The Steward’s House in Monart, Co Wexford, was built in the early 1800s as part of the Monart estate established by the Cookman family on a rolling, lush 6,000 acres outside Enniscorthy in 1740. When the developer Liam Griffin bought Monart in 2002 to transform it into a top-flight spa destination hotel, some of the Cookmans moved into the Steward’s House.
When the current owner bought the property in 2019, it was in sore need of restoration. She spent weekends sleeping on the floor as she began extensive renovations, including rewiring, reroofing, replumbing and fixing the broken well. The attics in both the house and the wing were heavily insulated. “With Monart on one side and a working farm on the other, all I could hear was birdsong, all I could see was light,” she says.
Her efforts have resulted in a wonderfully renewed historic home that now, thanks to her eclectic taste and use of Farrow & Ball shades throughout, resembles a hunting lodge in the highlands of Scotland and is in excellent condition. The four-bed 232sq m (2,497 sq ft) house, with an E1 Ber, would make a great family home, with the extensive gardens, patios and paddocks on more than half an acre.
What used to be a relatively small two-up-two-down has been added to over the years with extensions to the side and the back, and what she calls the west wing has sufficient space for a gym, an office and guest accommodation. Its three rooms and a bathroom have been renovated.
Entering the house, there is a library on the right, painted in Farrow & Ball’s Hague blue. The deer’s head over the fireplace is on offer pending negotiations, says the owner, and the floors are pitch pine. Even during the day, you can sense what a warm, inviting space this would be at night with the curtains drawn against the dark.
Double doors open into a large, bright kitchen and diner, which opens on to a small courtyard. The kitchen and diner is long and has room for imaginative reconfigurations to create extra office or play areas. The drawingroom features an antique fireplace and the same pitch-pine floors as the library. This is also a sumptuous room, full of art and antiques and a cosy retreat on a winter’s evening.
The stairs split three ways on the landing, an effect that, along with the sloped ceilings, adds charm. The main bedroom is large with two windows and an en suite. There are three more large bedrooms on this floor and a family bathroom covered in Grosfillex, a type of laminate tile that is a breeze to keep clean.
The garden now has thousands of bulbs and dozens of trees. She cites the perfect southerly orientation and good soil for the thriving fig, apple, plum and pear trees that provided such a glut of fruit last autumn, she was giving it away. An old cast-iron bath beside the stone wall of the wing is filled with tomato plants, which thrive in the gentle Wexford air.
The owner is moving to be closer to family and young grandchildren but predicts there will be tears as she leaves. She is immensely proud of what she has accomplished. She has now placed the Steward’s House on the market through Kehoe & Associates Wexford, seeking €595,000.
The property is 4km outside Enniscorthy, with good transport links to Dublin, and just over an hour from the city via the N11.
