Period home in pretty valley

Co WicklowA four-bedroom Georgian house with a separate coach house and five acres on the outskirts of Rathdrum in Co Wicklow has a guide price of €800,000 prior to auction through HOK Country on October 8th. Avon Park, which dates from the early 1800s, is on the western side of the village on the road to Laragh.

It overlooks a pretty valley, and is within strolling distance of the shops.

Set on an elevated site, the house overlooks sloping gardens to the front while behind there is the coach house which was been converted to a three-bedroom house.

The main house has a traditional layout with two formal reception rooms, a drawingroom and a diningroom, leading off a wide central hallway. The drawingroom is an elegant room with windows on two sides and an ornate ceiling rose. Double doors lead through from the hall to an inner hall with the staircase and the rest of the ground floor rooms - a kitchen and utilityroom and a study with en suite shower room.

Upstairs the main bedroom has an en suite shower room and a dressingroom, while a second bedroom also has an en suite.

Two further bedrooms share a family bathroom.

The cut-stone coach house has a large sittingroom and a kitchen on the ground floor, and three bedrooms - all with exposed beams - on the upper floor.

Avon Park was built as an agent's house but in the 1840s it was given to the Catholic Church and used as a parochial house for the next 100 years.

It was subsequently owned by a German family and then a retired British army captain, though in recent years it has been in local ownership and at one stage was run as a holistic health farm.

Rathdrum is an hour's drive from Dublin city centre, and viewers are likely to include Dublin families seeking a quieter pace of live within reach of the capital.