Stunning place set in a valley

YOU could start humming ‘As I was going over the Cork and Kerry Mountains’ here - roaring past the artwork on the main Killarney road with the usual speed trap at Ballyvourney to one’s back.

You’re in the bowl of the mountains when over to your right you get a flash of white - take time to slow down and look again - a big house with two flanking wings stands out on the Clydagh valley.

Indicate right - thank God, it’s lunchtime on a weekday, and you take a crunchy new surface to join that familiar old Cork road, hang a right again and you wend your way along the contours of the valley.

The new surfacing runs all the way up to ‘Dunquinn’, the geographically-odd, but clan-appropriate name of this stately Killarney property. Set below the road, and on a flat site, with a land belt of 76 acres, (including a share of a 1,000 acres of commonage), this is a rather regal dwelling but one which isn’t a patch on the sheer majesty of its surroundings.

Dunquinn was built by an American family called Quinn and designed by architect Hugh Campbell, and is ideal for a family. The Quinn’s raised their own brood here and the bikes and the wellies are still in situ - in fact, the furniture that remains is being sold with the property - priced at €900,000 through Donal Cronin of Thos J O’Driscoll and Co.

The house is quite new dating from the early nineties, and is Georgian in style, with two side additions giving room for a cosy kitchen and a den/library/guest bedroom, at the other. While imposing, this house is not huge and comes with just three bedrooms.

A marble hallway leads to the main living room to the right and onto the den wing: to the left is the dining room, kitchen and utility as well as a ground floor bathroom.

The kitchen is all in white and comes with a typical, farmhouse fireplace, while the dining room is more formal with an antique oak fire surround and quality marble insert.

In the main drawing room the marble fireplace is Adam’s-style and like the rest of the house this room has loads of light and French doors to the south-facing rear patio.

The den, with ensuite bathroom and storage cupboard, is fully shelved and has a traditional, stone-faced fireplace.

Upstairs the master bedroom has built-in wardrobes in white and windows on two aspects: it also has an ensuite bathroom.

The ancestral home of the Lynch family, the sale includes a 1930s cottage and the remains of an 1880s farmhouse.