Courtown Demesne is back on the market – at €11 million below its original asking price, writes EDEL MORGAN

COURTOWN Demesne, a substantial 19th-century estate in Kilcock, Co Kildare with a colourful history, is back on the market asking in excess of €10 million – a dramatic €11 million price drop on its asking price last year when it failed to sell.

Back then Paddy Power was offering 4/11 odds that it would sell for that price and 15/8 that it would fetch over €26 million.

The massive Georgian pile – a five-bay house on 386 acres of parkland with gates at Courtown and Kilcock – was once the seat of the Aylmer family, who built the main portion of the current house in 1815 with a grant after the previous house was destroyed in the 1798 rebellion. The estate was rented by the film director John Huston for a period in the mid-1950s before he went on to buy St Clerans in Craughwell in Galway. The story goes that while Huston was at Courtown he entertained Gregory Peck, Katharine Hepburn and John Wayne. One wonders how Huston and his family adjusted to the scale of the place – 1,250 sq m (13,454 sq ft) – which has a dizzying number of rooms arranged over three levels of the main house and a wing.

As well as two gate lodges, the sale includes a swimming pool and pool house, a farmyard with workshops and sheds, a polo yard with a thatched cottage, 15 stables and staff rooms, an inner courtyard with coach houses, offices, a staff cottage, stables and feed rooms and an outer courtyard with more stables, a workroom and a 12-bay barn. And of course the long, sweeping driveway between the two entrance gates.

The grandeur of the main reception rooms at hall level in the house is jaw-dropping, although the lower ground level and wing rooms are less formal.

The current owners, an Irish family, have lived there since 1981 but have decided to retire from farming. The land has been in pasture for years and the estate run as a stud, equestrian and beef farm.

Knight Frank and REA Coonan are joint agents for the house, which comes with planning permission for a high-tech business park on 40 acres together with a 126-bedroom hotel with conference facilities and a golf course and 72 holiday homes – although, given the economic climate, it’s more likely that a new owner would buy it purely as a private residence.

The entrance hall is a spectacular, if slightly eclectic mix of full-on elegance and hunting lodge chic, with wood panelling around the staircase, a dark wood beamed ceiling and gazelle and other animal heads mounted on the walls. The sweeping mahogany staircase is made for anyone who loves a grand entrance.

The finest rooms in the house are the morning room and drawing-room, separated by an ante-room with a velvet love seat. When you enter the morning room from the hall and look down the length of these three interconnecting rooms, the effect is a mesmerising melange of pale yellows, whites with lashings of gilt. The rooms are airy and bright with views of flat parkland through five large sash windows.

As well as a massive diningroom with red flock wallpaper, thre’s a less formal library. A kitchen in the wing area is a little dated but is a good size.

Upstairs off the main landing there are six bedrooms, some of which are very grand with four poster and half-tester beds.

The main bedroom suite has a dressing-room, a sitting-room and two en suite bathrooms, as well as five further bedrooms and three bathrooms.

In the wing there’s a self-contained corridor of rooms including a big living-room, a dining area, a room wired for a kitchenette and a double bedroom with another room off it, which could be used as a dressing room. The lower ground floor opens up another trove of rooms, incluiding two games rooms, the larger of which currently houses an enormous snooker table and a bar. At this level there’s also a smaller billiards room, a wine cellar, playroom, an office, gym, a plethora of storage rooms, a laundry room and a wine cellar.

Also on the estate is a polo field, tennis court and croquet lawn.

Courtown Demesne, Co Kildare

Asking: Excess of €10 million

Agent: Knight Frank and REA Coonan