The Old Fort has all the light and graceful proportions of a Regency period building and the creature comforts of a modern home.
The house is deceptively large at 464sq m \(5,000sq ft), on four acres that sweep down to the shores of Lough Swilly. It was built in 1998 by Jeremy Williams, eminent architect, painter and founder-member of the Irish Victorian Society, for classical artist Martin Mooney who mixed the rendered pink exterior “to match the colour of the ploughed fields of the Inishowen Penninsula when the soil catches the sunlight”.
Mooney, a still life and landscape artist, was brought up in Belfast and discovered Donegal on summer holidays. He had previously refurbished and sold a Georgian property in Ramelton. Then he heard this historic site was for sale five miles away. It was the site of an old “bawn” fort built by Captain William Stuart, a Scotsman who was “gifted” the land in 1610 as part of a parcel of 1,000 acres that had originally belonged to Donegal chieftan Aodh “Dubh” O’Donnell, son of Red Hugh O’Donnell, one of the chiefs who fled the country from nearby Rathmullen during the Flight of the Earls in 1607.
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Stuart’s arrival formed part of the Ulster Plantation. He established Ramelton village, a Georgian-style village almost unique in the county.
Mooney, whose work is held in the private collections of Michael Smurfit, Dermot Desmond and Sir AnthonyO’Reilly, says: “The site felt like a peaceful place to work.”
Mooney was also inspired by “the graceful proportions of the Merrion Hotel” where at that time he was hanging eight commissioned works.
The main house was built in 1998 using an original Georgian front door surround and lintel from a house in Dublin.
In the hall, a towering stone column leads the eye up to the landing.
Three huge floor-to-ceiling windows allow southern light to stream into the drawingroom. Between them sit original Regency pilasters. On the floor is salvaged French oak. Three foot deep coving in the 14 foot high room adds further drama as well as concealing the staircase. The overall feel is very authentic, despite its newness.
The gardens outside are formal, in keeping with the house. A cut-grass path leads directly to the water’s edge, where the ruins of Stuart’s fort shelter a timber deck looking across to Inishowen Peninsula.
The drawingroom opens through to a large L-shaped kitchen/diningroom, where there is an open fire and very smart, simple cabinetry made by local craftsman Lesley Buchanan. Hidden from view is a lovely free-standing dresser and a Belfast sink. Three French windows lead out to a limestone patio and Mooney’s studio, a space built in 2006, where roof lights flood the room with northern light – the best kind for painting.
In the smaller sittingroom French windows, again mirroring those in the kitchen, lead across the garden to a separate one-storey self-contained one-bed apartment, designed by Mooney and built in 2006.
Upstairs, there are five bedrooms. The finest is situated in what was originally Mooney’s studio when he and his partner, Aislinn Galligan, and their two children moved into the house.
There are three other good-sized doubles and another bedroom that has been converted into a dressing room.
The house has an asking price of €1.5 million through joint agents Savills and Franklins, a somewhat bullish price in a county where it is very difficult to establish real values. Savills agent Harriet Grant says: "Houses of this calibre in the country are selling."
