Take the plunge

AHEAD of its time for the time, the depressed mid-1980s, and even still ahead of the posse is the Waterfall House, on the edge of the River Nanny in Navan, Co Meath.

It is a striking and uncompromising ecologically grounded home in a setting that has been through the mill: a structure has been on this waterfall bank footprint since the 18th century, first a cornmill, then a sawmill, now a house that is far from run of the mill.

Airline pilot Charlie Coughlan stumbled across the 11 acre site with a mill ruin on it in the early 1980s “and before I was halfway down the laneway I knew it was for me.”