:An 18th century mansion on 47 acres, in the heart of Co Kilkenny's bloodstock belt, is for sale for €1 million to include a completed holiday home development in the grounds.
Duninga House, near the village of Goresbridge, is the former home of the Mullins family whose son Willie is one of the country’s leading trainers.
The estate is being sold on the instructions of receivers at accountancy firm KPMG, after its owner, Cork developer Oliver O’Dwyer, failed to complete plans to convert it into a luxury hotel and tax-break holiday home destination.
The €1 million price tag includes 14 newly-constructed holiday homes with Section 23 tax breaks; numerous stables and outbuildings; a derelict gate-lodge; and attractive woodland. It also includes exclusive fishing rights and river frontage onto a gorgeous, navigable stretch of the Barrow.
Even with the downturn in property prices this is an astonishing price for assets of this quality. And thereby hangs a tale which is about to become very familiar. The sales brochure unexpectedly quotes Thackeray, the English novelist and travel writer who serendipitously visited Duninga over 150 years ago and wrote enthusiastically of arriving via “a pretty avenue of trees leading to the pleasure grounds of the house – a handsome building commanding noble views of river, mountains and plantations”.
Not much has changed. But the writer’s next comment – which does not appear in the brochure – was uncannily prescient: “The gentlemen who . . . owns the house, like many other proprietors in Ireland, found his mansion too expensive for his means, and has relinquished it.”
History now repeats itself because Duninga, which was acquired by its developer owner four years ago, must now be sold, with h joint agents Savills and Dominic J Daly Auctioneers of Cork seeking “serious expressions of interest no later than October 12th”.
Although 14 holiday homes have been built in a former walled garden, the hotel project has stalled.
The renovation of the 997sq m (10,732sq ft) 14-bedroom house is described as “quite advanced” and outside there are abandoned foundations and walls – constructed to first floor level – for a new block which was to provide 23 extra bedrooms.
According to the estate agents handling the private treaty sale, suitable uses for Duninga include use as a private residence, completion of the hotel concept or adapting the property for use as a language school, nursing home, retirement village, or, indeed, its reinstatement as a commercial stud. The hotel project was always viewed with some surprise by local people. Although Kilkenny city is just 12 miles away, the area, while noted for its wonderful scenery, is not a major tourist destination. It is better known in horsey circles – the famous Donohoe horse sales take place a short furlong away and Gowran Park Racecourse involves a drive of just three miles.
Not a single one of the 14 Section 23 holiday homes – which were initially launched at prices between €412,000 and €545,000 – was sold. Those prices seem almost surreal now.
A visit to Duninga today is not unlike visiting Pompeii. It’s as if a terrible and sudden catastrophe had taken place in the middle of a working day and the builders had just dropped their tools on the spot and fled.
You half expect to come across a yellow fluorescent-jacketed labourer hunkered down with his jumbo breakfast roll and a copy of the Daily Star – frozen forever in the lava and ashes of the boom meltdown.
A few miles away, in the even more remote townland of Ullard, the Zoe Group’s Liam Carroll has also built a small complex of holiday homes.
He had also applied for planning permission to build a 144-bedroom three-storey hotel, a car-park for 252 vehicles and a leisure centre on adjacent land. The fields lie empty – save for a flock of sheep grazing amidst the thistles. A sign on the gate reads: ‘Beware of Bull’.
