According to local legend, there has been a house on this commanding site at Rathbran Mór, Co Meath since 1780, though the current owner’s searches have only turned up records dating back to 1800.
Nevertheless, the house that now stands on the hillside with views of six counties – Meath, Louth, Cavan, Monaghan, Fermanagh and Armagh – while looking like a typical late Georgian farmhouse, also appears to be brand new. So which is it?
The answer is a bit of both. When the current owner bought the house and its 80 acres of farmland and outbuildings in 2006, it was in a “livable” condition.
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“There were three rooms that would have been lived in – a bedroom and kitchen/dining area, all on the ground floor, but the other rooms hadn’t been lived in for a long, long time. The whole back of the house was fit to fall down,” he says.
Tasteful exterior
So what drew him to the property? He pauses before answering: “The courtyard, and the stonework, they were the main attractions. So we kept the facade and the gables, and basically rebuilt the house from the ground up.”
The results are a tasteful exterior that fits in to the landscape in a timeless way and an interior that mixes some original elements – a salvaged fireplace and bricks from the old house creating the stove area in the kitchen, for example – with new dramatic elements, such as the imposing butterfly staircase in solid oak by Flynn’s of Tullamore.
The hallway and landing area were enlarged to incorporate this, sacrificing some extra bedrooms. The house now has five bedrooms, four upstairs, including a master suite, and one downstairs, that could also be a study or playroom.
Everything has been done to an exceptionally high standard by the owner, who says this was the first such project he had taken on. The whole enterprise took five years, and he’s now moving on to fresh challenges, though possibly not another project on such a scale again.
Overall there is 3,400sq m (315sq ft) of accommodation, including an elegant livingroom, a cosier sittingroom and a very large well-appointed kitchen that leads through to a diningroom.
Classically elegant
As an almost-new build, it has a BER of B3, but the new owners will still get to live in a classically elegant environment. Downstairs, there’s an atmospheric cellar, which – again according to local legend – was the entrance to a secret passage connecting the main house to the lodge, which has also been rebuilt and now functions as a farm office.
The owner says he has searched and has not found anything but you never know: you might be lucky. The 80 acres are in grass and tillage, and with a very beautiful old cut-stone coachhouse plus five stables, barn and other out buildings, there are plenty of options for the land. There is also a kilometre of road frontage. Closer to the house, which is about four miles from the village of Collon and some 50 minutes' drive from Dublin Airport, there are lovely private gardens and patio areas with mature planting.
For sale through Knight Frank for €2.8 million, it has the best of both worlds in terms of mod cons versus old world charm, drama versus restrained taste.
And no horse, however demanding, could have cause to complain when it comes to the land and stabling.
