For not much more than the price of a decent detached house in Dublin's inner suburbs, you could be rattling around your very own 30,000 sq ft early Georgian mansion in Brosna, Co Offaly. The sprawling former convent comes with Italianate terraced lawns and a rose garden and is surrounded by no less than 163 acres of woodland and agricultural land. The property is being sold by the businessman and former senator, Edward Haughey.

Gloster House, a 17th century pile situated between Birr and Roscrea, comes with a guide price of £1.65 million and an entry in Burke's Guide to Irish Country Homes, where it is described as "enlarged and grandly remodelled in the early 18th century for Trevor Lloyd, a first cousin of the architect, Sir Edward Lovett Pearce".

Captain Trevor Lloyd, originally from Anglesea, built the house in 1680 to replace an older mansion on the site. In 1958, his descendant Major Trevor Lloyd sold the house and lands to the Salesian Order, which extended the house considerably in the late 1960s and ran it as a girls' school until its closure in 1991.

The house is to be offered for sale by tender on September 22nd and agents Hamilton Osborne King are marketing it as "of particular interest to hoteliers and those looking for a headquarters/manufacturing base".

The principal house is in need of complete restoration but comprises an ornate two storey reception hall, four reception rooms, 13 bedrooms and four bathrooms.

The new buildings, dating from the 1960s, are in good condition and link to the rear; they include a function room, conference room, diningroom, commercial kitchen and a further 20,000 sq ft of modern accommodation, currently laid out as classrooms and dormitories.

There is also a three-room bungalow built in the mid-1980s to provide extra classroom space, a front gate lodge, a side lodge and a variety of farm buildings.

Another Offaly property to be auctioned in the autumn by Hamilton Osborne King is an elegant four-bedroom Georgian house, Millbrook House in Birr.

The property has a one-acre walled garden which has a wide range of unusual species and comes with a guide price of £450,000.

Millbrook House has an entrance hall with an original Georgian fanlight, three reception rooms, a fully-fitted kitchen, four bedrooms, main bedroom en suite and a bathroom.

A paved courtyard contains lofted stores and a loose box.