Get a good life cycle by Waterford Greenway with €1.2m period home purchase

IN ITS almost 220 years of history, Kilmeaden House has seen major shifts in agriculture and land uses, politics, religion, statehood, the arrival and departure of a rail service, the subsequent arrival of the Waterford Greenway as a way of ‘recycling’ the old transport infrastructure, a village bypass and, yet, has only had three sets of owners in all of that time.

Originally built as a Church of Ireland rectory (the Anglican St Mary’s Church is nearby), and near the village of Kilmeaden on the other side of the N25’s Carrick Road roundabout, six miles from Waterford city, Kilmeaden House was later owned by the Congreve family whose own grand home and grounds were in six generations of Congreve hands from 1760 to 2011: Mount Congreve is now in State care, with house and gardens a major visitor draw in Munster and, indeed nationally and internationally.

So, change comes slow around these parts, home to enormous piles like Kilmeaden’s Whitfield House and Mount Congreve.

A bit more change did come to Kilmeaden House: for example, it served as a comfortable country house guest accommodation business for a number of years, with slivers of remnants of those accommodating business days still here, in things like en suite bathrooms, and fire-rated doors, amid considerable retained period era decorative integrity and features.

Might it go back to earning a crust again? There’s business passing its door along the hugely popular Waterford Greenway, as well as having the quaint narrow gauge Waterford Suir Valley Railway running from near Kilmeaden House’s 12 acres of private grounds to Bilberry in the city.

The 1806-rooted ex rectory is now set to find its fourth set of owners, listed for sale with Eileen Neville of Lisney Sotheby’s International Realty with a €1.195m AMV.

That’s for a 462 sq m/5,000 sq ft comfortable, asymmetric four-bay Georgian original with well-proportioned, period-era appropriate reception rooms, modestly-scaled fanlights over doors front and back, service wings, a gardener’s cottage, stone outbuildings, and lean-to glasshouse, plus paddocks, all up a long, private approach avenue.

Down the years, it has been gently nudged along, whilst keeping faith with essential features such as sash windows (some, upstairs, in an unusual three-over-six pane arrangement,), updated plumbing and bathrooms with heritage style sanitary ware, with effective central heating adding to the attraction of open fires with original fireplaces.

The spec includes an alarm and CCTV, as likely to be appreciated by private buyers as business-minded ones as well key attributes like location so close to the city and Greenway, private grounds and scope for hobby farming/horses, lifestyle leisure and more.

Lisney’s Ms Neville says heritage, history and modernity are here in harmony, and the various outbuildings speak of its past as a working estate, and add to the possibilities for future uses, in just a fourth set of hands in over 200 years.

VERDICT: Neither too big nor too small, and steeped in local ecclesiastical and ‘big house’ Congreve family history, Kilmeaden House is ready for its next cycle of ownership next to the Waterford Greenway.