Historic Wicklow demesne and stud sells for €10m

Having been first offered to the market at a guide price of €15 million back in May 2018, the sprawling Grangecon Demesne and Stud in Grangecon, Co Wicklow, has been sold for just over €10 million.

An examination of the Property Price Register shows that the sales of the 256-acre estate’s principal residence, a restored and extended five-bedroom Tudor-style house of 1,199sq m (12,905sq ft), and its three-bedroom manager’s house were completed on May 18th at prices of €4.8 million and €300,000 respectively. With the register only recording the sums paid for residences and curtilages of up to one acre, this would suggest that the estate’s remaining 254 acres of land were sold for the equivalent of €19,291 per acre. The sale of the Wicklow property was handled on behalf its outgoing owner, the Californian currency and commodity trader Rick Barnes, by joint agents Goffs Property and Coonan Property. The purchaser is understood to be an Irish businessman.

Quite apart from the 33 per cent discount they secured on the estate’s €15 million guide price, Grangecon’s new owner will benefit greatly from the improvements made to it over the years.

Speaking to The Irish Times when the property first came for sale in 2018, its then owner, Rick Barnes, recalled how he had bought it in 2000 after attending the Irish Derby.

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“It was the land and the people that attracted me to Grangecon – at the time it was a cattle farm and needed a huge amount of work. It took 2½ years to renovate the property, and a further year to turn the estate into a stud farm,” he said.

Barnes transformed the house, part of which was destroyed in a fire in the 20th century (a wooden door lintel with the inscription 1576 remains), into a lavish residence that has seven reception rooms and five bedroom suites.

In addition, the property includes a formal walled garden, a chapel, three period gate lodges, the aforementioned manager’s house and a groom’s apartment above the stables offering a total of 1,569sq m (16,888sq ft) of additional accommodation.

Barnes, a noted horse breeder, transformed the dairy farm into a stud, with the addition of 33 post and railed paddocks, 56 stable boxes between the mares, yearlings, and foaling yards complete with rubberised flooring and CCTV.