House of the week

A DINOSAUR in the garden is just one of the surprises at the Old Presbytery, a ‘gentleman’s residence’ in the heart of the heritage town of Lismore.

Originally built by the Duke of Devonshire for managerial staff on the Lismore estate in the 1820s, the townhouse with walled garden and mews was also a doctor’s home in the mid-1800s, and was rented to the Catholic Church in 1880 — and they bought it in 1913.

It housed the town’s curates in the mid and later 1900s, but by the ‘80s and ‘90s it was starting to show signs of neglect. Then in stepped David and Jane Keating, and Horatio, the friendly Tyrannosaurus Rex, a scale model made for zoos and garden centres but who has been at home here for years.