The Old Rectory, Ballywilliam, Co. Limerick, V94Y6HV

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. No rooms have been subdivided. A dressing room has been converted to a bedroom, and two dressing rooms into ensuite bathrooms. The ground-floor room in the wing is now a spacious kitchen. The entire basement seems untouched. However, there is a working wine cellar, kept damp-free by an unusual man-sized cavity in the wall, and the boilers are situated here. 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 patina of time has been respected in almost all interventions made in recent years. The external walls were recently limewashed over the existing lime plaster. The floors were painstakingly stripped rather than sanded so that the unevenness of timber that has been there for 200 years is still evident. New materials have been chosen with reference to the existing fabric; hardwood for eaves repairs, softwood for the back stair joinery. Other materials perform well in a large old house. The Earthborn clay paint used in all the bedrooms, the stair and elsewhere downstairs, allows the walls to breathe, while its matt texture complements the slate fireplaces and fills the spaces with a sense of serenity. 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