When Dublin businessman Cyril Forbes and his wife Jill bought an 18th century riverside house in Co Kilkenny in 1982, he walked to the end of the site it was on and said, "This is where the house should be" – because he wanted a view of the river Nore.
Over two decades later, they built The Boat House, a very modern 371sq m (4,000sq ft) house on an acre beside the river, with six bedrooms, five of them en suite, geothermal underfloor heating and a bespoke walnut kitchen with granite worktops. And of course lots of triple-glazed, floor-to-ceiling windows with river views.
The Boat House, Inistioge, Co Kilkenny went for sale in May 2010 asking for €950,000. It didn't sell, and for the past six years, Cyril and Jill's son Robert ran it as a luxury B&B/holiday home, which rented for up to €1,995 a week, getting very positive online reviews.
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Now Robert is off to Chamonix to run a ski B&B and the house is back on the market. The Boat House is now for sale through Ganly Walters, with a price drop of €150,000 to €800,000.
The house is on the Woodstock estate, a former Anglo-Irish estate in walking distance of the village of Inistioge.
Nothing has changed in the house since The Irish Times wrote about it in 2010, says Cyril. Then, we described the ultra-modern house set in a secluded, heavily wooded stretch of riverside as“defiantly contemporary”, although exterior walls are partially clad with traditional stone and slate. Reached through a bluebell wood in the forest, down a driveway past electric gates, it is beside the river, where there’s a jetty big enough to tie up two or three boats.
Accommodation is spread over three floors: a staircase leads from the double height entrance hall up to a large open-plan livingroom/ diningroom/kitchen with sliding doors opening on to a balcony overlooking the Nore, “the perfect observation point from which to enjoy quite remarkable views of a river teeming with wildlife”.
The Boat House is seven miles from Mount Juliet, 18 miles from Kilkenny city.
