Live in a fantasy mansion for less than €700k

Asking value: €685,000 Agent: DNG (01) 286 7625

Followers of Downton Abbey, Harry Potter or Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast would possibly dream sometimes about residing in a fantasy interval mansion. However we additionally know concerning the not inconsiderable realities.

After the large preliminary outlay to accumulate a real nation home mansion, comes the equally huge annual power and upkeep prices related to enormous interval buildings.

That mentioned, there are few Irish mansions extra fabulous than Hollybrook Home exterior Bray, Co Wicklow, as soon as the seat of the baronet Hodsons, together with the painter/architect Sir George Hodson, who constructed it.

Hollybrook was the long-time residence to best-selling fantasy novelist Katherine Kurtz and for 100 years residence to the well-known Hollybrook Harp, now held by the Nationwide Museum and lately topic to an thrilling experimental archaeology music analysis challenge.

Designed within the Tudor Revival type by William Vitruvious Morrison in 1831, Hollybrook has been described as “a chic essay of granite ashlar with transom and mullioned home windows, gables and tall stacks” and it comes with a clock tower.

Whereas most nation homes in Eire are typically within the elegant however fairly muted Georgian Palladian type; with this home we’re into true fantasy realms.

And the excellent news is that you may dwell right here, in a manageable three-bedroom household home and at a not unreasonable value, because of a reconfiguration that occurred following a fireplace on the home in 1969.

After being restored it was cut up into 5 smaller properties with one massive dwelling in the primary part and 4 extra within the wings.

Now No3, within the north west wing, has simply been positioned in the marketplace for the primary time in 30 years asking €685,000.

The present house owners raised two youngsters right here and these had a mighty time rising up on this unbelievable home and its appreciable grounds.

Builder Sir George Hodson was born in 1806, the second son of the primary baronet Sir Robert Hodson.

Because the ‘spare’, George went portray round Europe earlier than unexpectedly succeeding his older brother Robert Adair Hodson who died childless aged simply 29 in 1831.

The Hodsons had beforehand married into the equally rich Adair household. Sir Robin Adair was knighted on the sphere of the Battle of the Boyne by William of Orange and was later the primary proprietor of the well-known Hollybrook Harp.

Upon his brother’s dying, George inherited 1,211 acres in Co Wicklow, 4,349 in Co Cavan, 729 in Co Meath, 502 acres in Co Westmeath and 26 acres in Buckinghamshire.

Sir George instantly had the previous Adair residence demolished and employed William Morrison as architect for its new Tudor Revival type alternative,

An artwork aficionado, and himself a painter, George’s works nonetheless often promote at London’s public sale rooms.

He noticed himself as one thing of an newbie architect and had sturdy enter into the design of the home and its surrounding buildings.

He was focused on newfangled innovations, lighting Hollybrook by fuel in 1859. Hollybrook’s lovely gardens, lake and nice corridor with stained-glass (depicting Hodson household historical past) made it a well-liked venue for guests effectively into the twentieth century.

Within the grounds a viewing tower modelled on historic Irish spherical towers was erected throughout the Famine and may nonetheless be seen right now.

An historic Irish doorway and carved head had been inserted into some stone work within the farmyard.

In the present day Hollybrook (as soon as often known as Hollybrooke Corridor) is considered an architecturally necessary Irish historic residence.

Within the Nineteen Eighties, the larger half grew to become residence for American born novelist Katherine Kurtz alongside together with her husband and fellow novelist Scott MacMillan.

Whereas they lived right here the couple wrote and co-wrote greater than 15 books which their residence and surrounds helped encourage, together with the majority of Kurtz’s well-known Deryni collection of fantasy novels for which she is greatest recognized.

Whereas they offered up and moved again to the States in 2006 simply earlier than the massive crash, in 2020 Kurtz printed an essay concerning the ‘haunting of Hollybrook Home’ wherein she asserted that the unhostile picture of Sir George would seem within the again bed room and his footsteps might be heard about the home, particularly when the couple had been renovating or adorning.

Sir Robin Adair’s harp meantime resided at Hollybook earlier than being offered by the Hodsons, miraculously earlier than the 1969 hearth.

The harp was acquired at Sothebys by the Nationwide Museum within the Nineteen Eighties. In 2020, as one of many few surviving early 18th-century ‘excessive headed’ devices, it grew to become the topic of a challenge which concerned intensive forensic investigations.

The aim of infra pink and laser assessments was to supply a blueprint to construct a contemporary instance so we are able to rediscover what classical Irish harp music of the 18th-century actually seemed like amid the shortage of such devices right now.

No3 has 1149 sq ft of lodging with its entrance into an internal hallway resulting in a front room with a three-metre excessive ceiling and overlooking the 100ft south-facing backyard by these classical home windows.

A solid-fuel range sits on the centre of the room. Off the lounge is a Poggenpohl-designed kitchen/eating room and there’s a door to the rear backyard.

Upstairs has three bedrooms, two are doubles, and the toilet. There’s a particularly massive attic which is 12ft excessive and has apparent potential to transform to a fourth bed room. DNG is promoting.