Co Offaly/€6.5m: You can walk for half-an-hour through mature parklands and forest before reaching the boundary of Ballincor Demesne, writes Michael Parsons
Jilly Cooper, the posh English novelist and friend of Camilla, who chronicles the lives of the jodhpurs-and-gin set, recently came to Ireland and "adopted" a retired greyhound in "Awfully". Which is how the British upper classes pronounce Offaly.
That's progress of a sort. They used to call it the King's County until independence in 1921. The lucky hound was last heard of sprawling on a chaise-longue in a Gloucestershire mansion being fed Chateaubriand from a silver salver by a liveried footman. Which sure beats having the hind legs walked off you round the Bog of Allen before a hard night at the track in Thurles.
But there's no need to follow the emigrant trail of "Ferbane Flighty" (the name has been changed to protect the dog's dignity) to enjoy the life of a country squire.
Ballincor Demesne, a 660sq m (7,100sq ft) Georgian house on 535 acres (215 hectares) near the village of Shinrone, Co Offaly will be sold at auction on October 5th by Ganly Walters in Dublin. The AMV is €6.5 million.
Because of the Land Commission's practice of splitting large land holdings, the sale of 535 "intact" acres is "rare" - a word the agent is justifiably using to describe this chance to acquire one of the the largest country estates to appear on the market this year. Ballincor has been home to the same family for over 100 years and the current owner is retiring.
An 18th century house (with later additions) is set in superb parkland and approached by an avenue lined with majestic trees. The accommodation has 11 bedrooms, five reception rooms and all the various chambers one expects in a period country house of consequence - from a game room (for hanging pheasant and not "hanging out" with a PlayStation) to a schoolroom.
The house, while habitable and comfortable, will require substantial updating and renovation to create a residence meeting contemporary requirements for comfort and convenience. Budget to spend between €500,000 and €1 million.
A three-room gate-lodge, hideously "modernised" in the 1950s, also needs attention. The yard behind the house has attractive stone outbuildings including an old laundry, saddle room and coach-house. A walled garden, currently serving as an apple and pear orchard, is in need of gentle restoration.
Ballincor is still a working farm (dry-stock cattle) but is more likely to appeal to a tycoon "hobby farmer" seeking a grand estate or, possibly, wishing to create a stud. There is extensive road frontage and riverbank onto the Little Brosna River where the current owner's children learned to swim and fish for trout.
There's oodles of land - you can walk for half-an-hour from the house before reaching the estate's boundary - with 315 acres of prime pasture grassland, 58 acres of mature forest, 106 acres of callow land (which means it floods in winter) and 46 acres of bog. Once the quintessential symbol of national poverty, owning a bog has become intensely fashionable.
Anyone can buy the yacht, the Manhattan penthouse, the Vermeer, the villa in Cannes. But, for many Irish people, land has more cachet than any other possession. Remember this famous exchange from Gone with the wind? Gerald: "Do you mean to tell me, Katie Scarlett O'Hara, that Tara - that land doesn't mean anything to you? Why, land's the only thing in the world worth working for, worth fighting for, worth dying for, because it's the only thing that lasts."
