A listed country house in a part of rural Kilkenny once a favourite with the Anglo-Irish gentry is for sale for €4 million. Michael Parsonsreports
"There are many beautiful little towns along the Nore, but 'since each man kills the thing he loves' it is perhaps unsafe to admire them" - wrote the late man of letters Hubert Butler of his native Co Kilkenny in 1984.
Well, their secret is out. Among them, Thomastown has long been "discovered" but it remains muckily authentic despite being fashionable. Think Charles & Camilla meet The Riordans.
If you honestly like country life there is no more wonderful place to live than this stretch of rural Kilkenny with its undulating pastoral landscape of sleepy Norman castles, golden fields of barley, lush water-meadows, ancient oak groves, sloe-black rivers and, always on the far horizon, the brooding Blackstairs mountains.
The area is filled with ghosts of the Anglo-Irish gentry and no property better encapsulates the golden age of that lost world better than lovely Kilmurry House, tucked away down a tree-canopied road about two miles from town.
The current owner, Dublin banker John Casey, is reluctantly selling the 1,300sq m (14,000sq ft) house on 20 acres for family reasons.
Prospective buyers - who may have to fight like Kilkenny cats to acquire this cream of a property - should contact Knight Frank Ganly Walters in Dublin, which is handling the private treaty sale. The asking price is €4 million.
A list of previous owners reads like an index to the social and cultural history of Ireland: Charles Kendal Bushe, a 19th century Chief Justice, known as "The Incorruptible"; Richard Archer Houblon, a dashing major with the Royal Horse Artillery who served with distinction in India; his formidable wife, Doreen who taught the present Queen of England how to ride side saddle and, for 19 years prepared Queen Elizabeth's mount for Trooping the Colour; and the late Dick Walsh of The Irish Times and his wife Ruth Kelly.
But the most famous resident was the artist Mildred Anne Butler, one of Ireland's greatest watercolourists, who died in 1941.
She used the Orangery at Kilmurry as a studio and her work was mostly inspired by the house and gardens.
The scene depicted in her best-known painting, The Lilac Phlox (at the National Gallery of Ireland) hasn't changed in 100 years and the plant still flourishes today.
The Grade 1-listed Georgian house in the Palladian style has been extensively refurbished and offers absolute privacy, grand living and immense charm.
There is ample space for staff quarters in the "bachelor's wing" - named after no nonsense Mrs Archer Houblon's sensible habit of lodging single male guests there to discourage hanky-panky.
A magnificent organic walled garden needs renovation to restore its original Victorian splendour.
There is space for a helipad, some mature woodland, a small lake, and paddocks for the horses, which noblesse obliges.
Golf at Mount Juliet is a mere nine iron away; there's racing and hunting a furlong beyond; Kilkenny city is a 10-mile spin in the Land Rover; and the new M9 motorway (scheduled for completion in 2010) will slash travel time to Dublin.
Incidentally, the house has a most magnificent ballroom - perfect for country house parties. Pack a tiara, the Labrador, a ballgown and green wellies.
Oh, and a shotgun. For the pheasants, darling. And yes, that is with an "h".
