Hunting lodge with cottage to spare in Co Louth for €1.3m

A mid-18th-century hunting lodge on 19 acres – surprisingly called "the Cottage" – will test the market in Co Louth when it goes to auction on June 20th. Declan and Anne Hollywood, who have lived there for the past 28 years, are moving on now that their five children have grown, and the property is for sale through Property Partners Laurence Gunne. It has an AMV prior to auction of €1.3million to €1.5 million.

The Cottage, Ballymascanlan, Dundalk, Co Louth, a 399sq m (4,300sq ft) six-bedroom house, has come on the market only five times since it was built in 1745. Sitting in the middle of four fields near Dundalk’s Ballymascanlon Hotel, it’s a mostly single-storey home modernised by the Hollywoods.

They re-roofed the house in keeping with the original, put in central heating, revamped the kitchen and bedrooms and also refurbished a separate 83.6sq m (900sq ft) building – Apple Cottage – that was a gardener’s house.

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The terracotta-floored conservatory in the Cottage in Ballymascanlan.

The house is hidden down a long driveway off the Carlingford road. The drawing room has a curved ceiling, rounded wall and floor-to-ceiling windows looking through trees towards the river estuary of Dundalk Bay.

Pine beams

The dining room has French windows opening to the garden and an arch leading into the terracotta-floored conservatory. The kitchen/breakfast room has a marble-topped centre island, exposed pine beams and wide French windows opening on to a patio. There’s also a living room with a wall of glazed windows and doors opening into the back garden. There’s a great flow from one room to the other, making the Cottage a great house for parties, says Declan.

Four of the bedrooms are downstairs and two upstairs, overlooking the garden. The main bedroom is en suite and has a dressing room. Apple Cottage, where Anne’s father lived for 16 years, has a sitting room, two bedrooms and a kitchen and opens into a cut-stone stable yard.

There are six loose boxes in an enclosed yard: the Hollywoods’ children were involved with ponies when they bought the property, says Declan, and the Louth Pony Club held its annual pony camp on the grounds for years. The 19 acres include gardens, a grass tennis court, four paddocks and a glasshouse. There are two 300-year-old specimen oak trees on the property, one with a 60ft-long bough.

The house, dating to 1745, was first owned by a family called McNeale. It was bought by a William Carville from Co Down in the 1860s, who then leased the house and grounds. In the 20th century it was bought by a woman called Augusta Brennan, who sold it to the O’Hagan family, who ran a stud farm there before the Hollywoods bought it .

Co Louth: €1.3 million– €1.5 million AMV

The Cottage, Ballymascanlan, Dundalk, Co Louth

Description: 18th-century country house on 19 acres with paddocks and separate cottage

Agent: Property Partners Laurence Gunne