Designs of different eras but both are comfortable, modern builds

YOU could be forgiven for thinking that a century or more separates the vintages of these two Limerick homes, new market arrivals with price tags of €750,000 apiece. You’d be wrong.

Large-scale Ard na Coille is a 4,600 sq ft, all-en-suite, five-bed near Cratloe, clearly modern, right up to its roof-mounted solar panels — seeming a world apart from its identically-priced country home counterpart at Lismakeery, Askeaton.

For all its Georgian airs and feel, this Askeaton, Co Limerick home, called Cloghermore House is an upstart, a young pretender — it was built in 2004, but to an exacting template and detail. On 12.5 acres and in a farmland setting, at Lismakeery, it is a design suited to its backdrop, with old farm buildings near the shared approach avenue very much rooting it to a genuine past.