Feature: Cahir, Tipperary €800,000

Size: Sq m 250 (2,600 sq ft)

THE vendor of Tipperary’s Thonogue House has good taste in horses, but also in houses — she previously lived in Ahakista House in West Cork, which is now Graham Norton’s Irish hideaway from the rest of the world.

And, now as confidence return to the Irish country homes market, she also hopes to find a well-heeled or well-schooled buyer for this Cahir period home, on 10 acres with top equestrian facilities.

Owner Elizabeth Kroeger and daughter Valeska have bred and trained top event and race horses at Thonogue, which has 10 stables, cut-stone yard with outdoor arena and 10 acres in paddocks, and that’s what’s helping interest now, says selling agent Michael H Daniels, jointly with Shelley and Purcell who guide the whole lot at €800,000-plus. That’s down from an earlier ask of over €1m when it had ten extra acres, and “we have had a several overseas viewers recently with its excellent equestrian, facilities and have UK buyers chasing hard,” said Mr Daniels.

The restored seven-bay Georgian Golden Vale house is at Roosca, five miles from Cahir and the M8 Cork-Dublin motorway, in prime hunting and thoroughbred pastures, easily reached from a range of Munster towns, services, studs, hunts and racecourses. In the house, the Kroegers’ renovation saw a considerable bedrooms renovation from six to four large rooms, there’s two new bathrooms making for four in all, a stylish country kitchen pale blue units and cream Aga range, and the entire has been rewired, replumbed etc, plus there’s a gate lodge, charming ornamental gardens with stone wall divisions, and Golden Vale views.

VERDICT: Hot to trot.