A country house estate on 250 acres near the shores of Lough Derg in Co Tipperary is back on the market nearly four years after it first went for sale, with a price drop of between €600,000 and €1.2 million.
Bellevue House and Estate, Coolbaun, Nenagh, a stately home dating back to 1750, went on the market in 2022 for €4.8 million. The property is now for sale through Sherry FitzGerald for €4.2 million on 250 acres or for €3.6 million on 200 acres. The 50 acres is farmland, of which five acres are woodland, but these are not being offered for sale separately. The estate has 2km of lake frontage.
Bellevue, a 915 sq m (9,900 sq ft) manor house with extensive outbuildings, was in a state of disrepair when Jim King, formerly vice-chair of aviation company Guinness Peat Aviation (GPA), bought it in 1997. Between then and 2003, he completely refurbished it in sympathy with its 18th century period: it’s described in the agency brochure as “a gentleman’s estate” with a Georgian manor house in an elevated setting with uninterrupted views over Tipperary countryside and Lough Derg. The outbuildings were re-roofed and remodelled, with one being turned into a corporate office/entertainment space. The property has been designated a protected structure since the renovation and is Ber-exempt.
After going for sale in 2022, the property attracted interest from the US and the UK but a sale did not proceed. Bellevue’s selling agent Marcus Magnier believes the €3.6 million price tag now makes the property “very competitive in the Irish market”. The massive difference between asking prices for top properties in the city versus the country is underscored by the asking price for Bellevue: it’s nearly €3 million less, for example, than the asking price of a refurbished Victorian on 1.43 acres that’s just gone on the market in Killiney, Co Dublin’s celebrity belt.
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Magnier, who has been an agent for country properties since he started his career 52 years ago, says the difference has long been “location, location, location”: Irish people are “a couple of generations off the land”, less inclined to buy country properties than to buy, say, in Dublin 4. He expects interest in Bellevue to be about 50/50 from Ireland and overseas. The UK market is important and the level of interest from US buyers has doubled in the past year over the previous 12 months he says, citing the “Trump effect”, climate and security as possible reasons.
Bellevue has not been changed since The Irish Times wrote about it in 2022, says Magnier. A 1.2km driveway lined with mature trees that include beech, holly, oak, lime and chestnut, winds up to the detached seven-bay, two-storey over basement five-bedroom house with a cut-stone Ashlar limestone facade.. A large reception hall has a polished timber floor, timber-panelled walls, a stone mantelpiece with a stove inset and ornate ceiling plasterwork. A formal crimson diningroom on the left of the hall is dual aspect, with windows looking down the wooded avenue and at the front to Lough Derg. A drawingroom on the other side of the hall has a Bossi-style mantelpiece, ceiling plasterwork and is also dual aspect, overlooking lawns and Lough Derg.
Other rooms at this level include a timber-floored sittingroom and a family room opening into the kitchen/breakfastroom which has a glossy red Aga and seating in a bay window. A butler’s pantry opens into the diningroom. On the first return, there are two double bedrooms, both en suite and a cinema room, all with timber-lined ceilings. There are three more double bedrooms on the first floor, all en suite. The main bedroom has an arch opening into a small sunroom with views over the countryside, a walk-in wardrobe and an en suite with a Jacuzzi bath, shower and double wash-hand basins.
The basement of Bellevue has timber-lined ceilings and a tiled floor: there are two large offices here, a gym – with sauna, steam room, shower and toilet – a wine cellar, boot room and storage.
Outbuildings in three courtyards behind the house have also been restored. A single-storey L-shaped building, a “fully refurbished, open plan multifunctional space” is suitable as a party room, board room or games room, according to the agent’s brochure.
An arch leads to a walled garden and another into a stableyard where three stables have been partially refurbished and could be converted into more accommodation, subject to planning. On the shores of Lough Derg there’s a traditional stone-built boathouse, suitable for storing two lake boats. The harbour is large enough to moor two larger cruisers or sailing boats up to a draft of 1 metre.
The 250-acre grounds are laid out as parkland pastures, grazing paddocks, mature woodland, and some commercial forestry, mainly hardwoods.
Bellevue was built around 1750 on lands owned by Charles Sadleir, a descendant of a Cromwellian soldier, Col Thomas Sadleir, who in 1655 was given a castle in Tipperary near Borrisokane, which he renamed Sopwell Hall. Jim King, who bought Bellevue in 1997, had been a reporter with the Irish Press, Daily Herald and Sunday Express in London before becoming chief executive of Kilkenny Design. In 1981, he became one of Tony Ryan’s GPA cadre which “transformed Ireland into a world mecca of aviation leasing” as Justine McCarthy said in her Irish Times column last week, despite running into serious financial trouble in the 1990s. King was vice-chair of GPA, and was later involved in a number of major aviation leasing firms in Ireland.
