If you love country life, surround yourself with landscaped heritage grounds in a big country house setting. This royal country property offers a compelling mix of rural and urban, with nature on all sides and amenities just two kilometres away in Kells.
Not everyone wants to live in urban environments.
More and more of us want to spend our free time escaping them to decompress in nature, breathe in oxygenated air, and enjoy a simpler, less frenetic way of life, even if it just for a few hours.
Imagine if you could surround yourself in it every day and yet be in commutable distance of Dublin.
Address: 2 The Main Courtyard, Headfort Demesne, Kells, Co. Meath, A82 Y7W6
Asking price: €355,000
Agent: T & J Gavigan, Kells
About two kilometres outside the heritage town of Kells is the Headfort Demesne, a significant 18th-century estate whose big house, Headfort House, has original Robert Adam interiors.
One of the most notable examples of the picturesque English landscape garden in Ireland, the grounds feature ornamental and functional structures of artistic and social significance.
There is a striking 18th-century bridge by Irish architect Thomas Cooley, an intricately detailed Gothic-revival mausoleum, a Gothic viewing grotto, outbuildings of fine architectural quality and a rare example of an underground icehouse.
Those outbuildings include The Courtyard, former carriage houses, forge and stables, set around a Georgian parterre garden with its box heading set out in the four playing card suits.
It was converted into two and three-bedroom homes in 1999 by Langville Properties.
The same company did the mock-Georgian house that surrounds the yard.
The two-bedroom, three-bathroom terraced residence has a C2 BER rating and extends to 93 square metres across two floors.
It opens directly into the open plan dining room cum living room with an elegant staircase, complete with monkey’s tail end post on its handrail.
The dining area is to the right, and it opens to a small kitchen, its white units set in a C-shape.
The living room part is dual aspect with an open fire at its centre.
French doors open out to a west-facing back garden that is private and well-planted.
It has pedestrian rear access to the car parking at the back.
Upstairs, there are two bedrooms, one of which is ensuite, while the other enjoys a large bathroom with a roomy shower stall.
The property is sizeable, for a two-bed, but hopes of extending out the back or up into the attic are unlikely, for the units are protected structures.
The grounds are what make this space very special.
Walk the Yew Avenue, visit the American garden and the early 20th-century Pinetum.
A special feature of the demesne is the sense that the outside world is not cut off.
There are two championship golf courses on the doorstep, a Montessori school for families with small children, and a fee-paying prep school, housed in the old big house, that takes boy day pupils and boarders.
The restaurants, bars, shops and services of Kells are within walking distance.
Off the M3 motorway, the town of Kells is a 65-kilometre drive to Dublin.
There is a management fee of €1,350, which covers the maintenance of the grounds.
