€900k period home with O'Malley political clan links is for sale in Limerick

Former residents of Roseneath in Corbally include an Aga Khan trophy winner

Rosneath House, Limerick

pt 

Corbally, Co Limerick
€900,000
Size	246 sq m (2648 sq ft)
Bedrooms	6
Bathrooms	3
BER	Exempt

ROSENEATH House could give period drama Downton Abbey a run for its money, given the ‘Who’s Who’ of Limerick nobility that lived there.

Over its c 200-year history, the Limerick Georgian property has housed men of the cloth, doctors, politicians, military officers — even an Aga Khan trophy winner. If the latter sounds like a Julian Fellowes plotline, here’s another: One unfortunate resident died of “severe scald and shock in her bath” at Roseneath. High drama indeed.

The roots of this stately-looking Corbelly home on Mill Rd can be traced to a former mayor of Limerick, Pierce Shannon.

 He granted a lease to a Robert Rodger in 1837. Roger invested £1,200 to build Roseneath, which had the same purchasing power as buying 80 horses, 224 cows, 2,000 stones of wool, a great deal of wheat, and pay the wages of skilled tradesmen for 6,000 days - or so says the currency converter.

The house went between various Rodger ownerships, before being left to a son-in-law, Charles Broderick Garde, from Ballymaloe Cottage, Cloyne, Co Cork, in 1876. In the 1880s, it passed to the George family of Limerick City, before being sold in 1897 to Mary Jane O’Brien, whose unfortunate sister, Emma Margaret Hobson, died in the bath in 1907. By the 1940s, it was associated with Limerick political royalty, in the ownership of Desmond J and Úna O’Malley, parents of Dessie, founder of the now-defunct Progressive Democrats. (Desmond J was brother of politician Donagh). 

After the O’Malleys came Major John Gerard O’Dwyer, a member of the Irish showjumping team that won the Aga Khan trophy at the RDS in 1928. Limerick surgeon Edmund A O’Connor had it next, before it was sold in 1956 to Daniel O’Connell, a Limerick-based motor trader. Rosneath has been in O’Connell family ownership since.

An impressive property about 3km from the city centre, near secondary school St Munchin’s College and primary school Scoil Íde, it comes with an outdoor swimming pool, walled gardens, kitchen garden/orchard and outbuildings. Accommodation is expansive: kitchen, breakfast room, reading room, shower room and three bedrooms on the ground floor; dining room, drawing room and three more bedrooms overhead.

It’s being sold by joint agents Savills and auctioneer, Joe Wheeler. Michael O’Donovan, of Savills, says the house is in “pretty good condition”, albeit investment would be needed to modernise.

Given the calibre of the house and its location, he’s expecting overseas interest.

“It’s a good period house, in good grounds, and there’s always an international piece to something like that. I expect good interest, too, from the local Limerick trade-up market. There aren’t too many period homes available in that location,” the agent says.

VERDICT: Ideal buyers would be an owner-occupier family with the bobs to future-proof.