This €2.75m period mini mansion in Celbridge comes with a Hollywood pedigree plus a three-bedroom gate lodge as an optional extra

Springfield House

Address: Celbridge, Co Kildare

Asking price: €2.75m

Agent: Sherry FitzGerald Country Homes (01) 2376300 and Sherry FitzGerald Brady O’Flaherty (01) 6510000

​An inscribed granite stone marker set before Springfield House commemorates the considerable achievement of the late Morgan Sheehy — the engineer responsible for restoring the 18th century manse over a three-year period between 1989 and 1991.

With a family of six children, Morgan decided he and his wife Libby needed a suitably big abode, so the couple bought a period mini mansion on 10 acres in need of work. And with his professional background, Morgan got on to doing it himself.

Sadly he didn’t get to enjoy the wonderful home he’d provided for his wife Libby and their six children as he contracted an illness and passed on unexpectedly the following year.

Morgan had been known in the construction industry as managing director with the Dublin office of Ove N Arup, best known for its work on Dublin’s iconic Busáras. He poured his heart into his last big project, the renovation of a dream home for his family.

“We needed more space for all these babies,” Libby says. “And he saw this place and showed it to me, and I thought, ‘it’s beautiful, but it needs a lot of work’. Which it did. He got it done. It was completely renovated. It’s got eight bedrooms. They’re all en suite. I made sure of that. It is sad that Morgan missed the best years his family had here.”

Having lost her husband, Libby, who is originally from Texas, found herself living in a large country house in Ireland with a lot of children and no income. Because she hadn’t taken citizenship, getting a job was impossible, but a friend suggested setting up a bed and breakfast. Those en suite bathrooms Morgan had restored would now earn their keep.

She enjoyed running the B&B and relished the company, building quite a reputation in the process. You can still read the five-star reviews online. “We would get lots of referrals from The K Club, which is just down the road,” she says.

Then, five years ago, struck by the dual attraction of helping the housing crisis and having a more stable rental option, Libby changed tack, packing in the tourist B&B business and making the switch to providing accommodation to Kildare County Council for families with housing needs. She currently shares her home with a number of families, who would otherwise be homeless.

“I’ll be 71 in a couple of weeks,” says Libby. “I need to retire while I have my health. The B&B was fun. You got to meet so many interesting people. But with the families, it’s nice to be full every day and to have children around. It’s self-catering now obviously, so I just need to make sure the place is being kept up to scratch and the laundry is getting done and so on.”

Springfield is within walking distance of the centre of Celbridge and down the road from Barberstown Castle. Its 10 acres are largely in gardens and paddocks. There’s a main house, a courtyard and a three-bedroom gate lodge, which is available to buy for extra. The main house is just short of 6,000 sq ft.

There is an entrance hall with marble floor tiles and stained-glass doors. Off to the left of the hallway is a colourful formal dining room with large sash bay windows, a marble fireplace and chandelier. On the opposite side is the drawing room, which has a fireplace and gold-leaf ceiling rose with chandelier.

Off the back of the hallway is a conservatory with a terracotta floor and French doors leading out to the courtyard. A back hall leads to the kitchen, which is set up for catering. It has granite worktops, two large pantries and several ovens. Off the kitchen is a utility.

In the ‘west wing’ on the ground floor, is a shower room and three en suite bedrooms, plus a wine cellar. Upstairs, there are two master bedrooms, looking out over the front of the house, with bay windows and bathroom suites, as well as the three other bedrooms. On the opposite side of the courtyard are a number of outbuildings, stables and former stables, which could be converted, subject to planning.

Libby says she’ll miss space for the animals, her horses and her great Dane, and some of the trees. “The sycamore is my favourite. The big one that all the kids try to climb. There are beeches and birches too and we have an apple orchard.” There’s a huge weeping willow and a thousand year old yew.

If the Sheehys’ story had a ‘novel-ish’ flavour to it, back in the 1960s, it was home to writer Aidan Higgins, born at the house and later mentored by Samuel Beckett. It is to Higgins that Beckett gave the famous advice to “despair young and never look back”.

Scion of a wealthy copper mining family, Higgins arrived into a world of privilege, and he was sent to Clongowes to study. But the family’s fortunes plummeted and they were forced to move to more modest accommodation in Greystones. His debut novel Langrishe Go Down was loosely based on the Langrishe family, who lived at Springfield in the 19th and 20th centuries. The house itself has a starring role in the tale.

Hailed as a modernist classic, largely because it subverted the ‘big house’ novel, it was made into a 1978 film starring Jeremy Irons and Judi Dench, with a screenplay by Harold Pinter. The story is about three spinster sisters whose lives are changed when a mature German student comes to stay. It was shot at a similar house in Kilkenny and ended up banned in Ireland because of nudity. It didn’t premiere here until 2014.

Back at the real Springfield House, there is also a recently refurbished, three-bed gate lodge of about 800 sq ft. This has a large living room and kitchen, and separate access to the road. It is “available by separate negotiation” to any buyer of the main property for a price in the region of €450,000.

Springfield House costs €2.75m through joint agents Sherry FitzGerald Country Homes and Sherry FitzGerald Brady O’Flaherty. Though the Sheehys will move on, the reminder of their achievements will remain up front, set in stone.

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