The owners of this six-bedroom house in Celbridge liked their previous Georgian home so much that they decided to copy it with the help of an architect who specialises in Georgian design, writes Rose Doyle

ALTHOUGH A youthful seven years old, Ashleigh House, Corbally, Celbridge, Co Kildare has the graceful proportions, high ceilings, space and light of a Georgian house built in the period.

This is because the owners so loved their original Georgian home on nearby Corbally Stud that they retained a piece of land when they sold up and had the architect John O'Connell design them a new home in the Georgian style.

O'Connell, who has a special interest in Georgian buildings, did them proud.

The light in Ashleigh pours through up to 50 long, sash windows; the drawingroom alone, which runs the length of the house (and has a pair of period marble fireplaces) has seven windows.

There are views of the rolling green of the Co Kildare countryside from almost every window.

Space too comes in generous amounts in Ashleigh House: the sweeping curve of a wide staircase in the large entrance hallway leads on and up to a bright first floor landing.

This is big enough to double up as a reading room and library or, its purpose in an earlier century, a minstrel's gallery.

Ashleigh House, on three floors and named after the ash trees by its gates, has a floor area of 505.6sq m (5,443sq.ft) in which there are six bedrooms, three reception rooms, kitchen and breakfastroom.

A mews house across the yard with ground floor garage and first floor living accommodation is also for sale, as are 16 acres of land laid out in three paddocks. Coonan Real Estate Alliance will auction everything as one lot on 12th June, and has set an AMV of €4.5 million.

The dining and breakfast rooms make the most of Ashleigh's location. The diningroom, which has an arch specially designed to take a sideboard, has wide French doors opening onto granite steps to the patio and paddock with, on a surrounding trellis, a wisteria.

Another French door opens from the curve of a bay window to similar steps from the breakfastroom.

The kitchen has old style presses, marble worktops, centre isle and a two-oven Aga.

The main, first floor en suite bedroom has four windows; its dressingroom has two and from both there are panoramic views.

There are three other bedrooms on this floor while two attic-style bedrooms, along with a playroom and storage, are on a second floor.

Gardens all around are landscaped and hedged.