Historic Limerick home with a subterranean mystery hits the market for €1.5m

A 200-year-old Limerick property with a storied history in  Ballywilliam, Rathkeale has come on the market with an asking price €1.5m.

The Old Rectory in Rathkeale sits at the heart of a thriving, cultivated demesne, situated on 28 acres. 

The beautifully proportioned classical four-bedroom home is “a house fit for a bishop” writes Dr Judith Hill, heritage consultant and architectural historian.

“The Old Rectory was built in 1819 for Charles Warburton, the son of a Protestant bishop, and the grandson of a blind Catholic harpist. The architect is unrecorded, but Warburton more than likely engaged James Pain, the talented English architect who had recently moved to Ireland to work with John Nash, to design his new house,” said Ms Hill

The house would have been run by servants who had their own stairs and lived and worked in the wing and the vast basement.

“The present owner, who grew up in the house, has restored and fully serviced the house without sacrificing its historic integrity. The house has been modernised but has escaped modernism,” writes Dr Hill.

Running parallel to the house is a tunnel with an abrupt end which Ms Hill describes as a “subterranean mystery”.

“Perhaps a place to retreat to; a reminder of early nineteenth-century Ireland when there was unrest in the countryside and when, in 1807, the bishop, Warburton's father, was shot at in Limerick. The steel-plated ground-floor shutters and the bars that secure them are a witness to those troubled times. 

“The patina of time has been respected in almost all interventions made in recent years.”

Ms Hill said the tremendous repair work carried out over thirty years extends to the outbuildings, yards and gardens. 

“The impression of care is palpable when you enter the red-painted gates of the avenue: the rose under the young trees, the bee hives towards the house. 

“This love extends to the stables where large-scale renovation ensures a structurally stable roof composed of old and new timbers, a rebuilt stair and invisible steel beams for a building that retains its rough walls and dusty atmosphere: a building saved for the future.

“The life that is palpable in this house extends to the gardens.”

Ms Hill said in a house where gold gilds the Corinthian columns while even after a thorough overhaul the stable retains the depredations of age, it is clear that the place has been loved for what it is.

“This is unusual and precious.  The Old Rectory and the land that surrounds it waits for the next chapter in its existence, confident that it has the strength to remain old in the modern world.” 

The property was brought  to the market by Eileen Neville, of Lisney / Sotheby’s International Realty. There is sure to be both local, national and international interest in such a unique property.

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