CO CAVAN €2 MILLION:'I will be very sorry to go, but it will be lovely if someone nice moves in. It needs to have a family in it,' the owner of historic Georgian mansion tells EMMA CULLINANE
AFTER SPENDING nearly 400 years in Rathkenny House, Tullyvin, Cootehill, Co Cavan, the Lucas-Clements family is selling up.
The substantial eight-bedroom Georgian house on 256 acres is for sale asking in excess of €2 million through Knight Frank.
This wasn’t the first house on the site though. That was a smaller Jacobian house (from the time of James I) on the other side of the Annalee River from the “new” house and there is still a Jacobian walled garden in the grounds, constructed in 1695.
“The story has it,” says the current owner Rosemary Lucas-Clements, “that they got fed up with the first house, set up a canon and blew it up.” Luckily, she says, they were good shots because it is not too far from the current house, built between 1760 and 1820, “and they could have hit it”.
The foundations of the old home are still there, if you dig down a bit, a task usually undertaken by dogs going about their investigations.
This four-bay Georgian house – almost in a square but with a kitchen and bedroom wing – looks like a complete composition, but there was actually a much larger wing attached to it which was taken down in the 1920s.
“There was an old girl left alone in it after her husband died,” says Ms Lucas-Clements, “and she wanted to downsize because everything was getting in a bad state and she wanted to keep the main part of the house going.”
The river runs close to the front of the house which is reached via a gravel drive.
While the house is huge, it works as a family home, a role it has played many times over the centuries. “Although it’s a big house it’s not a rambling one,” says Ms Lucas-Clements. “Every one who comes here says it has a good atmosphere. We’ve had good parties here.”
Many of these have been held in the interconnecting library and drawing room on the ground floor which is to the right of the main hall.
The house is laid out around an inner hall on the ground floor and a landing above, reached via a grand staircase passing a large window on the return.
Also on the ground floor is a study to the left of the entrance hall and, at the back, is a dining room, kitchen and utility room. Upstairs, there are eight bedrooms and two bathrooms.
There are period features throughout, including fireplaces, large sash windows and shutters, plasterwork, wooden architraves, flagstone floors and mahogany doors. The decor is in keeping with the house’s architectural style.
The reception rooms have views of the river which, the day before our conversation had yielded one of its many trout for dinner, caught by a friend. And views from all of the rooms are of the surrounding parkland and trees.
The property also includes a farm manager’s house (facing onto a courtyard), stables, a workshop, storerooms and outhouses. There is also a farmyard, with barns, milking parlour, cow houses, slatted sheds, cubicles, silage pits, an outdoor sand arena and saw mills.
Over its centuries in the house, the family has been part of the local political scene, holding offices including Mayor of Cavan.
Some of the Clements side of the family moved to Leitrim and, indeed, four of them bore the title Earl of Leitrim.
The first earl, Nathaniel Clements, was chief ranger of Phoenix Park who built the viceroy lodge, now Áras an Uactaráin.
Sadly, the third Earl let the family down for a while. A tough landlord, dubbed the Wicked Earl, he met an untimely death, when he was assassinated in 1878, along with his clerk and driver.
So this house comes with plenty of history but happiness reigns here now. “It always had a nice friendly feeling,” says Ms Lucas-Clements. “I will be very sorry to go, but it will be lovely if someone nice moves in. It needs to have a family in it.”
Rathkenny House, Tullyvin, Cootehill, Co Cavan
Four-bay eight-bedroom Georgian house on 256 acres
AgentKnight Frank
