A €590,000 four-bed in lushly wooded grounds in Wicklow is perfect for those seeking peace. Kate McMorrow reports
Guaranteed to set pulses racing and hearts beating faster, an early Victorian house in the Vale of Avoca has everything a seeker after peace and tranquillity would desire.
Once the home of screen-writer Wesley Burrowes, White-bridge House is guiding €590,000 at auction on October 27th with Sherry FitzGerald Myles Doyle of Arklow.
The 264 sq m (2,840 sq ft) four-bedroom house is set amidst 1.3 acres of lushly wooded grounds, with views across the vale to the Wicklow hills beyond. One of the earliest residents of Whitebridge was Captain James Higgins, a Cornish man who came from Brazil with his family to manage the Avoca copper mines.
Wesley Burrowes installed the mansard roof when he lived here in the 1970s, gaining a fine second-floor studio and two further bedrooms. The current owners, one of whom commutes to the city, are relocating to north County Dublin for work reasons, hence the sale.
Tall dappled greenery frames the laneway to the house from the old mine-workings road, about a mile and a half from the village of Avoca. The interior is everything you would expect from a comfortable country house; the only drawback that there is just one bathroom.
The half-glassed front door opens to a quarry-tiled hall, with a big country kitchen-cum-diningroom and music room spanning the house to the front. This is airy and open-plan, with a pine dresser, Belfast sink, quarry tiles on the floor and a cream Aga.
An adjoining sitting area with open fireplace and exposed stone walls is a cosy place to relax. Two pantries provide good food storage and laundry facilities.
The music room doubles as a study, with a wood-burning stove, a wall of bookshelves and a timber floor. Off the back hall is a tack room and the family bathroom. Spanning the first floor at the front is a formal drawingroom with great views: its three windows look out across the valley. Its relative isolation from the working end of the house adds to the comfort of this colourful room.
Bedrooms one and two are also at this level, both doubles and with wardrobes in the main bedroom. Up on the top floor are two further bedrooms under the eaves. The front part of this floor is taken up by a very bright studio with three windows, skylights and an array of built-in cupboards.
Stables to the side of the house have lighting and water provided. The grounds are in lawn, with a small paddock, shrubberies, mature trees, a terrace and greenery, with Virginia Creeper and orange nasturtiums tumbling over the front of the house. A wooden playhouse will delight a small child.
