luxury houses for sale County Limerick, Ireland

Situated on a beautifully landscaped site of approximately 0.23 acres, Ardnaculla is an exceptional detached family residence extending to 4,582.5 sq. ft., located just off the prestigious North Circular Road, one of Limerick's most sought-after residential addresses. Designed and finished to an uncompromising standard, this remarkable home combines timeless elegance with cutting-edge technology, creating a residence perfectly suited to modern family living and sophisticated entertaining. A magnificent entrance hall immediately showcases the quality of craftsmanship, featuring polished porcelain tiled flooring, a Portuguese marble fireplace with gas fire and a bespoke solid oak staircase beneath a striking feature light. To one side is a luxurious cinema room with 7.1 surround sound, solid oak flooring and a Portuguese marble fireplace, while opposite is an elegant formal living room centred around a further Portuguese marble fireplace. Double doors lead to a spacious dining room, ideal for entertaining, which flows effortlessly into a bright south-facing sunroom overlooking the beautifully landscaped gardens. At the heart of the home is a superb bespoke kitchen featuring Silestone quartz worktops, extensive cabinetry and premium integrated NEFF appliances, including double ovens, steam oven, microwave combination oven, built-in coffee machine and warming drawer. A generous pantry provides additional storage, while the adjoining dining and family living area with gas fire opens directly onto the gardens, creating a seamless connection between indoor and outdoor living. The ground floor also incorporates a large utility room with shower facilities, a versatile bedroom or playroom, a home office and a separate entrance, making this section ideal for guest accommodation, extended family or a nanny suite. Upstairs are five beautifully appointed bedrooms. The luxurious principal suite enjoys a spacious walk-in wardrobe and an impressive ensuite with oversized bath. Two further bedrooms also feature walk-in wardrobes, while every bedroom benefits from its own stylish ensuite, providing exceptional comfort and privacy. The second floor offers two additional rooms currently used as a yoga studio and storage, easily adapted as a gym, games room or home office. Ardnaculla also excels in energy efficiency and technology, with thermostatically controlled geothermal heating and cooling, a sophisticated multi-room audio system and Clipsal intelligent lighting throughout. Outside, electric gates open to a generous driveway with ample parking. The landscaped rear gardens have been thoughtfully designed for entertaining, featuring a stunning granite sunken seating area wired for audio and plumbed for a gas fire pit, together with irrigation, lighting and multiple seating areas. The exceptional leisure facilities include a swimming pool complex with adjoining gym, sauna, lounging area and hot tub. Large bifold doors open onto elegant granite terraces, creating an effortless flow between the house and its spectacular outdoor spaces. Ideally positioned just minutes from Limerick City Centre, the North Circular Road offers convenient access to excellent schools including Villiers, Ard Scoil Rís and JFK, together with shops, cafés, restaurants and sporting amenities. The nearby M7 and N18 provide excellent connectivity to Shannon Airport, Cork and Dublin, completing the appeal of this outstanding family home.

The Old Rectory sits at the heart of a thriving, cultivated demesne situated on 28 acres. The beautifully proportioned classical house addresses a lawn surrounded by trees. It is not quite what it seems. The façade projects the modest comfort and good taste appropriate for a country rectory, but inside, it is a house fit for a bishop. Radiating from the house are the wing, basement, outbuildings, yards, walled garden and demesne; all supported a life lived on a magnificent scale. The Old Rectory was built in 1819 for Charles Warburton, the son of a Protestant bishop, and the grandson of a blind Catholic harpist. The architect is unrecorded, but Warburton more than likely engaged James Pain, the talented English architect who had recently moved to Ireland to work with John Nash, to design his new house. Other rectories with similar elevations would have contained two or maybe three rooms on the ground floor, four modest-sized bedrooms and a basement for the servants. That the Old Rectory was far grander is immediately apparent on entry into the hall, where the gently calibrated stair rises from under a broad elliptical arch supported by gilded Corinthian columns. The large reception rooms – morning room, drawing room, dining room – each with long shuttered windows, panelled doors and elegant ceiling plasterwork – interconnect, bringing a wonderful sense of spaciousness to the house. There was also a library. Upstairs there were three large bedrooms each with a dressing room. Such a house was run by servants who had their own stair and lived and worked in the wing and the vast basement. The present owner, who grew up in the house, has restored and fully serviced the house without sacrificing its historic integrity. The house has been modernized but has escaped modernism. Measures taken to provide contemporary services are discreet. Warm air heats the house through ducts concealed in the attic and basement. The house has been rewired. Fibre-optic cable for highspeed broadband has been installed, and there is WIFI coverage to all the buildings on the estate. Running parallel to the house is a tunnel with an abrupt end. A subterranean mystery. Perhaps a place to retreat to; a reminder of early nineteenth-century Ireland when there was unrest in the countryside and when, in 1807, the bishop, Warburton’s father, was shot at in Limerick. The steel-plated ground-floor shutters and the bars that secure them are a witness to those troubled times. The tremendous repair work carried out over thirty years extends to the outbuildings, yards and gardens. The impression of care is palpable when you enter the red-painted gates of the avenue: the rose under the young trees, the bee hives towards the house. This love extends to the stables where large-scale renovation ensures a structurally stable roof composed of old and new timbers, a rebuilt stair and invisible steel beams for a building that retains its rough walls and dusty atmosphere: a building saved for the future. The life that is palpable in this house extends to the gardens. In the orchard traditional apple tree scions have been grafted onto existing rootstocks and Shropshire sheep graze the grass. The woods have been extended with plantings of hazel, beech, birch, and saplings inoculated with truffles planted ten years ago. The organic-certified field to the north of the house is grazed by Droimeann cattle, a native Irish breed. Barn owls and many other birds thrive in this diverse landscape. In a house where gold gilds the Corinthian columns while even after a thorough overhaul the stable retains the depredations of age, it is clear that the place has been loved for what it is. This is unusual and precious. The Old Rectory and the land that surrounds it waits for the next chapter in its existence, confident that it has the strength to remain old in the modern world. Text by Dr. Judith Hill