CO WICKLOW: €9MA house that was destroyed in the Civil War has been carefully restored 0ver 50 years, writes Rose Doyle
A HOUSE WITH a past and lots of character is for sale in Blessington, Co Wicklow. You get a sense of this even as you drive between trees and meadows up the long, long avenue to where Tinode House sits in 300 acres of parklands including gorse-edged fields and woods.
All this even though the original house, built around 1860 for a nationalist member of parliament for west Wicklow, was a casualty of the Civil War, burned down because its then owner was an ex-British army major.
Just a few years before, in 1914, it was described as having "every accommodation for a gentleman's or nobleman's family". Tinode's architect, in the 1860s, was WF Calbeck.
The 19th century feel and fascinating period features in today's Tinode are thanks to the current owners who, after buying it in 1955, devoted years and care to rebuilding as well as furnishing and fitting Tinode with everything from doors to windows to fireplaces sourced at house clearance auctions.
There was a lot of work needed, especially to rooms around the courtyard (which would work as guest rooms/apartments) but there's a genteel extravagance in the drawing and diningrooms, in a kitchen made to live in, in soaring ceilings everywhere and in exceptionally tall windows.
Over a floor area of 750sq m (8,073sq ft) the main house has four bedrooms, five reception rooms, billiard room and kitchen/breakfastroom.
A cut-stone gate lodge has planning permission to extend. The two-story buildings around the courtyard have a floor area of 241sq m (2594sq ft).
The land and gardens have specimen shrubs and trees, woods, grazing land and a walled garden. For sale as one lot, the price is €9 million. Joint agents Savills Hamilton Osborne King and JPM Doyle are looking after the private treaty sale.
The heights in the reception hallway will have you craning your neck: the front door is some 15ft high, the inner doors are 10ft high and the ceiling is at least 40ft overhead.
A tall mirror on the turn of the stairs, which has cast-iron bannisters, adds to the drama of it all.
The piéce de resistance, highly theatrical and a surviving part of the original house, is the billiard room. In a ceiling higher than any other there are four triangular skylights and, below them, cross beams. A huge window overlooking the gardens has working shutters.
The formal drawingroom has a lovely, curved window, fireplace with picture tiles and arched door to a diningroom where an entire wall is taken up by a majestic piece of library/shelving furniture with inset stone fireplace.
The fourth bedroom is unfinished. To the side of the house are rafters, exposed stone walls and three windows.
Tinode House, Blessington, Co Wicklow
750sq m (8,073sq ft) house built in 1860s has four bedrooms, five reception rooms and sits on 300 acres of land
Agent: Savills Hamilton Osborne King and JPM Doyle
