The Abbey Leix Estate located near the Laois Kilkenny border is one of the priciest properties to come on the market in 2019. Coming in at a cool €20m and with an international selling focus, the estate is comprised of over 1,120 acres, a mansion, and 10 lodges dispersed across the property.

Some 600 acres of the total lands are comprised of forestry, with the rest made up of grassland and gardens.

Forestry at the Abbey Leix Estate Co Laois.

The estate is positioned within one of the most notable remaining ancient woodland and extensive frontage to the River Nore.

The woods on Park Hill across the river from the house are among the last surviving remnants of Ireland’s ancient oak forests. One tree, the oldest oak in Ireland still survives in its woods.

Abbey Leix owes its origins to religious settlement, and specifically to the French Cistercian monks who came to Ireland in the mid-12th-century. The present estate evolved out of the monastery’s granges, woods and fields.

The de Vesci family fashioned this impressive estate during their ownership between 1675 and 1995.

The residence

This 18th-century Irish mansion benefited from a full restoration back in 1995 when a new state dining room was created.

The house is a 26,910sqft three-storey classical mansion of seven bays. The arrangement of rooms is elegant and simple, with three major rooms to the front. There is a deep hall, with a screen of columns separating it from the east-west running staircase, hall and corridor. Although grand, the northwest corner of the accommodation was redesigned to provide a new family room, kitchen and butler’s pantry.

The redesign created a 21st century family home with an appropriate balance between comfort and informality on the one hand and grandeur for entertaining and the display of art on the other.

Stud farm

A stud farm is positioned within the original farmstead and includes a range of cut-stone outbuildings. A principal yard, complete with a clock tower, was built of local limestone in 1822.

A separate farmyard has a range of farm sheds with the farmland providing good grazing pastures. The limestone soil is ideal for rearing and keeping bloodstock. It is well laid out in well-sheltered and gently undulating fields and paddocks.