House of the week

It might be worth buying a boat for the house viewings at Lough Derg — there’s a rapidly growing mix of waterfront period homes here for sale, many for millions of euro.

They range from the 16-bed former hotel (in receivership), the Tinarana Estate on 222 acres, for €2 million with GVM and Knight Frank to St David’s, another period beauty, restored, on 17 acres Urra near Nenagh. Having sold for well over €1.5m earlier this year, St David’s now back for sale guided at €2.2m, while in the same aspirational price bracket also with KF is Kilteelagh House, Nenagh, on 25 acres by Dromineer Bay.

Now, into that mix comes a bit of a modern pretender, a 1970s-built replica villa or pavillion, with some salvaged Georgian architectural details, and on 50 woodland and waterside acres a mile from Tipp’s pretty Terryglass village.

It’s priced at €815,000 by Sherry FitzGerald and Christies International, with Sherry FitzGerald Talbot in Nenagh as the local agents.

Slevyre was built by the Hickie family after they sold the original 1870s Victorian Italianate Slevyre (or Slevoir) to a religious order, the Salesian Sisters. It sold again in 2006 for € 4m, and has been re-offered since, while this retro villa has been in Hickie family hands since selling the main house .

With both formal gardens and woodland, along with Lough Derg frontage, it’s a good design, adroitly architecturally handled, single-storey and symmetrical across its front facade.

Low-slung (yet with high enough ornate ceilings inside) it’s got three arched sash windows either side of a central set of French doors in the dining room, with balancing corner quoins and set-back wings.

Other accommodation includes an elegant drawing room with two sash windows, facing an old Georgian chimney, as well as re-hung old mahogany doors. There’s a bookshelf-lined study with side terrace access, kitchen with four-oven Aga, and four bedrooms with three en suites, as well as several stores, pantries and service rooms.

The formal grounds and walled garden featured in Michael George and Patrick Bowe’s 1986 book The Gardens of Ireland, and the pavilion-style house is quite central in its 50 acres, with a mix of flagstone terraces, lawns, orchard, and shrubs, festooned with woodland spring bulbs such as snowdrops, daffodils and bluebells.

There’s half a mile of lake frontage, with a jetty for a dinghy or access to cruisers for Shannon tours. While the area’s rich in fauna and deer, it’s also prime hunting territory, with packs like the Galway Blazers, Ormonds and North Tipperary. If horses aren’t to your seat, there’s 75 miles of cycle trails around Lough Derg.

VERDICT: One of the more affordable ‘period’ country home offers around the wonderful amenity Lough Derg, home to a range of water sports, angling and preserved antiquity.