Ripe with homeliness

NAAS €425,000This charming, rambling pile owned by Solomon Fine Art's Suzanne Macdougald offers a master class in stylish interior design

APPLETREE COTTAGE, a rambling rustic pile whose origins date back to the 17th century, is an exercise in how to do homely.

The terraced property is situated in the tiny village of Rathmore, nine kilometres from Naas in Co Kildare. To call the place a village is a bit of an exaggeration. There is a Church of Ireland church but no shops, pubs or post office.

The house has been extended numerous times. Its higgledy piggledy layout feels charming and homely – a description that has been out of fashion for decades.

This is a place that offers refuge from modern life, where you can batten down the hatches, light a big fire and forget, if only for a short while.

The house belongs to Suzanne Macdougald, who runs Solomon Fine Art, a gallery on Balfe Street in Dublin 2. She’s downsizing. The 3,000sq ft (279sq m) property is too big for one person, she says. Appletree Cottage is for sale through Jordan Auctioneers and has an asking price of €425,000.

As a dealer Macdougald has a great eye. The property is full of lovely pieces that come from different eras and styles but fit perfectly together. She has travelled extensively and souvenirs of these excursions are evident everywhere, from the ostrich eggs from South Africa in the drawing room to the rug from Oman in the family room. “I’m a great collector of things,” she explains. “I like to have a memory of my time there.”

The exterior is easy on the eye with creeper cladding the stone wall. It is set on the side of the road, albeit a very quiet road.

The terraced property was built in stages. The oldest part dates from the early 17th century. It was built by Huguenot weavers, who came to Ireland to seek refuge from religious persecution in France. Before Macdougald bought the house it had been owned by an architect who did most of the renovations.

The front door opens on to a large tiled hall with a small Victorian cast-iron fireplace. A set of doors take you through to a terrace that hugs the entire property.

Off the lobby is a family room, with low ceilings of approximately seven feet. The room has a lovely Victorian cast-iron fireplace, a cottage-style recessed window, a built-in display alcove and a sizeable under-the-stairs cupboard. Double doors lead from it into a uPVC conservatory that has travertine tiles and another door out on to the patio. The garden is south facing.

To the right of the hall is an impressive double-height drawing room with a Georgian-style bay window that looks out on to the patio and garden. This was once the barn and is the kind of room in which you could spend hours or even days. The 15ft-high panelled ceiling counters the narrow shape of the room. The room also has a mezzanine that is the perfect place to install an office or study. A round gable window adds interest and light.

An opening from the family room leads into the kitchen, a cowshed before the architect renovated it. In the prep kitchen polished granite units and country-style cabinetry by Country Kitchens in Ballymore Eustace sit alongside a Britannia six-burner range. Here the window multitasks as a shelving unit.

An adjoining breakfast area has a Prussian blue Stanley range as a warming focal point. Another set of double doors lead outside. The first of the property’s four bedrooms is just off the kitchen. It is covered in a Laura Ashley rose-print wallpaper, has lots of storage, roof lights, an en-suite shower-room and French doors on to the sandstone patio.

Adjacent to this bedroom but in a separate building with its own entrance is a room that is currently used as an office but that would work as a granny flat bedroom or au pair’s space. It has roof lights and an en-suite shower-room.

Climbing the stairs, there is a sizeable landing with a panelled ceiling. The master bedroom is an exercise in maximalism. Venetian-style mirrors bookend its front and back walls. Toile de jouy wallpaper adorns the walls, window frames and the dividing wall that hides the support beam of the original exterior wall. This was supplied by London-based decorator Catherine Connolly of Northwick Design.

The family bathroom is pure country living. Its tongue-and-groove woodwork is painted a Farrow Ball blue, which helps intensify the colour of the matching striped wallpaper. The sink countertop is made of blue and white tiles. A separate shower is hidden behind the door.

The fourth bedroom is on the other side of the landing. This room is used as a dressing room by Macdougald. At the moment it is full of wardrobes. A door off it leads out to the mezzanine study or library.

The property is set on half an acre. Most of this is in a raised old-fashioned garden, the kind that still smells of summer. It has a lily pond, two mature apple trees that give the house its name, and fruit and vegetable plots with potatoes, cabbage, peas, herbs, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries and rhubarb all on show. Wandering from bed to bed you come to a medium-sized lawn with one apple tree at its centre. There’s enough room for small kids to kick a ball around but not to play a serious game of football.

Outside the only sound you hear is that of the sheep in neighbouring fields.

Appletree Cottage, Rathmore, Co Kildare

Description: Four-bedroom terraced house on half an acre with section dating from 17th century

Agent: Jordan Auctioneers