Ever fancied yourself as an Irish Sleeping Beauty? We’ve got just the thing.
The next Allsop residential auction takes place on Tuesday 21st of April, and while most of us are struggling to make our rent not to mind a 20 per cent deposit for a home – it’s fun to dream about owning an 18th century castle with 28.8 acres in Galway.
Amongst the 331 properties going under the hammer in the auction is Ardfry House in Oranmore.
The detached period residence was built in 1770 by Joseph Blake, who later gained the title of Lord Wallscourt. The Wallscourts lived there until the second wife of the fourth Earl lost the family money through gambling and even sold the lead of every roof on the estate. The mansion was left empty and much of the contents stolen – a grand piano was later rescued from a barber’s shop. In 1922 the Walscourt title became extinct, but in 1950 the three granddaughters of the fourth Earl succeeded in legally reclaiming the house and 33 acres of the family estate. These three Blake sisters were known locally as the three gay mice and lived in an outhouse close to the ruin.
Ardfry was designed as a two-storey house with nine bays, a central pediment to the front and a raised roofed pavilion at either end. It was renovated in 1826 and updated with some gothic features including a pointed entrance doorway with pinnacles, battlements on the end pavilions and a gothic conservatory with stone piers.
The lands also contains the ruins of an earlier castle, previously home to the Blakes, one of the 14`tribes’ of Galway.
If you have couple of million to spare, you could be owning a piece of movie history too. Ardfry House was used in the Paul Newman film, The Mackintosh Man, when the house was re-roofed and re-windowed, and then burnt – destroying many remnants of the internal features.
Planning permission was granted by Galway County Council in 2004 to develop Ardfry House into luxury holiday apartments which has now lapsed.
This property is offered with an orchard, stone cottages and various outbuildings.
The reserve range for the castle is €1,800,000 to €2,000,000. Of course, the properties require extensive restoration and modernisation. But as we mentioned last week, Dermot Bannon is looking for some new Room To Improve candidates…
The residential auction will be held on Tuesday 21stApril commencing at 9am and the Commercial auction will begin at 10am on Thursday 23rd April. Both auctions will take place at the RDS, Merrion Road, Dublin.
