A four-bedroom Georgian house which featured in the television series of Somerville & Ross's novel The Irish RM goes to auction through Keane Mahony Smith on June 7th, guiding £950,000 (#1.21 million). Upper Punchestown House is a 19th century house on 11 acres outside the village of Kilteel in Co Kildare.
The house is located 15 miles or so from Dublin, close to the western slopes of the Wicklow mountains and utterly unspoiled.
Interior designer Una Campbell and her husband Keith have sympathetically restored and redecorated the entire house since they moved in about nine years ago. They are now moving to France, leaving Upper Punchestown House in immaculate order. Windows and walls are dressed entirely in Osborne & Little, Colefax & Porter and Zoffany papers and silk fabrics. Door panels, staircase and ceiling plasterwork have been sympathetically replaced and radiators are enclosed by brass grilles. A large room over the garage was converted into a work studio for Una's design business.
The yellow-painted house is hidden from the road behind a row of beeches and the spreading branches of an old sycamore tree. In true Georgian style, the hall is wide and bright, with a curved staircase facing the front entrance. The drawingroom to the left is decorated in shades of cream. The windows here, as throughout the house, are timber sash replacements.
Across the hall, the blue and gold diningroom has a period marble fireplace and an intriguing panelled dumb waiter linking with the kitchen could perhaps be restored.
Off the galleried landing are four exquisitely decorated bedrooms, all with half-tester headboards in designer fabrics which the owners plan to leave behind.
The main bedroom overlooks the back garden, another double room in lavender and cream has an en suite shower and two other double bedrooms have fitted wardrobes and bookshelves. A magnificent claw foot bath is a centrepiece in the main bathroom. At garden level are a huge country kitchen and utility room, a comfortable study/ sittingroom and a guest shower room with old-style sanitary ware. The kitchen is fitted with antique pine units and includes a built-in love seat and an oilfired Stanley range. Chinese slate flags on the floor are "indestructible" say the owners.
The study is a large room, fitted with bookshelves and cupboards and with a window looking out on the rear terrace. The gardens have been arranged in an informal way, with a lawn, rambling rockeries and a pond edged with greenery. Tall beech trees line the drive to the stable complex and cobbles have been laid around specimen trees on the front lawn.
The original cut stone stables would be an interesting conversion project for a new owner.