“We didn’t want a big house in a field,” says the owner of Cramersvalley in Brannockstown, Co Kildare, and instantly you know what she means. Drive across the country and you’ll spot any number of vast newish houses, mansions of the “sure why build small when you can build big” school of construction, seemingly plonked on still-bare windswept sites for all to see.
That’s not how they do things in this picturesque part of Kildare, which is known as the “K4” of the county due in part to the many major stud farms in the locality. Residents of the leafier and similarly priced streets of D4 would only look on in amazement at what you get for your money here and the sort of lifestyle it offers a family.
Cramersvalley – now for sale, asking €1.85m – is a case in point. The six-bedroom 564.3sq m (6,704sq ft) house is set on 36 acres, a mixture of mature trees, woodlands with walks, formal gardens and paddocks. For 500 metres, the land, once part of the vast Harristown estate, borders the river Liffey (the house comes with fishing rights) and the property includes a one-acre private island in the river.
But in keeping with this pocket of the county it’s all about horses. Buyers are likely to be a large horse-mad family like the current owners or someone looking to start a small equine-related enterprise.
There’s a stable yard adjacent to the house – built around a quod in classic style with a jaunty weather vane topping the clock tower on its pitched roof – comprising eight stables, a tack room, storage, and a one-bedroom self-contained apartment used as au pair quarters in previous years. Nearby there’s a vast hay shed, horse walker and sand arena with jumps. When one of the children was competing cross-country a small course was set up in one of the fields, but now a herd of cows happily graze there under a full-size rugby goalpost built for one of the sons to practise his kicks.
The grounds are so mature it’s hard to believe the house was built just 16 years ago on a bare greenfield site. Hedging planted around the perimeter of the all-weather tennis court now completely obscures it from the house and there are knots of waist-high box hedging in the garden part of the grounds.
The site came with planning permission for a pleasingly rambling dormer bungalow with nods to arts and crafts architecture. The covered outer porch – above it is an open terrace off the master bedroom – opens into an inner porch and into a wide T-shaped stone tiled hall that, with its open fire, seating areas and piano, functions as an extra living room.
Three interconnecting reception rooms open off the hall to the rear, a drawing room, dining room and family room, each accessing a patio via French doors. There’s also a large home office. The eat-in kitchen is less small-scale arts and crafts type and more heart-of-the-home country house. It is a very large square room facing the front with plain maple-fitted kitchen, double stainless steel stove and stone-topped island. Off it, the utility and boot room opens out to a short path to the stables.
Also on this levelis a guest wing with two double bedrooms and a bathroom. Upstairs are four more double bedrooms (three en suite), while the master has a room-sized walk-in dressing room as well as a bathroom en suite. An attic room is used as a bedroom.
Cramersvalley, which takes its name from the surrounding townland, is for sale through Sherry FitzGerald Country Homes.
