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Until the Georgian period Ireland was constantly in conflict and ‘big houses’ were almost all defensive castles, towers or heavily fortified dwellings. Next comes the truly unique Jacobean design because Ireland has almost no big houses from this period. The advantage of having a Jacobean cut sandstone mansion in pieces are surprisingly many, not least the fact that cutting that stone today would be far too expensive to be practical. The original is thought to have been built before the Normans by the Saxon chief Aethelwald, the man who gave the Altwoodley locale its name "We also have the original oak support beams stored indoors (around 50) most of which would still be fit for purpose today," says Steve Mitchell "We had them checked by a dendrochronologist who dated them at latest to the 1400s, so they might have been reused from the original medieval house.” “We also have the original oak support beams stored indoors (around 50) most of which would still be fit for purpose today. There’s a five feet by three feet doorstep that’s 10 inches thick. Also included are cobblestones from the basement floor, garden wall masonry and the decorative carved pieces from around the windows, doors and columns.
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There are 70 palettes of wall stones alone, estimated to amount to 6,300 mainly rectangular blocks. “A stone mason in Donegal who I talked to about it said it would take his company three years doing nothing else to carve that stone today and that’s using modern machinery,” says Steve.
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The stones and the detailing around the windows and doors were all hand carved almost four hundred years ago. An architect who studied the remaining pictures estimates its internal floor area at about 5,000 sq ft with six to seven bedrooms. So we’ve decided to put it on the market again.”Īlwoodley Hall was a three bay, three storey over basement rectangular country house built mostly of cut Yorkshire sandstone. “Louise is in a wheelchair with her knees so it doesn’t make sense to live in a four floor country house. "Back in 2008 we put it on ebay in the USA and we had some interest, including from a friend of the guy who bought London Bridge and moved it to the USA.” Oil baron Robert McCulloch re-erected the 1830’s bridge in Lake Havasu City in Arizona where it reopened in 1971. So it’s been sat in our field ever since. We just couldn’t do that to a beautiful and historic 1640s house.
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But the planners insisted that we use wider modern windows. “The original plan was to rebuild it as our home here in Ireland. The Alwoodley Hall blocks in storage at the Mitchells' home in west Clare