Many of us dream of escaping the rat race and finding a place to grow your own foodstuffs. However, the reality is that most of us have to be content with buying some meat and vegetables from farmers’ markets and getting the rest from the local supermarket.
No so for Catherine and Francois Muller, a married couple of real Good Lifers who make the characters played by Felicity Kendall and Richard Briers in the 1970s TV series seem like amateurs.
When they bought Cloneen House on the Cavan-Longford border in 1996, the property was a shell. The gardens didn't exist and the market garden across the road was just a field.
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The house comes with its own small river, the Cloneen, a small trout-spawning contributory river to Lough Gowna, which runs alongside the gardens.
“The fishing in this part of the world is second to none,” says Francois, a Frenchman from near Strasbourg. “In France, one pike is a story to tell. Here you can catch 10 in a day.”
Fishing
As well as pike and perch the Cloneen has brown trout so you can fish your own river for dinner. Francois also hunts, mainly for deer and rabbits.
The Georgian house is on about one acre with quite a few spots to catch the sun. It includes several outbuildings, an old forge, a separate converted barn, a cold room where Francois butchers and hangs his kills and a toolshed.
The property includes a separate mill house, complete with original mill wheel and mechanics and which features in the book Mills & Millers of Ireland by William Hogg.
Across the road there is another three acres of land where the couple keep chickens and a nanny goat and grow their own nuts, fruit and vegetables, including artichokes, 12 types of tomatoes, table grapes, peaches and herbs. The only things they buy are milk and bread.
Ready-made package
The most charming room in the house is the sittingroom to the left of the hall. It has a herringbone ceiling and panelled walls and a rustic French raised wood-burning fire.
Across the hall is a kitchen with a low-set window crying out to be used as a window seat. The pine units have been painted a cream colour and there are black granite countertops.
Double doors lead through to a breakfastroom where a spiral staircase is one of two sets of stairs up to the first floor. Off the breakfastroom, there is a formal diningroom and a formal sittingroom.
Upstairs there are six bedrooms, three of which are en suite.
The house and grounds offer a ready-made package to any self-sufficient wannabe but maintaining the gardens, animals and house is too much of a full-time job for the couple who both still work.
They are now hoping to move to France to another smaller project.
The house is a 20-minute drive from Longford and Cavan and 30 minutes from Mullingar. Dublin is about an 80-minute drive via Edgeworthstown.
