Co Limerick: from €465,000Fancy living on an estate - a real country estate that is? Michael Parsonstours the glitzy showhouse at Adare Manor, where the Irish Open kicks off next week and new homes are launched.
A FOUR-POSTER bed is primped with snakeskin cushions cushions above a faux sable throw. A Brown Thomas heather-and-bergamot candle awaits the flame of passion; a sleek plasma screen is perfectly positioned to check closing prices from the ISEQ or Wall Street gliding silently along a ticker tape; and a bottle of golden cognac handily promises late-night digestifs.
The wardrobe contains pastel, metrosexual garments by Polo and Linea. (Don't golfers have the most appalling dress sense?)
A jet-massage tub - all gurgling anticipation - gleams in a bathroom stocked with toiletries by Hervé Gambs (Paris) and matching robes from The White Company (London).
Lifestyle props are oh-so-casually strewn around. "Her" jewellery and sequinned evening bag (Dunnes!); "His" cufflinks and black leather wallet (empty!).
In the pink-hued little princess bedroom next door, soft toys have already taken up residence along with "first books", including Eeyore Has a Birthday and Piglet Does A Very Grand Thing (which presumably doesn't involve him ending up as Galtee rashers). Downstairs, glittering art deco mirrors reflect a moodily contemporary taste in art.
A dining table, lit by a black glass chandelier, is set for six while Chablis "cools" on crystal ice cubes. Kitchen cupboards are stocked with Iranian pistachios, cranberry tea and a pyramid of Campbell's soup worthy of Warhol.
As PJ Mara might put it: "It's show[ house] time!" And you really have to pinch yourself. Because this is rural Limerick - not Beverly Hills.
Adare village is tablemat pretty with cutesy thatched cottages (the bane of many a jigsaw puzzler), picturesque ruined abbeys, a smattering of pubs and restaurants and an exceedingly pleasant park. But its tranquillity is spoiled by relentless and murderous traffic on the Limerick-to-Killarney through-road. There's the usual talk of a bypass - but not until 2010.
At the Dunraven Arms Hotel, which claims to be one of the small luxury hotels of the world, a sour-puss Princess Anne scowls from a framed photograph and staff can't rise to the decadent luxury of coffee at 10 to 11am on a weekday summer morning.
Directly opposite is the entrance to the very different world of Adare Manor, former home to the Earls of Dunraven, and since transformed into a seriously opulent hotel.
New lord of the manor, American businessman Thomas F Kane, has also created a golf resort on the 850 acres of wooded parkland which will next week (and for the next two years) host the Irish Open.
As happened at the K Club, Mount Juliet and other former big-house estates across the country, some of the land is being developed for private housing.
A complex of 46 rather humdrum tax-incentive golf lodge holiday homes have already been sold to private clients at a cost of €1.2 million each.
For those seeking permanent homes, 19 sites costing from €650,000 to €1.2 million have also been flogged - mostly to Irish buyers. Architects and builders are anthill-busy creating "dream houses" for clients who include a Limerick developer building a 1,394sq m (15,000sq ft) oligarch's pad at an estimated cost of €12 million.
And then there's The Village. Launched today by Sherry Fitz-gerald O'Malley, the development offers 39 houses for sale with prices from €465,000 - for a three-bedroom 125sq m (1,350sq ft) mid-terrace townhouse - to a neat €1 million - for a three-storey, five-bedroom 287sq m (3,085sq ft) detached house.
There are nine house types with fancy names like The Kenry and The Lavington and showhouses are now available for viewing by appointment.
Each house comes with an individual membership of the golf club (worth €35,000). There are, as yet unspecified, annual service charges and the yearly golf club fee is €3,000.
The houses were designed by architects Michael Healy & Partners and built by McInerney Homes. The showhouses have been "dressed" by interior decorators Cotton Box (Galway) and Ventura Design (Dublin) who could clearly satisfy even the pickiest denizens of Wisteria Lane.
On one level this is an unremarkable, rather bland upmarket housing estate. But of course, you're buying into a seductive "lifestyle".
Access is via "an imposing portered limestone entrance" and "homeowners will benefit from a 24-hour roaming monitoring service". Which translates as round-the-clock security.
This is a classic "gated community" in utterly sanitised surroundings where men can play golf while trophy wives enjoy the Elemis spa.
Or the other way round. Jennifer Haugh, the spa manager, says "guys often go for facials", which start at €80. Limerick city is just 15 minutes away and Shannon Airport, 35.
The loquacious agent, Des O'Malley (yes, he's a chip off the old PD block) believes the houses will appeal to "trader-uppers from the city", downsizers, future employees of a 100-bed private hospital which is to be built in the grounds of the estate and, obviousl, golfers.
O'Malley believes Adare is the best golf course in Ireland. It is "not pretentious - unlike the K Club" and is "way ahead of Mount Juliet". He adds "a lot of people think they live in exclusive developments but this is real thing".
If you've read Angela's Ashes or recall being terrorised by the petrifying, sermonising Redemptorists - then take a look. You'll be gobsmacked.
