Perched on an elevated site overlooking the Clare countryside, and the mountains of Kerry on clear days, vistas from this new house also take in the home of Munster rugby at Thomond Park in Limerick city.
The owners called the home Swallows Hill, as you can sometimes hear the migratory call of birds’ song from the 0.9-acre grounds.
Purchased by its builder-owner in 2009, it was just to shell and core: “It was watertight but wasn’t even at first-fix stage,” the owner says, who has now placed the fully finished house on the market through Sherry FitzGerald, seeking €780,000.
Don’t be fooled by thinking this is your average country bungalow. Extending to 390 sq m (4,198sq ft), the property offers plenty of space, which is first evident from the scale of the front hallway.
To put it into context, the main bedroom suite measures about 93sq m (1,000sq ft), the size of some two-bed homes. Here, a dressingroom has plenty of space for those with large sartorial collections, and the 20sq m en suite bathroom would give any five-star hotel a run for its money.
It is listed as having five bedrooms in total, but as three of these lie on the ground floor (so will suit multigenerational living) they could also be used as further reception rooms if needed. It’s all a moveable feast and could even be split into a self-contained unit if needed.
As it stands, a large kitchen and breakfastroom, which opens to one of two south-facing patios, sits adjacent to a fine dual-aspect livingroom, with another reception room upstairs in use as a home office.
Its Ber is A3, thanks to 150ml pumped insulation plus an additional 50ml internal insulation slabs. It has an efficient heat pump (with five zones) and underfloor heating guarantees no cold toes on winter mornings.
Despite having a Co Clare address, a 15-minute walk over a nearby footbridge crossing the river Shannon will have you in the lovely village of Castleconnell (Co Limerick), where there are the charming public houses of Bradshaw’s and Guerin’s. It’s also close to the Angler’s Rest in Clonlara, where you can sip a pint, read the paper and look out at soothing waters of Doonass Falls.
The property, which is wired for electric gates, is about a 20-minute drive from Limerick city centre, so really has the best of both worlds: all the charm and peace of the countryside within an easy commute to the city.
