Partry House is one of the oldest houses in the west of Ireland and dates back to 1677, when it was home to the Blosse Lynch family for 300 years.
Henry Blosse Lynch, a mid shipman in the Indian Navy, led an expedition up the Tigris to Baghdad for the first time in navigational history. He is forever immortalised in present day Iran, as the old road through the Zagros mountains to Isfahan bears his name as does Lynch's Corner, a street in Baghdad.
Lorraine O’ Donoghue, the current owner of the 248-acre Party Estate, purchased the property in 1995, which she describes as being in a state of “benign neglect”.
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While repairing the diningroom floor, the joists were discovered to be constructed out of ships timbers with roman numerals thought to date from the 14th century.
While replastering the house slit windows were revealed in the internal walls. It emerged that old retaining castle walls from 1548 were incorporated when the house was built in 1677.
O'Donoghue is moving on to restore a C17 property in Wicklow and has placed the estate on the market with joint agent Savills and Tuohy O'Toole with an asking price of €1.78 million.
Partry Estate is situated on the shores of Lough Carra, commemorated in George Moore's novel The Lake . A marl lake, it allows anglers to fish at night during the summer due to the white base reflecting the moonlight.
The 725sq m (7,803sq ft) house has a modest character with understated elegance and has two wings which were later additions to the original property. The rooms are warm and perfectly proportioned with high ceilings, one of which in the diningroom has original frieze depicting local curiosities.
All the doorways have deep architraves and there is a sense of sturdiness to the property which has nine bedrooms, five of which are en suite. O’Donoghue had let the east wing, which has its own kitchen and could be used as a self-contained unit if new owners opened their doors to guests.
Included in the sale, besides the main house, is a new 215sq m (2,314sq ft) gate lodge, a boathouse, a herd of 100 wild fallow deer. The grounds have rare wild orchids, an abundance of wild mushrooms, pine marten, badgers, a lake full of brown trout, not to mention the 248 acres of woodland with birds who have their own census, and also included is former resident Arthur Lynch, the friendly ghost.
