A miniature sporting estate, New Forest House, on 300 acres near Tyrrellspass, Co Westmeath, is expected to make around £1 million when it is auctioned on November 30th by joint agents Ganly Walters and Strutt & Parker.
The estate comes on the market near the end of a year in which agents handled fewer sales of country properties than for a considerable time. A substantial number of country properties changed hands in 1996 but the volume of sales has been particularly slow since then, partly because of the buoyant economy and the continuing rise in values. Agents specialising in country estates have waiting lists for good-sized period houses on at least 30 acres, preferably within an hour's drive of an airport. Much of the demand for these estates is coming from Irish businessmen who have acquired considerable wealth over the past few years.
New Forest House is being sold for London property developer Julian Smith and his wife Jane who have owned it since 1989. The couple have re-roofed the house and refurbished much of the interior, according to Robert Ganly, of Ganly Walters.
He advises that the layout of the woodlands and the rolling fields mean that there is great potential to develop a driven pheasant shoot on the estate. There are several areas where duck flighting ponds could be created.
The great attraction of New Forest is the superb rural landscape. It is fairly typical Westmeath countryside - a mixture of rich grasslands, noble stands of hardwoods, rushy fields, bog, hills and scrub.
A long avenue winds past banks of beech trees and wonderful parkland to a large gravel forecourt.
The three-storey over basement house dates from 1780 and has four reception rooms, eight bedrooms and four bathrooms.
A stone-flagged hall, complete with a star inset into the floor, dominates the centre. Off this are the main reception rooms, the drawingroom with French windows to an oval terrace and a lofty view of trees and fields. The small study or library to the right is equally elegant and faces south.
The central hall repeats itself on both first and top floors, with an unusually-placed stairway rising through a series of lobbies, rather than landings - a stroke of clever design which gives the feeling that each floor is almost a separate house. The bedrooms are generously-sized, many with bathrooms en suite, all with the same glorious views over the midlands.
