A very large country house on 53 acres near Banagher, once owned by Roger Whittaker, is for sale nearly 20 years after the singer-songwriter completely refurbished and modernised it.
Whittaker – whose hits in the 1960s and 1970s included Durham Town and New World in the Morning – and his wife, Natalie, put the 828sq m (8,913sq ft) Shannon-side property up for sale in 2005, close to the peak of the market, and the current owner paid €5 million for the house. It is now for sale through Sotheby’s International for €2.65 million.
Lairakeen House, which comes with a guest cottage, studio apartment in a coach house and a recording studio, is decorated to a baronial style, with lots of mahogany panelling, a number of formal reception rooms and five bedrooms.
What most attracted the current vendor – whose late partner had knee problems – to the property was its lift in the main hall. Its 53 acres include lawns, a walled garden and parkland meadows running down to the river, connecting to a small island and a boathouse – the estate has 400 yards of river frontage.
County boundary
The present house – earlier called Kilnaborris and Shannon View, according to the NUI Galway Landed Estates Database, and renamed by Whittaker – was modelled on a house dating back to 1705 but mainly built in 1870. Badly damaged by fire in 1931, it was rebuilt in 2002 by the Whittakers, who purchased it in 2000 for €672,000. The house is situated in Galway, across the river – the county boundary – from Banagher, Co Offaly.
The current vendor has made a number of changes to Lairakeen, installing an Aga in the kitchen and, outdoors, building sheds, workshops and stables.
Lairakeen is a grand country house, where a wide oak staircase rises from a porcelain-tiled front hall. The many downstairs rooms include a library, drawingroom and diningroom with carved timber chimneypieces, a glazed sunroom with views over parkland to the Shannon and a back staircase leading to the first and the lower ground floor.
The recording studio, an office and a family room are located on this lower ground floor along with the kitchen, a wine cellar and a laundry room. The kitchen has a tiled floor, a cream-coloured four-oven Aga and cream units.
The main bedroom upstairs has a dressing room, an en suite with Jacuzzi bath and shower, and a bay window with views of the river. Two more of the five bedrooms have a shared en suite and a fifth bedroom has views of the formal gardens.
There’s a large terrace behind the house, lawns, an orchard, glasshouses and parkland with elm, beech and sycamore trees.
Eight stables
The 96sq m (1,029sq ft) guest cottage outside includes a gym, sauna and solarium; the timber-panelled loft studio apartment in the coach house has a games room, kitchenette, bedroom and shower room. The coach-house also has garaging and a large workshop. There are eight stables opening into an enclosed courtyard.
Lairakeen is an hour from Galway, and 1½ to two hours from Shannon and Dublin airports.
Kenyan-born Roger Whittaker and his wife moved to Eyrecourt, Co Galway, after selling Lairakeen before moving on to France.
