Just under four miles outside the village of Laragh in Co Wicklow, a long, thatched cottage nestles in a wrinkle in the mountains. For nearly 30 years the stone-faced house has been a much-loved home-from-home for the California-based film actress, Dana Wynter. Ms Wynter, who starred in the film Shake Hands with the Devil with James Cagney, also played Niall Toibin's wife in Bracken, the early 1980s rural soap opera which starred Gabriel Byrne. Much of it was filmed in the Glenmacnass valley near her home.
The house, along with 15 acres of classic valley terrain - rough grass, bracken, dry-stone walls, wind-blown trees and a stretch of the Glenmacnass River - is for sale by private treaty. John Doyle, of HJ Byrne, in Bray, is seeking about £650,000 for this charming property with unspoilt views of the distant Glenmacnass waterfall. The L-shaped, two-bedroom house was completely rebuilt 28 years ago for Ms Wynter by Jack Doyle (no relation to the estate agent), whose family had owned the original cottage for generations. "It was built on a handshake," remembers Mr Doyle. "When she heard that I had been born and reared here, she touched me on the shoulder and said: `You're the man to do it'."
The interior of the house is a sophisticated version of rustic simplicity: exposed beams, wooden floors and white-washed plaster walls gently moulded like confectioner's icing.
Ms Wynter wrote warmly about her Irish home in the 1988 book, edited by Sybil Connolly, In an Irish House, adding that "life in the house is excessively plain and we live without staff". The main room is a very large livingroom that rises into the roof space. Two small windows face east, while west-facing French doors open on to an area bounded by rough stone walls at the front. A huge fireplace with a raised stone hearth provides a cosy focal point. A similar fireplace and high, peaked ceiling features in the main bedroom.
There is also a kitchen, main bathroom, guest bedroom with en suite, utility area and another attic room. A separate one-bedroom guest house, also faced in Wicklow stone, and with a double garage, stands nearby. A large block-built building, about 1,800 sq ft, with a corrugated roof sits by the river bank. Its interior is unfinished, and the outside would definitely benefit by being rendered and painted, but the potential offered is huge: further guest accommodation, a studio or workshop.
The property sits very discreetly in the landscape and most of the planting is sympathetic to the wild environment and to the 900 ft above sea level location: birch, mountain ash, fuchsia and a few well chosen roses and rhododendrons. A shelter belt of cypress lines the drive. Although the house looks the picture of rural simplicity, there is a sensible sprinkler system for the reed thatch, in case of fire, and a stand-by electricity generator.
