Loose lips can lose you your dream home. The current owner of Carniseal House, outside Ramelton in Co Donegal, was in the mood for a move when, attending a business lunch, he heard about the property.
Situated on the shores of Lough Swilly it looks every bit a period country house. Until you take a closer look and are told that it was built in the 1990s but modelled on all the design elements that the Georgians hold dear.
He made an appointment to view it the next day. At the time he had a site in Dunfanaghy, one of the hippest seaside resorts in west Donegal, where he had planned to build a dream home but when he and his wife first went through the gates his thought was: “This is it, there is no building to do”.
The house lived up to all his expectations.
“If I want something, I go for it. You can’t see the house from the road and from its front windows, which overlook Lough Swilly, all you see is the odd boat and the odd fisherman. There was no way anyone else was going to be buying this.”
The house has all the decorative tropes of a country estate, starting with its electric wrought-iron gates through to details like the six-over-six sash and casement windows throughout.
The five-bedroom detached property, which extends to 651sq m (7,009sq ft), had been built by a German to exacting standards and a Ber of D1.
It also offered a very fine sense of proportion and balance throughout its rooms, echoing the Georgian love of light and the era’s innate elegance and sense of symmetry. Many of the property’s rooms are dual aspect and have a connection to the surrounding grounds.
The front door opens into a flagstone-floored vestibule and entrance hall with the drawing room to the left and a sitting room to the right.
Dual aspect, the drawingroom has an Adams-style fireplace and leads through to a sunroom where French doors open to the well-landscaped grounds. There are polished floorboards underfoot throughout with these rooms built on the sunny western side of the house.
A door leads from the drawing to the dining room, where the owner says there is scope to entertain en masse, and on through to the kitchen.
The kitchen is off the dining room. This room has an impressive, painted in-frame units topped by polished black granite counters.
While the house is set over two principal floors, there is a basement and also an annex which comprises a garage and a studio.
Upstairs there are five good-size bedrooms as well as a home office that overlooks the lough.
This deep inlet holds a bittersweet moment in Irish history for it is from nearby Rathmullan that Hugh O’Neill and Red Hugh O’Donnell caught sight of their last bit of dear old Donegal in the Flight of the Earls in 1607.
The primary bedroom has a separate dressing room and en suite bathroom.
“It is completely private. You can withdraw on demand,” says the owner.
