Orna Mulcahy visits a large period house on 11 acres in rural Co Wicklow

As Dublin house prices continue to rise, the gulf between city and country values becomes all the more remarkable. In Dublin €725,000 will buy you a four or five-bedroom house in a good estate. For the same amount you could buy Lakeen House, an elegant country property with 11 acres including useful outbuildings near Shillelagh, Co Wicklow.

Lakeen is on the market through HOK Country where David Ashmore is handling the sale. The seven-bedroom house, part of which dates from the 18th century, is two miles from the village of Shillelagh, 55 miles from Dublin. It's bound to appeal to those who dream of giving up city life and moving their family to a fresh air environment with the possibility of keeping a horse or two. Commuters may be tempted by a country estate within reach of the city, though the drive from Shillelagh involves many twists and turns of country road before one hits the N11 highway.

The two-storey house is reached at the end of a long driveway with lovely views over its grounds towards open countryside. Lakeen was built by the Fitzwilliam family of the Coolattin estate, and it's said that the house was once used as a training ground for servants destined for the main house.

It remained part of the estate until the late 1970s when Coolattin was broken up by Lady Juliet de Chair, widow of the 8th Earl of Fitzwilliam who had died decades earlier in a plane crash along with Kathleen Kennedy, sister of John F Kennedy.

It's a very elegant country house with many of its original features intact, though it now needs some refurbishment, according to the agents.

The accommodation includes a drawingroom with two fireplaces, a formal diningroom, a family room and a country-style kitchen warmed by a Stanley. A rear hallway leads to a utility room, fuel store and study with a secondary staircase to the first floor. Upstairs, all seven bedrooms are comfortable doubles, with the main bedroom occupying a corner of the house and including a large dressingroom and an en suite bathroom. The remaining bedrooms share a family bathroom.

Lakeen's outbuildings include a stone garage and workshop, a cottage, loose boxes, tack room and a 40 ft hay barn. The gardens are planted with numerous specimen trees and shrubs. There is also a kitchen garden, orchard and a water garden.