingroom. There is also a converted two-bedroom coach-house used to house staff.
The gardens were restored in the 1980s under the direction of the late gardener Rosemary Brown, whose parents lived at Ballyorney in the 1920s. The lawns circle around the back of the house and include space for a large tennis court. But the chief glory is the restored terraced garden which goes down to a stream, spanned by a bright red bridge.
Restoration work on the house was carried over the years by Jeremy Williams, John O’Connell and Brian O’Halloran.
