James Dyson thought to be behind Ireland’s biggest-ever private house sale

Inventor and vacuum cleaner magnate James Dyson is thought to be behind the purchase of the house and 850 acres of land

Ballynatray House and its estate on the banks of the River Blackwater on the Waterford-Cork border was sold for over €30m. Picture: Denis Scannell

A Munster estate on the River Blackwater has hoovered up the title of Ireland’s biggest-ever private house sale at well over €30m. 

One of Britain’s richest men, vacuum cleaner magnate James Dyson, who already controls 35,000 acres in Britain  — owning more land there than King Charles — is believed to be behind the purchase.

Ireland’s Property Price Register has recorded the sale of the Ballynatray Estate, upriver of Youghal in West Waterford, at €29.25m. 

Inventor James Dyson has been linked with the purchase of Ballynatray in Co Waterford. Picture: Gareth Fuller/PA

But when the separate value of the 850 acres it was sold with is added in, the total cost is €32m to €35m.

A source who revealed details of the off-market deal exclusively to the Irish Examiner says Ballynatray’s buyer is James Dyson, a household name in Britain and beyond — with a number of domestic appliance inventions to his credit.

Some estimates place Dyson’s personal and family fortunes at over €20bn, and he owns extensive British farms and estates in "the Shires", along with homes in London, France, London, and Singapore, as well as a 300ft superyacht.

Ballynatray House 

Ballynatray has been sold by its owner, London and Waterford-based Henry Gwyn-Jones, who doubled its lands to 850 acres after buying it 20 years ago for over €11m, and has now trebled its value.

At over €30m, the Blackwater River property now holds an Irish price record for a private house or estate: It’s greater than the €20m paid by Stripe founder, Irish billionaire John Collison, for the Abbeyleix Estate on 1,100 acres in 2022, and more than US billionaire John Malone paid for Tony O’Reilly’s Castlemartin Estate and stud farm at Kilcullen, Kildare, 750 acres sold for €29m.

Record-busting Ballynatray’s €30m-plus is only beaten by the €58m paid as a development play for Dublin’s Walford on Shrewsbury Rd in 2005, a 4,000 sq ft Edwardian home on a leafy suburban 1.7 acres, later resold in 2016 for €14.25m.

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