Would you have what it takes to restore a country pile? In the first of a series, Robert O'Byrne talks to a couple who are tackling a big house near Birr
This was among my prayers: a piece of land not so very large, Where a garden should be and a spring of ever-flowing water near the house. And a bit of woodland as well as these."
WHEN Tom Alexander is asked to explain why he left Dublin and moved to Co Offaly, he's inclined to quote the above lines from the Roman poet Horace. And certainly they're as good a description as any other of the enchanted spot owned for the past five years by Alexander and his wife Mary.
Although just off the main road between Roscrea and Birr, Gloster gives the impression of being several worlds and hundreds of years away; only the occasional hum of a distant juggernaut suggests the 21st century might lie close by.
Not the least of Gloster's charms lies in its setting, with the south-facing house looking over terraced gardens that conclude in a lake with woodland lying beyond. The restored Italianate terraces are of relatively recent vintage, probably dating from the late 19th/early 20th century. The upper section has two three-tier fountains installed by the Alexanders three years ago.
Even Tom Alexander - who has grown to love the place dearly - would not claim that the house represents the apogee of refinement. Built around the third decade of the 18th century, Gloster is representative of provincial aspiration, of someone who wished to emulate contemporary taste but did so in a rather coarse fashion.
The occasional clumsiness of its design only enhances the house's charm, as exemplified by the masks found on the upper architraves of the principal front's ground floor windows. A number of these are so grotesque they might have been recycled from a mediaeval church while others look like adaptations of the decoration then appearing on Irish mahogany furniture. The original two-storey house has nine bays; at some date it was extended by a further two bays to either side, making it long and low.
All this work on both house and gardens was carried out by the Lloyd family, who lived at Gloster until less than 50 years ago. They were never an especially grand family though many of them achieved high rank in the British army. The last Lloyd to live at Gloster sold the place in 1958, when there was a two-day sale of its accumulated contents, an unhappy occasion that saw even the chimneypieces from the principal rooms being stripped out.
The empty shell was then bought by the Salesian Order of nuns who ran a boarding school for girls at Gloster until 1991. The property was briefly owned by Macra na Feirme before being acquired by Northern Irish entrepreneur Edward Haughey. Nothing much was done to preserve the house until it was sold again in early 2001 to the Alexanders.
Why did they choose Gloster? "We'd been hunting for an 18th century property for five or six years before we came here," explains Tom Alexander. "We looked at a place in Meath, and another on the Carlow/Kilkenny border, we almost bought a house in Dublin on North Great George's Street." Then they came across Gloster and made the impulsive decision to buy it, selling a comfortable home on Dublin's Palmerstown Road to do so.
How great was the change? "It was quite a culture shock and a wrench," Tom Alexander now admits. "Miles away from everything we knew, it was worse for me than for Mary; she was more gung-ho about the whole thing." His wife, financial director of the College of Surgeons, now spends her weekdays in the capital but he is happily settled full-time into life at Gloster. Which is just as well, because even after five years, the amount still waiting to be done is not so much formidable as overwhelming. The Alexanders were only able to spend their first night in the main house last March, on St Patrick's Day. Prior to that, they had been living directly behind in the old convent/school buildings. The additions made to Gloster in the late 1950s are massive, and massively ugly. Running to more than 4,645sq m (50,000 sq ft), sooner or later they will have to be demolished and some of the original designs reinstated - not least so that a view intended to close the main avenue can be re-created. But the cost of sweeping away these accretions is enormous.
To date, the Alexanders have not only cleared the gardens and reinstated the ponds and fountains, but also secured the roof of the main house and thoroughly restored its east wing. In the latter tasks they have received some welcome financial assistance from both the Heritage Council and from their local authority. "We've also benefitted from Section 482," says Tom Alexander, referring to the measure that allows houseowners restoring property to claim tax relief against their income. "We wouldn't have bought the house if 482 didn't exist," he adds. "We're living proof of how beneficial it is." Even so, a lot more than tax relief is needed if ambitious plans for Gloster are going to be realised.
Working with architect John Redmill, an expert in this field, the Alexanders have drawn up plans to rebuild the west front and demolish an ugly Edwardian extension to the north rear, as well as get rid of the 1950s additions. Inside the old house there is much to be done, both to the glorious double-height entrance saloon and upper landing and beyond the former to a magnificently lofty space that Tom hopes will eventually serve as a music room.
"We're working on a time-frame," he insists, one imposed by planning authorisation that extends for only five years. "We've to start in the cellars and work our way up. It's a long process but frankly both Mary and I take the view that the best-restored houses are done over a long period of time and on a limited budget."
Still, undaunted by the challenges they make sure the work goes on, whether re-seeding the lawns outside, keeping ducks and chickens in the old walled garden, restoring an old lodge on the back avenue or checking window frames in the main house to see whether any can be salvaged. In the east wing there's conclusive evidence that even the grandest ambition can be realised: while the walls have yet to be decorated, underfloor heating makes the place comfortable, as does the furniture and pictures the Alexanders have been acquiring.
"We moved from what would have been a relatively large city house - and it was quite well-furnished - to discover what we had was totally inadequate for here," says Tom Alexander. He shows off the drawingroom chimneypiece, a handsome piece of 18th century marblework bought to replace what had been lost in the house contents sale following the Lloyds' departure. A few years ago, the original turned up in an auction at Christie's in London and Tom and Mary Alexander were keen to buy it back.
In 1958, the Gloster chimneypiece went for £460; this time its price was considerably higher and the Alexanders were unable to pay the eventual five-figure sum. "Maybe a more progressive government might consider tax relief for people buying back items lost from historic houses," he muses. Then, lest his contentment with present circumstances be doubted, over tea in the kitchen he quotes Jonathan Swift's Imitation of Horace:
I often wished that I had clear/For life, six hundred pounds a-year/A handsome house to lodge a friend/A river at my garden's end/A terrace walk, and half a rood/Of land, set out to plant a wood
