If you've made your fortune and fancy joining the ranks of the new landed gentry, Beechy Park on around 224 acres in Co Carlow could be just the ticket, says Michael Parsons
Self-made men who make fortunes - think Michael O'Leary, Denis O'Brien, Michael Flatley et al - always seem to want a "place in the country".
It is all fine and dandy having the D4 redbrick, glass-walled apartment in Canary Wharf, penthouse in Manhattan, Nice villa or, heaven forbid, a bolt-hole in Malta. But no gent is quite "proper" without a country house and a few green fields.
Proximity to cow-dung has always been a defining characteristic of wealth and respectability in Irish society.
Blinded by the boom, we tend to think that making a quick buck and then lording it is a relatively recent phenomenon.
But consider the case of early 19th century man-about-Dublin, one Benjamin D'Israeli.
After an apprenticeship to a public notary, he went on to amass a fortune and a significant property "portfolio" through stock market speculation, money-lending and operating a lottery business (a sort of Georgian Lotto) from offices on Grafton Street.
By 1800, and aged only 34, he had entered the golden circle and acquired posh friends.
He bought his way into the landed gentry by acquiring an estate in Co Carlow for £30,000 - a king's ransom at the time. And, according to Jimmy O'Toole's history The Carlow Gentry, was appointed high sheriff of the county.
Beechy Park - a mid-18th century house on 224 acres - has since been home to a number of families but is now on the market again - for the first time in 100 years - due to an executors' sale.
It will be auctioned in Dublin on February 27th at the offices of Knight Frank which, with joint agent Browne Corrigan, is guiding €6 million for the entire property.
The estate is in north-west Carlow, between the villages of Rathvilly and Castledermot, close to the Wicklow and Kildare borders and about 40 miles from Dublin on the N81.
More interestingly, access to the planned M9 Dublin-Waterford motorway is only about five miles away.
When construction of this road is completed in 2010, ease of travel to and from Dublin will improve significantly.
Although occupied until very recently, the 500sq m (5,400sq ft) house, which has a granite porticoed entrance and views to the Wicklow Mountains, needs major renovation, modernisation and redecoration.
This is a serious project which will require imagination, patience and wads of cash.
A Victorian walled garden has also gone to seed and needs a dose of Diarmuid.
Assorted farm buildings, courtyard and stables are a reminder that the property has potential as a stud farm.
The land, described as "of excellent quality and well-sheltered", is currently set in a mixture of tillage and pasture.
Oh, and in case you wondered, Mr D'Israeli died in 1814 aged 48.
He was unmarried and willed some of his money for a school to be built and a trust fund established to pay a teacher "for the education of the poor children of Rathvilly".
Incidentally, his namesake and nephew, also Benjamin, dropped the apostrophe from his surname, forged a successful career in British politics, and became one of the great prime ministers of the Victorian era.
If you've made your fortune and fancy joining the ranks of the new landed gentry, then Beechy Park could be just the ticket.
