Costume designer who dressed George Michael is selling her €480,000 theatrical home 

It would take a lot to upstage the Co Offaly home of illustrator, costume maker and fashion designer Louise Verity

The Shinrone property, situated in the centre of the village, had been empty for a decade or more when she found it.

Shinrone, Co Offaly
€480,000
Size	271 sq m ( 2917 sq ft)
Bedrooms	6
Bathrooms	2
BER	Exempt

NOT everyone might have appreciated or even noticed the architectural merits of a run-down shop in Shinrone village– but when illustrator and former fashion and costume designer Louise Verity came upon it in 2023 she was, despite the dilapidation, entirely captivated.

Seeing past the neglect and the rotten floorboards in the three storey Georgian property, she admired the grandeur of the staircase and recognised the craftsmanship that had gone into the stone, timber and plaster work. “It’s an amazingly well built house with fantastic views at the rear of the church, the coach house ruin and a meadow.” 

The detached property, situated in the centre of the village, had been empty for a decade or more when she found it. Before that, for the major part of the 20th century (from 1917 to 1995), it had been Ryan’s shop which sold groceries, drapery and sundry items to the villagers.

When Louise arrived in Shinrone she had come to Ireland to do illustrations for the second edition of journals dating from the 1840s. Written by Elisabeth Smith, a Scottish woman who married the owner of Baltyboys House in Wicklow, these provide valuable social commentary on the Famine years.

Louise’s connection to these journals was that Elizabeth Smith nee Grant who wrote them was her great-great- great grandmother. And while he was carrying out renovations, Louise painted her ancestor’s name on the front of her Shinrone where the shop sign used to be.

A great niece of ballerina Ninette de Valois, Louise has a background in theatre and fashion. She designed costumes for the Royal Opera, made clothes for The Pet Shop Boys and George Michael in the 1990s and later wrote and illustrated two children’s books.

Given this background, it’s entirely unsurprising that she has decorated the house theatrically, colourfully and quite unconventionally - filling it with paintings and period furniture On the walls, images of women predominate and there are painting of Celtic goddesses, Greek figures and ballerinas as well as photographs of Victorian ladies.

Although she and her husband Karsten had originally intended to rent rather than buy in Ireland – they completed the purchase of the old shop within a few weeks of finding it early last year.

Because of its state of dilapidation a great deal of work was required. Previous owners had put on a new roof in 2016, added a two storey extension in the 1930s for a kitchen and bathroom and, later in the century, replaced the windows at the rear with double glazing.

A listed structure – easily identifiable as Georgian because the windows on the top floor are smaller than the lower ones - it still has mostly timber sash windows at the front.

“It was in a chaotic state when we found it – we ripped up old floorboards and stripped it right back, getting rid of layers of plastic and fabrics,” reveals Louise They started with the key essentials and brought plumbing and electrics up to modern standards. “We wanted to keep everything simple,’’ says Louise, explaining that Karsten, a civil engineer, was able to do a lot of the work himself.

“We cleaned and renovated the timber window frames and replaced broken glass, repaired shutters, replaced floorboards and renovated the staircase – the treads had to be replaced. All nine chimneys were relined with stainless steel flexi flue, six fireplaces were fitted with stoves and a Scandinavian fire went into the dining room. To improve heat retention, Karsten insulated internal walls and ceilings.

Carpeting the wide staircase and the bedrooms in green, Louise found chandeliers for the main living spaces, the hallway and the bedrooms and covered the walls with paintings, photos, tapestries and mirrors. “We moved here from a larger house in France and we brought these with us,’’ she reveals.

In the space of a little over a year, the property has been resurrected from dilapidation, renovated and turned into a highly individual, tastefully decorated home which might possibly be described as being artistically cluttered.

A large ground floor room which would have originally been a drawing room has become a dining room with two chandeliers, multiple mirrors and paintings and, in the centre, a long table with seating for ten.

The main hallway has been colourfully and eclectically decorated and is dominated by a large painting of a Celtic goddess. In the large front room which used to be the shop, Louise, stores the 1,000 illustrations for Elizabeth Smith’s Journals. To rear in there’s a kitchen which has been refloored and fitted with open shelving The restored staircase, carpeted in green, leads to the first floor where the main sitting room is located. 

Maximally decorated like the other rooms in the house, it has been fitted with a stove. There’s also a bathroom, home office and a colourfully decorated bedroom which has a stove and a mirror surrounded by ornate plasterwork.

The next level has a second bathroom which has been fitted with a stove as well as four bedrooms, decorated in floral prints which include two with stoves.

Spacious, with 271 sq metres of living space as well as an attic with Velux windows – the house is on a site of three quarters of an acre . A side gate offers access to an overgrown garden which contains the ruins of an old stone coach house and a field which runs all the way down to the canal.

“This house has been imaginatively and creatively restored and brought to a good level of comfort,’’ says Julie Fogarty of Sherry FitzGerald Fogarty who thinks a new owner might consider the option of using the ground floor shop for some form of business but may simply use it as a family home.

“There’s scope for someone to take the house to the next level and carry out work on the gardens and the coach house,” she adds The guide price is €480,000 and for this Louise is willing to let it go as is – complete with furniture, fabrics and hundreds of pictures and pieces of wall art including paintings by Louise as well as curtains and tapestries she created. 

"Pictures are ideas and each picture has a story ” says Louise - who has on the ground floor alone, carefully and artfully arranged 120 paintings, prints, photographs and mirrors. A great many of them can be found in the theatrically decorated dining room and on the staircase while the hallway contains a colourful depiction of a Celtic Goddess painted by Louse. Louise also made the curtains, cushion covers and tapestries and in places has hung tapestries and paintings across windows in place of blinds.

Asked about her decorating style she admits to being strongly influenced by the theatre and to being passionate about recycling, reusing and refashioning.

She despairs of the throw away culture and believes that not enough value is given to things which are old and capable of being reused. “I have always recycled and used my sewing machine to turn old fabrics into something new. “Although they have put huge effort into renovating and redecorating Louise and Karsten have now decided to move back to France. 

 We want a simpler life and a smaller place,’’ she reveals.

Her hope now is that they can find a buyer who appreciates and loves the house as much as they have.

While waiting for this to happen, she says that work on the house is continuing and that Karsten has now started construction of an attached pergola in the back garden.

The Property Price Register shows the property on Main street, Shinrone selling for €175,000 in March 2023.

VERDICT: A theatrically decorated period home – it’s one a kind and could quite possibly be viewed as a work of art.