Heroes Of The Emerald Isle

These two excellent Irish estates have histories to write home about

- Penny Churchill

The sale of two grand Irish country houses—for the first time in their history—reveals that, for the families who created them, life in ‘the big house’ wasn’t just about horses, hunting and wild house parties, although such activities were ever a serious part of the traditional AngloIrish country scene.

Joint agents Jordan Auctioneers in Newbridge, Co Kildare (00 353 45 433 550), and Knight Frank in Dublin (00 353 16 342 466) and London (020–7861 1069) quote a guide price of €3.5 million for the picturesque, 341-acre Fortgranite estate, near Baltinglass, Co Wicklow, close to the county borders of Carlow and Kildare. home to the Dennis family since 1810, the estate is being sold by the family of the late Capt Piers Dennis, who died on January 19, 2016.

The Dennis family was already well established on the Irish social register when, in 1810, Thomas Stratford Dennis married his cousin, Katherine Saunders, of Saunder’s Grove, Co Wicklow, receiving, as part of his marriage settlement, a small estate in nearby Baltinglass, including the original Fortgranite house, built by George Pendred in 1730. Dennis extended the house and enlarged the estate, which passed, on his death in 1870, aged 89, to his eldest son, Meade Caulfield Dennis.

Educated at Trinity College, Dublin, Meade was a respected JP for Carlow, Wicklow and Kerry and was already 60 years old when he moved to Fortgranite with his wife, Margaret, and their seven children. During the next 21 years, until his death in 1891, he remodelled the house and planted an arboretum, which includes some of the finest rhododendrons and specimen trees to be found anywhere in Ireland.