A 19th century country house in an Arts and Crafts village on the outskirts of Kilkenny is on the market for €1.2m. Oak Lodge, which has five bedrooms and lots of family rooms, will be auctioned on July 30th. Emma Cullinan reports

A very special country house on the outskirts of Kilkenny city sits in an Arts and Crafts model village constructed at the end of the 19th century by Earl and Lady Desart.

Oak Lodge, which has five bedrooms and lots of family rooms, will be auctioned on July 30th by Property Partners Fogarty, which is guiding €1.2 million. The guide price wasn't easy to come up with, as houses over the million mark are still rare in this part of the country and rarer still are houses like this one.

Oak Lodge sits on around an acre and a half, which includes a tarmac drive to the front, large garden to the rear, and a meadow to one side.

It is a property that will appeal either to someone who wants a large home near Kilkenny city, a person who wants the opportunity to own a good example of Arts and Crafts architecture, or a property developer with an eye on the potential of the meadow.

This apparently did have planning permission once for a number of houses but it has expired.

A housing development would not be in keeping with the rest of the model village in which this house sits: such villages have carefully positioned, generously-sized homes, interspersed with green areas.

Houses like this are rare in Ireland as the architecture is essentially English "home counties" - the nearest to this is the "castle" on Lambay Island, off the coast of Dublin, designed by the renowned architect Edwin Lutyens.

Oak Lodge's architect, William Scott, was a keen follower of William Morris, who railed again the industrial age and proposed craftsmanship. This tied in with the Celtic Revival movement, which wanted the same thing: the revitalisation of traditional hand-crafts.

Oak Lodge bears the hallmarks and hands-on approach of the style. The house has been built using natural, local materials, it has exposed timber ceilings (to show the craftsmanship of the house) and slated roofs which level out towards the overhangs to slow the path of rain.

The chimneys are of a generous size, as are the brickwork fireplaces. The windows are leaded, harking back to the mediaeval age of craftsmanship, as does the stained-glass porthole beside the front door. Outer walls are dashed with lime and pebble.

It appears that the original house was L-shaped, with an extension that is very much in keeping on the road side, added soon after it was built. A further extension was later added to the rear of the building, overlooking the garden. On the ground floor this houses a huge diningroom, with a table that seats 14.

A room beside this with a generous bay window could either be used as a study or bedroom.

From this room, a naturally-lit corridor leads past the front door to a livingroom at the other end of the house, with a vaulted ceiling and lots of windows, including a bay overlooking the meadow. The kitchen, complete with Aga, runs along the back of the house.

At the top of the stairs is a small bathroom, lined with man-made sheeting, and along a corridor are two bedrooms.

The corridor turns to the left, leading to a delightful bedroom with low-level windows that bring in copious amounts of light. Beyond this is the main bedroom with an en suite.

A buyer seeking modern comforts would probably need to spend a good deal on refurbishing this home. Someone who's keen on the rambling country-house lifestyle will want to pare back some of the less-wonderful decor and see what lies beneath.

While the kitchen and bathrooms need an overhaul, the bedrooms have been decorated in keeping with the period, with either William Morris (or William Morris-style) wallpaper.

The main bedroom has the type of crafted timber bed also in keeping with the style - not for sale with the house but an indication of how to decorate this home in sympathy with the period.