Adare Manor five-bed with a Johnny Grey kitchen for €2.1m

The medieval village of Adare commands a significant premium in property prices over the rest of Limerick and has become one of the most desirable places to live in the county.

The Demesne at Adare Manor, where 19 sites were sold in the past decade by Tom Kane, proprietor of Adare Manor Hotel, for between €650,000 and €1.5 million each, saw the estate become the most exclusive gated community in Munster. Winterwood, the best known house in the enclave sold in 2012, for €1.78 million, a €10 million tumble from its original asking price.

Number 6, with five bedrooms, standing at 445sq m (4,789sq ft) on a quarter of an acre of landscaped gardens is not your run-of-the-mill house. Designed by architects A&D Wejchert, and built by John Sisk & Son, the brief was to “create a sense of space that flows seamlessly using natural renewable materials”.

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World renowned architect Johnny Grey, of Johnny Grey Studios, designed the soft geometrical kitchen. Grey has been described as the world's best kitchen designer by the New York Times, and the kitchen, boasting three dishwashers, was hand crafted in Melbourne prior to being shipped to the village of Adare. Grey, a nephew of cookery writer Elizabeth David, developed the concept of the unfitted kitchen and his kitchen installations grace the houses of the late Apple founder Steve Jobs and singer Sting. They are all based around the concept of "a living room in which you cook".

The house, with vaulted ceilings soaring to 30ft in places, are warmed by oak windows which have been carefully orientated to maximise daylight.

To the front of the house is a large foyer with an imposing glass staircase leading to the bedrooms. These are accessed by a glass bridge which runs along an atrium that floods the downstairs with light and is a work of art in itself.

On the ground floor, all the reception rooms flow into one another, echoing the sense of space and light in the house’s overall structure, and each can be cordoned off by oak sliding doors. Irish Oak features heavily throughout and is interspersed with Portuguese stone flooring which has also been used in the modern fireplace that stretches all the way to the ceiling in the living room. The installation of up-lighters on the window frames add a stunning nocturnal ambience.

Each part of the house overlooks distinctly different areas of the gardens, which were designed by Verney Naylor, who also designed Lord David Puttnam’s gardens in west Cork. Laid out in separate micro gardens laden with plants and trees, the gardens feature a gazebo, greenhouse, orchard and vegetable plot.

The property was constructed as a summer house by the current owners, who are based in Dublin, but as it has had little use in recent years the owners have decided to sell.

The asking price of €2.1 million, through joint estate agents Sherry FitzGerald and Christies, may be ambitious for Limerick county, but there is no question that whoever buys Number 6 The Demesne is getting a property that is utterly unique.