2 weeks Ago
Driney, Loughlynn, Co Roscommon Asking price: €295,000 Agent: RE/MAX Chopin and changing scenery drive the daily routine of musician Leanne Anastasi at her rural idyll in Loughlynn, Co Roscommon. The Maltese pianist, whose career has taken her all over the globe, now teaches music and piano locally, having found her geographical muse at the end of a 400-metre driveway in a chance encounter. It was a journey that ended in a love affair with the place that has been home to her and her beloved Chappell & Co concert grand piano for the past five years or so.
Read more “I could not see a house,” she says. “Because there’s a very long private driveway to get to the property. There was farming land on either side, but I just couldn’t see any houses.
“As soon as I parked the car, I said to myself, ‘My goodness me, this is heaven over here’, because all I could hear was the sound of birds.” Owner Leanne Anastasi is a professional musician At the time, the previous owner had not yet completed the extension and refurbishment of the tiny 1920s cottage, but when Anastasi saw the large, open-plan living space the owner had created inside – one large enough to accommodate a grand piano – she was sold on the place. “I could visualise a full-size instrument in there, and that is not something one would come by often because to be quite honest, you very rarely see an open plan as big as this one,” she says.
Though she wanted to put her own stamp on her prospective new home, Anastasi says there were characteristics of the house she wanted to retain. “The person I bought it from had already started the conversion,” she says. “And she had done a lot of work on the old front of the house, retaining the old cottage features and so on.
I continued building on her imagination, so I placed an offer on this house. There was quite a bit of bidding, but I eventually managed to succeed.” Some of the proudest and most striking of her additions Anastasi can point to are the unmissable ceiling beams in the main living space, as well as the finish on the ceiling itself.
“The beams came from the Titanic shipyard so there is history to them, and the finish to the insulation in the roof was done in such a way that it reminded me of the type of limestone we use in Malta.” The timber floors and exposed stone walls lend an ‘international rustic’ feel throughout the interior of the L-shaped property. “I could visualise straight away how I wanted to finish it off,” Anastasi says.
“My brother is a very well-known interior designer back in Malta, so I guess it is in the blood. I could imagine the place complete, and I managed to finish the work in a matter of a few months.” One of the two bedrooms Situated on a finger of land in a rural location just outside Loughglynn, a village halfway between Ballaghaderreen and Castlerea, Anastasi’s property comprises just under eight acres of paddocks and gardens.
There is a substantial parking forecourt and inside, an entrance hallway with partially-exposed old stone walls, a feature that is echoed in other rooms. The open-plan kitchen, dining and living area with vaulted ceiling and exposed timber beams has a large sliding door and lots of windows. The open-plan living area At one end is a seating area, with a three-sided sofa looking towards a trapezoid window that frames a large tree outside.
At the other, are the kitchen, dining area and at the centre of it all, Anastasi’s piano. There are two bedrooms and two bathrooms. The master has a stone feature wall and built-in wardrobes, with an en suite bathroom with a freestanding bath and stone floor.
There is a library with a wood-burning stove off the second bedroom. Outside, there is a sheltered entertaining area with seating and tables, and a useful outbuilding. Another shelter has a wood-burning hot tub underneath it for rainy-day bathing.
The wood-fired hot tub The house has triple-glazed windows, stoves, oil-fired central heating, a burglar alarm system and a new waste treatment system, in addition to a private well with a water purification and softening system. To the rear of the house is a large pond, which can be seen from inside. Anastasi says, “The place is full of glass, so one can see and enjoy the outside.
It is a huge pond, and we get regular visitors there – ducks and all sorts of other birds, you name it – the hot tub was placed strategically to be able to look at the pond while enjoying the tub.” The master bathroom with freestanding bath Anastasi used to keep a selection of animals on the property, though she has had to scale back significantly in recent times. “I had goats and dogs, and I had miniature horses,” she says.
“But I don’t have the energy to look after animals these days, so had to cut down. Anastasi says she believes the house could be converted easily into a three- or four-bedroom property with minimal intervention, and without the need to extend its current footprint. Large windows make the most of the views Though Anastasi rarely performs in public these days, she recently completed a durational piano performance of 24 hours playing with only toilet breaks every hour, to raise money for a local girl, Zoe, who suffers from Cerebral Palsy.
“We went by the Guinness Book of Records rules, and I had to have lots of physiotherapy after doing it,” she says. “The proceeds went to help little Zoe get treatment in America. Afterwards, I was tired, but not in my fingers.
They were ready to do it all over again.” Now that she is reluctantly leaving the property to trade down to a smaller place, her new home, when she finds it, will have to accommodate her beloved instrument. What she is leaving behind is a cottage every bit as romantic as the nocturnes she coaxes from the keyboard.
RE/MAX Estates, is seeking offers in the region of €295,000. Read more.
